I don't know about IDEs, but early version of Microsoft Word and many other applications used to require the user to switch MDI windows by clicking on the "Window" menu. After you did that, you could see all Windows.. usually they would be numbered with some kind of description like this:
1. document1 2. document x 3. some other document ...
With that kind of interface, in order to see what documents you had open, you had to click on the Window menu. If you wanted to switch to another document, you would have to click on the Window menu, and then click on your selection.
With tabbed interfaces, the user can see what is open at a glance, without clicking on anything. If the user wants to switch to another open document or page or whatever, there is a one-click type interface to do so. Applications can also take advantage of visual 'status' indicators depending on the application's function. Mozilla, for example, uses some rotating arrows on the tab to indicate that a page is loading. It also uses a thumbnail icon to identify the page if that webpage supports it. The only downside is that tabs require a little more screen space, which isn't big enough IMHO to justify switching back to the old MDI style.
Or, you could put this in user.js and then whenever mozilla doesn't recognize what you put into the location bar as a URL, it dumps the string to google's I'm feeling lucky feature. Less typing involved for most searches, as you don't have to type the keyword anymore.
Seeing as how KDE cloned the Microsoft Windows interface, endusers should be able to use either one probably configured. Everybody wants an interface that is familiar, and that's why KDE has the best shot at existing Windows users IMHO. I'm guessing that nobody would seriously consider migrating Windows users over to something like blackbox or MacOS unless you have a big training budget. You can get away with little to no additional training using something like GNOME or KDE.
many people have already pointed out the answer to the switching tabs via the keyboard option, but what I do not understand is why they chose CTRL+PAGEUP/DOWN instead of something like CTRL+TAB. The usability problem with pageup/pagedown (at least on my keyboard) is that the right hand must leave the home keys to advance to the next or previous tab. So basically, even though you can switch tabs via the keyboard, I don't do it because I might as well reach for the mouse with the right hand. At least using the mouse, I could pick a tab towards the middle of the list:P
I agree that the tabbed interfaces we are seeing now should replace MDI. IIRC, Word 2000 uses separate windows for multiple documents, but Word97 was still using MDI. I haven't used Office 2002 yet, but those kinds of applications need to implement tabbed interfaces IMHO.
Of course it can, proof of concept is any linux-based operating systems. Probably MacOS too, although I don't have much experience with it. How difficult would it be to remove IE from Windows? Who knows, the design has always been poor, good examples of that are those applications that complain "you must have the version X of Internet Explorer installed before you can install this product.". It's one thing to reuse the HTML rendering engine, but the design of Windows/IE is broken if a completely unrelated application requires Internet Explorer in order to function.
Man, I wish I had a bunch of Pentium 233mhz machines! I work in an educational institution, and I probably still have 40 or so P133mhz 32MB machines in active use for mainly mainframe access, email, internet, and word processing.
The parent is correct though, just stuff as much RAM as you can into the modern boxes and that will buy you a lot of time until you can get funding for new machines. If you must upgrade the CPU, you should probably just buy the fastest CPU supported by the existing motherboard/memory. When you get down to the mobo/psu level, I think you are just better off giving that computer to a lighter user, and just buying the power user a new machine.
It sounds like he is just upgrading the motherboard and CPU and memory (maybe PSU) in most machines. I would imagine that it's OK to keep using the OEM license, although it definitely isn't clear. Maybe "recycling" isn't the best word to use in this case, it sounds to me like he is just upgrading the core components, and thus the OEM license should still be OK to use.
I can remember one case where we had a CPU die out of an OEM machine under support from the vendor. We called the vendor, and then they sent us a new motherbaord and CPU because the CPU wasn't in stock anymore and the older mobo wouldn't support the new CPU. They did not send us another license for Windows, which we purchased from them as well (Windows 2000, IIRC).
My experience with Dell hasn't been too bad. We had an insprion fan that started to go out and make a horrible noise in the process. The only thing that I had to do was call Dell, inform them of the problem, and then they had a tech onsite to fix it within two days. I guess it depends on the warranty option you are buying, but I think that we just purchased whatever the standard business warranty was at the time.
