Browser Wars: Part III

Mein Gott, things just get worse and worse.

In compliance with EU regulators, Microsoft proposed a browser ballot screen (pushed through Windows Update to XP, Vista, and Win7), allowing users to choose which browser they want to install. This is one of the closest things Windows has to a mainstream program chooser program (Google Pack is kinda’ close, but not quite the same thing). It’s not perfect, but Microsoft is definitely moving towards something that’s fair, maintainable, and easy to use.

Microsoft's Browser Ballot Proposal

The official document outlining this ballot can be found here (DOC file). Here are some highlights for you:

• Windows Internet Explorer Bundling
  • OEMs have the right to turn on or off Internet Explorer and install their own browsers, without any retaliation from Microsoft or “special agreements” (i.e. money to favor IE).
  • Microsoft will still be able to update certain components of IE (e.g. security, Trident renderer), but IE (e.g. the browser frame, menus) will not get pushed.

• The Ballot Screen
  • Pushed through Windows Update as a high-priority update for both WinXP and Vista.
  • Automatically included in Win7, if everyone can agree on time. Otherwise, through Windows Update. Every Windows after Win7 will have have it automatically included.
  • Takes the most recent versions of the top 10 browsers with more than 0.5% market share. That’s effectively IE8, Firefox 3, Safari 4, Chrome 2, and Opera 9.
  • Each browser shown horizontally will feature a small descriptive blurb, an install link, and an info link. Links go to vendors’ pages.
  • Microsoft will not allow download links of browsers that are bundled with things like toolbars and other piggybackware. Defunct browsers or Trident-dependent are also not supported (no lolifox, no Maxthon).
  • Microsoft won’t design it so that it’ll favor any one browser over another (applies to all vendors).
  • IT shops can still disable the ballot screen if they think it’s a pain in the ass.

Now, this is where all the nitpicking comes in.

You Go To The Opera To See Drama and Hear People Scream At Each Other Sing Really Loudly

Microsoft gave people an inch (actually, much more than inch compared to other OSes), and Opera demands a mile. While generally happy with the unprecedented proposal, they still had complaints. They’re chief complaint?

IE’s logo against their’s.

For Pete’s sake, you saying that someone’s logo is too ubiquitous with the Internet? Maybe it’s because people are visual learners, don’t care about text, and look for something pretty. You have to admit, the IE logo isn’t too shabby, but if your logo (with name) doesn’t cut it, who’s fault is that? Companies spend millions of dollars into logos and brand images, equity that is very real on someone’s balance sheet.

The logo isn’t a business tactic. It’s actually part of the business.

And, I don’t know about you, but Opera’s red logo is rather striking compared to IE’s blue logo  . Red has always been a stronger color. That said, IE’s is just plain prettier. If Opera’s logo isn’t cutting it, the onus is on Opera to revamp their logo, not IE. If you ask me, it could use something to make it look fuller.

“We’re not sure of logos. The blue ‘e’ has become so associated with the Internet in general, due to the bundling with Windows. We think using the blue ‘e’ might not be such a good idea.”

To me, it sounds more like,

“We’re not sure of logos. The blue ‘e’ looks more like a blue globe called the Earth in general, due to the bundling with the highly graphical Windows OS. Because it looks better than our red ‘O’, we think using the blue ‘e’ might make people choose the prettier option.”

Congratulations, you’ve discovered the core of the problem: stupid users distracted by shiny pretty things. Opera and the EU obviously don’t think people should become computer literate, they just want you to never choose Microsoft have a choice in what you run.

Chrome released, Mozilla frowns. Polls show Mozilla not in first place, Mozilla frowns. I’m hungry, Mozilla frowns.

Mozilla decides that Microsoft is still not doing enough. Or rather, they haven’t bothered to do any research or care about its users, potential and otherwise.

In the Mozilla VP’s blog, Harvey Anderson writes, “Not offering updates through Windows Update to an off-switched IE is a good start.  But most users won’t have IE turned off, even if they have other browsers as their default.”

So, is he saying that he’d rather have an unpatched Internet Explorer running around? I tend to enter my house through the garage door rather than the front door; it’s just easier considering my routine. If I forget to lock my front door, does that mean it should never get locked if my (non-existent in real life) housekeeper finds it unlocked? Or if the lock is broken?

