I had poor luck successfully using Google Docs offline, even though this was supposedly what Gears was made for. I still do find Gears useful for one thing - Wordpress. I obviously can't blog offline, and if I were writing a post offline I'd do it in Microsoft Live Writer or MS Word or something, but regardless, that's not how Wordpress uses Gears; it leverages Gears to cache common Javascript files locally so that the pages on the admin console load much more quickly. This makes complex procedures really painless - like when I have to switch between many pages on the admin console, such as when I'm tweaking a series of templates or testing incremental changes to a plugin.
I'm no web designer so perhaps I'm misunderstanding TFA, but is offline script caching one of the features of HTML5? I really love this feature for frequently viewed web apps.
I'd like to think that with the name "netbook" people know what they're intended for, but they still put up with the performance hit to run their favourite apps, however poorly. Obviously Photoshop isn't important to the netbook demographic, but Bejeweled and MS Word and MSN Messenger certainly are.
The "world of disappointment" you mention isn't caused by running familiar apps slowly, it's caused by being forced into inferior and unfamiliar facsimiles.
Chromium... will bring Linux to the masses. It is designed to be secure. It will make Microsoft shit their pants.
A huge percentage of people who bought linux-based netbooks returned them and bought Windows netbooks instead. They did this because they couldn't take their usual Windows software on the go. If a wonderfully featureful and customizable OS like Ubuntu couldn't wean people off of netbooks what makes you think a one trick pony like Chrome will?
People are willing to pay extra for a product that works the way they want it to.
All fair points. I guess my difference in opinion comes from my feeling that Flash and Silverlight are optional add-ons, while HTML5 is (or will be) more of a core protocol. Maybe the line is greyer than it used to be.
Thanks for this explanation. All I've read on the subject is that HTML5 is not yet finalized, but it's very interesting to hear how much real-world use influences the spec.
Gmail was listed as beta until July. Hotmail was listed as production since like 1998. Therefore, Hotmail is better than Gmail, case closed. Right?
I'd much rather have "release early and release often" than "stick a fork in it and languish".
I'd rather have "release when it's done" and not "the public will do our QA for us". And I'd certainly rather have the web browser whose icon I just double clicked, rather than a rogue web browser injected into the UI of what I thought I was using.
I very seriously doubt that they did this just to turn their collective nose up at Microsoft. Might it be that they want a more usable browser, so they get more eyes on their own products?
Google is shoehorning their own browser into their competitor's browser. This is the equivalent of Burger King selling their hamburgers inside a McDonalds restaurant. It's a very drastic move that goes too far in my opinion.
Wouldn't you consider the fast pace of development a reason to at least support the most obvious standards. If our browsers wait for the final standards, that will slow the development process down. Now before you come flaming back at me, I'm not saying everything should be released bleeding edge, but there has to be some place in the middle that could be effective. You have to admit, IE hasn't had a stellar record of being a progressive, or even current browser.
You're right that standards should be backed, but they're not standards until they are finalized. A standard means something that will not be changed, but if it's not finalized it could change at any minute. I don't think "being progressive" should be a priority of any web browser - reliability should be #1. I'm not going to make any statements about IE's track record concerning reliability, but I can empathize with Microsoft for their reasons why they made this decision.
Sure, since the only reason Google had to create this code in the first place is because Microsoft wouldn't step up to the plate.
Is this a comment about HTML5 support? The standard isn't even established yet so it seems irresponsible for web designers to use that format for their entire framework, and premature to consider it a must-have for web browsers. IE9 will support it, I believe, though MS balked at supporting a non-final language.
I think this is all just an excuse for Google to turn up its nose at Microsoft by making them look like they're dragging their heels. It's a very Google ideal to embrace beta and subject users to technologies while they're still only half baked. Microsoft releases beta software too, but with warnings not to use the software in production. HTML5 is a good example of this difference of philosophy, and certainly so is this Chrome Frame plugin which is essentially a sloppy man-in-the-middle attack vector. It's like one of those obnoxious browser toolbars that acts as an intermediary to hijack all your search queries.
You'll get much better results using scaler=super2xsai or hq2x
These scalers consume a lot more CPU than the normal and normal2x scalers. A lot of my games slow down when I use fancy scalers in DOSbox. I can use these scalers just fine in arcade and NES/SNES emulators, though. I guess it has to do with the complexity of the machine being virtualized - RISC vs. CISC or something to that effect.
