Ummm....those toilets aren't the kind you're ever supposed to sit down on.
Ah, but pay attention, grasshopper:
Back there in the murk and gloom, you'll notice a cubicle, a cubicle whose porcelian throne lies prone and unconscious upon it's side, obviously the innocent viction of the HEMORRHOID BEAST'S explosive emergence from the lower depths of HELL!!!
Now, I'm no expert but it seems to me that taking the simple precaution of wiping the seat, while possibly not preventing the H.B.'s emergence into our dimension, certainly wouldn't have hurt.
So, now you know the difference between a urinal and your standard, seated john.
Doom III is pushing the fear factor over the raw action.
My main fear is how raw my wallet will feel after I pay for a graphics card that can handle this "complete unification of lighting, shadowing, and bump mapping across all visual elements".
This is real simple. When 34,000,000 users start using a non-IE browser, all the big commerical webpages will have to support non-IE browsers perfectly.
Actually, that's a good argument. There are a couple of minor problems.
1. Not all AOL users use the AOL client.
2. It takes quite a while for their userbase to upgrade.
3. There will be some sort of AOL users backlash that will discourage others from upgrading.
4. That backlash may force AOL to offer an IE option and, if that happens, I expect that most users will opt for it.
But, yes, any sort of block jump in non-IE, hopefully even standards compliant browser usage would be great.
We must, however, resist the temptation to see these 34m AOLers as a homogenous block rather than individuals who aren't going to take this sort of corporate manouevring lying down.
Ah, c'mon, it's not as if being a Web Designer is a proud boast anymore. Christ, if I was trying to fluff myself, I would have called my a Web Programmer:)
Netscape are not totally without blame, completely breaking backward compatibility has caused many designers to cease developing for either of their browser lines (4.x and 6+) until one or the other is dropped completely.
I guess that's the main factor in the frustration I hear other designers expressing.
I'm not sure what's going to happen, but the Mozilla rendering engine needs some serious work to bring it up to the speed of IE, and until that happens, I can't see people switching. BTW, I'm talking about the layout engine, which is still abysmally slow when working with dynamic content (DHTML). I personally design a lot of web apps, and currently then Moz engine is far too slow to consider.
Well, yeah, DHTML, I really see the difference when it comes to layers. I mean they just don't look right!. But the thing that worries me is that no-one else here seems to acknowledge these problems. There have been some very interesting comments and I've followed a few suggestions with regards to what browsers to try, but no-one will accept that IE is better at anything. I now accept that recent iterations of Mozilla are good, but they still aren't good enough for really complex stuff.
I thinks it's important that people recognize those areas where they aren't ahead of their competition. Denial just pushes us further behind.
Well, yeah, this is exactly what I'm saying: those cable subscriptions are far more important to MS than the Xbox in and of itself.
After this initial phase of establishing the Xbox's trojan incarnation as a gaming device, it will then evolve (within the current hardware) into a communications device, a sort of uber-MSN Messenger tied to simple, easy-to-use hardware and, thus, massively popular internationally.
The scene will then be set for it's use as a market-expanding tool by their cable partners all over the world.
That's when things will get interesting. Forget the current price war, the Xbox's entire cost will be subsumed into monthly subscription costs, making it the ultimate no-brainer purchase.
So, yes, you're absolutely right, it all boils down to the fact that MS has much more to gain from this battle that Sony or Nintendo because they have investments that stand to benefit far beyond gaming.
All any designer wants are universal standards but, unfortunately, the whole problem is that we also have to code for what the majority of users use.
For me, the perfect browser would be one that was purely standards based but that also allowed some sort of plugin that would also allow it to render IE mistakes and mis-uses.
I'll accept that, as a user, there are better options than IE but I would argue that, for designers, it's simply dispiriting trying to cater to NN. NN6, at least, implemented CSS in a sloppy fashion, making life harder for the designer but not regular users (or, at least, not in a way they would be aware of).
If that's not a dead giveaway that this is a pro-Microsoft post, I don't know what is. See, this troll is smart, though, because he doesn't say "but I'm impartial!" till the end.
Unfortunely, you have to put in this sort of disclaimer if you say anything vaguely controversial on/. because there are too many people skimming through the posts and not actually reading them. It's the same deal if you say anything that questions or even vaguely discusses American foreign policy these days.
