It refers to an optional System Preferences pane that can be downloaded for OS X Tiger (link) called DashOnOff which lets you disable Dashboard - it's not the only way to do this, but it's been a while since I updated my sig. You may also want to Google "MainMenu" which probably enables you to do the same thing, as well as having quick recourse to utility scripts and other stuff (I don't recommend it wholesale, AFAIK, you need to sudo su to run/etc/weekly from the Terminal, so this menu might retain more privileges than needed).
And don't stop at the lawyers - use all the leverage possible to keep him off air in any capacity whatsoever, discredit him, make him face his own past in a realm he can't run away from it - the courts. Underscore how frivolous his complaints are, but how much time and effort they detract by their process. Reveal how base his arguments are, how scientific studies and strived for impartiality have never entered his deranged mind as considerations. Exhalt in how loathed he is, how manipulative of genuine tragedy, how anachronistic in the basic tenets of his first arguments, how he's devolved from then.
After all that, tell him it's not really Microsoft's responsiblity to police the fucking vendors, ridicule him for his lack of jurisprudence, move to have the twat disbarred, and let us be done with it.
Please, for the love of god give me a better way than Entourage with Mac:Office to connect to my work e-mail account on an Exchange server? I've tried plug-ins for Apple Mail, similarly for Eudora, Thunderbird extensions, Mulberry (an IMAP client), I considered running a separate machine with Evolution on a Linux distro. But I've never got support for shared calendars and public folder access from home working with anything other than Entourage - which to me is a piece of shit for a litany of reasons. For all the rest that I can think of, I could easily live with NeoOffice/J.
I truly hope I'm ignorant of a real solution to this. If not, I still need the whole suite for that one program, its clusterfuck of an interface, its shoddy database management (why, if it's comparable to IMAP, does it need to create a 3GB database on my harddrive?), and its randomly attributed shortcut keys.
As of OS 10.4 it is no longer part of the default OS X install, but it was there up to an including Panther (10.3). I don't know why it was removed (either it broke on the later OS, or Microsoft had its own reasons for discontinuing it) but it didn't put anyone out. Either way, it was Internet Explorer in name alone and as it wasn't using Trident or operating with a Windows system, the code base was probably irresovably different from the Windows version and all of the 'features' later available on that platform.
I think colours are covered by patents. Like this link.
From it:
"Deutsch Telekom AG now owns the color magenta, which has been estimated to be worth up to 20 billion Euros. The maker of Milka chocolate owns the color lilac, which was made famous by its trademarked Milka cow. The color-trademark is estimated to be worth about 50 million euros."
Please don't forget that Adobe will have to headhunt the geniuses who have worked on the GIMP and it seems on Corel Graphics Suite to make all the default shortcut keys counter-intuitive, so much so that Photoshop users who have a decade of keyboard habits get strange and unpredictable results from trying to switch tools in the way their usual software package would do.
I know Corel users and trust them that it's a great package, but why make the selection tool bound to one of the f-keys? And why couldn't the GIMP just rip off the Adobe keymap? I believe in later versions Corel may have done this, so the software comes with Corel traditional shortcuts keys, and a loadable Adobe-style set of shortcut binds.
It's a simple thing, but not a little thing when people want to be able to easily crossover - and typically, telling people to 'do it themselves' (i.e. re-bind your own damn keys) will make them continue to ignore GIMP as an alternative.
//oh, and Photoshop on OS 9 (up to version 6.0.1) and under OS X (up to CS2) use floating windows for pallettes, tools etc, which disappear when you switch focus to another program - but this is at least consistent with Apple's GUIs (see Address Book, font format windows and colour picker popping up in iChat, Mail etc). I can't quite put my finger on why the floating windows of the GIMP suck so much (IMHO). I'm sure an option for hiding everything but the image window would help the interface/user experience on all platforms.
Unixen? I always thought it was like index and indices. So the plural would be formed into the word "Unices".