It'll be an interesting battle of philosophies there. Nobody wants to miss a turn because the Google map didn't download in time, but on the other hand nobody wants to pay $70 to Garmin every time they need to update their maps.
The article you linked to was an overly brief summary of third-hand reports. Your summary makes some very wild speculations based on the incomplete truths in your source.
The actual law from the Legislative Assembly of Ontario web site makes it quite clear what sorts handheld devices are not permitted to be used unless you are pulled over safely (stopped at a red light is still illegal):
Bill 40 2008
An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act to prohibit the use of phones and other equipment while a person is driving on a highway...
(2) No person shall use a cellular phone, car phone, pager, personal data assistant, portable computer, fax machine or other equipment prescribed by the regulations while driving a motor vehicle on a highway.,,,
The Bill amends the Highway Traffic Act to prohibit the use of a cellular phone, car phone, pager, personal data assistant, portable computer, fax machine or other equipment prescribed by the regulations made under the Act while a person is driving a motor vehicle. There are exceptions for cases like emergencies, cases where a driver who is not a novice driver as defined in the regulation on drivers' licences uses the equipment entirely through a hands-free feature and other cases prescribed by the regulations made under the Act.
The Registrar is required to report cases where the use of a cellular phone, car phone, pager, personal data assistant, portable computer, fax machine or other equipment prescribed by the regulations made under the Act may have contributed to causing a motor vehicle accident.
Drivers' licence examinations are required to include a portion testing the applicant's knowledge of the amendments made by the Bill.
I so wish I had mod points today. The new law makes it very clear that only handheld devices with a readable screen are not permitted to be manipulated while driving.
I think the open source community has belched out more than enough multiplayer-only FPS games to last a lifetime and a half, and a significant percentage of them are built on id Software's engines which were closed-source to begin with.
You want an enterprise search service. Microsoft and Google both make web-driven search solutions which work on any end user platform including mobile. There are many other companies that have web-based search services as well but those are the two goliaths.
That's not really a "desktop search engine" anymore, but I agree with your suggestion. Desktop search is not the right tool to index shared content, lest you get a department full of PCs constantly indexing the same repository over slow ethernet wires. Microsoft Enterprise Search Server lets you separate the indexing and serving servers, but unfortunately the free Express version doesn't support this.
The GSA works perfectly well with many security standards (AD, NTLM, Kerberos, SAML, forms, cookies) and it obscures secure search results from users who do not have read permissions to those documents. It's probably easier to configure the GSA's security settings than with any other enterprise search platform.
Furthermore, the GSA has a self-throttling feature called Host Load Scheduling which allows you to limit the number of connections opened per second. If that's not sufficient you can throttle the VLAN on your switch to limit the throughput in KB/s. Or you can stop crawling during the day and schedule it at night.
Based on your comments it sounds to me like you haven't used the GSA in a long time. There's a lot of handy new features. Google has really been listening to its customers and configuration partners, and especially the larger ones.
You could use Microsoft Enterprise Search Server Express which is free (if you have a Windows Server license laying around). It's the same search engine as MOSS without the CMS functionality and it can crawl just about everything either natively or with connectors. You can use MSSQL Express as the database engine which is also free.
Or you could go completely open source with Apache SOLR, though I hear it's so featureful that it's very difficult to install and configure.
I definitely think the address bar should become more of a portal to overall functionality. I loved the Cybersearch extension (while I still used Google), and just the other day I was wishing that I could enter math problems and unit conversions into my Start button search box.
I think it's important to offer full functionality for both the keyboard and the mouse. That's why I don't like the idea of requiring a keypress to unobscure important features like a tool bar. I'm sure Mozilla will come up with a very usable UI in the end. The Awesome Bar was a great start and there's nowhere to go but up from the foundation they laid out there.
I'm not a fan of showing the toolbar with alt, and I don't like the idea of moving the tabs so high up into the title bar. I'm sceptical, not pessimistic. I'll give Mozilla the chance they deserve to impress me with their UI.
Thanks - I think you're right that I reacted to a statement out of context. It's encouraging to hear that the Mozilla team is aware of changing trends and I always look forward to their new software releases.
Thanks very much for this clarification. I fear this will be a "worst of both worlds" situation, but I withhold judgment until I can try it out myself.
