You can test the browsers yourself by placing the URL to the Yahoo Random Link http://random.yahoo.com/bin/ryl in a toolbar bookmark and click it a few thousand times. Although be warned it can take you anywhere! So I really wouldn't recommend using it in IE.
There used to be a "browser buster" on mozilla.org that would reload this URL (loading a new page each time) automatically in a frame. But I don't see that out there anywhere any more. Probably because the YRL was busted for a long time.
The stated reason in TFA is to allow use of IE-only site. But of course it would be a lot simpler to fake and/or emulate IE's responses to sneak in; and to bitch loudly to the sites...
Exactly, Most sites that require IE for reasons other than a little bit of bad HTML usually only work on IE for Windows. If they happen to let IE for Mac in it is probably because they couldn't be arsed to test the site in IE for Mac (or don't even know Macs exist!) and forgot to block it. When IE for Mac get to the part that loads the Windows x86 only ActiveX control or whatever other proprietary thing, it won't work.
IE only sites exist because someone is either lazy and/or stupid. If they can't be bothered to install Firefox on their own Windows computer and design/test for that, then it is unlikely that they will actually design/test their site in IE for Mac on a completely different computer. (which works differently enough that it often won't work if it is not specifically designed for)
With Firefox usage as high as it is, it boggles my mind the stupidity that must be causing IE only sites to still exist. People do need to complain more - and loudly.
And after three long hard years of implementing a huge amount of code as per specifications, finally wrapping things up and looking to moving on to bigger and better things... they go and change the specs! Arrraggg!!
*Sigh* now slashdot won't look so good in my collection of old browsers. I actually used to rely on Netscape 3 on some slower computers until around the release of Mozilla 1.0.
Well, at least the latest Seamonkey and Firefox Deer Park will run on Windows NT 3.51 Just try that with IE!:)
It looks like I will finally have to upgrade from Netscape 3.0. Well, Moz and Firefox runs on Windows 95... probably will need more than 8 megs of ram unless I want it to take half an hour to start up again. Will upgrading to XP make my 486 faster?
Geze... and I have been asking for a boycott since version 4!
And after all these years I am still using Windows (95 and NT 4) without any trace of IE (no mshtml.dll or anything!)
<mad scientist voice> Internet Explorer is Evil! EVIL! </mad scientist voice> And I don't think IE 7 is going to be any different.
Slashdot should be more positive
on
Firefox 1.1 Scrapped
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Does slashdot suddenly have something against Mozilla / Firefox? This reminds me of the "Mozilla suite discontinued" and the "Thunderbird (some version) canceled" stories. These could EASILY be re-worded to put a more positive spin on it.
How about: Firefox leaps ahead to 1.5!
Going on to describe: The vast number of improvements to Firefox has warranted a larger version increase, skipping over 1.1 the next release will be 1.5...
Similarly the previous stories could have been "Mozilla.org focuses exclusively on Firefox" and "Thunderbird flies ahead to version (number)".
Of course it didn't help the previous two were copied out of context from Mozillazine articles. Hmm... I don't see anything about this at all on Mozillazine yet.
Anyway Slashdot should be trying to help Mozilla.org and Firefox, not trying to sensationalize every change.
Of course no one wants this, what the EU should have done was mandate that ALL versions of Windows come with WMP as an *OPTION* (during setup, and in Add/Remove programs). Then it would be up to the OEMs (and/or users) to CHOOSE to install WMP or not - and they wouldn't have to fret over it being a completely different version of windows to support. Sure, most likely they would choose to install WMP, but it is the choice that is important!
And if it were an Add/Removable program, even if was not installed by default, apps installed later that needed WMP could ask the user if they wanted to install WMP or not. (MS did that before in the 9x days with other optional components)
The original order by the EU was not specific as to how to implement this entire thing. Yanking out all related DLLs and offering it as a separate Windows version was Microsoft's idea. Making WMP add/removable (with the user-default of not installed) would have satisfied the EU order just fine. But Microsoft, once again, just had to be jerks about the entire thing so they could get their way.