If not, then a good rule of thumb for writing is to rephrase if it will help you get your meaning across. If people won't understand something, or it is an unconventional word (even on Slashdot, I haven't seen 'Unixen' used often), the author should consider a different wording.
You could easily have said:
It has the same ability to handle hardware that all other types of unix do.
Your idea is akin to having someone stand by the pumps of a gas station you run, telling every body that they should buy a hybrid civic.
His idea is akin to how I can't use update.microsoft.com with anything other than a version of IE, or those Microsoft pages that used to send bad formatting data - malicious even - that made Opera display the contents of tables further to the left than the margin of the table, appearing to be essentially empty and making Opera work around this by spoofing its identity as Mozilla or IE.
Most will be annoyed, and a select few who know a bit about cars will just peg you for a dipshit. Neither will likely return.
I think this is what the article is all about, a boycott on Microsoft for the reasoning behind how they implement their product, and disregard for the ACID test and fully CSS support.
Photoshop has a silver certification under CrossOver Office, and supposedly runs really well under Cedega
What version? Can WINE run CS or CS2? Last time I tried to install them CS and CS2 said 'you need a newer operating system' or words to that effect because WINE emulates Windows 98.
The complicated CAD programs like VectorWorks 11 (which I don't think was included), and the print/pre-press applications like Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw are not in the same league as the other applications.
It would be like a comparison between a bicycle and an airliner. One you get as a hobbyist, learn things about, and use it to achieve certain targets. The other takes a large investment of cash and time, you need to learn it pretty in-depth, but then it will pay for itself. They are expensive pieces of software that are not for the hobbyist.
VectorWorks 11 for example will set you back $995, and after that you won't be able to use it for what you would Inkscape because it's an architectural tool that handles vectors, and not an artistic/media tool.
Programs like Inkscape are perfect for their purpose, and from what I've seen of it, it's on its way to being the next GIMP - a renowned quality program that suits the common users needs.
However, you say "this separation is completely artificial and serves to belittle". This is not the case. If you are serious about learning graphic design, and becoming familiar with the staple tools of the trade, you'll be using at least one of Adobe Illustrator, or Corel Draw. If you cannot honestly prove to a prospective employer that you are familiar with those, you'll reduce your chances of getting the job - because why should they pay you, and wait for you to stop making silly mistakes, when they could get any other graphics artist who has used the software for years?
I don't agree with your perspective here because I think it's fair to judge each piece of software on its merits, but also to categorise using a league system based on price so that you aren't looking at the top of the line when deciding on what program you should get to either get started, or make something quick and easy like a UML activity diagram.
The separation is the same as considering InDesign and Quark as different from TeX, Pages, MS Publisher etc.: no one buys InDesign or Quark unless they are using it professionally, so why should they be judged the same way? If you're paying hundreds of dollars as an investment in your livelihood you're entitled to expect more than something that was perchance bundled with your last distro.
Hee hee. I get it, now you're being ironic, right?
If not you seriously need to start a petition to get a new HTML standard that will make text lean like italics, only to the right instead of the left, that way you'll know it's ironic or even sarcastic.
You remember when you were a kid, and didn't give too much thought or place too much imagination on the creative writing you had to do in class? Maybe it was a sunny day, and your attention was focussed on what was outside the window, whether you were a nerd or not, because it was so stiflingly hot and boring in the classroom? Then when you needed to finish writing that stupid little essay, your pointless flight of fantasy, what way did you wrap it up? "....then I woke up. It was all a dream."
From TFA
The net's core architecture moves over too, with Micrix on the DNS root servers, and even Google migrates the Googleplex's servers, simply because the support environment is better and patches are rolled out more efficiently and with fewer errors.
Even Apple aficionados are dumping Mac OS for Micrix on their Powerbooks.
....
Of course, all of this is a fantasy for the summer holidays. I have absolutely no reason to believe that such a future could come to pass.