In my posting I pointed out that MS weren't in the business of throwing money away but that, in this case, the stakes went far beyond gaming. I pointed to clear and obvious examples that suggest they're gearing up to turn the Xbox into a sort of hardware incarnation of MSN Messenger.
It's important for any of us who are concerned about the machinations of corporations to understand where they're trying to take us. Personally, I don't like to present my arguments in a hysterical fashion, I feel it undermines my actual arguments. In this case, I choose not to wave the anti-MS flag because I feel that the implications of a defacto worldwide MS monoply on instant messaging is chilling enough.
Seriously, you shouldn't let your hatred blind you. We can only fight what we understand.
Look at it the other way round: the Xbox will be used as a tool to drive the uptake of cable broadband.
Microsoft's long-term strategy (and MS is ALL about long-term strategy) is to act as a sort of informational conduit. To this end, they've invested huge amounts internationally in cable companies. In each case they've adopted a minor but significant position, usually around 25% of the company. They intend, however, to act more as equal partners because they'll be bringing something quite unique to the table: a device or family of devices that are able to turn the raw technical capability of cable into something almost all consumers will understand and want.
My thesis is that that something will turn out to be a sort of hardware incarnation of MSN Messenger. Although they're exclusively focusing on it as a gaming device right now, you're going to see a stunning turn-around in that by about the middle of next year. At that point they'll introduce a voice-driven subscription-based chat service, primarily targeted at females. This, in turn, will give their cable partners an incredibly persuasive argument in selling a sort of broadband-internet lite service to all of their non-computer owning customers. It will be sold as just another option alongside TV packages and cable-phonelines.
Basically, MS know that it isn't enough to wait for the broadband market to somehow blip into existence and then compete, they know that they've got to make themselves an absolutely indispensible part of it's creation.
I've been thinking about the essential difference between Nintendo and the Xbox and it seems to me that the most important difference is the most abstract one.
Up until now I've been focused on the point-to-point technical/marketing/economic comparisons.
I saw Nintendo's lower price as being cancelled out by the lack of DVD, and gave the Xbox the edge on the grounds that it's online capability was going to add an extra layer of addictivity to it's games.
Now, though, with the release of these titles, memories of the awesome absorbtion I've felt when playing earlier Mario's and Zeldas are flooding back...
..and suddenly it occurs to me that the extra dimension I expect Microsoft's billion dollar Online infrastructure to provide already exists in (some) Nintendo games, through the sheer artistry of their creators.
While it isn't hard to imagine the fun of a properly managed, manificently pinged, global gaming arena (and if your imagination is running a bit slow today this promotional video spells it out pretty effectively), it's almost impossible to describe the magical web that the last couple of Zelda games wove around their players.
Of course, there is still the longer-term consideration of the Xbox's extended functionality that MS is anxious to keep under wraps for now.
For me, at least, there's now only one course of action: I'm going to buy the Game Cube (and as many of these games as I can afford), and the Xbox as soon as they start bundling the headset.
Actually, AOL's most recent beta for Mac OS X uses Gecko in place of IE. I think this is a sign of things to come.
Really? I didn't know that but, yeah, I guess that's a pretty important experiment on AOL's part.
I think it's worth remembering though that IE OSX had some reported speed issues, something to do with the underlying OS not being suffiently optimized, something that I believe Apple are correcting with another release of OSX.
This might mean that this was one instance where Gecko was chosen because of the same speed issue that might prevent it being adopted by AOL on a larger, Windows scale.
problem with netscape is that they broke from the mozilla tree before gecko was frozen.
Did they get back with the tree for this release?
Again, it would be great to see a speedy, smooth, standards-based browser but the Netscape name is more of a hindrance than a help; NN6 was a final straw for a lot of designers.
I guess it's a subjective thing but, yeah, I find IE less jerky, particularly on layers/CSS based pages. I also find it noticeably faster. Obviously, it's only a slight difference but noticeable.
I'm on a pretty fast connection so maybe it isn't as noticeable on dial-ups or whatever.
I actually use both browsers for testing purposes and, really, there's a big difference, try it.