I mean, I can just not have a door there. But if I want to use that door, I should be able to, yes?

In less metaphorical terms, hell yes I want Microsoft to update my IE. I barely ever use that browser. However, Windows Update aside, I do use it and don’t want to uninstall it: as a web developer, it’s important for me to have cross-browser compatibility. So I irregularly need to use IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera (Safari from my Mac) so that my visitors will have the best experience I can offer.

Blah blah blah, I’m a Mozilla Executive (in other words, a dinosaur), Hear Me Roar…

Anderson also goes on about tie-ins to Microsoft apps, which is more of a problem with developers (that are not necessarily Microsoft employees) using stupidass code than Windows itself. If he did the research instead of mindlessly typing on his computer, pretending to know about computers (I guess he’s just an executive, just like people in Microsoft), he’d know that the “default browser” thing has been working quite well for the past year or so. Way before his blog post or the ballot thing.

Anderson talks about OEM policy towards the ballot screen. If OEMs (which are basically have highly specialized IT shops, and the first-in-line) can easily disable IE8, and IT can easily disable the ballot screen, how can you not figure out that OEMs can disable the ballot screen if they want to? Group Policy, my dear.

Oh, that’s right. Firefox has crap Enterprise and IT support, so it should make sense that an executive who’s company refuses to publish easily deployable MSI packages of Firefox that can be installed across hundreds of company computers simultaneously doesn’t know shit about real world practices. Now that’s stupid.

He also complains about people downloading but not installing Firefox, which is why the ballot screen should automatically install it. INSTAFAIL. That’s a security disaster waiting to happen, and he doesn’t even realize that he hasn’t packaged Firefox to do that. I don’t think FrontMotion is exactly an arm of Mozilla (it’s a MS Certified Partner), and it’s not that hard to shape an MSI around an installer.

Maybe he doesn’t realize that some people install Firefox multiple times. A billion downloads should equate to a billion users, yes? What? File sharing? Updates? Reformats? Dual-booting? Auto-downloaders? I can’t hear you.

So what is this? Because they now have momentum, the underdogs now have license to be stupid? If you want in on the game, play the game.

Why The Hell Do You Write Such Long Posts

Because trying to be witty in every single sentence and creating thought-terminating memes, cliches, and other shorter but inaccurate devices is kinda’ stupid. Sorry, I’m a bit old-school.

Perhaps my English teachers would be proud. Or maybe they aren’t.

Windows 7 Versions and Ignorance

I was reading a post on ZDNet about Windows 7 annoyances, a post written by a blogger I generally respect as keeping in touch with computing technology. This time, however, I couldn’t stop but rage at his inability (I hesitate to use the word incompetence, but it gets close to it) to figure out the Windows 7 editions, as he complains about how they’re are too many editions. For Pete’s sake, has he not paid attention to anything that’s written?

Windows 7 Editions Breakdown

Most people will have only two editions to consider: Home Premium or Ultimate.

Home Premium has everything a typical consumer will want.

If you want to join your Win7 computer to your Windows Active Directory domain or have the ability to host a terminal services session (or if you even know what I’m talking about), you are not a “typical consumer.” You are a power user, essentially a pro computer user. So, get your butt over to the Professional line.

Businesses and professionals will really only have two editions to consider: Professional or Ultimate.

Professional has pretty much everything a typical business employee or professional needs to get his work done (and then some). It’s Home Premium + Pro Tools. The only people buying this are IT departments and people who already know what they’re looking for.

So what’s Ultimate? Ultimate =  Home Premium + Professional + Extra Stuff That 99% of People Don’t Use. Things like BitLocker, booting virtual hard disks, and BranchCaching. If you know what those things are and will want to use them, good for you. You’re not a typical user.

Upgrade From Vista

This one’s even easier, yet people still screwed it up. Even Microsoft screwed it up! ZDnet’s Ed Bott got it right with this simpler chart breakdown. And the simple guidelines that summarize it. Say it out loud with me.

If you have Vista Home Starter or Premium (the green box), you can upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium (the green box).

If you have Vista Business (the blue box), you can upgrade to Windows 7 Professional (the blue box).

Everyone (green or blue), can upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate (the black box). Why? Because black goes with everything. Duh.

