The goal of the presidential primary process (right or wrong) is to obtain delegates for the national convention in Denver. The delegate results for the primary seem to be Clinton 65 Obama 61. That's a net of 4 for Clinton. Obama looks to win 21 of the 31 state districts (which is how the remaining 67 remaining delegates get allocated). I can't speak as to how the TX caucus processes works from here forward. I know it's complicated and not as straight forward as the 21/31 senate districts number I sited above. But I would guess that Obama is going to net more than 4 delegates from the caucuses, and actually come out of Texas a delegate winner even though he lost the popular vote (see Nevada for details).
Also, don't think that only Texans understand how silly and convoluted the process is. Everyone outside of Texas also thinks "y'all are doing it wrong." However, it's the process that the state democratic party came up with, and that's the way you do it down there. Complaining about the disenfranchisement of voters because of a system that was created before the race began is a bad argument. You should complain about the incompetence of the plan on its own merits. However, it's the system Texas Democrats decided upon and that's the way it goes. (I have similar feelings about Michigan and Florida.) Lets all learn from our mistakes and get it right next time.
It's really Google vs. Microsoft because Firefox 2 essentially integrated Google's Safe Browsing extension into the core browser. And while Firefox has the ability to change phishing-list providers (Tools -> Options -> Security), the only one it ships with is from Google.
Let's take a look at that list from someone who uses the Spreadsheet app daily (personal finances):
1. Formulas are edited in the cell rather than having a text field on top. This is REALLY annoying to anyone who uses a spreadsheet program regularly. There is an uneditable text field at the top (doesn't work right in Mozilla 1.7.12), but it's not useful for anything other than ogleing at.
Let's not mock Google for trying something different. Because they use "ribbons," that bar up top is only visible when the formatting ribon is selected. I know that you've got Excel muscle memory and you want to go up to that function bar, but why should you have to click on a cell and then click up on the formatting bar when you can just edit by double clicking a cell and staying there. Open your mind and try something different. It might be better.
2. Auto-resizing by double-clicking doesn't work. This is a core feature that I should think that everyone uses.
You're right, double-clicking a column header's edge doesn't auto resize, but since cells auto word wrap based on their contents, you can just resize a column until rows no longer wrap. This feature should be added -- it would be nice. It should also be easier to grab the column header's edge.
3. No size indicator when changing cell sizes.
This is a nice luxury feature I'd like to have (when resizing similar sheets to have the same column widths). Regardless, I don't really NEED it to do my work. That's just me though.
4. You're limited to 100 x T cells. If you're one of those people with a lot of data, good luck. It doesn't look like Google will let you store it without manually inserting enough rows or columns to hold it all.
If you highlight all the rows and then go to insert, you'll see that you can insert however many rows you have selected. For instance, if you select 100 rows, you'll get an option to add 100 rows up or 100 rows down. You can also right click on the row headers to get this option. Works the same for columns, too.
5. The formatting menu is useless. It's got a few data types, and that is IT. If you need a custom style, or a date in one of the billion other formats, you're SOL.
You're not SOL, but you do have to do some work: You need to use the TEXT() function. Check this out to see what you can do with that function.
6. No cell borders. Raise your hand if you tend to mark headers with a cell border. (/Me raises hand.)
It's simple, but it works. Frustratingly, it seems that the common solution to most problems are to download, and open it in excel then update online. Maybe that'll change as the project matures.
7. The "Freeze Rows" command makes no sense. Why are you choosing the number of rows from a menu, when a multiple row-select exists?
I don't know if you don't understand what it's supposed to be doing, but it emulates the pane feature in excel, where you can keep one or more header rows frozen as you scroll down. This works well for my financial stuff that I do. It'd be nice if they had the first couple of columns freezable too.
There are some downpoints, noticably the speed, especially when you've got lots of data and you do lots of calculations on it, or when slashdot covers it on the front page. When typing things, they stay up on the page while the server gets updated and that works for random text being added, but if the data you are changing changes other data, you'll have to wait for the server to catch up. Like I said, the column dividers could be easier to select. And the autofill feature could be smarter. That really hurts my productivity.
In excel, you could have two cells with values of 2 and 4 and then autofill the next couple of cells and you'd get 6 and 8. In Google, you'll get 3 and 5, then 4 and 6, and so on.
This is not at all what's happening. Debian wants to patch firefox so that it works with the Debian OS. Mozilla says that if you do that, you can't use the logos. Debian says, fine, we won't use your logos. Mozilla then replies, well if you don't use the logos, you can't use the name either.
Close, it's more like this:
Debian says, "I want to modify the source so that Firefox can better fit in with my OS."