The screenshot in TFA looks nothing like the Office ribbon. The purpose of the ribbon is to make apparent the options the are usually buried within expanding hierarchical menus. In the screenshot it looks to me like they just replaced pulldown menus with pulldown buttons.
I love the Office ribbon and would be very happy to see this standard propagate into more user interfaces. I'd love to see it implemented in Firefox, but I see no such thing here.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the information! Sounds like HTML5 is a non-proprietary rip and replace for Gears.
I had poor luck successfully using Google Docs offline, even though this was supposedly what Gears was made for. I still do find Gears useful for one thing - Wordpress. I obviously can't blog offline, and if I were writing a post offline I'd do it in Microsoft Live Writer or MS Word or something, but regardless, that's not how Wordpress uses Gears; it leverages Gears to cache common Javascript files locally so that the pages on the admin console load much more quickly. This makes complex procedures really painless - like when I have to switch between many pages on the admin console, such as when I'm tweaking a series of templates or testing incremental changes to a plugin.
I'm no web designer so perhaps I'm misunderstanding TFA, but is offline script caching one of the features of HTML5? I really love this feature for frequently viewed web apps.
I'd like to think that with the name "netbook" people know what they're intended for, but they still put up with the performance hit to run their favourite apps, however poorly. Obviously Photoshop isn't important to the netbook demographic, but Bejeweled and MS Word and MSN Messenger certainly are.
The "world of disappointment" you mention isn't caused by running familiar apps slowly, it's caused by being forced into inferior and unfamiliar facsimiles.
Chromium ... will bring Linux to the masses. It is designed to be secure. It will make Microsoft shit their pants.
A huge percentage of people who bought linux-based netbooks returned them and bought Windows netbooks instead. They did this because they couldn't take their usual Windows software on the go. If a wonderfully featureful and customizable OS like Ubuntu couldn't wean people off of netbooks what makes you think a one trick pony like Chrome will?
People are willing to pay extra for a product that works the way they want it to.
All fair points. I guess my difference in opinion comes from my feeling that Flash and Silverlight are optional add-ons, while HTML5 is (or will be) more of a core protocol. Maybe the line is greyer than it used to be.
Thanks for this explanation. All I've read on the subject is that HTML5 is not yet finalized, but it's very interesting to hear how much real-world use influences the spec.
Gmail was listed as beta until July. Hotmail was listed as production since like 1998. Therefore, Hotmail is better than Gmail, case closed. Right?
I'd much rather have "release early and release often" than "stick a fork in it and languish".
I'd rather have "release when it's done" and not "the public will do our QA for us". And I'd certainly rather have the web browser whose icon I just double clicked, rather than a rogue web browser injected into the UI of what I thought I was using.
I very seriously doubt that they did this just to turn their collective nose up at Microsoft. Might it be that they want a more usable browser, so they get more eyes on their own products?
Google is shoehorning their own browser into their competitor's browser. This is the equivalent of Burger King selling their hamburgers inside a McDonalds restaurant. It's a very drastic move that goes too far in my opinion.
Wouldn't you consider the fast pace of development a reason to at least support the most obvious standards. If our browsers wait for the final standards, that will slow the development process down. Now before you come flaming back at me, I'm not saying everything should be released bleeding edge, but there has to be some place in the middle that could be effective. You have to admit, IE hasn't had a stellar record of being a progressive, or even current browser.
You're right that standards should be backed, but they're not standards until they are finalized. A standard means something that will not be changed, but if it's not finalized it could change at any minute. I don't think "being progressive" should be a priority of any web browser - reliability should be #1. I'm not going to make any statements about IE's track record concerning reliability, but I can empathize with Microsoft for their reasons why they made this decision.
Sure, since the only reason Google had to create this code in the first place is because Microsoft wouldn't step up to the plate.
Is this a comment about HTML5 support? The standard isn't even established yet so it seems irresponsible for web designers to use that format for their entire framework, and premature to consider it a must-have for web browsers. IE9 will support it, I believe, though MS balked at supporting a non-final language.
I think this is all just an excuse for Google to turn up its nose at Microsoft by making them look like they're dragging their heels. It's a very Google ideal to embrace beta and subject users to technologies while they're still only half baked. Microsoft releases beta software too, but with warnings not to use the software in production. HTML5 is a good example of this difference of philosophy, and certainly so is this Chrome Frame plugin which is essentially a sloppy man-in-the-middle attack vector. It's like one of those obnoxious browser toolbars that acts as an intermediary to hijack all your search queries.
