Did you just write a whole essay on an arbitrary and meaningless version number?
It may be arbitrary and meaningless now but it didn't use to be.
It used to be that a move from Major->Major meant that there would be large changes and there's a good chance addons would break. Changes to minor versions might break addons, and patches shouldn't.
Now, who the fuck knows? The number's meaningless. No one cares about Chrome's version number, because it's meaningless.
Firefox's version number used to convey information, and now it doesn't. They've taken something useful and made it useless.
I actually just scrolled up and read your line bashing the AwesomeBar. Great. How many years has it been now? And you still don't understand how it's used or why it's useful?
Really? It's supposed to find infrequently read sites? Or sites that you've only read once? Because before it finds Slashdot, it finds some random article I read months ago.
Before it finds a website that I had repeatedly had to go back to over the course of a day, it found page 2 of some article I read a month ago. Actually, it found several random articles that had nothing to do with the site I was trying to pull up. Enough that scrolling through the entire list meant that, despite the fact I'd opened it, say, five times already, it wasn't on the list. At all.
And I can guarantee you the thing with me trying to reopen a forum only to find that the Awesome bar found nothing but either page 2 or beyond and random threads on the forum happened. Despite the fact that I'd bookmarked the forum. I thought that was supposed to promote it to the top of the search, but apparently not.
Of course, I wouldn't need to reopen it if Firefox hadn't randomly decided not to restore my tabs, but that's a different issue...
Google only supports the last 3 versions of a browser. With FF6, that means Google's only going to support FF4, FF5 and FF6. FF3.6 won't work with Google Apps and other stuff anymore (seriously, I tried using G+ with FF3.5, and it demanded I upgrade - supported browsers are 3.6, 4 and 5 then).
Well, shit, because I still have a PowerPC Mac on my desk. It's stuck with Firefox 3.6 because they dropped PowerPC support in Firefox 4. So I guess that means it's time to move over to Safari for it. I suppose I can't complain too much on that one, but it's annoying having a perfectly functional Mac that's going to get warehoused because no one will compile software for it any more. Actually it's Apple dropping support for Mac OS X 10.5 that will force the issue: as soon as an unpatched security issue is found, IT will force me to disconnect it and it will become useless. (And since I have it explicitly to run Mac-only software, Linux isn't an option to extend its life.)
And when will Mozilla stop screwing around with the UI? FF5 screwed up the tab bar if you have a bunch of tabs and close them right->left since the now-rightmost tab doesn't scroll right - your mouse just has an empty space.
That's another feature half-assed copied from Chrome. When you close a tab in Chrome, the tabs don't rearrange until the mouse leaves the tab bar. It's useful because an accidental double-click won't close a tab you didn't mean to close.
In Firefox 5, they just don't scroll over to fill the right most space until the mouse leaves the tab bar, but otherwise rearrange themselves. So a double-click will kill two tabs.
I don't think I'd mind Firefox copying features from Chrome if they didn't continuously half-ass them and turn a feature that's useful in Chrome into just a pure annoyance by missing out on why Chrome does something or how they make it work.
They can't block "evil" addons like that, sure, but they can block "well behaved" addons that install as part of some other software.
Take the Skype addon, for example. In IE9, IE will ask you if you want to enable it the first time IE9 runs. Firefox provides no mechanism for that, and instead just blindly runs it.
This will tell you "hey, there's a new addon, do you want to use it?" and then you can opt out.
You're right that "sneaky" addons that decide to play evil will be able to get around it. But given that the way Firefox currently works, all "system-level" addons are "sneaky," this is still a good fix.
Can you skip version 6, or are they going to pull another asshole "Firefox 5 is EOLed because v6 is out" like they did to Firefox 4?
Or do you mean you're sticking with Firefox 3.6? Because that seems like a good idea these days, at least until they figure out that their "rapidly release schedule" isn't actually helping anything and is just ensuring that no one gives a shit about new Firefox releases any more.
I suppose it's no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to Firefox development for the past several years, but for fuck's sake, listen to your users and stop with the version number inflation!
Seriously, what makes this a Firefox 6 and not a Firefox 4.2? What new features does it add? Apparently the only really "stand-out" feature is graying out anything that isn't the domain name in the useless-bar. I mean, Awesome Bar.
(Seriously, I like the concept, but I've had quite a few instances this past week where instead of finding "the page I was just on five minutes ago" it does something like "page 3 of this article you read two months ago" with no hint of the URL I'd opened literally ten times already that day. Awesome. Here's an idea, can Firefox try and fix it to make it useful? Like sort based on number of times a page was viewed, counting reloads, so that typing the URL to a forum doesn't find page 2, 3, 4, and 5, but never page 1 because I don't click on the page 1 link enough, I just reload the forum?)
But back to the version number issue - quick, how many people know what version number Chrome is up to off the top of their head? Anyone?