Mozilla says, "Sure, but you have to run changes through us to release it with the official branding. We want to protect our brand and QA those changes before you ship something that will reflect on our image."
Debian responds, "Um, no. We do what we want because it's free software. This isn't going to fly with us."
Mozilla answers, "Well, you're free to have the source and do with it what you will, but the logo is copywritten and the name is trademarked and we reserve the right not to let you use it without our permission. The only way you're getting that is to let us QA the changes or ship it unmodified."
Debian says loudly with it's nose in the air, "OK, fine! We're not using the name or the logo, because we do what with Free software. That's what makes it free."
It seems like the natural course of events happened here. Debian wants everything to be free. Mozilla wants to protect a brand. So Debian takes what's free and makes its own brand. I think the culture of that at Mozilla is not into Free Software as an ideology (and there are many blog posts by Mozilla employees that say so) but that it is a means to create great software. I think the culture of Debian is that they're really into Freedom and the software will come over time. Given the availability and an infinate amount of time, the probability of creating great software goes to 1. (They like the Math equations over there in the Debian camp!)
Of course, it all doesn't matter as long as Ubuntu gets to keep the Firefox branding. If not, I'm sure there will be scripts written to change it all back. Freedom, baby! Yeah!
You can't place it on the tab bar where it (imo) belongs. This is the reason I still use Moz instead of FF.
I wrote an extension for Firefox called New Tab Button on Tab Bar just for this purpose. I even gave it an awefully long name so that people could find it!
Even better, from the bug report (copy and paste URL to location bar). This is Fritz Schneider, a Google employee speaking:
> Will google continue releasing the extension as part > of Google Labs, or a product offering?
Great question. We're end-of-lifing the stand-alone extension as it is released on Labs. Instead, we've integrated this feature into the Google Toolbar for Firefox and it will go out in the next release. Then one of two things happens. Case one is this feature (or something like it) makes it into Firefox, in which case we rip it out of the Toolbar and do all new development in Moz cvs tree. Case two is that this feature does not make it into Firefox, in which case we continue to support it in the Toolbar.
So, to answer your question, we'd very much like active development to move into Moz cvs tree. But we won't force it.
I wasn't saying that iPod users are dumber than Zen users or whatever. You can't deny that with eighty-something percent of the market share and fourteen some-odd million units sold, you're going to have a significant amount of computer-illiterate people with iPods buying music.
are more enticed to use the bundled iTunes legal purchasing software that works well with their computer, their iPod, and the fact that they really don't understand computers? Isn't this software Darwinism? Build good software and they will come, right?
My brother got a nano and he got my dad to buy some music from iTMS, even though he had previously gotten them for free off of peer networks. He could have gotten those songs for free, but since his iPod came with iTunes, he used the included software to get some music. Songs at a reasonable price, found using software he can use. It all makes sense to me.
Being open source programmers doesn't make them perfect programmers. Not working at Microsoft doesn't make them perfect programmers.
The phrase never never said, "given enough eyes, there are no bugs." It said "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow." That phrase even admits there will be bugs. Security is a process, not an accumulated number of crash bugs.
I would hope Firefox has fewer overflows than IE, only because that would mean less headaches for me, and less bad press.
I just bought a Sion. They have this new system where, like building a computer online, you build your car piece by piece on the Internet and just pay that price. No haggling required (or allowed).
It's a nice flash-based site geared towards my demographic. But the "build your scion" part of the site doesn't quite work for building my car. You are supposed to check features, and they are graphically added to your car. (This is very helpful, as the car isn't available at many dealerships -- it sells fast.)
That whole part, the graphical response to adding features to my car, did not work in Firefox. It asks you to "click here" to get the required program to make the purchase interactive. But that link doesn't do anything.
It turns out that the pop-up was blocked for the "click here" window. And even if I did get it open, it's an ActiveX control that's doing the work.
This is a brand new car brand too. It's not an old and outdated website.
Yahoo! Music is also notorious for not working in Firefox.
One of the comments in the article says this (from a microsoft developer):
As for the "* HTML" selector issue - actually, it's currently fixed (that is, it no longer works) in beta 2; however, I'm on the fence as to whether we should ship that (it does help our appearance on the acid2 test), since it is in use in the web today for browser switching. I'd welcome feedback on whether we should fix it in IE7 or not.
I read this the other day, and sifted through the huge pile of comments by searching for "[MS" which will find most (all?) of the microsoft employee comments. Those are way more informative than the hundreds (!) of "yay" or "is this fixed?" posts.