I'm no fan of MS but I wouldn't personally choose to NN instead of IE. I haven't tried Opera in quite a while but I do remember that it's last release was considered to be fast but flawed when it came to CSS rendering and that's too important to disregard.
If you design soley for IE, don't call yourself a web designer. Call yourself and IE designer.
God, I remember when I used to say the same sort of things; then I entered a nasty world of deadlines and clients who don't really give a toss about anything except the bottom line. One person can only carry out so much maintainence and, what I'm saying is that NN demands at twice as much again.
People need to learn to design for standards, not for browsers.
Exactly. And NN6 was NOT standards compatible. That may have been it's aspiration but it sucked in a multitude of respects. Maybe NN7 is better, I really hope so, but the fact is that, in a very real and practical sense, it's too late.
I share the dream of an entirely standards based browser, with excellent rendering capabilities, it's a great dream and would free me in so many ways but, today, I have to work in reality.
NN6 handed the game to MS and all web designers have to work with that. So, yeah, maybe we should all call ourselves IE designers.
It's just a damn shame that the Mozilla community didn't have some way to stop the premature release of NN6, it caused irreversible damage to that dream.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm....those toilets aren't the kind you're ever supposed to sit down on.
Ah, but pay attention, grasshopper:
Back there in the murk and gloom, you'll notice a cubicle, a cubicle whose porcelian throne lies prone and unconscious upon it's side, obviously the innocent viction of the HEMORRHOID BEAST'S explosive emergence from the lower depths of HELL!!!
Now, I'm no expert but it seems to me that taking the simple precaution of wiping the seat, while possibly not preventing the H.B.'s emergence into our dimension, certainly wouldn't have hurt.
So, now you know the difference between a urinal and your standard, seated john.
Just don't piss in the sinks, OK?
From the Carmack interview:
Doom III is pushing the fear factor over the raw action.
My main fear is how raw my wallet will feel after I pay for a graphics card that can handle this "complete unification of lighting, shadowing, and bump mapping across all visual elements".
Wow and Cool toilets
Now, this is why I always wipe the seat before sitting down.
wait, i develop linux applications. now how am i supposed to use ie? or is there an ie for linux download page i missed somewhere.
Great, now all you have to do is to persuade everyone else on the planet to develop Linux applications.
But I'm sold, from now on I develop websites exclusively for Linux developers.
This is real simple. When 34,000,000 users start using a non-IE browser, all the big commerical webpages will have to support non-IE browsers perfectly.
Actually, that's a good argument. There are a couple of minor problems.
1. Not all AOL users use the AOL client.
2. It takes quite a while for their userbase to upgrade.
3. There will be some sort of AOL users backlash that will discourage others from upgrading.
4. That backlash may force AOL to offer an IE option and, if that happens, I expect that most users will opt for it.
But, yes, any sort of block jump in non-IE, hopefully even standards compliant browser usage would be great.
We must, however, resist the temptation to see these 34m AOLers as a homogenous block rather than individuals who aren't going to take this sort of corporate manouevring lying down.
Well Mr Web.Designer
Ah, c'mon, it's not as if being a Web Designer is a proud boast anymore. Christ, if I was trying to fluff myself, I would have called my a Web Programmer :)
Netscape are not totally without blame, completely breaking backward compatibility has caused many designers to cease developing for either of their browser lines (4.x and 6+) until one or the other is dropped completely.
I guess that's the main factor in the frustration I hear other designers expressing.
I'm not sure what's going to happen, but the Mozilla rendering engine needs some serious work to bring it up to the speed of IE, and until that happens, I can't see people switching. BTW, I'm talking about the layout engine, which is still abysmally slow when working with dynamic content (DHTML). I personally design a lot of web apps, and currently then Moz engine is far too slow to consider.
Well, yeah, DHTML, I really see the difference when it comes to layers. I mean they just don't look right!. But the thing that worries me is that no-one else here seems to acknowledge these problems. There have been some very interesting comments and I've followed a few suggestions with regards to what browsers to try, but no-one will accept that IE is better at anything. I now accept that recent iterations of Mozilla are good, but they still aren't good enough for really complex stuff.