How many people using Firefox 5 here have literally forgotten that they're using Firefox 5, because the last really major update was Firefox 4? I still think of it as "Firefox 4" because it looks identical, and have to be reminded that they've inflated the version number for no useful reason.
Seriously, stop blindly aping Chrome! If you're going to copy something Chrome does, try and understand it! For example, take removing the status bar. Chrome will expand the little URL popup that replaced the status bar if you continue hovering a link. Firefox 4 and 5 don't. And for some reason they randomly switch between left-aligning it and right-aligning the popup. And for fuck's sake, why don't you just expand the popup to fill the entire horizontal width of the window?! I've got the room to display the entire URL! Why doesn't Firefox bother doing so?!
But kudos for aping (poorly) the feature in IE 9 that warns when third party addons have been installed and gives you the option of not using them. It's nice to know that you're going to go ahead and do that after crying about how it's impossible to do, even after IE had launched with that feature.
Anyone who remembers US history should be able to answer that one.
The US Industrial Revolution was literally based on IP stolen from England. Samuel Slater copied the design of patented British cotton mills as best he could and brought them to the United States.
Thanks to this act of blatant "intellectual piracy" he's now known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution."
this case, I believe Apple has a legitimate complaint.
And you're completely wrong. The "design elements" Samsung copied are literally "rounded corners" and "displaying icons in a grid." There's nothing really unique about any of that.
Have you even seen the Samsung tablets? Like, in reality?
About the only thing that made me think "iPad" was that Best Buy had placed them next to the Apple section for some reason, and that instead of using a normal USB connector they used something that looks like the crappy iPod one. Once you actually look at them, they look nothing like an Apple anything.
Except... Apple is suing HTC and Motorola over Android-related patents. What exactly is your point? That they're not suing them over rounded corners, but instead using other bogus patents? (Specifically, if I recall, unlocking a phone with a touch screen.)
So your point is that the fact that Apple is using a different set of entirely bogus patents against HTC and Motorola and a completely bogus trademark against Amazon makes those lawsuits completely different from the bogus IP suit against Samsung, somehow?
I suppose you're technically right. Apple is abusing different areas of IP law in their various lawsuits. Yay Apple?
You know that article I linked to? It may not have made it clear, but Apple sued first, asking for an injunction to forbid sales of Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets (and a whole bunch of others, too) in the US.
It was Apple that went for the "nuclear option" as you put it from the very start. Samsung just responded in kind.
you don't see them suing HTC or Sony or any of several other manufacturers who make Android handsets
You might not, because you're not looking: Apple Sues HTC
Man, that took all of one search on Google to find. (Try "Apple sues HTC.")
If you want others, you can also try just flat-out searching for "Apple sues Android" which will get you such gems as Apple suing Motorola over Android and Amazon.com over having an App Store.
I can't find anything for them suing Sony in particular, but there's a lot of speculation that if they win their HTC suit, they'll be able to use that against every Android phone maker. So the best you can say is that they're not suing Sony yet.
Yeah, except if you recall, Samsung's move was in retaliation of Apple attempting to ban imports of the Galaxy Tab into the US using the exact same crap reasoning they're getting away with in Europe.
Except as far as I know, they weren't able to get a preliminary injunction in the US, and instead are still in US court suing Samsung over rounded corners and arranging icons in a grid.
Samsung's patents, on the other hand, are based on actual technology. Whether they're really patent worthy or not I can't really say, but they're actual technology patents, and not rounded corners.
Have you ever seen a Galaxy Tab? They totally ripped off Apple!
No, seriously, the connector it uses is some proprietary POS instead of just USB. Just like Apple's! It actually looks kind of like the iPod connector cable, except a different color and it says Samsung on it in giant letters.
I have no idea why Samsung would want their connector cable to look like an Apple cable, but I will admit when I first saw the tablet end-on with the cable sticking out, I figured it had to be an iPad because no one else would be so stupid as to use a proprietary connector when a simple micro-USB plug would work.
Actually, I could be wrong, because I didn't bother unplugging the cable, so it could be hiding a micro-USB plug under the Apple-esque oversized cable plug. Which would be incredibly silly, like requiring a music application to sync contact information to a cell phone.
I wonder if it also breaks as incredibly easily as Apple's cable? Nothing quite like seeing copper wires after only a few month's use!
Ah, yes, the "Add-on Bar," giving me the worst of both worlds: extra vertical space wasted for a few icons, and the URLs appear above the damned thing anyway instead of what should be a status bar, and they're still compacted so I can't see the entire URL anyway!
The addon-bar is a horrible hack they threw in when they discovered that certain addons expected there to be a status bar (for example, they'd show the current weather in it), and didn't work quite so well when that expectation was broken.
