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In-Game Web Browser Round-Up
theodp writes "CNET takes a look at Web browsers you can run inside of the latest video games, offering mini-reviews of PlayXpert, Steam, Rogue, and Xfire. Why run these instead of your standard browser? Well, these browsers run lean and mean, play nice with full-screen apps, provide hot keys that can make them appear or disappear in an instant, and offer transparency so you can continue to play a game in full screen while chatting, reading e-mail or looking up cheat codes. So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?"
These new in-game browsers are great! I used to be annoyed that I'd have to hit Alt AND F4 to switch away from my game to check my stock prices, but now with these new in-game browsers I can simply hit Shift+F4 and browse at my leisure.
This is a huge step forward in usability. I can't wait until Emacs includes a browser that can be toggled with an intuitive set of keystrokes.
Hopefully never. People already have enough things to distract them while driving. Do they really need another one?
So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
I hope that we never see this. Not as long as there's a human steering the car. Do we really need yet ANOTHER distraction from driving? People are texting, putting on makeup, calling, eating, drinking, reading and doing too many other things than driving. Imho if a police should see you doing this they should sell your car and take your license since you're too stupid to figure out that 3000kg at 100km/h is a force to be respected.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Now that AIGLX lets you run any window as an OpenGL mesh and texture, it's not a stretch to map that into a surface in your game. But it would require some cooperation from the game itself, since it has to take a reasonable place in the OpenGL command pipeline unless you just want it hovering over everything.
Sam ty sig.
As with most geeks, no browser will get our full attention until it gets adblock.
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
All it does is encourage people to multi-task more. And that is not a good thing. Our brain isn't good at multi-tasking (in terms of focusing on different things), we end up doing each job half-assed. And have a big switch when we go from one to the other. It is like a drug though because we use so much extra brain power multi-tasking we feel like we are being more productive however you are better off doing job 1 then job 2 in order. With this happening more we are training our kids not to sit down and solve a problem but jump back and forth until until we fail at all of them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Steam seems to still use Internet Explorer for some things. I removed IE with nLite and can easily see where Steam tries to use it. TF2 also has major problems and it forces the game to minimise and presents a dialogue asking me if I want to download an html file, it then takes 20 seconds to get back into the game. I wish there was some way to stop TF2 from making any attempts to use a browser, but I haven't found one yet.
Eve Online's IGB is a joke.
What's worse is, the joke suck!
If you're just looking for something to look up info there is no need for a browser in WoW.
Install the Questhelper and lightheaded addons and you're all set.
Questhelper points you to the quest locations and lightheaded parses all comments from wowhead on quests in a ingame addon.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Usually I have all my chat windows etc open on second monitor where I can see them. Second old 17" LCD does the trick.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
"...So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?"
Are you serious? We can't even keep people from crashing at 80MPH and killing innocent people because they're too busy texting on a 2x2" screen on a fucking cell phone, and you want to slap a full-blown YouTube/Facebook/Myspace portal on the windshield?
I'll tell you how much longer. When we have a foolproof autopilot system for our cars.
"So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?"
just as soon as I mount those rockets, .50cal, smoke screen, oil slick, caltrop seeder, and armor on my truck.
Oh, and I need to mod the controls to let me handle steering and acceleration/defense devices with a joystick and the aiming/offense with a mouse.
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
If you're just looking for something to look up info there is no need for a browser in WoW.
Install the Questhelper and lightheaded addons and you're all set.
Questhelper points you to the quest locations and lightheaded parses all comments from wowhead on quests in a ingame addon.
Questhelper has too large of a performance impact for me in my 3.8 GHz C2D with 4 gigs of ram. I'm glad you mention wowhead, which the GP should be using instead of thotbot. I think a good solution is cartographer and playing the game in windowed (but maximized) mode. In windowed mode, alt tabbing out is instant instead of incurring the 2 second delay of full screen. Of course, windowed mode incurs a performance penalty too, but it's less than QH and it can easily be turned off when not in need of constant reference material.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Yep. With the way the economy is going, the user interface will be a rifle or shotgun.
A/S/L?
Actually, I find that trying Questhelper has pretty much killed all my interest in WoW.
Now I do appreciate having Thottbot or such, for when I got lost or couldn't figure out the directions after trying for half an hour. But just following the cube makes me feel like a bot could do the same thing, and probably better. There is no need for any more complex thought above "click on that guy because Questhelper says so" or "head that way because Questhelper says so." There's nothing left to discover (technically QH discovered it already for you), nothing worth remembering (QH already tells you whether you need to go east or west, so no point in even trying to remember where the quest told you to go), you don't even need to look at the major landmarks (if it's behind that hill, QH will tell you so.)
And you can tell. I know people who play exclusively by Questhelper (heck, mom does) and frankly, they don't seem to actually use any brainpower in playing the game. Often they won't even remember what they just did or where some major landmark is, because really there was no more thought involved than obediently doing what the bot told them to. They've run along some road a dozen times, but ask them to show you where it is, and you find that they couldn't find their own arse with a map and a compass, but without QH. Or you see them forgetting they had to use some unique item, and some whole group trying to take down some elite boss the hard way instead, because none of them bothered even reading the quest text and QH doesn't tell them, "dude, use the shreder".
Now if that still keeps you entertained, good for you, and I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise. But it's just not for me. For me it makes the whole thing boring as heck, and takes away any kind of sense of achievement too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Level pally...watch porn...level pally...watch porn...
hmmm...
EUREKA!
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Steam (and probably the others too) just uses the drop-in ActiveX Internet Explorer component. It's not mean and it's definitely not lean.
If they used Gecko or Webkit it would be a different matter.
Actually, I think the best thing to do with these in-game browsers is to play in-browser games.
Hopefully, those games will include browsers, too, so we don't get bored.
Questhelper has too large of a performance impact for me in my 3.8 GHz C2D with 4 gigs of ram.
Sir...I call bullshit. I can run Questhelper fine on a crappy Compaq laptop running Vista on 1 GB of RAM.
Although TourGuide (w/ the WoW-Pro guides) is better, and I use that now anyway.
I use my laptop and Synergy to achieve just that.
looking up cheat codes. So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
What's the cheat code for enabling infinite fuel in my car?
Window up, window down, window up, window down, turn signal left, turn signal right, turn signal left, turn signal right, AC, emergency brake, ignition.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?