Nobody at Microsoft tells me anything, I have not heard any rumours and I do not know nothing. I am just indulging in a bit of imaginative thinking."
This guy seems to have been taken by the recent spell of good weather in whatever part of the world he's in. This is wanton garbage.
We can discuss firefox's superiority to any UI shortcomings in a beta product of IE all we want, but it will become moot if the production release of IE7's UI is imporoved.
Dude, it's a beta for the computer/software development community. We're proposing bugfixes because all of our lives would be better if Microsoft either improve their products, or fuck off and die.
if the UI of your app is detemining it's [sic] design then your design process is flawed. The design of an application should be determined by it's [sic] use cases. This is true both for UI design and feature design.
Just a point, the design should incorporate both form and function. I agree that a program's user interface will vary according to the requisite tasks that the program will have to perform. However, the UI of Internet Explorer 6 had a menu bar where most users would expect a menu bar - this isn't the case in the original parent's screen grab. So, if it has been changed, and if it was well designed to meet the function it was intended to carry out, either IE 6 or IE 7 beta is badly designed.
The placement of the refresh button is inconsistent with where it was in IE 6 also, and it's not the same as it is in Safari, Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, and probably others I can't recall at this time. It's counter-intuitive to put the refresh button, which is associated with navigation, so far away from the 'back' and 'forward' buttons, and even further still from the 'home' widget.
The layout of this implementation seems badly thought out, it is inconsistent with earlier UI models. It may be the easiest thing to change, but it also seems to have been changed for no reason other than it was easy to do. The widgets are in the wrong place. The menu bar is in a completely new place, committing the same sin of design that OpenOffice.org commits on the Mac. The new tab button, which the parent poster did not highlight, but which you will find referred to in this review or in this image is positioned on the tab bar itself, whereas it would be better placed outside of it, perhaps where the 'home' button is, such as it is implemented by default in recent versions of Opera.
I am not a professional software designer, I am not a programmer other than as a hobbyist. However, ergonomics and design features do interest me. I disagree however, with part of your claim that
If the UI determines the features or the other way around your design is flawed. A proper design allows for an UI which is independent from the application featureset.
The UI should not determine the features, we agree here. It's part of the reason, as an Apple user, I am appreciative of the requirement of a one-button mouse, but the compatibility with a 3-button mouse. The UI should be consistent in how it houses all the features (i.e. they are in intuitive locations, not only in right click menus, nor orphaned widgets).
Your other point, that the UI must be 'independent from the application featureset', is not the same thing. The UI should be designed around the featureset, the form should give complete access to the function. If the location of the menu bar, or the refresh button, or the width of the search engine bar is locked down, or invariably hard coded, this does nothing to accommodate the user who isn't used to this gratuitous redesign and relocation of UI components. They all provide sufficient functionality, in that they'll work when you click them I'm sure. But they are still badly designed from an early stage, and even if it can be pulled out of the fire now, and the placement of objects made consistent, the original post said I believe that it looked like something from an inexperienced group of developers, rather than team behind the most widely used browser on the web.
Genuine question. Why do you run Outlook (the full version from Office 2003) and Thunderbird?
I loved Thunderbird until I found I couldn't retrieve gmail and other non-gmail accounts because of the server settings, and Outlook solved this problem, but Thunderbird was still better. So I can see how there may be reasons for it, but I don't see why you would run both when Outlook could handle all accounts itself, even if it is an inferior product (Outlook hangs irretrievably on me occasionally, Thunderbird never did).
I don't doubt that Firefox will improve the web by being a popular standards-compliant Acid Tested browser with a competitive market share, but before that day comes the web would benefit from less programs that hold back the progress such as IE 6's issues with CSS (and IE 7 hasn't covered this completely, yet). Oh, and less Flash would be welcome I think.
Firefox is a great positive step for the web, but correcting dominant non-progressive problematic browsers would be great, not just for the web as a place to be, but for the web as a place to design for.
