Generally what I've seen from digital cable (Cox cable) and satellite has been a much-improved signal (audio and video clarity), even on standard TVs. Of course, it's possible that they've just destroyed their analog cable service to make digital look like a better option, but most of what people are mentioning are not things I've seen on either digital cable or satellite.
At the same time, once I can afford to, Ill simply by a fairly large HDTV and my primary use will be DVD and console games. I could really care less about TV, especially with a lot of the better shows coming along on DVD within a season or two of airing (which is helpful not only for being commercial-free (though most of the ones I like are HBO series anyway, and therefore always commercial-free), but because I rarely sit down and watch TV at a certain time on certain nites of the week just to catch a show, so I always miss parts of each season).
My fav feature is the zoom-in function for text sizes; there's so many idiot webmasters who think 8pt text is big enough that this grants my eyes another 20 years of functionality without contacts.
I've found very few pages that don't zoom when using CTRL+mouse wheel in IE5/6, and there's also a font-size icon in the toolbar (or maybe I put it there through the customize function, I tend to customize everything within a week of installing) in case I forget what the shortcut is.
Your attitude is not new: just go back through old Usenet postings and read the 'why should I care if my pages only look good in Netscape?' posts.
Of course, eventually IE could render most of those pages properly without the people that made them going back and changing them just for it. This allowed people to switch more easily to IE when they either got sick of some problems with Netscape, or just got sick of having two browsers installed on their Windows systems all the time.
(actually Netscape lost very few users when their share of the browser market went through the floor. The majority of IE's increase in market share is a direct result of new users who had never used a browser before and received IE either from their ISP or with Windows (or Office))
I'd say there's several major reasons to switch.. the fact that you can block pop up advertising is a major reason. The fact that is has far superior cookie and password management is a major reason. The fact that it has a better email and usenet client (than OE) is a major reason.
I don't think I'm alone on this, but the choice of browsers to me is completely separate from the choice of email and usenet clients. I use Outlook (not OE) on most of my Windows machines primarily because of it's handling of multiple email accounts and filtering (yes, I'm sure there are free/open source alternatives, but I haven't spent time researching more than a half dozen email clients and am happy with what I have). I would prefer to be able to download a browser without an email client, but in the end find IE preferable to most browsers available on Windows.
As far as pop-up ads, there are a lot of ways to get rid of those completely independant of the browser, I usually just add the source of the ad to the filter on my firewall (whether it's a software firewall or hardware firewall), some of the software ones have fairly good interfaces for doing this, as well (such as Norton's Internet Security, drag the ad to the ad trashcan and say goodbye).
As far as cookie and password management, I haven't had any problems with IE in that area, so I really couldn't say much about it. The only thing that I really would prefer from it is the ability to dismiss the 'Would you like to save this password?' prompt for a particular site without disabling it for all sites.
As long as th UI is good, I'd prefer it to not have a windows UI because then that means the Unix and Mac versions get stuck with a UI that I didn't like to begin with. I know a lot of programers go to the system ui on each OS, but I have had too many windows feeling apps on my Mac to deal with.
I don't think anyone's looking for a 'Windows-feeling' Mozilla on OS X. What most are saying is that the application should fit with the system under which it is being run. It should feel like a Windows app under Windows, an OS X app under OS X, a KDE app under KDE, and so on. Obviously there are projects available for accomplishing this, but in reality it's just good sense as a developer to make the UI conform to the platform under which it's being run, rather than trying to make the UI the same across all platforms. The number of users that are using your application on more than one platform is much smaller than the number of users that are using it only on one platform, and more than likely taking some note of the fact that it doesn't fit the OS UI.
2) Write the GUI side of you application for each OS you wish it to run on. Which would at least double the amount of work required and also prevent to from being able to show a consistent interface across platforms. Not to touch upon the complexities of debugging issues.
This is the option that most developers prefer when writing professional cross-platform applications. It also helps to track down bugs in some cases, because your UI logic is separated more thoroughly from your core application logic (this bug appears only on this platform, therefore it's more likely to be in the UI or platform-specific code; this bug appears on all platforms, so it's most likely in the platform-independant code; not to mention not having to iron out bugs in the interface toolkit if the native interfaces are stable). Microsoft tried the 'one look on all platforms' thing with Office a couple of versions ago, and basically pissed off the majority of Apple users (and they have a larger percentage of the Apple market for office suite software than they do of the Windows market for office suite software), and eventually they went back to using the native OS' interface in the new version.