Re:If they're going to bump it up that much...
on
Firefox 1.1 Scrapped
·
· Score: 1
Gecko (the rendering engine) for Fx 1.5 will be version 1.8. They are going to branch Gecko 1.8 soon and start making advances towards Gecko 1.9. Acid 2 fixes will be in Gecko >= 1.9 and therefore will probably not be in Fx 1.5, but will probably be in Firefox 2.
Personally, instead of displaying the tiny unobtrusive update indicator as it currently does, I would love see Firefox do something like change the window color to red and display a system message dialog stating the problem with a link to the update. Maybe a good compromise?
Read about the proposed new software update coming in (much) later versions of Firefox. For those who can't be bothered to read anything, they have mockup screenshots.
Someone posted some graphs for Mozilla's load balancer, Bouncer and you can clearly see when 1.0.[1-3] came out. You'll probably want to look at the bottom graph.
It's a hidden preference. It's not supposed to be exposed in the GUI. Go to about:config and look at all the hidden prefs. If they all had a front-end, the preference window would look like, well, the mozilla suite.
Think about it for a second. Your browser allows identical-to-the-eye domain names via a spoofing security issue. Your workaround is to put big "!!!" marks before and after the domain name when it's possible that the user could be spoofed. But really, some people would rather take the risk of getting tricked than have to look at those damn exclamation marks, so you give them a hidden preference.
Would you, a user interface designer, put this pref in the Options panel? If so, where would you put it?
If you answered yes to the first question, where would you put browser.blink_allowed? I'm sure somebody somewhere wants that pref exposed. How about browser.chrome.site_icons? "Man, if those little per-site icons don't drive me crazy. I wish I could turn them off, and heaven forbid I type the word chrome, because that's just not acceptable UI."
Without looking, can you tell me 5 of the options listed in IE's Advanced tab in it's options pane? Since you can't, does that make it good UI that they've exposed those prefs to the user? Don't you think that allowing a "hidden" feature, about:config, to play with all the prefs is an acceptable compromise to facilitate a simple, yet effective UI?
People like you are reasons why the suite is what it was a year ago. People like Ben Goodger are the reasons why Firefox is objectively better than the suite for almost all people.
If you've read this far, maybe you would read the Firefox Charter, with their stated goals.
Without you knowing it, several of the people employed to work on Firefox 1.0 (and have been working for a long time) recieve paychecks with other companies such as Rracle, Red Had, and IBM.
It's like Google is 'sponsoring' a worker for the Mozilla Foundation, like you used to do to raise money when you were a kid.
The title is a catchy one because Firefox is "new and cool". Really, it's Mozilla as a Platform, and that just really means XUL as a Platform. XAML is Microsoft's attempt at XUL, because it's XUL's a "Good Idea".
Slashdot Mirror
The goal of the presidential primary process (right or wrong) is to obtain delegates for the national convention in Denver. The delegate results for the primary seem to be Clinton 65 Obama 61. That's a net of 4 for Clinton. Obama looks to win 21 of the 31 state districts (which is how the remaining 67 remaining delegates get allocated). I can't speak as to how the TX caucus processes works from here forward. I know it's complicated and not as straight forward as the 21/31 senate districts number I sited above. But I would guess that Obama is going to net more than 4 delegates from the caucuses, and actually come out of Texas a delegate winner even though he lost the popular vote (see Nevada for details).
Also, don't think that only Texans understand how silly and convoluted the process is. Everyone outside of Texas also thinks "y'all are doing it wrong." However, it's the process that the state democratic party came up with, and that's the way you do it down there. Complaining about the disenfranchisement of voters because of a system that was created before the race began is a bad argument. You should complain about the incompetence of the plan on its own merits. However, it's the system Texas Democrats decided upon and that's the way it goes. (I have similar feelings about Michigan and Florida.) Lets all learn from our mistakes and get it right next time.
Problems like that won't happen anymore with the new Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS).
It's really Google vs. Microsoft because Firefox 2 essentially integrated Google's Safe Browsing extension into the core browser. And while Firefox has the ability to change phishing-list providers (Tools -> Options -> Security), the only one it ships with is from Google.
Let's take a look at that list from someone who uses the Spreadsheet app daily (personal finances):
1. Formulas are edited in the cell rather than having a text field on top. This is REALLY annoying to anyone who uses a spreadsheet program regularly. There is an uneditable text field at the top (doesn't work right in Mozilla 1.7.12), but it's not useful for anything other than ogleing at.