If I could get the status bar, complete with a "as much of the URL as will fit" display back, then I'd be happy. Actually, if they'd just finish ripping off Chrome's "hover over a link" URL display (it expands after a few seconds to show the entire URL) rather than half-assing it, I'd be fine with it.
I can deal with moving the NoScript and Firebug icons to the toolbar, it's the URL display being broken that's really obnoxious.
Re:Whatever happen to UI consistency?
on
The Next Firefox UI
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Not quite: try pressing the green "make the window as big as it needs to be to display all the content" button.
Oh, that's awesome. Not only does it not actually "zoom" the application, what it actually does is what the "collapse" button (the little bar on the right of certain windows) is supposed to do.
Although the Zoom button has always effectively meant "do something random" so I've gotten in the habit of never touching it.
I always find it hilarious when Apple shits all over their own guidelines, especially when there's a ton of research and design behind them. Microsoft can get away with crap like making the Office windows not behave like any other window in their OS, because they've never sold themselves as being "the user interface experts," but Apple?
Come on, your HIG is enormous and generally explains why it suggests what it suggests. Why do you then ignore your own guidelines?
Incidentally, it's worth reading the Microsoft HIG for using custom window frames for examples of Microsoft applications that ignore their own guidelines. It's nice to know that Microsoft's interface people are aware that the Gadgets window is broken, even if they can't convince anyone on the Windows team to fix it.
As it turns out, it appears that Firefox already treats the URL bar like a search bar. If you enter in a string with spaces, it will auto-search it in Google. (And not whatever you've set your search provider to be in the Search Bar, which is... interesting.)
Really, I think most people find that not having a separate "search bar" is more useful. If you want to enter a URL, start with "http://", and it will take you to any URL you need to go to. Otherwise, it'll do a search.
If you need to quickly search, just hit the bar, type in your search, and hit enter. I dunno, I like that feature.
But I will agree that if they do implement it, it had damned better being configurable. If you don't want to search in the address bar, that's fine and your choice. The option should be available, in my opinion, but it certainly shouldn't be forced.
Re:Whatever happen to UI consistency?
on
The Next Firefox UI
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Whatever happen to UI consistency?
Beats me, but when Apple decided to throw their own interface guidelines out the window and pointlessly rearrange the window icons on iTunes for whatever reason, and then again made the window icons on their App Store app center on the toolbar instead of the top of the window like every other app, it's become clear that the watchword for today is "change for the sake of change."
Incidentally, I notice that at some point after screwing with the iTunes window buttons for absolutely no reason, they've reverted them back to be like every other window that's not the App Store. So apparently Apple is slowly learning their own lessons about interface consistency.
My first reaction on seeing the headline was "oh, this ought to be awful." But, you know, that's just a gut reaction. I should really give them the benefit of the doubt.
(click)
OK, first thing I notice is that there's now no forward button. It shows up again later, so I guess the idea is that it vanishes if you don't need it?...uh, OK, but I kind of like having a UI that doesn't randomly change size based on what tab I'm looking at.
These are Mac OS X screenshots, so the menu shouldn't be in the window anyway, but it appears they've moved everything to a small cog. No, wait, later there's a Windows 7 version, and the menu is still the orange Firefox thing, so I guess the cog is Mac OS X only?
They're finally merging the search and URL bars, which I'm sure some Slashdotters will scream bloody murder over, but which I can't help but think it's about time. (Really, not too hard to tell a URL from a search term, and given that the "awesome" bar is already a search feature, they might as well give me more space so that I can see the entire URL.)
Over all it doesn't look too horrible compared to their current interface. May even be an improvement.
Now the only question left is how many extensions will be required to restore the toolbar so I can keep my NoScript and Firebug icons fucking available since I frequently need to use them. You took away my status bar, please don't take away my toolbar too.
Also, I wonder what new bugs they'll introduce to Firefox under Windows Aero. Gotta love Aero Glass freaking out whenever you mouse over a link. (How did you even do that?!)
Really? The standard 3DS price for games in the US is $40. It's nice to know that the tradition of "overpriced for Europe" is continuing. (Let's see, according to Google, 50 Euros is... $75. Ouch. Also, bets on when Slashdot finally realizes there's a Euro symbol and allows people to use it, instead of it coming out â? I'm guessing never, because apparently allowing the Euro symbol means they must allow BIDI marks. No, really! That's the excuse.)
As for the zelda remake... that is the MUST have title? Come one, that should have been a freebee or a special bundle.
First off, yes, it's by far the best title for the system. By 16 points on Metacritic at present, in fact. (At time of posting, Zelda 3D is 95, and the next highest is Dead or Alive Dimensions at 79.)
Secondly, I disagree it should be free, but bundling it with the 3DS - especially considering the price drop - would have been a good idea. The 3DS comes with no games (no, be honest, AR Games and Face Raiders don't count), and it could really use a good bundled title.