I discovered the other day when setting up a new XP installation that you can turn those error report dialogues off - having never bothered to do so for the past 3 years or so, I don't think I'll be missing anything not reporting problems which I don't care about since I got an Apple.
If you go to the System Properties window by right-clicking the 'My Computer' icon and selecting Properties, you should click the 'Advanced' tab, under which you should see three headings. Below this there are two other boxes: 'Environment Variables' and 'Error Reporting'.
Click Error Reporting, a window pops up which asks whether you want to:
Disable error reporting
but notify me when critical errors occur
Enable error reporting
windows operating system
Programs
Choose Programs...
Pick the top one, disable error reporting, now your programs crash without verbosity.
Re:This is the dumbest post I have ever posted
on
Preview of KDE 3.5
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· Score: 1
Where KDE is offering an alternative to XP in a sort of similar style, this version of GNOME is being aimed at the OS X fans with the implementation of a Dock replete with funky icons - because it's all about choice, innit?
Re:FreeBSD is nice and clean
on
Why FreeBSD
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· Score: 1
Cheers for the reply. In relation to my post, I was referring to what someone else was saying about FreeBSD and Gentoo similarities. I'm now thinking this is something to do with Ports and Portage. But, I'm a complete, sub-begginer level n00b when it comes to BSD, so I don't even have a clear idea on what Ports entails (I will google it in the near future, don't worry).
My post was wrong in implying that *BSD systems come without X. I should have been more clear. When I started out, at some time in the last year, experimenting as a hobbyist in the OSS OS world of Unices and Linux distros I tried NetBSD. It left me at a terminal when it was finished and I presumed that was a complete install.
It's only some months later (4 days ago in fact) that I finally got around to installing OpenBSD 3.7 and actually having another computer online so I could read instructions on how to setup the base install. So, maybe NetBSD is the same deal that there's no X until you xorgconfig. That'd probably make sense.
I've tried Solaris 10, but not in earnest. It doesn't offer me anything that my Linux of choice (SuSE) doesn't. It's a standalone machine, and no one else in my house would use a non-Windows system. They dislike even OS X - user-friendly as it is. Also, out of the box, all Linux distros and PC-BSD have detected my soundcards with no setup. No such luck with Solaris.
Obviously, as a n00b I do tend to gravitate to the lowest common denominator solutions. I'm not standing on the shoulders of giants yet as I am a hobbyist. I dropped out of my Comp Science course after 7 months because of my personal situation. Everything I know is rudimentary and incomplete. So in most instances I'm not doing things the right way long-term, because I don't see what problems are going to present themselves over the brow of the hill.
I've never used Red Hat, and am not too keen on it since I think it was their attitude to supporting clients/users on older systems that prompted the need for other distros such as White Box Linux to come into being.
I'll second that Ubuntu and Gentoo are moving in the right direction. Ubuntu may be the group I admire the most for their work to make alternative systems inexcusably accessible, in distribution and in user friendly setup and interfaces.
I hope there will be no AUTHORYTY to decide which Linux is kosher or not.
I agree with this sentiment, but I think that mutually similar sub-groups of distributions, say based on package manager similarities, maybe ought to be formalised so they consider each other when making advances which change the parts of the systems that should be common, or at least more common than unique.
I don't propose total consolidation or homogenisation, just a communal pull in similar directions for the Debian/RPM/tgz systems for the sake of consistency, and for the sake of the n00bs who get confused easily.
Re:Second Opinion on PC-BSD
on
Why FreeBSD
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· Score: 1
Obviously a successful install is not something that needs to be congratulated, but well done anyway on persisting with taking the plunge on Freesbie/FreeBSD. Just as soon as I can lay my hands on a casing with a proc faster than 200 MHz PII, I hope to be doing the same (as such I've made careful note of the details and links in your post).
Hope that Beta release is as tough as the BSD reputation suggests, and thanks for the bootloader and ports scripts notes.