Compaq hasn't been too bad either, we don't have onsite service with them, but when we did have an Armada m700 power problem (IIRC, the batteries wouldn't charge in the device) they sent a prepaid box to ship the laptop off to a service center. Then after about 3 days, we got the box back and the laptop had been fixed. The turnaround time was so quick that I thought that there was some kind of shipping problem:P
Uh, AOL uses an embedded browser. My guess is that you won't have a choice of rendering engines in the latest version of AOL. And besides, why would you want to use IE's engine anyway? Feeling sad that the latest IE exploit can't own your machine when you view a web document through gecko?
Office isn't included in Windows, and so it's not even an issue here.
It's the applications like IE and WMP and that unzipping thing (in newer versions of Windows) that are under consideration here. I have to disagree with you that people think that these are "better", and that is why they use them. I believe that people use them because they are conveniently included with the computer that they buy. For applications like outlook express and IE, their use is also encouraged by ISPs.. maybe for the same reason.
example: When @home was around and visited your house for a cable modem install, one of the things they do is configure a web browser and a mail program. The browser is IE (actually a really ugly modification), and the mail program is Outlook Express. They might show you how to view webpages and send email with these programs if you didn't know, and that is what most customers would use. It's not that these two programs are better, it's just what "works" and is convenient.
heh, the point you seem to be missing is that there are two issues: the physical assembly of the computer in-house and then the "software assembly" if you will. I think that everyone including myself agrees that software assembly costs nothing in terms of time. The time spent is all in the assembly and, as someone already mentioned, obtaining/purchasing the parts and dealing with warranties/returns to all kinds of different sources. The reason very few businesses build normal computers in house is because they can't save any money doing it..
I think you are missing the point, the person you replied to was talking about the labor costs involved in building computers _from_scratch_ and in house instead of using an OEM like Dell. That means you buy 20 computer cases, 20 motherboards, 20 power supplies, 20 CPUs, 20 sticks of RAM, etc. I doubt that you would save much money, if any, trying to build normal desktop computers in house. disc imaging tools such as ghost don't have anything to do building a computer from scratch.
tetris / sokoban in VIM
on
SedSokoban
·
· Score: 2
that reminds me of the tetris game I played a while ago written in VIM's native scripting language. The tetris game is here IIRC. Heh, and when I was looking for that there seems to be a sokoban game in VIM too..
I wouldn't say that it is "slower" than NS4. Mozilla does use more memory which does cause it to load slower, but the page rendering speed compared to NS4 is much faster. New windows also seem to load slower on mozilla which is one gripe of mine, but I figure it's due to XUL or something not native. It has been said before, but you can work around that delay by using tabs and CTRL+L instead of CTRL+SHIFT+L (for example).
Low memory machines might still find NS4 faster overall, I haven't really had a chance to try mozilla on a loaded 32MB machine yet. At work, we have many of these left in use and they have to run software like mcafee which uses a huge amount of memory itself. There won't be much RAM after that to make mozilla happy I don't think:(
I am sure that when they do switch their internal browser, they might mention 'new and improved AOL 8!!', but that's about it. The end users (especially AOL users), don't care what rendering engine they are using to view web pages. And they certainly don't care that AOL is making an internal switch to linux. AOL marketing is smart, that's why they are "#1":P
I don't think that very many computer labs need $1,500 computers.. Assuming that a $1,500 computer comes with a 17" CRT monitor (worth about $160), that means you spent $1,340 on the computer. I'm buying some pretty good dell computers now for employees and they cost $830 w/o monitor (256MB, 7,200 20GB hdd, win2k, NIC). I could go a lot cheaper if I only had to buy computers that did email and web browsing. If you buy cheaper computers, the cost savings isn't that much initially. You may be right, however, that you would save a significant amount over several years.
There are exceptions. Bands will sometimes put an animation + music on their main page. aliceinchains.net and slayer.net are some examples. This is OK with me, I'm going to their website because I like their music. The sites that bug me are the ones with the crappy midi clips that are there only because the designer just learned how to make it work.. They add nothing to the site and are just plain annoying.
I think that they are referring to the sponsored link boxes. It depends on what you search for, but here is an example.. The only change that I can see is that they moved the advertising box from the side of the screen towards the top. It's a bit more intrusive now, but still much better than blinking banner ads.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about IDEs, but early version of Microsoft Word and many other applications used to require the user to switch MDI windows by clicking on the "Window" menu. After you did that, you could see all Windows.. usually they would be numbered with some kind of description like this:
1. document1
2. document x
3. some other document
...