In the end, I think the 3DS will, eventually, replace the DS. It really is a better handheld in every way - if you ignore the battery life issue. So only after Nintendo solves the battery life issue.
No, seriously, I've gone looking for this information and wasn't able to find it. The best answer appears to be they will support the current version and the previous version, and that's it.
If someone has better information than that, I'd love to have it, but it makes suggesting a Mac OS X-based solution a bit difficult when I can't give a solid number on how long the platform will receive security updates.
Not only am I using a Dell, but my battery exploded.
Don't worry, Apple laptop batteries do that too.
I'm already on my second Apple laptop battery after the first one bulged to the point it no longer fit within the laptop case. Thankfully I'm using the "old" MacBook: the one where you can replace the battery and hard drive on it, both things you can't do with the new ones.
Which makes me think that somehow I might be staying away from the new "sealed" MacBooks with the unreplaceable batteries, especially because searching for "bulging battery" brings up nothing but horror stories about Apple batteries. Apparently they've had this problem for over five years and have never bothered fixing it.
I think the 3DS's launch lineup is its big problem, more so than the 3D gimmick. I got one a week ahead of the release of Ocarina of Time 3D, and went looking for a game to get to play on it after discovering that the included "games" are really kind of stupid. (And, in the case of AR Games, impossible to play with the 3D on. But I think enough people can explain that.) I wound up buying Link's Awakening DX off the virtual console. Probably the best game available for the 3DS at the time, if you exclude existing DS games.
But OOT3D is out now, so I've been playing it. It's a really good game. Then again, OOT was probably the best game of its time, and this is basically the original in 3D with improved graphics. (The textures are higher-res, and various things that were sprites or pre-rendered are now full 3D models.) There are some user interface tweaks to improve things here and there (for example, boots are now just a regular item that can be toggled on and off with a button).
And, as the subject says, I actually like the 3D effect. I honestly like the way the game plays with actual 3D graphics.
I turned 3D off after completing the second temple.
Really, that's all there is to say about it - despite the fact that I actually enjoyed the 3D experience, I wound up turning it off because it required too rigid a viewing angle for a hand-held device.
Turns out turning off the 3D makes the graphics look somewhat better - the screen is clearer (really, it's a very nice and vibrant screen with the 3D off), and OOT3D at least turns on antialiasing in 2D mode, making the image nicer.
Honestly, the most fun I've had with the 3DS and 3D mode is playing around with the 3D camera.
Because that's not the way the addon versioning system works?
Look, it's really pretty simple. An addon needs to say what versions of Firefox it supports, as the API is known to change with each version.
The old rule was that you were pretty safe in assuming that the "patch level" number (the third/fourth number depending on release) could change without breaking any addons. Changing the minor number might break existing addons and could add new APIs. (For example, the change from Firefox 3.5 to 3.6.)
Changing the major number indicated a major change in functionality that could, potentially, require addons to be rewritten. (For example, Firefox 2 to Firefox 3.)
How the hell do you work that into the new versioning system?! The only way would be for the browser itself to "know" that Firefox 5 is basically Firefox 4 and not flag addons written for "4.0+".
Am I supposed to assume that an addon I write against Firefox 4 will work in Firefox 5 and Firefox 6, when the same was certainly not true for Firefox 1 to 2 - and 2 to 3, and 3 to 4? When will they be changing the API again? Am I supposed to be psychic when setting the maxVersion number?
Keep in mind that it's the browser itself that enforces these version checks. It's not something that addon developers really have any control over.
Asking users what they think is generally a bad approach to game development.
If you want a great example of this, look at Final Fantasy XIV.
Now, you might think with the game being as big a failure as that one, that they should be listening to fans and closely as it's obvious that the developers have absolutely no clue what makes a good game. You'd be wrong, because the only people answering are the people still playing.
They added a feature to mark which enemies "aggro" (attack you without provocation). Now, you might be thinking "doesn't just about every MMO do this?" or "didn't FFXII do that?" and you'd be right.
The fans revolted anyway. Apparently it "ruined their immersion" so the feature was dutifully patched out. Well, disabled by default, but apparently the only way to reenable it is a text command that's only documented in the patch notes for that one specific patch.
Listening to the fans still playing FFXIV is going to doom that game. Well, it's already doomed after failing to fix any of the core issues (other than leveling not working) in eight months. But even more doomed, thanks to moronic input from the idiots still playing.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you just write a whole essay on an arbitrary and meaningless version number?
It may be arbitrary and meaningless now but it didn't use to be.
It used to be that a move from Major->Major meant that there would be large changes and there's a good chance addons would break. Changes to minor versions might break addons, and patches shouldn't.
Now, who the fuck knows? The number's meaningless. No one cares about Chrome's version number, because it's meaningless.
