Windows 7 wins a ringing endorsement from MSNBC: “Next Windows won’t be as annoying”.
Jokes apart, Microsoft tends to do lousy .0 releases and very good .1 releases. And Windows 7 == v6.1. Who knows, maybe I won’t have to switch to Ubuntu after all.
Tag Archives: Software
Chrome Burning Bright
So Google finally got tired of waiting for other browser vendors to improve their offerings – not surprising given how their business absolutely depends on the web. Chrome is definitely very important because it’ll change the way people think of browsers. Back in 2005 I wrote about the browser of tomorrow and listed some key features:
- Offline Access – baked into Chrome thanks to Gears
- Compiled code that can access the browser DOM – present thanks to the “V8″ Javascript VM
- Modern widget set – still waiting on HTML5
2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
A lot of the buzz about Chrome has been about how this is a warning shot about Google’s platform ambitions. Actually, Google’s ambition has been plain to see for some time now: to suck in as much of personal and enterprise computing into the web (preferably its own server farms) as possible.
Its own browser furthers that goal by giving it a greater say in how the web shapes up, but don’t expect a Google OS on your desktop anytime soon. The real gruntwork an OS does (supporting obscure devices, maintaining software and hardware compatibility) is remarkably unsexy and thankless and tends to produce not “ooh shiny” fanboys but “my printer does not work you suck” maniacs who troll your forums (both Microsoft and most Linux distro vendors know this pretty well). Of course, Google will be looking to get its mittens into controlled environments like mobile phones and Internet tablets. But even a browser like Chrome alone will have some profound consequences for the industry:
Mozilla: Now that Google is committed to a svelte, usable, cross-platform browser (dare I say it, the vi of browsers), Mozilla will have no choice but to become the emacs of browsers – an über-customizable does-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink app for dealing with the web. Extensibility will remain Chrome’s weak point simply because XUL (which Firefox uses to create its UI) is so much more expressive. Like emacs’s elisp, XUL is Firefox’s Achilles’ Heel and its single biggest competitive advantage.
Microsoft: It has to get serious about web standards – its rendering engine, Trident, is showing its age (complex CSS-based layouts load significantly faster on Gecko than even IE8 Beta 2). More than that, it’s commitment to Javascript has been iffy as it has bet on Silverlight’s .NET DLR to bring a modern multi-language VM to the browser. With Google showing off what can be done with Javascript alone, this strategy is looking like a classic case of overreach. Sun has the same problem – a JITed Javascript is the beginning of the end of Java on the web client. At this point the best option for both is to work out how their VMs can handle standard ECMAscript in addition to other non-web languages, and how to make these VMs ubiquitous on as many browsers and platforms as possible.
Fun with synthesized RSS feeds
In an ideal world everyone would have full-content RSS feeds. Until then making your own isn’t that hard — and it’s getting easier by the day with mash-up tools like Yahoo Pipes. Here are some I’ve created:
- Digg Direct – links directly to the stories, instead of wasting your time with Digg’s comments page (Python source).
- BBC’s 10 Things We Didn’t Know Last Week – they have their own feed, but it isn’t full-text. This one is (‘source’).
- Archie Comic of the Day (Python source)
- The Joy of Tech Comic – they have an RSS feed, but it doesn’t have images (Python source).
Update: added links to source code.
Get your blog iPhone-ready
Apple’s releasing a new phone today (if you didn’t know that, you’re lucky). Beside curing all manner of ills, the phone has a great web browser that should get people really interested in using the web while on the move.
Now, the thing is lots of other phones have decent browsers — many phones run Opera, for example, or at least the Opera Mini. And with reasonable data plans becoming increasingly common, it definitely makes sense to get your site ready for mobile browsing.
I used a media="handheld" stylesheet declaration on this site, but that wasn’t very well supported. So here’s a better solution that requires very little work, if you run WordPress:
- Get the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin and install it. This will create a wp-mobile.php file in your WordPress plugins folder, and a wp-mobile folder in your WordPress themes folder.
- Open wp-mobile.php in a text editor and search for the word 'iPhone'.
- If you don’t find it (I’m sure it’ll be added as soon as the user-agent string is confirmed) add this text exactly as shown (without double quotes) somewhere in the middle of the list of browser user-agents: " ,'iPhone' " (search for the text 'small_browsers' to find this list). When you’re done, save the file.