/*looks like I don't have an excuse not to use it if I get a suitable comp:) */
Re:Second Opinion on PC-BSD
on
Why FreeBSD
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· Score: 1
PC-BSD at least lets me get to a point where I have something to learn on, all my other attempts to install FreeBSD were just annoying.
That's exactly how I feel. I have a copy of Solaris 10, and I don't have any reason for this, but something about it feels different from the *BSD Unix strain. I don't think I could learn generic Unix skills on it.
With NetBSD I start off with only a console, no X (AFAIK anyway).
So my current plan is to have PC-BSD as a tool for learning, and if I can, then I'll devote another box to OpenBSD (I have 3.7 on a hard drive that I swap out and replace with PC-BSD). So I get the full GUI for beginner stuff, when I work out what I want to do, then I can try on the other strain of BSD in xterm or a non-X terminal, and find out of it's a generic way of doing things.
I think my problem with the bootloader was simply that GRUB existed from SuSE, but PC-BSD overwrote it. And PC-BSD then didn't boot SuSE - it gave it as an option though, so maybe it could have worked, just not that time.
Best of luck with the NIC drop. I have no experience with NIC, if I lost my router I could only think to mess with KInternet to bring it back before heading for Google myself. The amateur/community support on the PC-BSD site seems well intended though. If it persists hopefully someone there has had similar experiences which were resolved and could help out.
Re:FreeBSD is nice and clean
on
Why FreeBSD
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· Score: 1
Wouldn't Slackware be more UNIX-esque? Or is that just rumour?
Unless you mean Gentoo because it doesn't come with X by default (and for those who want it with X there's always VidaLinux 1.1 and NavynOS - the latter I find imperfect, but the former has received glowing reviews for a pre-compiled Stage 3 install, with X, and a GUI frontend (Porthole) to the Portage system)?
Slashdot Mirror
It refers to an optional System Preferences pane that can be downloaded for OS X Tiger (link) called DashOnOff which lets you disable Dashboard - it's not the only way to do this, but it's been a while since I updated my sig. You may also want to Google "MainMenu" which probably enables you to do the same thing, as well as having quick recourse to utility scripts and other stuff (I don't recommend it wholesale, AFAIK, you need to sudo su to run /etc/weekly from the Terminal, so this menu might retain more privileges than needed).
And don't stop at the lawyers - use all the leverage possible to keep him off air in any capacity whatsoever, discredit him, make him face his own past in a realm he can't run away from it - the courts. Underscore how frivolous his complaints are, but how much time and effort they detract by their process. Reveal how base his arguments are, how scientific studies and strived for impartiality have never entered his deranged mind as considerations. Exhalt in how loathed he is, how manipulative of genuine tragedy, how anachronistic in the basic tenets of his first arguments, how he's devolved from then.
After all that, tell him it's not really Microsoft's responsiblity to police the fucking vendors, ridicule him for his lack of jurisprudence, move to have the twat disbarred, and let us be done with it.
Please, for the love of god give me a better way than Entourage with Mac:Office to connect to my work e-mail account on an Exchange server? I've tried plug-ins for Apple Mail, similarly for Eudora, Thunderbird extensions, Mulberry (an IMAP client), I considered running a separate machine with Evolution on a Linux distro. But I've never got support for shared calendars and public folder access from home working with anything other than Entourage - which to me is a piece of shit for a litany of reasons. For all the rest that I can think of, I could easily live with NeoOffice/J.
I truly hope I'm ignorant of a real solution to this. If not, I still need the whole suite for that one program, its clusterfuck of an interface, its shoddy database management (why, if it's comparable to IMAP, does it need to create a 3GB database on my harddrive?), and its randomly attributed shortcut keys.
As of OS 10.4 it is no longer part of the default OS X install, but it was there up to an including Panther (10.3). I don't know why it was removed (either it broke on the later OS, or Microsoft had its own reasons for discontinuing it) but it didn't put anyone out. Either way, it was Internet Explorer in name alone and as it wasn't using Trident or operating with a Windows system, the code base was probably irresovably different from the Windows version and all of the 'features' later available on that platform.