Firefox's version number used to convey information, and now it doesn't. They've taken something useful and made it useless.
I actually just scrolled up and read your line bashing the AwesomeBar. Great. How many years has it been now? And you still don't understand how it's used or why it's useful?
Really? It's supposed to find infrequently read sites? Or sites that you've only read once? Because before it finds Slashdot, it finds some random article I read months ago.
Before it finds a website that I had repeatedly had to go back to over the course of a day, it found page 2 of some article I read a month ago. Actually, it found several random articles that had nothing to do with the site I was trying to pull up. Enough that scrolling through the entire list meant that, despite the fact I'd opened it, say, five times already, it wasn't on the list. At all.
And I can guarantee you the thing with me trying to reopen a forum only to find that the Awesome bar found nothing but either page 2 or beyond and random threads on the forum happened. Despite the fact that I'd bookmarked the forum. I thought that was supposed to promote it to the top of the search, but apparently not.
Of course, I wouldn't need to reopen it if Firefox hadn't randomly decided not to restore my tabs, but that's a different issue...
Google only supports the last 3 versions of a browser. With FF6, that means Google's only going to support FF4, FF5 and FF6. FF3.6 won't work with Google Apps and other stuff anymore (seriously, I tried using G+ with FF3.5, and it demanded I upgrade - supported browsers are 3.6, 4 and 5 then).
Well, shit, because I still have a PowerPC Mac on my desk. It's stuck with Firefox 3.6 because they dropped PowerPC support in Firefox 4. So I guess that means it's time to move over to Safari for it. I suppose I can't complain too much on that one, but it's annoying having a perfectly functional Mac that's going to get warehoused because no one will compile software for it any more. Actually it's Apple dropping support for Mac OS X 10.5 that will force the issue: as soon as an unpatched security issue is found, IT will force me to disconnect it and it will become useless. (And since I have it explicitly to run Mac-only software, Linux isn't an option to extend its life.)
And when will Mozilla stop screwing around with the UI? FF5 screwed up the tab bar if you have a bunch of tabs and close them right->left since the now-rightmost tab doesn't scroll right - your mouse just has an empty space.
That's another feature half-assed copied from Chrome. When you close a tab in Chrome, the tabs don't rearrange until the mouse leaves the tab bar. It's useful because an accidental double-click won't close a tab you didn't mean to close.
In Firefox 5, they just don't scroll over to fill the right most space until the mouse leaves the tab bar, but otherwise rearrange themselves. So a double-click will kill two tabs.
I don't think I'd mind Firefox copying features from Chrome if they didn't continuously half-ass them and turn a feature that's useful in Chrome into just a pure annoyance by missing out on why Chrome does something or how they make it work.
They can't block "evil" addons like that, sure, but they can block "well behaved" addons that install as part of some other software.
Take the Skype addon, for example. In IE9, IE will ask you if you want to enable it the first time IE9 runs. Firefox provides no mechanism for that, and instead just blindly runs it.
This will tell you "hey, there's a new addon, do you want to use it?" and then you can opt out.
You're right that "sneaky" addons that decide to play evil will be able to get around it. But given that the way Firefox currently works, all "system-level" addons are "sneaky," this is still a good fix.
Can you skip version 6, or are they going to pull another asshole "Firefox 5 is EOLed because v6 is out" like they did to Firefox 4?
Or do you mean you're sticking with Firefox 3.6? Because that seems like a good idea these days, at least until they figure out that their "rapidly release schedule" isn't actually helping anything and is just ensuring that no one gives a shit about new Firefox releases any more.
I suppose it's no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to Firefox development for the past several years, but for fuck's sake, listen to your users and stop with the version number inflation!
Seriously, what makes this a Firefox 6 and not a Firefox 4.2? What new features does it add? Apparently the only really "stand-out" feature is graying out anything that isn't the domain name in the useless-bar. I mean, Awesome Bar.
(Seriously, I like the concept, but I've had quite a few instances this past week where instead of finding "the page I was just on five minutes ago" it does something like "page 3 of this article you read two months ago" with no hint of the URL I'd opened literally ten times already that day. Awesome. Here's an idea, can Firefox try and fix it to make it useful? Like sort based on number of times a page was viewed, counting reloads, so that typing the URL to a forum doesn't find page 2, 3, 4, and 5, but never page 1 because I don't click on the page 1 link enough, I just reload the forum?)
But back to the version number issue - quick, how many people know what version number Chrome is up to off the top of their head? Anyone?
How many people using Firefox 5 here have literally forgotten that they're using Firefox 5, because the last really major update was Firefox 4? I still think of it as "Firefox 4" because it looks identical, and have to be reminded that they've inflated the version number for no useful reason.