This is just a hypothesis, but perhaps the properties tab is so far away from the beginning of the pull-down list because the software designers figured out that if people can't find the properties button, then they won't change things within the app, thereby making the application support person's jobs easier.
A 'context menu' is the menu that pops up when you right-click on something, called a context menu precisely because a good application will change what comes up based on context (ie a user will not right-click on the toolbar expecting text-editing options when they're using Word or another text editor). The reason Properties is the last item, in most cases, is simply for consistency. An experienced user will usually be able to get to it quite quickly precisely because it's the last item, rather than being somewhere in the middle of the menu list, and if you right-click near the bottom of the screen or application window, it's the first thing your mouse pointer will hit.
Actually, I have that option checked on all of my Windows systems and have never seen the behavior being described, unless I'm simply misunderstanding his description.
No, the page can visit YOU via the HTML email feature of Outlook Express, Outlook, and even Eudora in some cases. Until very recently, scripting and ActiveX were enabled by default for incoming emails on most mail clients.
The majority of exploits that utilize Outlook to launch an attack against IE were fixed over a year ago
Re:Why is the next generation user interface GUI?
on
GUIs for Everyone
·
· Score: 1
The web page talks about the next generation GUI. Why should the next generation of user interfaces be still graphical? Shouldn't there be some new paradigm, like the GUI was the next generation from the command line?
Actually, going from command line to GUI wasn't really a complete change, just an evolution (or devolution depending on how you look at it) of the existing ideas. In many ways, most command-line based operating systems already had GUI apps long before GUI operating systems (or GUI shells for operating systems) started gaining popularity. The real power was in the shift from the command line to the desktop metaphor, and so the question is what is the next metaphor?
If they go to an interface heavily reliant on voice commands any time in my life I think Ill just lock myself in away from all other computer users and concentrate on making the computer work for me instead of making the computer guess what I want to do.
Here's an example: do "regular users" prefer the new look of WinXP, or the old one?
I've found most people that give the XP look a fair chance eventually come to prefer it. Those users that are looking for a way to change it back as soon as they see it generally will never come to prefer it. Personally, I can't stand the blue theme, but I've been using the silver theme almost since day one, and actually used the olive theme (which at first I thought was quite bad) for about a month. I prefer the new start menu, locking the taskbar, the (configurable) auto-hide for system tray icons, and taskbar grouping. I like the fact that the silver tends to be a little more subtle about the changes than the blue theme is, since a quick glance will probably miss the changes, unless the start button or a window's close button catches your eye. ClearType is also something I miss a great deal when I'm at work, since the network admins decided no one can use XP on the network until their remote software works properly with it.
I think where a lot of Linux GUIs (and many Windows GUI alternatives) tend to fall on their face is by placing most of the customization options (which are certainly among their strong points) into text files without offering the average user simple, intuitive methods for doing much of that customization. Even Windows fails there in some ways, by mixing meanings in dialogues listing options (a check here means Don't show this, a check here means Show something else), but they've finally cleaned up a few of them (right-clicking on anything in Windows should offer you an option of looking at it's properties, which should bring up something that makes sense, whether it's file properties, system properties, desktop properties, or your start menu properties (where most versions of Windows fail at least the last one)).
I believe all of the codecs have had claims of being equivalent to 128kb MP3 format audio at 64kb. The issue, though, is that they didn't include a baseline with 128kb MP3 compression in the test. Sure, you know how the various formats compare with each other at 64kb, but you can't really tell if the claims that they can perform with 128kb MP3s is accurate or not, assuming that anyone will even take the word of this to begin with.
I tend to agree. I use flat 128 or 192kb MP3 encoding for everything, but I do it primarily for space concerns and ease of use (it's much easier to manage my music in MP3 format than to juggle CDs, even with a large multidisk player). For background music I simply want a minimum of tape quality (which is about what 128 or 192 gets you), with no overwhelming artifacts (gotta love the old Xing encoder coughing up a pop or hiss out of nowhere). If I want to actively listen to the music, Ill dig up the CD and throw it in the DVD-ROM drive.