I thinks it's important that people recognize those areas where they aren't ahead of their competition. Denial just pushes us further behind.
Thanks, I'm now trying out quite a few different browsers including RC2.
Well, yeah, this is exactly what I'm saying: those cable subscriptions are far more important to MS than the Xbox in and of itself.
After this initial phase of establishing the Xbox's trojan incarnation as a gaming device, it will then evolve (within the current hardware) into a communications device, a sort of uber-MSN Messenger tied to simple, easy-to-use hardware and, thus, massively popular internationally.
The scene will then be set for it's use as a market-expanding tool by their cable partners all over the world.
That's when things will get interesting. Forget the current price war, the Xbox's entire cost will be subsumed into monthly subscription costs, making it the ultimate no-brainer purchase.
So, yes, you're absolutely right, it all boils down to the fact that MS has much more to gain from this battle that Sony or Nintendo because they have investments that stand to benefit far beyond gaming.
Thanks, I'm using it now!
Thanks, that's great info.
In particular, I didn't know that Mozilla had improved so dramatically 6 months ago. I'm certainly going to check it out.
All any designer wants are universal standards but, unfortunately, the whole problem is that we also have to code for what the majority of users use.
For me, the perfect browser would be one that was purely standards based but that also allowed some sort of plugin that would also allow it to render IE mistakes and mis-uses.
IE6 was actually generally considered to be a pretty good upgrade.
I am, however, going to look into whether it's easier to design for the latest incarnations of Mozilla than NN6.
Wow, that IS interesting. I tried it in both IE6 and NN6, only the NN really worked.
Mkoenecke's link is a little bit broken, if anyone wants to visit the page he recommends here's the correct link:
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspira l/glassy.html
IE is also noticably slower on Mac OSX
I've certainly heard about that.
I'll accept that, as a user, there are better options than IE but I would argue that, for designers, it's simply dispiriting trying to cater to NN. NN6, at least, implemented CSS in a sloppy fashion, making life harder for the designer but not regular users (or, at least, not in a way they would be aware of).
If that's not a dead giveaway that this is a pro-Microsoft post, I don't know what is. See, this troll is smart, though, because he doesn't say "but I'm impartial!" till the end.
Unfortunely, you have to put in this sort of disclaimer if you say anything vaguely controversial on /. because there are too many people skimming through the posts and not actually reading them. It's the same deal if you say anything that questions or even vaguely discusses American foreign policy these days.
In my posting I pointed out that MS weren't in the business of throwing money away but that, in this case, the stakes went far beyond gaming. I pointed to clear and obvious examples that suggest they're gearing up to turn the Xbox into a sort of hardware incarnation of MSN Messenger.
It's important for any of us who are concerned about the machinations of corporations to understand where they're trying to take us. Personally, I don't like to present my arguments in a hysterical fashion, I feel it undermines my actual arguments. In this case, I choose not to wave the anti-MS flag because I feel that the implications of a defacto worldwide MS monoply on instant messaging is chilling enough.
Seriously, you shouldn't let your hatred blind you. We can only fight what we understand.
Look at it the other way round: the Xbox will be used as a tool to drive the uptake of cable broadband.
Microsoft's long-term strategy (and MS is ALL about long-term strategy) is to act as a sort of informational conduit. To this end, they've invested huge amounts internationally in cable companies. In each case they've adopted a minor but significant position, usually around 25% of the company. They intend, however, to act more as equal partners because they'll be bringing something quite unique to the table: a device or family of devices that are able to turn the raw technical capability of cable into something almost all consumers will understand and want.
My thesis is that that something will turn out to be a sort of hardware incarnation of MSN Messenger. Although they're exclusively focusing on it as a gaming device right now, you're going to see a stunning turn-around in that by about the middle of next year. At that point they'll introduce a voice-driven subscription-based chat service, primarily targeted at females. This, in turn, will give their cable partners an incredibly persuasive argument in selling a sort of broadband-internet lite service to all of their non-computer owning customers. It will be sold as just another option alongside TV packages and cable-phonelines.
Basically, MS know that it isn't enough to wait for the broadband market to somehow blip into existence and then compete, they know that they've got to make themselves an absolutely indispensible part of it's creation.