Seriously, stop blindly aping Chrome! If you're going to copy something Chrome does, try and understand it! For example, take removing the status bar. Chrome will expand the little URL popup that replaced the status bar if you continue hovering a link. Firefox 4 and 5 don't. And for some reason they randomly switch between left-aligning it and right-aligning the popup. And for fuck's sake, why don't you just expand the popup to fill the entire horizontal width of the window?! I've got the room to display the entire URL! Why doesn't Firefox bother doing so?!
But kudos for aping (poorly) the feature in IE 9 that warns when third party addons have been installed and gives you the option of not using them. It's nice to know that you're going to go ahead and do that after crying about how it's impossible to do, even after IE had launched with that feature.
Anyone who remembers US history should be able to answer that one.
The US Industrial Revolution was literally based on IP stolen from England. Samuel Slater copied the design of patented British cotton mills as best he could and brought them to the United States.
Thanks to this act of blatant "intellectual piracy" he's now known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution."
Today? It's the same thing, different countries.
this case, I believe Apple has a legitimate complaint.
And you're completely wrong. The "design elements" Samsung copied are literally "rounded corners" and "displaying icons in a grid." There's nothing really unique about any of that.
Have you even seen the Samsung tablets? Like, in reality?
About the only thing that made me think "iPad" was that Best Buy had placed them next to the Apple section for some reason, and that instead of using a normal USB connector they used something that looks like the crappy iPod one. Once you actually look at them, they look nothing like an Apple anything.
Except... Apple is suing HTC and Motorola over Android-related patents. What exactly is your point? That they're not suing them over rounded corners, but instead using other bogus patents? (Specifically, if I recall, unlocking a phone with a touch screen.)
So your point is that the fact that Apple is using a different set of entirely bogus patents against HTC and Motorola and a completely bogus trademark against Amazon makes those lawsuits completely different from the bogus IP suit against Samsung, somehow?
I suppose you're technically right. Apple is abusing different areas of IP law in their various lawsuits. Yay Apple?
You know that article I linked to? It may not have made it clear, but Apple sued first, asking for an injunction to forbid sales of Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets (and a whole bunch of others, too) in the US.
It was Apple that went for the "nuclear option" as you put it from the very start. Samsung just responded in kind.
you don't see them suing HTC or Sony or any of several other manufacturers who make Android handsets
You might not, because you're not looking: Apple Sues HTC
Man, that took all of one search on Google to find. (Try "Apple sues HTC.")
If you want others, you can also try just flat-out searching for "Apple sues Android" which will get you such gems as Apple suing Motorola over Android and Amazon.com over having an App Store.
I can't find anything for them suing Sony in particular, but there's a lot of speculation that if they win their HTC suit, they'll be able to use that against every Android phone maker. So the best you can say is that they're not suing Sony yet.
You're wrong, Apple started this whole mess waaaaay back in April by suing Samsung over Android phones that they claimed "looked like an iPhone."
It was only later that Samsung started filing suits against Apple. I mean, hell, your own link mentions that the battle has been ongoing!
Apple started this. Samsung just refused to take it lying down.
Yeah, except if you recall, Samsung's move was in retaliation of Apple attempting to ban imports of the Galaxy Tab into the US using the exact same crap reasoning they're getting away with in Europe.
Except as far as I know, they weren't able to get a preliminary injunction in the US, and instead are still in US court suing Samsung over rounded corners and arranging icons in a grid.
Samsung's patents, on the other hand, are based on actual technology. Whether they're really patent worthy or not I can't really say, but they're actual technology patents, and not rounded corners.
Have you ever seen a Galaxy Tab? They totally ripped off Apple!
No, seriously, the connector it uses is some proprietary POS instead of just USB. Just like Apple's! It actually looks kind of like the iPod connector cable, except a different color and it says Samsung on it in giant letters.
I have no idea why Samsung would want their connector cable to look like an Apple cable, but I will admit when I first saw the tablet end-on with the cable sticking out, I figured it had to be an iPad because no one else would be so stupid as to use a proprietary connector when a simple micro-USB plug would work.
Actually, I could be wrong, because I didn't bother unplugging the cable, so it could be hiding a micro-USB plug under the Apple-esque oversized cable plug. Which would be incredibly silly, like requiring a music application to sync contact information to a cell phone.
I wonder if it also breaks as incredibly easily as Apple's cable? Nothing quite like seeing copper wires after only a few month's use!
Ah, yes, the "Add-on Bar," giving me the worst of both worlds: extra vertical space wasted for a few icons, and the URLs appear above the damned thing anyway instead of what should be a status bar, and they're still compacted so I can't see the entire URL anyway!
The addon-bar is a horrible hack they threw in when they discovered that certain addons expected there to be a status bar (for example, they'd show the current weather in it), and didn't work quite so well when that expectation was broken.