With that kind of interface, in order to see what documents you had open, you had to click on the Window menu. If you wanted to switch to another document, you would have to click on the Window menu, and then click on your selection.
With tabbed interfaces, the user can see what is open at a glance, without clicking on anything. If the user wants to switch to another open document or page or whatever, there is a one-click type interface to do so. Applications can also take advantage of visual 'status' indicators depending on the application's function. Mozilla, for example, uses some rotating arrows on the tab to indicate that a page is loading. It also uses a thumbnail icon to identify the page if that webpage supports it. The only downside is that tabs require a little more screen space, which isn't big enough IMHO to justify switching back to the old MDI style.
Or, you could put this in user.js and then whenever mozilla doesn't recognize what you put into the location bar as a URL, it dumps the string to google's I'm feeling lucky feature. Less typing involved for most searches, as you don't have to type the keyword anymore.
L ucky
user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+
Seeing as how KDE cloned the Microsoft Windows interface, endusers should be able to use either one probably configured. Everybody wants an interface that is familiar, and that's why KDE has the best shot at existing Windows users IMHO. I'm guessing that nobody would seriously consider migrating Windows users over to something like blackbox or MacOS unless you have a big training budget. You can get away with little to no additional training using something like GNOME or KDE.
Heh, that is pretty cool. I really wasn't that impressed when I saw 256MB-512MB of "local memory", until I learned that was just the CPU :P
many people have already pointed out the answer to the switching tabs via the keyboard option, but what I do not understand is why they chose CTRL+PAGEUP/DOWN instead of something like CTRL+TAB. The usability problem with pageup/pagedown (at least on my keyboard) is that the right hand must leave the home keys to advance to the next or previous tab. So basically, even though you can switch tabs via the keyboard, I don't do it because I might as well reach for the mouse with the right hand. At least using the mouse, I could pick a tab towards the middle of the list :P
I agree that the tabbed interfaces we are seeing now should replace MDI. IIRC, Word 2000 uses separate windows for multiple documents, but Word97 was still using MDI. I haven't used Office 2002 yet, but those kinds of applications need to implement tabbed interfaces IMHO.
Of course it can, proof of concept is any linux-based operating systems. Probably MacOS too, although I don't have much experience with it. How difficult would it be to remove IE from Windows? Who knows, the design has always been poor, good examples of that are those applications that complain "you must have the version X of Internet Explorer installed before you can install this product.". It's one thing to reuse the HTML rendering engine, but the design of Windows/IE is broken if a completely unrelated application requires Internet Explorer in order to function.
Man, I wish I had a bunch of Pentium 233mhz machines! I work in an educational institution, and I probably still have 40 or so P133mhz 32MB machines in active use for mainly mainframe access, email, internet, and word processing.
The parent is correct though, just stuff as much RAM as you can into the modern boxes and that will buy you a lot of time until you can get funding for new machines. If you must upgrade the CPU, you should probably just buy the fastest CPU supported by the existing motherboard/memory. When you get down to the mobo/psu level, I think you are just better off giving that computer to a lighter user, and just buying the power user a new machine.
It sounds like he is just upgrading the motherboard and CPU and memory (maybe PSU) in most machines. I would imagine that it's OK to keep using the OEM license, although it definitely isn't clear. Maybe "recycling" isn't the best word to use in this case, it sounds to me like he is just upgrading the core components, and thus the OEM license should still be OK to use.
I can remember one case where we had a CPU die out of an OEM machine under support from the vendor. We called the vendor, and then they sent us a new motherbaord and CPU because the CPU wasn't in stock anymore and the older mobo wouldn't support the new CPU. They did not send us another license for Windows, which we purchased from them as well (Windows 2000, IIRC).
heh, or how about walking out of the store? Man, I'd be a LOT more worried about having my index finger stolen than my CC.
My experience with Dell hasn't been too bad. We had an insprion fan that started to go out and make a horrible noise in the process. The only thing that I had to do was call Dell, inform them of the problem, and then they had a tech onsite to fix it within two days. I guess it depends on the warranty option you are buying, but I think that we just purchased whatever the standard business warranty was at the time.