I use both IE and Mozilla at work. Mozilla is indeed *not* noticeably slower than IE.
My only experience has been with NN6 - forgive my ignorance but is NN6 based on Mozilla? Or does it only use Gecko?
A lot of you seem impressed with the non-NN6 Gecko browsers, so, I guess there must be something more than anti-MS churlishness at work here.
I'm going to have to look into this.
I'd greatly appreciate any recommendations for gecko-based win32 browsers.
I've been thinking about the essential difference between Nintendo and the Xbox and it seems to me that the most important difference is the most abstract one.
Up until now I've been focused on the point-to-point technical/marketing/economic comparisons.
I saw Nintendo's lower price as being cancelled out by the lack of DVD, and gave the Xbox the edge on the grounds that it's online capability was going to add an extra layer of addictivity to it's games.
Now, though, with the release of these titles, memories of the awesome absorbtion I've felt when playing earlier Mario's and Zeldas are flooding back...
While it isn't hard to imagine the fun of a properly managed, manificently pinged, global gaming arena (and if your imagination is running a bit slow today this promotional video spells it out pretty effectively), it's almost impossible to describe the magical web that the last couple of Zelda games wove around their players.
Of course, there is still the longer-term consideration of the Xbox's extended functionality that MS is anxious to keep under wraps for now.
For me, at least, there's now only one course of action: I'm going to buy the Game Cube (and as many of these games as I can afford), and the Xbox as soon as they start bundling the headset.
Actually, AOL's most recent beta for Mac OS X uses Gecko in place of IE. I think this is a sign of things to come.
Really? I didn't know that but, yeah, I guess that's a pretty important experiment on AOL's part.
I think it's worth remembering though that IE OSX had some reported speed issues, something to do with the underlying OS not being suffiently optimized, something that I believe Apple are correcting with another release of OSX.
This might mean that this was one instance where Gecko was chosen because of the same speed issue that might prevent it being adopted by AOL on a larger, Windows scale.
You are FORCED to use DIV tags everywhere.
Are you saying that DIV tags are a proprietry MS thing?
I find them to be quite a useful concept but I don't know anything about their genesis.
Are you sure you are not thinking about UI painting and startup speed, when you say rendering speed?
No, I do realise MS has a built-in advantage when it comes to those areas.
What I'm talking about is the speed with which the actual page components are drawn and, once they've appeared, their relative fragility.
For example, scrolling a page in NN6 causes a lot more redraw flicker, and is less comfortable to use.
I use XP but I've seen this replicated on many different systems.
problem with netscape is that they broke from the mozilla tree before gecko was frozen.
Did they get back with the tree for this release?
Again, it would be great to see a speedy, smooth, standards-based browser but the Netscape name is more of a hindrance than a help; NN6 was a final straw for a lot of designers.
But maybe with smooth you mean something else ?
I guess it's a subjective thing but, yeah, I find IE less jerky, particularly on layers/CSS based pages. I also find it noticeably faster. Obviously, it's only a slight difference but noticeable.
I'm on a pretty fast connection so maybe it isn't as noticeable on dial-ups or whatever.
I actually use both browsers for testing purposes and, really, there's a big difference, try it.
I'm no fan of MS but I wouldn't personally choose to NN instead of IE. I haven't tried Opera in quite a while but I do remember that it's last release was considered to be fast but flawed when it came to CSS rendering and that's too important to disregard.
God, I remember when I used to say the same sort of things; then I entered a nasty world of deadlines and clients who don't really give a toss about anything except the bottom line. One person can only carry out so much maintainence and, what I'm saying is that NN demands at twice as much again.
People need to learn to design for standards, not for browsers.
Exactly. And NN6 was NOT standards compatible. That may have been it's aspiration but it sucked in a multitude of respects. Maybe NN7 is better, I really hope so, but the fact is that, in a very real and practical sense, it's too late.
I share the dream of an entirely standards based browser, with excellent rendering capabilities, it's a great dream and would free me in so many ways but, today, I have to work in reality.
NN6 handed the game to MS and all web designers have to work with that. So, yeah, maybe we should all call ourselves IE designers.
It's just a damn shame that the Mozilla community didn't have some way to stop the premature release of NN6, it caused irreversible damage to that dream.