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Generally what I've seen from digital cable (Cox cable) and satellite has been a much-improved signal (audio and video clarity), even on standard TVs. Of course, it's possible that they've just destroyed their analog cable service to make digital look like a better option, but most of what people are mentioning are not things I've seen on either digital cable or satellite.
At the same time, once I can afford to, Ill simply by a fairly large HDTV and my primary use will be DVD and console games. I could really care less about TV, especially with a lot of the better shows coming along on DVD within a season or two of airing (which is helpful not only for being commercial-free (though most of the ones I like are HBO series anyway, and therefore always commercial-free), but because I rarely sit down and watch TV at a certain time on certain nites of the week just to catch a show, so I always miss parts of each season).
My fav feature is the zoom-in function for text sizes; there's so many idiot webmasters who think 8pt text is big enough that this grants my eyes another 20 years of functionality without contacts.
I've found very few pages that don't zoom when using CTRL+mouse wheel in IE5/6, and there's also a font-size icon in the toolbar (or maybe I put it there through the customize function, I tend to customize everything within a week of installing) in case I forget what the shortcut is.
Your attitude is not new: just go back through old Usenet postings and read the 'why should I care if my pages only look good in Netscape?' posts.
Of course, eventually IE could render most of those pages properly without the people that made them going back and changing them just for it. This allowed people to switch more easily to IE when they either got sick of some problems with Netscape, or just got sick of having two browsers installed on their Windows systems all the time.
(actually Netscape lost very few users when their share of the browser market went through the floor. The majority of IE's increase in market share is a direct result of new users who had never used a browser before and received IE either from their ISP or with Windows (or Office))
I'd say there's several major reasons to switch.. the fact that you can block pop up advertising is a major reason. The fact that is has far superior cookie and password management is a major reason. The fact that it has a better email and usenet client (than OE) is a major reason.
I don't think I'm alone on this, but the choice of browsers to me is completely separate from the choice of email and usenet clients. I use Outlook (not OE) on most of my Windows machines primarily because of it's handling of multiple email accounts and filtering (yes, I'm sure there are free/open source alternatives, but I haven't spent time researching more than a half dozen email clients and am happy with what I have). I would prefer to be able to download a browser without an email client, but in the end find IE preferable to most browsers available on Windows.
As far as pop-up ads, there are a lot of ways to get rid of those completely independant of the browser, I usually just add the source of the ad to the filter on my firewall (whether it's a software firewall or hardware firewall), some of the software ones have fairly good interfaces for doing this, as well (such as Norton's Internet Security, drag the ad to the ad trashcan and say goodbye).
As far as cookie and password management, I haven't had any problems with IE in that area, so I really couldn't say much about it. The only thing that I really would prefer from it is the ability to dismiss the 'Would you like to save this password?' prompt for a particular site without disabling it for all sites.
As long as th UI is good, I'd prefer it to not have a windows UI because then that means the Unix and Mac versions get stuck with a UI that I didn't like to begin with. I know a lot of programers go to the system ui on each OS, but I have had too many windows feeling apps on my Mac to deal with.
I don't think anyone's looking for a 'Windows-feeling' Mozilla on OS X. What most are saying is that the application should fit with the system under which it is being run. It should feel like a Windows app under Windows, an OS X app under OS X, a KDE app under KDE, and so on. Obviously there are projects available for accomplishing this, but in reality it's just good sense as a developer to make the UI conform to the platform under which it's being run, rather than trying to make the UI the same across all platforms. The number of users that are using your application on more than one platform is much smaller than the number of users that are using it only on one platform, and more than likely taking some note of the fact that it doesn't fit the OS UI.
2) Write the GUI side of you application for each OS you wish it to run on. Which would at least double the amount of work required and also prevent to from being able to show a consistent interface across platforms. Not to touch upon the complexities of debugging issues.
This is the option that most developers prefer when writing professional cross-platform applications. It also helps to track down bugs in some cases, because your UI logic is separated more thoroughly from your core application logic (this bug appears only on this platform, therefore it's more likely to be in the UI or platform-specific code; this bug appears on all platforms, so it's most likely in the platform-independant code; not to mention not having to iron out bugs in the interface toolkit if the native interfaces are stable). Microsoft tried the 'one look on all platforms' thing with Office a couple of versions ago, and basically pissed off the majority of Apple users (and they have a larger percentage of the Apple market for office suite software than they do of the Windows market for office suite software), and eventually they went back to using the native OS' interface in the new version.