From it:
Also a German wiki page.
Thanks, that's really helpful to know. I had tried GIMPShop, but this is the simple kludge I wanted. Much appreciated.
Please don't forget that Adobe will have to headhunt the geniuses who have worked on the GIMP and it seems on Corel Graphics Suite to make all the default shortcut keys counter-intuitive, so much so that Photoshop users who have a decade of keyboard habits get strange and unpredictable results from trying to switch tools in the way their usual software package would do.
I know Corel users and trust them that it's a great package, but why make the selection tool bound to one of the f-keys? And why couldn't the GIMP just rip off the Adobe keymap? I believe in later versions Corel may have done this, so the software comes with Corel traditional shortcuts keys, and a loadable Adobe-style set of shortcut binds.
It's a simple thing, but not a little thing when people want to be able to easily crossover - and typically, telling people to 'do it themselves' (i.e. re-bind your own damn keys) will make them continue to ignore GIMP as an alternative.
//oh, and Photoshop on OS 9 (up to version 6.0.1) and under OS X (up to CS2) use floating windows for pallettes, tools etc, which disappear when you switch focus to another program - but this is at least consistent with Apple's GUIs (see Address Book, font format windows and colour picker popping up in iChat, Mail etc). I can't quite put my finger on why the floating windows of the GIMP suck so much (IMHO). I'm sure an option for hiding everything but the image window would help the interface/user experience on all platforms.
Unixen? I always thought it was like index and indices. So the plural would be formed into the word "Unices".
If not, then a good rule of thumb for writing is to rephrase if it will help you get your meaning across. If people won't understand something, or it is an unconventional word (even on Slashdot, I haven't seen 'Unixen' used often), the author should consider a different wording.
You could easily have said:
</GrammarNazi>
If you throw in a dysfunctional marriage, then I think I can get Spielberg interested as technical supervisor for saving the world.
His idea is akin to how I can't use update.microsoft.com with anything other than a version of IE, or those Microsoft pages that used to send bad formatting data - malicious even - that made Opera display the contents of tables further to the left than the margin of the table, appearing to be essentially empty and making Opera work around this by spoofing its identity as Mozilla or IE.
Most will be annoyed, and a select few who know a bit about cars will just peg you for a dipshit. Neither will likely return.
I think this is what the article is all about, a boycott on Microsoft for the reasoning behind how they implement their product, and disregard for the ACID test and fully CSS support.
What version? Can WINE run CS or CS2? Last time I tried to install them CS and CS2 said 'you need a newer operating system' or words to that effect because WINE emulates Windows 98.
I was using Codeweavers Crossover Office which only lists Photoshop 7 as compatible.
It would be like a comparison between a bicycle and an airliner. One you get as a hobbyist, learn things about, and use it to achieve certain targets. The other takes a large investment of cash and time, you need to learn it pretty in-depth, but then it will pay for itself. They are expensive pieces of software that are not for the hobbyist.
VectorWorks 11 for example will set you back $995, and after that you won't be able to use it for what you would Inkscape because it's an architectural tool that handles vectors, and not an artistic/media tool.
Programs like Inkscape are perfect for their purpose, and from what I've seen of it, it's on its way to being the next GIMP - a renowned quality program that suits the common users needs.
However, you say "this separation is completely artificial and serves to belittle". This is not the case. If you are serious about learning graphic design, and becoming familiar with the staple tools of the trade, you'll be using at least one of Adobe Illustrator, or Corel Draw. If you cannot honestly prove to a prospective employer that you are familiar with those, you'll reduce your chances of getting the job - because why should they pay you, and wait for you to stop making silly mistakes, when they could get any other graphics artist who has used the software for years?