If I could get the status bar, complete with a "as much of the URL as will fit" display back, then I'd be happy. Actually, if they'd just finish ripping off Chrome's "hover over a link" URL display (it expands after a few seconds to show the entire URL) rather than half-assing it, I'd be fine with it.
I can deal with moving the NoScript and Firebug icons to the toolbar, it's the URL display being broken that's really obnoxious.
Not quite: try pressing the green "make the window as big as it needs to be to display all the content" button.
Oh, that's awesome. Not only does it not actually "zoom" the application, what it actually does is what the "collapse" button (the little bar on the right of certain windows) is supposed to do.
Although the Zoom button has always effectively meant "do something random" so I've gotten in the habit of never touching it.
I always find it hilarious when Apple shits all over their own guidelines, especially when there's a ton of research and design behind them. Microsoft can get away with crap like making the Office windows not behave like any other window in their OS, because they've never sold themselves as being "the user interface experts," but Apple?
Come on, your HIG is enormous and generally explains why it suggests what it suggests. Why do you then ignore your own guidelines?
Incidentally, it's worth reading the Microsoft HIG for using custom window frames for examples of Microsoft applications that ignore their own guidelines. It's nice to know that Microsoft's interface people are aware that the Gadgets window is broken, even if they can't convince anyone on the Windows team to fix it.
Then turn off auto-complete?
As it turns out, it appears that Firefox already treats the URL bar like a search bar. If you enter in a string with spaces, it will auto-search it in Google. (And not whatever you've set your search provider to be in the Search Bar, which is... interesting.)
Really, I think most people find that not having a separate "search bar" is more useful. If you want to enter a URL, start with "http://", and it will take you to any URL you need to go to. Otherwise, it'll do a search.
If you need to quickly search, just hit the bar, type in your search, and hit enter. I dunno, I like that feature.
But I will agree that if they do implement it, it had damned better being configurable. If you don't want to search in the address bar, that's fine and your choice. The option should be available, in my opinion, but it certainly shouldn't be forced.
Whatever happen to UI consistency?
Beats me, but when Apple decided to throw their own interface guidelines out the window and pointlessly rearrange the window icons on iTunes for whatever reason, and then again made the window icons on their App Store app center on the toolbar instead of the top of the window like every other app, it's become clear that the watchword for today is "change for the sake of change."
Incidentally, I notice that at some point after screwing with the iTunes window buttons for absolutely no reason, they've reverted them back to be like every other window that's not the App Store. So apparently Apple is slowly learning their own lessons about interface consistency.
My first reaction on seeing the headline was "oh, this ought to be awful." But, you know, that's just a gut reaction. I should really give them the benefit of the doubt.
(click)
OK, first thing I notice is that there's now no forward button. It shows up again later, so I guess the idea is that it vanishes if you don't need it? ...uh, OK, but I kind of like having a UI that doesn't randomly change size based on what tab I'm looking at.
These are Mac OS X screenshots, so the menu shouldn't be in the window anyway, but it appears they've moved everything to a small cog. No, wait, later there's a Windows 7 version, and the menu is still the orange Firefox thing, so I guess the cog is Mac OS X only?
They're finally merging the search and URL bars, which I'm sure some Slashdotters will scream bloody murder over, but which I can't help but think it's about time. (Really, not too hard to tell a URL from a search term, and given that the "awesome" bar is already a search feature, they might as well give me more space so that I can see the entire URL.)
Over all it doesn't look too horrible compared to their current interface. May even be an improvement.
Now the only question left is how many extensions will be required to restore the toolbar so I can keep my NoScript and Firebug icons fucking available since I frequently need to use them. You took away my status bar, please don't take away my toolbar too.
Also, I wonder what new bugs they'll introduce to Firefox under Windows Aero. Gotta love Aero Glass freaking out whenever you mouse over a link. (How did you even do that?!)
Some games retail in holland for about 50 euro's.
Really? The standard 3DS price for games in the US is $40. It's nice to know that the tradition of "overpriced for Europe" is continuing. (Let's see, according to Google, 50 Euros is ... $75. Ouch. Also, bets on when Slashdot finally realizes there's a Euro symbol and allows people to use it, instead of it coming out â? I'm guessing never, because apparently allowing the Euro symbol means they must allow BIDI marks. No, really! That's the excuse.)
As for the zelda remake... that is the MUST have title? Come one, that should have been a freebee or a special bundle.
First off, yes, it's by far the best title for the system. By 16 points on Metacritic at present, in fact. (At time of posting, Zelda 3D is 95, and the next highest is Dead or Alive Dimensions at 79.)
Secondly, I disagree it should be free, but bundling it with the 3DS - especially considering the price drop - would have been a good idea. The 3DS comes with no games (no, be honest, AR Games and Face Raiders don't count), and it could really use a good bundled title.