:P
Compaq hasn't been too bad either, we don't have onsite service with them, but when we did have an Armada m700 power problem (IIRC, the batteries wouldn't charge in the device) they sent a prepaid box to ship the laptop off to a service center. Then after about 3 days, we got the box back and the laptop had been fixed. The turnaround time was so quick that I thought that there was some kind of shipping problem
yeah you're right. An editor like VIM inside of an application with menus like mutt isn't usefull at all and lowers productivity.
Uh, AOL uses an embedded browser. My guess is that you won't have a choice of rendering engines in the latest version of AOL. And besides, why would you want to use IE's engine anyway? Feeling sad that the latest IE exploit can't own your machine when you view a web document through gecko?
Ya, one of my personal favorites.. video here.
Office isn't included in Windows, and so it's not even an issue here.
It's the applications like IE and WMP and that unzipping thing (in newer versions of Windows) that are under consideration here. I have to disagree with you that people think that these are "better", and that is why they use them. I believe that people use them because they are conveniently included with the computer that they buy. For applications like outlook express and IE, their use is also encouraged by ISPs.. maybe for the same reason.
example: When @home was around and visited your house for a cable modem install, one of the things they do is configure a web browser and a mail program. The browser is IE (actually a really ugly modification), and the mail program is Outlook Express. They might show you how to view webpages and send email with these programs if you didn't know, and that is what most customers would use. It's not that these two programs are better, it's just what "works" and is convenient.
It depends on the model, they are rated for a certain number of hours.
heh, the point you seem to be missing is that there are two issues: the physical assembly of the computer in-house and then the "software assembly" if you will. I think that everyone including myself agrees that software assembly costs nothing in terms of time. The time spent is all in the assembly and, as someone already mentioned, obtaining/purchasing the parts and dealing with warranties/returns to all kinds of different sources. The reason very few businesses build normal computers in house is because they can't save any money doing it..
I think you are missing the point, the person you replied to was talking about the labor costs involved in building computers _from_scratch_ and in house instead of using an OEM like Dell. That means you buy 20 computer cases, 20 motherboards, 20 power supplies, 20 CPUs, 20 sticks of RAM, etc. I doubt that you would save much money, if any, trying to build normal desktop computers in house. disc imaging tools such as ghost don't have anything to do building a computer from scratch.
that reminds me of the tetris game I played a while ago written in VIM's native scripting language. The tetris game is here IIRC. Heh, and when I was looking for that there seems to be a sokoban game in VIM too..
I wouldn't say that it is "slower" than NS4. Mozilla does use more memory which does cause it to load slower, but the page rendering speed compared to NS4 is much faster. New windows also seem to load slower on mozilla which is one gripe of mine, but I figure it's due to XUL or something not native. It has been said before, but you can work around that delay by using tabs and CTRL+L instead of CTRL+SHIFT+L (for example).
:(
Low memory machines might still find NS4 faster overall, I haven't really had a chance to try mozilla on a loaded 32MB machine yet. At work, we have many of these left in use and they have to run software like mcafee which uses a huge amount of memory itself. There won't be much RAM after that to make mozilla happy I don't think
I am sure that when they do switch their internal browser, they might mention 'new and improved AOL 8!!', but that's about it. The end users (especially AOL users), don't care what rendering engine they are using to view web pages. And they certainly don't care that AOL is making an internal switch to linux. AOL marketing is smart, that's why they are "#1" :P
I don't think that very many computer labs need $1,500 computers.. Assuming that a $1,500 computer comes with a 17" CRT monitor (worth about $160), that means you spent $1,340 on the computer. I'm buying some pretty good dell computers now for employees and they cost $830 w/o monitor (256MB, 7,200 20GB hdd, win2k, NIC). I could go a lot cheaper if I only had to buy computers that did email and web browsing. If you buy cheaper computers, the cost savings isn't that much initially. You may be right, however, that you would save a significant amount over several years.
There are exceptions. Bands will sometimes put an animation + music on their main page. aliceinchains.net and slayer.net are some examples. This is OK with me, I'm going to their website because I like their music. The sites that bug me are the ones with the crappy midi clips that are there only because the designer just learned how to make it work.. They add nothing to the site and are just plain annoying.
it's not on the right side of the screen anymore, it's towards the top. Try searching for something that people buy, like cars..
I think that they are referring to the sponsored link boxes. It depends on what you search for, but here is an example.. The only change that I can see is that they moved the advertising box from the side of the screen towards the top. It's a bit more intrusive now, but still much better than blinking banner ads.