I don't agree with your perspective here because I think it's fair to judge each piece of software on its merits, but also to categorise using a league system based on price so that you aren't looking at the top of the line when deciding on what program you should get to either get started, or make something quick and easy like a UML activity diagram.
The separation is the same as considering InDesign and Quark as different from TeX, Pages, MS Publisher etc.: no one buys InDesign or Quark unless they are using it professionally, so why should they be judged the same way? If you're paying hundreds of dollars as an investment in your livelihood you're entitled to expect more than something that was perchance bundled with your last distro.
If not you seriously need to start a petition to get a new HTML standard that will make text lean like italics, only to the right instead of the left, that way you'll know it's ironic or even sarcastic.
From TFA
This guy seems to have been taken by the recent spell of good weather in whatever part of the world he's in. This is wanton garbage.
Dude, it's a beta for the computer/software development community. We're proposing bugfixes because all of our lives would be better if Microsoft either improve their products, or fuck off and die.
<Zoidberg>I'm helping! I'm helping!</Zoidberg>
Just a point, the design should incorporate both form and function. I agree that a program's user interface will vary according to the requisite tasks that the program will have to perform. However, the UI of Internet Explorer 6 had a menu bar where most users would expect a menu bar - this isn't the case in the original parent's screen grab. So, if it has been changed, and if it was well designed to meet the function it was intended to carry out, either IE 6 or IE 7 beta is badly designed.
The placement of the refresh button is inconsistent with where it was in IE 6 also, and it's not the same as it is in Safari, Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, and probably others I can't recall at this time. It's counter-intuitive to put the refresh button, which is associated with navigation, so far away from the 'back' and 'forward' buttons, and even further still from the 'home' widget.
The layout of this implementation seems badly thought out, it is inconsistent with earlier UI models. It may be the easiest thing to change, but it also seems to have been changed for no reason other than it was easy to do. The widgets are in the wrong place. The menu bar is in a completely new place, committing the same sin of design that OpenOffice.org commits on the Mac. The new tab button, which the parent poster did not highlight, but which you will find referred to in this review or in this image is positioned on the tab bar itself, whereas it would be better placed outside of it, perhaps where the 'home' button is, such as it is implemented by default in recent versions of Opera.
I am not a professional software designer, I am not a programmer other than as a hobbyist. However, ergonomics and design features do interest me. I disagree however, with part of your claim that
The UI should not determine the features, we agree here. It's part of the reason, as an Apple user, I am appreciative of the requirement of a one-button mouse, but the compatibility with a 3-button mouse. The UI should be consistent in how it houses all the features (i.e. they are in intuitive locations, not only in right click menus, nor orphaned widgets).
Your other point, that the UI must be 'independent from the application featureset', is not the same thing. The UI should be designed around the featureset, the form should give complete access to the function. If the location of the menu bar, or the refresh button, or the width of the search engine bar is locked down, or invariably hard coded, this does nothing to accommodate the user who isn't used to this gratuitous redesign and relocation of UI components. They all provide sufficient functionality, in that they'll work when you click them I'm sure. But they are still badly designed from an early stage, and even if it can be pulled out of the fire now, and the placement of objects made consistent, the original post said I believe that it looked like something from an inexperienced group of developers, rather than team behind the most widely used browser on the web.
I loved Thunderbird until I found I couldn't retrieve gmail and other non-gmail accounts because of the server settings, and Outlook solved this problem, but Thunderbird was still better. So I can see how there may be reasons for it, but I don't see why you would run both when Outlook could handle all accounts itself, even if it is an inferior product (Outlook hangs irretrievably on me occasionally, Thunderbird never did).
Firefox is a great positive step for the web, but correcting dominant non-progressive problematic browsers would be great, not just for the web as a place to be, but for the web as a place to design for.
If you go to the System Properties window by right-clicking the 'My Computer' icon and selecting Properties, you should click the 'Advanced' tab, under which you should see three headings. Below this there are two other boxes: 'Environment Variables' and 'Error Reporting'.