- Optional — you can also tweak your site’s mobile appearance by going into the wp-mobile folder (under your WordPress themes folder) and editing the files there (mainly index.php). Some knowledge of PHP is required, but you can avoid the PHP and modify only the HTML inside the file.
- Test your mobile site using the Opera Mini applet, iPhoney (if you’re on a Mac) or even a real iPhone
. Emulators for most other phone browsers are also available.
The other advantage of a mobile-ready version of your blog is that mobile versions tend to very accessible and compact. Most accessible browsers already support disabling stylesheets, images, etc, but they still have to load other text, such as blogrolls, sidebars, etc. You could use the wp-mobile theme along with a theme switcher that would allow users to switch to a compact, accessible version if they wish.
The Web Just Got an Upgrade
Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs. According to TechCrunch, one of the first demos to use Gears will be
… Google Reader, which will add a green download button to the user interface. When you click the button, Reader will download the last 2,000 messages to your computer, preparing your computer to work offline or under a spotty internet connection.
As I’ve written before, offline capabilities are an important step towards making the Web a truly ubiquitous platform. Wifi is still not everywhere, and it’d be great if browsers were useful when you are away from an IP tone.
The next logical step would be for browser vendors to get their act together and bake this into the browser. The last thing I need is a bunch of different “lite” SQL databases and replication engines consuming cycles in the background.
Quick Bits: Zotero, Hotmail, Feet
- ‘Intelligent’ prosthetic feet
- Hotmail is now offering 1GB of storage space in all markets. Apparently this goes up to 2GB when your Hotmail account is upgraded to Windows Live Mail (paying users get double, i.e., 4GB).
- Zotero is a citation manager that works within Firefox. Pretty useful, especially for those who find systems like Endnote overly complex. (via BoingBoing)
Good Monospace Fonts for Programming
A day after I ran into the beautiful Anonymous font, I noticed that the Microsoft Download Center now has Consolas available for use on non-Vista systems. Consolas (which ships with Vista along with a bunch of other fonts) looks great on ClearType-enabled LCD screens even at small sizes and is highly recommended.
Don't Use Registry Cleaners
Using Registry Cleaners are a Bad Idea (via S Anand). I agree — if your registry has enough flotsam in it to impair your system’s performance and you don’t know enough to hand-edit the registry, you’re probably better off restoring from backups (you do have backups, right?) than trusting random registry cleaners that promise a sparkly-fresh computer for $29.
If you’re concerned about easily restoring your system, you’d be better off with Windows System Restore or spending money buying Norton Ghost and backing up images of your system.
Virtual Worlds and Google Sketchup
The Scobleizer’s been raving about Second Life for some time now. I’ve been less than enthusiastic because to me Second Life has always been the CompuServe of online 3D worlds: interesting but ultimately proprietary and therefore ripe for being replaced by an standards-based competitor (much as the Web replaced CompuServe). Like Joshua Allen says, a virtual world should provide a single seamless virtual environment that’s not provided by any single vendor.
Today Google released a product that makes me wonder if they have any intentions to enter the virtual worlds biz. They released a product called SketchUp that lets users create 3D models. There’s a free version available for all and Google will warehouse your models for you. You can even download items into Google Earth.
What stops Google from offering a virtual-earth.google.com that is essentially a coordinate space for users to populate with their models? Well, creating 3D models is much harder than creating a webpage but much, much easier than creating a system that can handle and render a distributed virtual world (here’s a good FAQ on the subject). However, given the large number of PhDs who populate Google it wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe that they have made some progress on this.
Another possibility is that Google will eschew the distributed virtual world model for what I call the (far less satisfying but far more achievable) small closed spaces with portals model: multiple virtual worlds with distinct coordinate spaces each run by a single entity and traversable using portals. Such a model could be used to spice up many Google offerings, such as Google Groups’ mail list feature, IM, personal home pages and the nascent markets on Google Base.
And of course, irrespective of whether or not Google’s working on this, there is tremendous opportunity for startups and researchers to go out and create the next big thing online. The opportunity to do something creative is huge here.
Your Mouse Moves Differently in OSX
Every time I use OSX my arm hurts from all the mousing I have to do — and that’s not because I don’t know the Mac keyboard shortcuts. The culprit is OSX’s mouse cursor acceleration logic, and here’s how you can fix it to be more Windows-friendly.