Let's not mock Google for trying something different. Because they use "ribbons," that bar up top is only visible when the formatting ribon is selected. I know that you've got Excel muscle memory and you want to go up to that function bar, but why should you have to click on a cell and then click up on the formatting bar when you can just edit by double clicking a cell and staying there. Open your mind and try something different. It might be better.
2. Auto-resizing by double-clicking doesn't work. This is a core feature that I should think that everyone uses.
You're right, double-clicking a column header's edge doesn't auto resize, but since cells auto word wrap based on their contents, you can just resize a column until rows no longer wrap. This feature should be added -- it would be nice. It should also be easier to grab the column header's edge.
3. No size indicator when changing cell sizes.
This is a nice luxury feature I'd like to have (when resizing similar sheets to have the same column widths). Regardless, I don't really NEED it to do my work. That's just me though.
4. You're limited to 100 x T cells. If you're one of those people with a lot of data, good luck. It doesn't look like Google will let you store it without manually inserting enough rows or columns to hold it all.
If you highlight all the rows and then go to insert, you'll see that you can insert however many rows you have selected. For instance, if you select 100 rows, you'll get an option to add 100 rows up or 100 rows down. You can also right click on the row headers to get this option. Works the same for columns, too.
5. The formatting menu is useless. It's got a few data types, and that is IT. If you need a custom style, or a date in one of the billion other formats, you're SOL.
You're not SOL, but you do have to do some work: You need to use the TEXT() function. Check this out to see what you can do with that function.
6. No cell borders. Raise your hand if you tend to mark headers with a cell border. (/Me raises hand.)
It's simple, but it works. Frustratingly, it seems that the common solution to most problems are to download, and open it in excel then update online. Maybe that'll change as the project matures.
7. The "Freeze Rows" command makes no sense. Why are you choosing the number of rows from a menu, when a multiple row-select exists?
I don't know if you don't understand what it's supposed to be doing, but it emulates the pane feature in excel, where you can keep one or more header rows frozen as you scroll down. This works well for my financial stuff that I do. It'd be nice if they had the first couple of columns freezable too.
There are some downpoints, noticably the speed, especially when you've got lots of data and you do lots of calculations on it, or when slashdot covers it on the front page. When typing things, they stay up on the page while the server gets updated and that works for random text being added, but if the data you are changing changes other data, you'll have to wait for the server to catch up. Like I said, the column dividers could be easier to select. And the autofill feature could be smarter. That really hurts my productivity.
In excel, you could have two cells with values of 2 and 4 and then autofill the next couple of cells and you'd get 6 and 8. In Google, you'll get 3 and 5, then 4 and 6, and so on.
Tho
Close, it's more like this:
- Debian says, "I want to modify the source so that Firefox can better fit in with my OS."
- Mozilla says, "Sure, but you have to run changes through us to release it with the official branding. We want to protect our brand and QA those changes before you ship something that will reflect on our image."
- Debian responds, "Um, no. We do what we want because it's free software. This isn't going to fly with us."
- Mozilla answers, "Well, you're free to have the source and do with it what you will, but the logo is copywritten and the name is trademarked and we reserve the right not to let you use it without our permission. The only way you're getting that is to let us QA the changes or ship it unmodified."
- Debian says loudly with it's nose in the air, "OK, fine! We're not using the name or the logo, because we do what with Free software. That's what makes it free."
It seems like the natural course of events happened here. Debian wants everything to be free. Mozilla wants to protect a brand. So Debian takes what's free and makes its own brand. I think the culture of that at Mozilla is not into Free Software as an ideology (and there are many blog posts by Mozilla employees that say so) but that it is a means to create great software. I think the culture of Debian is that they're really into Freedom and the software will come over time. Given the availability and an infinate amount of time, the probability of creating great software goes to 1. (They like the Math equations over there in the Debian camp!)Of course, it all doesn't matter as long as Ubuntu gets to keep the Firefox branding. If not, I'm sure there will be scripts written to change it all back. Freedom, baby! Yeah!
I wasn't saying that iPod users are dumber than Zen users or whatever. You can't deny that with eighty-something percent of the market share and fourteen some-odd million units sold, you're going to have a significant amount of computer-illiterate people with iPods buying music.
are more enticed to use the bundled iTunes legal purchasing software that works well with their computer, their iPod, and the fact that they really don't understand computers? Isn't this software Darwinism? Build good software and they will come, right?
My brother got a nano and he got my dad to buy some music from iTMS, even though he had previously gotten them for free off of peer networks. He could have gotten those songs for free, but since his iPod came with iTunes, he used the included software to get some music. Songs at a reasonable price, found using software he can use. It all makes sense to me.
Say it with me now.
"Security is a process."