I have often wondered about this myself, back in the day of the Apple IIs and TRS-80s there were almost always hardware specs available because that was what you used to program your application with. There were no drivers or OS abstraction layers, there wasn't enough memory or speed to do that so your program just talked directly to the hardware.
The first time I realized there was a problem was back in the 90s when my brother was trying to load up Linux on one of his machines and complaining that his video card wasn't supported because the people who made it (Diamond Multimedia?) wouldn't release any specs and people were having to reverse engineer how it worked. That seemed crazy to me. Back then it wasn't just a Windows world either, OS/2 was still around and DOS apps were huge. It boggled my mind that anyone would hold back information like that because releasing programming specs would encourage third party application development that made use of their hardware and ultimately boost their sales!
Sadly these days no one seems to care as long as the vendor has a Microsoft Windows XP(TM) driver available, even if the driver is half-assed and crashes some times.
hardware manufactures have to save a few cents and give us those lobotomized winmodems instead of real modems. I guess it shows where people's priorities are.
I don't know if this means that IBM is going to be involved in the direction that Firefox feature development might take, but if they are hopefully it might formalize Firefox more perhaps addressing some of the concerns of Mozilla Suite users (meaning more Firefox users! Yay!).
Actually, Slashdot started out as "Chips N Dips" at http://www.cs.hope.edu/~malda/cnd/ (no longer at that URL obviously) I pulled this up in archive.org once but I can't seem to right now as archive.org search seems to be slashdotted.
I'm not sure I would call everything that has happened to icons progress.
Now that icons are commonly 24 bit color or more and use complex shading and styles they are often more difficult to identify at a glance than 2-color monochrome icons. (Icons should always be capable of being represented as a 2-color monochrome icons to ensure they have enough visual contrast)
And with all of the varying styles these days, if you don't make your icons specific to each operating environment then they stick out like sore a thumb.
The days of 16-color icons were probably the best because you could make a decent icon without having to be an artist or having an expensive paint program.
It still boggles my mind how many people choose bad icons for their products. I currently have the joy of working with a particular software product where many of the different configuration tools all have slightly different pictures of little computer... looking things with some kind of network dealy around them, and I keep getting them all mixed up. Of course part of the problem is that the programs aren't very well organized to begin with and the fact that they keep changing the program names in each version proves that.
Anyway, it is important that any application have a clear distinct purpose, a good icon to reflect that purpose and then to stick with it as people learn what it symbolized.
Remember, Icons literally become a language to people!
Firefox was supposed to be the replacement for the Mozilla suite for a long time now, but I find it a tad lacking because the e-mail client is separate, and is the composer even being maintained any more by anybody? It wouldn't be such a big deal if Firefox had all of that included. (as optional components of course).
I am also still not crazy about some of the new features in Firefox 1.0, but I imagine these will be worked out in time.
Perhaps now that they are officially abandoning the suite and focusing in one direction, there will be more of a push to include or exclude features to make former suite users happier.
There is a simple reason why you wouldn't want to remove IE from the system: You install windows and want to download firefox from the internet. Now give me one good way that doesn't request user to have 5 years of experience with dos, ftp or similar utility to do that?
Which is why IE should have been an add/removable application from day one.
1: Install XP with IE. 2: Download and install Firefox. 3: Go to add/remove programs, remove IE. (Profit!)
Jeze, "Reduced Media Edition"? Every time Microsoft doesn't get their way they have to make a big stink about it.
Ultimately the removal of the media player is something their CUSTOMERS WANT! This is just another glaring example of how Microsoft stopped listening to their customers a long time ago and set their design goals for whatever gives marketing management a hard-on.
It is easy to explain modern right and left mouse click behavior because even Windows, in most places, is designed to assume users will only use one mouse button for normal operations. Right clicking is still left as a more advanced way to more quickly get to some options.
If you really want to see an example of a system where right and left clicking is confusing and right-clicking is mandatory, try IBM OS/2 2.0!. Talk about developers going right-click bananas!
True some programs use it inappropriately, but in cases where you have many windows that are part of the same application it can be very useful. A good example of a good use is a paint program where you may be working with dozens of pieces of images, the MDI form works kind of like a clip tray and makes it easy to manage all of the images at the same time.