This is just a hypothesis, but perhaps the properties tab is so far away from the beginning of the pull-down list because the software designers figured out that if people can't find the properties button, then they won't change things within the app, thereby making the application support person's jobs easier. A 'context menu' is the menu that pops up when you right-click on something, called a context menu precisely because a good application will change what comes up based on context (ie a user will not right-click on the toolbar expecting text-editing options when they're using Word or another text editor). The reason Properties is the last item, in most cases, is simply for consistency. An experienced user will usually be able to get to it quite quickly precisely because it's the last item, rather than being somewhere in the middle of the menu list, and if you right-click near the bottom of the screen or application window, it's the first thing your mouse pointer will hit.
Actually, I have that option checked on all of my Windows systems and have never seen the behavior being described, unless I'm simply misunderstanding his description.
No, the page can visit YOU via the HTML email feature of Outlook Express, Outlook, and even Eudora in some cases. Until very recently, scripting and ActiveX were enabled by default for incoming emails on most mail clients. The majority of exploits that utilize Outlook to launch an attack against IE were fixed over a year ago
The web page talks about the next generation GUI. Why should the next generation of user interfaces be still graphical? Shouldn't there be some new paradigm, like the GUI was the next generation from the command line? Actually, going from command line to GUI wasn't really a complete change, just an evolution (or devolution depending on how you look at it) of the existing ideas. In many ways, most command-line based operating systems already had GUI apps long before GUI operating systems (or GUI shells for operating systems) started gaining popularity. The real power was in the shift from the command line to the desktop metaphor, and so the question is what is the next metaphor? If they go to an interface heavily reliant on voice commands any time in my life I think Ill just lock myself in away from all other computer users and concentrate on making the computer work for me instead of making the computer guess what I want to do.
Here's an example: do "regular users" prefer the new look of WinXP, or the old one? I've found most people that give the XP look a fair chance eventually come to prefer it. Those users that are looking for a way to change it back as soon as they see it generally will never come to prefer it. Personally, I can't stand the blue theme, but I've been using the silver theme almost since day one, and actually used the olive theme (which at first I thought was quite bad) for about a month. I prefer the new start menu, locking the taskbar, the (configurable) auto-hide for system tray icons, and taskbar grouping. I like the fact that the silver tends to be a little more subtle about the changes than the blue theme is, since a quick glance will probably miss the changes, unless the start button or a window's close button catches your eye. ClearType is also something I miss a great deal when I'm at work, since the network admins decided no one can use XP on the network until their remote software works properly with it. I think where a lot of Linux GUIs (and many Windows GUI alternatives) tend to fall on their face is by placing most of the customization options (which are certainly among their strong points) into text files without offering the average user simple, intuitive methods for doing much of that customization. Even Windows fails there in some ways, by mixing meanings in dialogues listing options (a check here means Don't show this, a check here means Show something else), but they've finally cleaned up a few of them (right-clicking on anything in Windows should offer you an option of looking at it's properties, which should bring up something that makes sense, whether it's file properties, system properties, desktop properties, or your start menu properties (where most versions of Windows fail at least the last one)).
I believe all of the codecs have had claims of being equivalent to 128kb MP3 format audio at 64kb. The issue, though, is that they didn't include a baseline with 128kb MP3 compression in the test. Sure, you know how the various formats compare with each other at 64kb, but you can't really tell if the claims that they can perform with 128kb MP3s is accurate or not, assuming that anyone will even take the word of this to begin with.
I tend to agree. I use flat 128 or 192kb MP3 encoding for everything, but I do it primarily for space concerns and ease of use (it's much easier to manage my music in MP3 format than to juggle CDs, even with a large multidisk player). For background music I simply want a minimum of tape quality (which is about what 128 or 192 gets you), with no overwhelming artifacts (gotta love the old Xing encoder coughing up a pop or hiss out of nowhere). If I want to actively listen to the music, Ill dig up the CD and throw it in the DVD-ROM drive.