You'll get much better results using scaler=super2xsai or hq2x
These scalers consume a lot more CPU than the normal and normal2x scalers. A lot of my games slow down when I use fancy scalers in DOSbox. I can use these scalers just fine in arcade and NES/SNES emulators, though. I guess it has to do with the complexity of the machine being virtualized - RISC vs. CISC or something to that effect.
Governments ought to provide maps free of charge to the public. Our taxes paid for them so they're public domain.
It'll be an interesting battle of philosophies there. Nobody wants to miss a turn because the Google map didn't download in time, but on the other hand nobody wants to pay $70 to Garmin every time they need to update their maps.
The article you linked to was an overly brief summary of third-hand reports. Your summary makes some very wild speculations based on the incomplete truths in your source.
The actual law from the Legislative Assembly of Ontario web site makes it quite clear what sorts handheld devices are not permitted to be used unless you are pulled over safely (stopped at a red light is still illegal):
I so wish I had mod points today. The new law makes it very clear that only handheld devices with a readable screen are not permitted to be manipulated while driving.
I think the open source community has belched out more than enough multiplayer-only FPS games to last a lifetime and a half, and a significant percentage of them are built on id Software's engines which were closed-source to begin with.
You want an enterprise search service. Microsoft and Google both make web-driven search solutions which work on any end user platform including mobile. There are many other companies that have web-based search services as well but those are the two goliaths.
That's not really a "desktop search engine" anymore, but I agree with your suggestion. Desktop search is not the right tool to index shared content, lest you get a department full of PCs constantly indexing the same repository over slow ethernet wires. Microsoft Enterprise Search Server lets you separate the indexing and serving servers, but unfortunately the free Express version doesn't support this.
The GSA works perfectly well with many security standards (AD, NTLM, Kerberos, SAML, forms, cookies) and it obscures secure search results from users who do not have read permissions to those documents. It's probably easier to configure the GSA's security settings than with any other enterprise search platform.
Furthermore, the GSA has a self-throttling feature called Host Load Scheduling which allows you to limit the number of connections opened per second. If that's not sufficient you can throttle the VLAN on your switch to limit the throughput in KB/s. Or you can stop crawling during the day and schedule it at night.
Based on your comments it sounds to me like you haven't used the GSA in a long time. There's a lot of handy new features. Google has really been listening to its customers and configuration partners, and especially the larger ones.
You could use Microsoft Enterprise Search Server Express which is free (if you have a Windows Server license laying around). It's the same search engine as MOSS without the CMS functionality and it can crawl just about everything either natively or with connectors. You can use MSSQL Express as the database engine which is also free.
Or you could go completely open source with Apache SOLR, though I hear it's so featureful that it's very difficult to install and configure.
From down here it looks like a participle!
I definitely think the address bar should become more of a portal to overall functionality. I loved the Cybersearch extension (while I still used Google), and just the other day I was wishing that I could enter math problems and unit conversions into my Start button search box.
I think it's important to offer full functionality for both the keyboard and the mouse. That's why I don't like the idea of requiring a keypress to unobscure important features like a tool bar. I'm sure Mozilla will come up with a very usable UI in the end. The Awesome Bar was a great start and there's nowhere to go but up from the foundation they laid out there.
I'm not a fan of showing the toolbar with alt, and I don't like the idea of moving the tabs so high up into the title bar. I'm sceptical, not pessimistic. I'll give Mozilla the chance they deserve to impress me with their UI.
Thanks - I think you're right that I reacted to a statement out of context. It's encouraging to hear that the Mozilla team is aware of changing trends and I always look forward to their new software releases.
Thanks very much for this clarification. I fear this will be a "worst of both worlds" situation, but I withhold judgment until I can try it out myself.
The screenshot in TFA looks nothing like the Office ribbon. The purpose of the ribbon is to make apparent the options the are usually buried within expanding hierarchical menus. In the screenshot it looks to me like they just replaced pulldown menus with pulldown buttons.
I love the Office ribbon and would be very happy to see this standard propagate into more user interfaces. I'd love to see it implemented in Firefox, but I see no such thing here.