Ideally in most apps, yes it should be an option. (In VB 6 it is)
Before they bought out TechTV and it was doing so well they kept bumping it up to only be included on the more expensive plans. One day I changed to tech TV and all I got was "not authorized" until I agreed to pay more money. I only fell for for that once and then the next time I told them to screw it.
After they killed TechTV by buying it up and merging it with their crap clone G4 they left in on the more expensive plan expecting people would still want it that much. WRONG!
Well, I for one will welcome our new TV-over-phone-line overlords when they come around.
I hate Comcast (the local cable monopoly here) They just keep taking aways channels and increasing their prices for their worthless cable TV. If it weren't for a few sci-fi shows I watch I would just disconnect. I am seriously looking at other options and getting TV over phone line would be great. I already get my DSL though the phone line using Earthlink and getting video through that to would be great.
Hardware independence?
on
A .Net CPU
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It boggles my mind, every time someone comes out with a bytecoded language in order to attempt to achieve hardware independence, someone comes along and creates hardware to execute it! Thus defeating the original purpose.
Of course people see the need for hardware acceleration because interpreted or even JIT compiled bytecode languages are always going to be slower than precompiled native binaries.
If they took out the search between date function, that would make google groups usless to me! I have recently been doing quite a bit of research on old computers and GUIs. Some keywords would return zillions of matches after 1990 or so and the most relevent data is before that. Sometimes I am looking for comments about something that happens on a certian year (like a specific release of software - earlier or later comments are unlilkey to be relevant). Sometimes it is important to actually find the earliest posts without wading through 20 years worth of garbage.
I can understand why they wouldn't want people do deep link to them, some people should copy information to their own sites if they want it served up. But I really think Google could reach some kind of compromise such as inserting a big ad on pages that are deep linked.
Slashdot Mirror
You can test the browsers yourself by placing the URL to the Yahoo Random Link http://random.yahoo.com/bin/ryl in a toolbar bookmark and click it a few thousand times. Although be warned it can take you anywhere! So I really wouldn't recommend using it in IE.
There used to be a "browser buster" on mozilla.org that would reload this URL (loading a new page each time) automatically in a frame. But I don't see that out there anywhere any more. Probably because the YRL was busted for a long time.
The stated reason in TFA is to allow use of IE-only site. But of course it would be a lot simpler to fake and/or emulate IE's responses to sneak in; and to bitch loudly to the sites...
Exactly, Most sites that require IE for reasons other than a little bit of bad HTML usually only work on IE for Windows. If they happen to let IE for Mac in it is probably because they couldn't be arsed to test the site in IE for Mac (or don't even know Macs exist!) and forgot to block it. When IE for Mac get to the part that loads the Windows x86 only ActiveX control or whatever other proprietary thing, it won't work.
IE only sites exist because someone is either lazy and/or stupid. If they can't be bothered to install Firefox on their own Windows computer and design/test for that, then it is unlikely that they will actually design/test their site in IE for Mac on a completely different computer. (which works differently enough that it often won't work if it is not specifically designed for)
With Firefox usage as high as it is, it boggles my mind the stupidity that must be causing IE only sites to still exist. People do need to complain more - and loudly.
And after three long hard years of implementing a huge amount of code as per specifications, finally wrapping things up and looking to moving on to bigger and better things... they go and change the specs! Arrraggg!!
*Sigh* now slashdot won't look so good in my collection of old browsers. I actually used to rely on Netscape 3 on some slower computers until around the release of Mozilla 1.0. Well, at least the latest Seamonkey and Firefox Deer Park will run on Windows NT 3.51 Just try that with IE! :)
It looks like I will finally have to upgrade from Netscape 3.0. Well, Moz and Firefox runs on Windows 95... probably will need more than 8 megs of ram unless I want it to take half an hour to start up again. Will upgrading to XP make my 486 faster?
Geze... and I have been asking for a boycott since version 4!
And after all these years I am still using Windows (95 and NT 4) without any trace of IE (no mshtml.dll or anything!)