Click Error Reporting, a window pops up which asks whether you want to:
Enable error reporting
Programs
Pick the top one, disable error reporting, now your programs crash without verbosity.
Where KDE is offering an alternative to XP in a sort of similar style, this version of GNOME is being aimed at the OS X fans with the implementation of a Dock replete with funky icons - because it's all about choice, innit?
My post was wrong in implying that *BSD systems come without X. I should have been more clear. When I started out, at some time in the last year, experimenting as a hobbyist in the OSS OS world of Unices and Linux distros I tried NetBSD. It left me at a terminal when it was finished and I presumed that was a complete install.
It's only some months later (4 days ago in fact) that I finally got around to installing OpenBSD 3.7 and actually having another computer online so I could read instructions on how to setup the base install. So, maybe NetBSD is the same deal that there's no X until you xorgconfig. That'd probably make sense.
I've tried Solaris 10, but not in earnest. It doesn't offer me anything that my Linux of choice (SuSE) doesn't. It's a standalone machine, and no one else in my house would use a non-Windows system. They dislike even OS X - user-friendly as it is. Also, out of the box, all Linux distros and PC-BSD have detected my soundcards with no setup. No such luck with Solaris.
Obviously, as a n00b I do tend to gravitate to the lowest common denominator solutions. I'm not standing on the shoulders of giants yet as I am a hobbyist. I dropped out of my Comp Science course after 7 months because of my personal situation. Everything I know is rudimentary and incomplete. So in most instances I'm not doing things the right way long-term, because I don't see what problems are going to present themselves over the brow of the hill.
I've never used Red Hat, and am not too keen on it since I think it was their attitude to supporting clients/users on older systems that prompted the need for other distros such as White Box Linux to come into being.
I'll second that Ubuntu and Gentoo are moving in the right direction. Ubuntu may be the group I admire the most for their work to make alternative systems inexcusably accessible, in distribution and in user friendly setup and interfaces.
I hope there will be no AUTHORYTY to decide which Linux is kosher or not.
I agree with this sentiment, but I think that mutually similar sub-groups of distributions, say based on package manager similarities, maybe ought to be formalised so they consider each other when making advances which change the parts of the systems that should be common, or at least more common than unique.
I don't propose total consolidation or homogenisation, just a communal pull in similar directions for the Debian/RPM/tgz systems for the sake of consistency, and for the sake of the n00bs who get confused easily.
Hope that Beta release is as tough as the BSD reputation suggests, and thanks for the bootloader and ports scripts notes.
That's exactly how I feel. I have a copy of Solaris 10, and I don't have any reason for this, but something about it feels different from the *BSD Unix strain. I don't think I could learn generic Unix skills on it.
With NetBSD I start off with only a console, no X (AFAIK anyway).
So my current plan is to have PC-BSD as a tool for learning, and if I can, then I'll devote another box to OpenBSD (I have 3.7 on a hard drive that I swap out and replace with PC-BSD). So I get the full GUI for beginner stuff, when I work out what I want to do, then I can try on the other strain of BSD in xterm or a non-X terminal, and find out of it's a generic way of doing things.
I think my problem with the bootloader was simply that GRUB existed from SuSE, but PC-BSD overwrote it. And PC-BSD then didn't boot SuSE - it gave it as an option though, so maybe it could have worked, just not that time.
Best of luck with the NIC drop. I have no experience with NIC, if I lost my router I could only think to mess with KInternet to bring it back before heading for Google myself. The amateur/community support on the PC-BSD site seems well intended though. If it persists hopefully someone there has had similar experiences which were resolved and could help out.
Unless you mean Gentoo because it doesn't come with X by default (and for those who want it with X there's always VidaLinux 1.1 and NavynOS - the latter I find imperfect, but the former has received glowing reviews for a pre-compiled Stage 3 install, with X, and a GUI frontend (Porthole) to the Portage system)?