In the end, I think the 3DS will, eventually, replace the DS. It really is a better handheld in every way - if you ignore the battery life issue. So only after Nintendo solves the battery life issue.
Assuming they can solve the battery life issue.
Not before.
Who knows? They don't say.
No, seriously, I've gone looking for this information and wasn't able to find it. The best answer appears to be they will support the current version and the previous version, and that's it.
If someone has better information than that, I'd love to have it, but it makes suggesting a Mac OS X-based solution a bit difficult when I can't give a solid number on how long the platform will receive security updates.
Not only am I using a Dell, but my battery exploded.
Don't worry, Apple laptop batteries do that too.
I'm already on my second Apple laptop battery after the first one bulged to the point it no longer fit within the laptop case. Thankfully I'm using the "old" MacBook: the one where you can replace the battery and hard drive on it, both things you can't do with the new ones.
Which makes me think that somehow I might be staying away from the new "sealed" MacBooks with the unreplaceable batteries, especially because searching for "bulging battery" brings up nothing but horror stories about Apple batteries. Apparently they've had this problem for over five years and have never bothered fixing it.
I think the 3DS's launch lineup is its big problem, more so than the 3D gimmick. I got one a week ahead of the release of Ocarina of Time 3D, and went looking for a game to get to play on it after discovering that the included "games" are really kind of stupid. (And, in the case of AR Games, impossible to play with the 3D on. But I think enough people can explain that.) I wound up buying Link's Awakening DX off the virtual console. Probably the best game available for the 3DS at the time, if you exclude existing DS games.
But OOT3D is out now, so I've been playing it. It's a really good game. Then again, OOT was probably the best game of its time, and this is basically the original in 3D with improved graphics. (The textures are higher-res, and various things that were sprites or pre-rendered are now full 3D models.) There are some user interface tweaks to improve things here and there (for example, boots are now just a regular item that can be toggled on and off with a button).
And, as the subject says, I actually like the 3D effect. I honestly like the way the game plays with actual 3D graphics.
I turned 3D off after completing the second temple.
Really, that's all there is to say about it - despite the fact that I actually enjoyed the 3D experience, I wound up turning it off because it required too rigid a viewing angle for a hand-held device.
Turns out turning off the 3D makes the graphics look somewhat better - the screen is clearer (really, it's a very nice and vibrant screen with the 3D off), and OOT3D at least turns on antialiasing in 2D mode, making the image nicer.
Honestly, the most fun I've had with the 3DS and 3D mode is playing around with the 3D camera.
I'd just set it to 99 or whatever and patch shit as it breaks.
I'd rather have an app that's buggy on a new version of FF than one that *would* have worked fine but had maxVersion set too low...
Last I checked, you're not allowed to do that and have your addon be hosted on addons.mozilla.org. Which is why none of the addons on there do.
Not to mention that doing that was strongly discouraged by Mozilla and, prior to Firefox 5, at least, a really bad idea.
Because that's not the way the addon versioning system works?
Look, it's really pretty simple. An addon needs to say what versions of Firefox it supports, as the API is known to change with each version.
The old rule was that you were pretty safe in assuming that the "patch level" number (the third/fourth number depending on release) could change without breaking any addons. Changing the minor number might break existing addons and could add new APIs. (For example, the change from Firefox 3.5 to 3.6.)
Changing the major number indicated a major change in functionality that could, potentially, require addons to be rewritten. (For example, Firefox 2 to Firefox 3.)
How the hell do you work that into the new versioning system?! The only way would be for the browser itself to "know" that Firefox 5 is basically Firefox 4 and not flag addons written for "4.0+".
Am I supposed to assume that an addon I write against Firefox 4 will work in Firefox 5 and Firefox 6, when the same was certainly not true for Firefox 1 to 2 - and 2 to 3, and 3 to 4? When will they be changing the API again? Am I supposed to be psychic when setting the maxVersion number?
Keep in mind that it's the browser itself that enforces these version checks. It's not something that addon developers really have any control over.
Asking users what they think is generally a bad approach to game development.
If you want a great example of this, look at Final Fantasy XIV.
Now, you might think with the game being as big a failure as that one, that they should be listening to fans and closely as it's obvious that the developers have absolutely no clue what makes a good game. You'd be wrong, because the only people answering are the people still playing.
They added a feature to mark which enemies "aggro" (attack you without provocation). Now, you might be thinking "doesn't just about every MMO do this?" or "didn't FFXII do that?" and you'd be right.
The fans revolted anyway. Apparently it "ruined their immersion" so the feature was dutifully patched out. Well, disabled by default, but apparently the only way to reenable it is a text command that's only documented in the patch notes for that one specific patch.
Listening to the fans still playing FFXIV is going to doom that game. Well, it's already doomed after failing to fix any of the core issues (other than leveling not working) in eight months. But even more doomed, thanks to moronic input from the idiots still playing.