<mad scientist voice> Internet Explorer is Evil! EVIL! </mad scientist voice> And I don't think IE 7 is going to be any different.
Does slashdot suddenly have something against Mozilla / Firefox? This reminds me of the "Mozilla suite discontinued" and the "Thunderbird (some version) canceled" stories. These could EASILY be re-worded to put a more positive spin on it.
How about: Firefox leaps ahead to 1.5!
Going on to describe: The vast number of improvements to Firefox has warranted a larger version increase, skipping over 1.1 the next release will be 1.5...
Similarly the previous stories could have been "Mozilla.org focuses exclusively on Firefox" and "Thunderbird flies ahead to version (number)".
Of course it didn't help the previous two were copied out of context from Mozillazine articles. Hmm... I don't see anything about this at all on Mozillazine yet.
Anyway Slashdot should be trying to help Mozilla.org and Firefox, not trying to sensationalize every change.
there were a couple of things it was missing that would have made it better:
:)
1: A shipboard computer with an attitude
2: some kind of mysterious aincent/alien technology that gives the crew some small secret advantage.
Then it would be closer to being real-life anime.
Of course no one wants this, what the EU should have done was mandate that ALL versions of Windows come with WMP as an *OPTION* (during setup, and in Add/Remove programs). Then it would be up to the OEMs (and/or users) to CHOOSE to install WMP or not - and they wouldn't have to fret over it being a completely different version of windows to support. Sure, most likely they would choose to install WMP, but it is the choice that is important!
And if it were an Add/Removable program, even if was not installed by default, apps installed later that needed WMP could ask the user if they wanted to install WMP or not. (MS did that before in the 9x days with other optional components)
The original order by the EU was not specific as to how to implement this entire thing. Yanking out all related DLLs and offering it as a separate Windows version was Microsoft's idea. Making WMP add/removable (with the user-default of not installed) would have satisfied the EU order just fine. But Microsoft, once again, just had to be jerks about the entire thing so they could get their way.
I have often wondered about this myself, back in the day of the Apple IIs and TRS-80s there were almost always hardware specs available because that was what you used to program your application with. There were no drivers or OS abstraction layers, there wasn't enough memory or speed to do that so your program just talked directly to the hardware.
The first time I realized there was a problem was back in the 90s when my brother was trying to load up Linux on one of his machines and complaining that his video card wasn't supported because the people who made it (Diamond Multimedia?) wouldn't release any specs and people were having to reverse engineer how it worked. That seemed crazy to me. Back then it wasn't just a Windows world either, OS/2 was still around and DOS apps were huge. It boggled my mind that anyone would hold back information like that because releasing programming specs would encourage third party application development that made use of their hardware and ultimately boost their sales!
Sadly these days no one seems to care as long as the vendor has a Microsoft Windows XP(TM) driver available, even if the driver is half-assed and crashes some times.
hardware manufactures have to save a few cents and give us those lobotomized winmodems instead of real modems. I guess it shows where people's priorities are.
I wonder why IE is so popular in Japan and Asia and if there is anything that can be done to address that.
I don't know if this means that IBM is going to be involved in the direction that Firefox feature development might take, but if they are hopefully it might formalize Firefox more perhaps addressing some of the concerns of Mozilla Suite users (meaning more Firefox users! Yay!).
Actually, Slashdot started out as "Chips N Dips" at http://www.cs.hope.edu/~malda/cnd/ (no longer at that URL obviously) I pulled this up in archive.org once but I can't seem to right now as archive.org search seems to be slashdotted.
I'm not sure I would call everything that has happened to icons progress.
Now that icons are commonly 24 bit color or more and use complex shading and styles they are often more difficult to identify at a glance than 2-color monochrome icons. (Icons should always be capable of being represented as a 2-color monochrome icons to ensure they have enough visual contrast)
And with all of the varying styles these days, if you don't make your icons specific to each operating environment then they stick out like sore a thumb.
The days of 16-color icons were probably the best because you could make a decent icon without having to be an artist or having an expensive paint program.