Being open source programmers doesn't make them perfect programmers. Not working at Microsoft doesn't make them perfect programmers.
The phrase never never said, "given enough eyes, there are no bugs." It said "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow." That phrase even admits there will be bugs. Security is a process, not an accumulated number of crash bugs.
I would hope Firefox has fewer overflows than IE, only because that would mean less headaches for me, and less bad press.
Bug 9458 - Implement inline-block in layout.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9458
This is one of those golden-oldy bugs with a 4-digit bug number, so chances are it's really hard to implement.
Opened: 1999-07-08 15:25 PDT
Last modified: 2005-09-06 12:46 PDT
It looks like you might be able to get away with using both of the following rules:
display:-moz-inline-box;
display:inline-block;
He has got just 1 second of jail per 175 emails.
Yes, but is it "federal, pound me in the ass prison," or just prison with conjugal visits? If the former, then those seconds might be well-spent.
I just bought a Sion. They have this new system where, like building a computer online, you build your car piece by piece on the Internet and just pay that price. No haggling required (or allowed).
It's a nice flash-based site geared towards my demographic. But the "build your scion" part of the site doesn't quite work for building my car. You are supposed to check features, and they are graphically added to your car. (This is very helpful, as the car isn't available at many dealerships -- it sells fast.)
That whole part, the graphical response to adding features to my car, did not work in Firefox. It asks you to "click here" to get the required program to make the purchase interactive. But that link doesn't do anything.
It turns out that the pop-up was blocked for the "click here" window. And even if I did get it open, it's an ActiveX control that's doing the work.
This is a brand new car brand too. It's not an old and outdated website.
Yahoo! Music is also notorious for not working in Firefox.
Though not written in a garbage collecting language, (it's C++) the Mozilla framework called XPCOM uses reference counting for its garbage collection. And it has been used since at least the 4.x days.
They can still (and do) write pointers with classic syntax (int*), most of the time, you'll see the nsCOMPtr being used for managed pointers.
Gecko (the rendering engine) for Fx 1.5 will be version 1.8. They are going to branch Gecko 1.8 soon and start making advances towards Gecko 1.9. Acid 2 fixes will be in Gecko >= 1.9 and therefore will probably not be in Fx 1.5, but will probably be in Firefox 2.
For more about all this, see Roc's post in his weblog.
And that's better than the Open Source business plan, how?
1. Steal/Copy Idea
2. ???
3. Profit
Someone posted some graphs for Mozilla's load balancer, Bouncer and you can clearly see when 1.0.[1-3] came out. You'll probably want to look at the bottom graph.
It's a hidden preference. It's not supposed to be exposed in the GUI. Go to about:config and look at all the hidden prefs. If they all had a front-end, the preference window would look like, well, the mozilla suite.
Think about it for a second. Your browser allows identical-to-the-eye domain names via a spoofing security issue. Your workaround is to put big "!!!" marks before and after the domain name when it's possible that the user could be spoofed. But really, some people would rather take the risk of getting tricked than have to look at those damn exclamation marks, so you give them a hidden preference.
Would you, a user interface designer, put this pref in the Options panel? If so, where would you put it?
If you answered yes to the first question, where would you put browser.blink_allowed? I'm sure somebody somewhere wants that pref exposed. How about browser.chrome.site_icons? "Man, if those little per-site icons don't drive me crazy. I wish I could turn them off, and heaven forbid I type the word chrome, because that's just not acceptable UI."
Without looking, can you tell me 5 of the options listed in IE's Advanced tab in it's options pane? Since you can't, does that make it good UI that they've exposed those prefs to the user? Don't you think that allowing a "hidden" feature, about:config, to play with all the prefs is an acceptable compromise to facilitate a simple, yet effective UI?
People like you are reasons why the suite is what it was a year ago. People like Ben Goodger are the reasons why Firefox is objectively better than the suite for almost all people.
If you've read this far, maybe you would read the Firefox Charter, with their stated goals.
Without you knowing it, several of the people employed to work on Firefox 1.0 (and have been working for a long time) recieve paychecks with other companies such as Rracle, Red Had, and IBM.
It's like Google is 'sponsoring' a worker for the Mozilla Foundation, like you used to do to raise money when you were a kid.
XUL Tutorial
The title is a catchy one because Firefox is "new and cool". Really, it's Mozilla as a Platform, and that just really means XUL as a Platform. XAML is Microsoft's attempt at XUL, because it's XUL's a "Good Idea".
Gerv, who works for mozilla/bugzilla, already went through this, and found several ways around google's hackery. He then went and summarized the multiple ways to do it in good browsers.