Slashdot Mirror
Firefox In Print
hoovernj writes "It seems that O'Reilly is ready to release two books about Firefox in March. The first is Firefox Hacks, which will be targeted at Firefox power users. And the second is Don't Click on the Blue E!, which will be targeted at less-savvy users transitioning from Internet Explorer. Could this be the end of lazy IE-only scripted webpages? (thanks to mozillaZine for the original pointer)." And reader ledmirage writes "Wired Magazine's February issue on Firefox: 'It's fast, secure, open source - and super popular. The hot new browser called Firefox is rocking the software world. (Watch your back, Bill Gates.)'."
I'm giving up Lynx.
Gimme that booze you little pumpkin pie hair cutted freak!
The Wired kiss-of-death will strike again. They can't tout a "next big thing" without absolutely killing it.
Could this be the end of lazy IE-only scripted webpages?
Slashdot is not the place to ask. Their site constantly displays incorrectly in Firefox. They'd do well to take heed of their own articles.
Some people are very closed minded, and/or afraid to even go to the menus. I am sure the book covers more then the forward, back, refresh, stop, home, and location bar. Which most people use 95% of the time. But the little things like managing bookmark,configuring the options adding, theams, extentions, understaning RSS. Explaining why Active-X is bad. Most people when given a piece of software they don't at all the options they have they only go there when they need to. Heck I know many people who think clicking the start button is considered an advanced feature in windows. If it isn't on their desktop then it isn't worth clicking on.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I just had this conversation with my business partner the other day (we're in web development). I was thinking about it from this standpoint - even Firefox doesn't get everything completely right 100% of the time. Those problems tend to get fixed pretty quick, luckily.
If you've ever tried to read through the W3C recommendations, you'll find them pretty dry and occasionally confusing. You can understand how browsers don't conform completely all the time.
That doesn't excuse Microsoft from developing a way-off-base browser, allowing serious security holes past testing, or refusing to fix the problems they are aware of... There are a few things I like about IE, including some treatments of CSS and JavaScript. Just today I had to implement an auto-progressing slideshow feature into a photo gallery, and IE lets me use blend transitions (Firefox doesn't, at least that I can find).
Despite all the defenses I can imagine, we still develop for Firefox and adjust to make it work in IE. We're both Firefox users that have to keep IE in our arsenal because that's what EVERY SINGLE CLIENT USES. None of them care to switch...and some can't because of the corporate requirements.
The geek is strong in this one.
That's because the IE executable isn't much more than a wrapper for the MSHTML rendering engine, which is already loaded when booting Windows.
It's a shame that on Linux and Windows the Mac paradigm is not possible: of having an application loaded with no open windows. Closing the last Safari (or Firefox even) window on OS X doesn't kill the process, so for frequently used programs, the apparent load time is very fast. Of course, it's worth actually quitting larger processes if they aren't being opened much to free up memory.
Some Windows programs come with a background utility that keeps them open even when they are closed. (I think Office might have some Fast Office Start utility for example.) The problem with this tactic is the programs take up resources all the time.
Ironicly the firefox browser prints pages like crap, cutting text in half, and squishing images very poorly. I love the browser, but I always have to reprint pages in other browsers to get better results.
- Bruzer
"Tempt not a desperate man" - Willy S.
By making it impossible to execute in the browser, it makes it impossible to write a script to automatically execute a program.
Psychologically, it also slows down and warns the user. The web conditions you to click along like mad, on anything that seizes your interest for a second. Having to stop and answer the dialog, then go find the exe breaks that spell.
It's like seeing a line of flares on the side of the highway...you instinctively slow down, and look for the accident.