It still boggles my mind how many people choose bad icons for their products. I currently have the joy of working with a particular software product where many of the different configuration tools all have slightly different pictures of little computer... looking things with some kind of network dealy around them, and I keep getting them all mixed up. Of course part of the problem is that the programs aren't very well organized to begin with and the fact that they keep changing the program names in each version proves that.
Anyway, it is important that any application have a clear distinct purpose, a good icon to reflect that purpose and then to stick with it as people learn what it symbolized.
Remember, Icons literally become a language to people!
Firefox was supposed to be the replacement for the Mozilla suite for a long time now, but I find it a tad lacking because the e-mail client is separate, and is the composer even being maintained any more by anybody? It wouldn't be such a big deal if Firefox had all of that included. (as optional components of course).
I am also still not crazy about some of the new features in Firefox 1.0, but I imagine these will be worked out in time.
Perhaps now that they are officially abandoning the suite and focusing in one direction, there will be more of a push to include or exclude features to make former suite users happier.
Let's hope that the commercial wormhole industry comes to the rescue if Stargate SG1 gets canceled.
There is a simple reason why you wouldn't want to remove IE from the system: You install windows and want to download firefox from the internet. Now give me one good way that doesn't request user to have 5 years of experience with dos, ftp or similar utility to do that?
Which is why IE should have been an add/removable application from day one.
1: Install XP with IE.
2: Download and install Firefox.
3: Go to add/remove programs, remove IE. (Profit!)
Jeze, "Reduced Media Edition"? Every time Microsoft doesn't get their way they have to make a big stink about it.
Ultimately the removal of the media player is something their CUSTOMERS WANT! This is just another glaring example of how Microsoft stopped listening to their customers a long time ago and set their design goals for whatever gives marketing management a hard-on.
It is easy to explain modern right and left mouse click behavior because even Windows, in most places, is designed to assume users will only use one mouse button for normal operations. Right clicking is still left as a more advanced way to more quickly get to some options.
If you really want to see an example of a system where right and left clicking is confusing and right-clicking is mandatory, try IBM OS/2 2.0!. Talk about developers going right-click bananas!
Well, I like MDI :)
True some programs use it inappropriately, but in cases where you have many windows that are part of the same application it can be very useful. A good example of a good use is a paint program where you may be working with dozens of pieces of images, the MDI form works kind of like a clip tray and makes it easy to manage all of the images at the same time.
Ideally in most apps, yes it should be an option. (In VB 6 it is)
It's because comcast is evil.
Before they bought out TechTV and it was doing so well they kept bumping it up to only be included on the more expensive plans. One day I changed to tech TV and all I got was "not authorized" until I agreed to pay more money. I only fell for for that once and then the next time I told them to screw it.
After they killed TechTV by buying it up and merging it with their crap clone G4 they left in on the more expensive plan expecting people would still want it that much. WRONG!
Well, I for one will welcome our new TV-over-phone-line overlords when they come around.
I hate Comcast (the local cable monopoly here) They just keep taking aways channels and increasing their prices for their worthless cable TV. If it weren't for a few sci-fi shows I watch I would just disconnect. I am seriously looking at other options and getting TV over phone line would be great. I already get my DSL though the phone line using Earthlink and getting video through that to would be great.
It boggles my mind, every time someone comes out with a bytecoded language in order to attempt to achieve hardware independence, someone comes along and creates hardware to execute it! Thus defeating the original purpose.
Of course people see the need for hardware acceleration because interpreted or even JIT compiled bytecode languages are always going to be slower than precompiled native binaries.
If they took out the search between date function, that would make google groups usless to me! I have recently been doing quite a bit of research on old computers and GUIs. Some keywords would return zillions of matches after 1990 or so and the most relevent data is before that. Sometimes I am looking for comments about something that happens on a certian year (like a specific release of software - earlier or later comments are unlilkey to be relevant). Sometimes it is important to actually find the earliest posts without wading through 20 years worth of garbage.
I can understand why they wouldn't want people do deep link to them, some people should copy information to their own sites if they want it served up. But I really think Google could reach some kind of compromise such as inserting a big ad on pages that are deep linked.