Everyone else has to basically start all over and install Windows 7 from scratch. Considering most people are either XP holdouts or power users who hated Vista’s bloat (which I find quite understandable, on both counts), this is quite a good thing. See the breakdown above to see which one you should have (as opposed to the one you just want because it’s more expensive/is blue/is black/has shiny gadgets).

If you have a good computer, how about setting up a dual-boot so you can have your XP and Win7? If you have a bad computer, what the hell are you doing? If you want Win7, go buy a new computer that comes with it.

Editions That Don’t Matter

Windows 7 Starter: If you’re buying a crap PC, this is what you’re getting. Complain all you want about not having Media Centers and Remote Desktop. Your computer is honestly horrible enough that its better that you don’t have it. You’re a paper airplane trying to be a Boeing 747. Stop dreaming, grow up, and get a better PC.

Windows 7 Basic: If you live in the third-world (or in a place that’d rather pirate Windows than buy it), you get this. If you have enough money to get a rig that’ll run something better, you either have enough money buy a better Windows version or the know-how to download one.

Windows 7 Enterprise: For all intents and purposes, Enterprise = Ultimate, available only to those who’ve sold their souls to had special business ties with Microsoft. Meaning, you have an IT department that will do this for you, so that you don’t have to. Don’t have an IT department? Enterprise is not for you, then.

Caveats

There’s caveats in everything.

32-bit vs. 64-bit: Does your car run diesel or unleaded? If you don’t know, find someone who can find out. With that out of the way…

32-bit Editions vs. 64-bit Editions: If you’re switching from diesel to unleaded (or vice versa), your car’s engine needs a complete overhaul. Likewise, if you’re switching from 32-bit to 64-bit (or vice versa), your computer needs a complete overhaul; you’ll need to install Windows 7 from scratch.

Spoiled Brats

Nowadays, I’m thinking so many people are “spoiled” with intelligence and know-how that they lose touch with “lesser” people and concepts. Windows 7, health care reform, anime, the global financial meltdown, the personal finance, technology in general.

Home means Home. Professional means Professional (Pro). Ultimate means everything, including horse radish, vegetarian chili, and boisonberry wasabi salsa. I mean, if you like that sort of stuff…

There are no death panels. Read the damn bill. Insurance companies get kickbacks and treat you like crap. Shit hits the fan, and they scramble for good public relations. Medicare and Medicaid is government run, as is Congress’s and the U.S. military’s health care. What’s wrong with a public option, competition from the public sector? It’s like having private workers (real estate, restaurants) and government employees (transit, police, fire department, military).

The recession hits everyone badly, including anime production companies. Yet, some people will look at old anime and feel nostalgia, glossing over the bad stuff and calling it either camp (So Bad It’s Good) or indicative of a tight budget. And you say new anime production can’t have tight budgets or sloppy animation? Double standard. You’re acting like a bunch of spoiled ADHD nostalgiafags who demand instead of appreciate. You have a large choice of anime to watch; anime isn’t a right, it’s just a friggin’ show. Show me how an anime should be done, and I will guarantee you that everyone else will laugh at you and tell you how stupid your version is. You’re not a genius, you’re not a pundit. You’re an audience. If you don’t like it, exercise your actual rights and watch something else. Viewership ratings are your form of voting, ya’ know.

People are so willing to show off their (supposed) wealth by living above their means. This makes them use credit cards, in the bad way. They take out a second loan against their house. They buy luxury cars to show off to friends. They invest in risky stocks. They day trade. They pretend their smarter. They ignore bills. Screw you all for making the rest of us suffer. Go die in a fire.

People like the first blogger I mentioned have their head so high up in technology and “knowing” stuff that they don’t bother to learn things anymore. I’m betting Adrian Kingsley-Hughes knows more about technology than I do in general, but for God’s sake, he’s acting like a whining kid that complains that Microsoft’s falafels, eggrolls, and mini-chicken sandwich are making a mess of his ideal menu: the ultimate deluxe triple stacker cheeseburger. Maybe you can eat it all and enjoy all the extra condiments, but some people don’t like stupidass one-item menus that charge them for things they don’t want. Or need. Or can’t even use. Or can’t afford.

That’s the beginning of the slippery slope that ends with Mac fanatics and monopolies.

Endless Digital Waltz

The major software and computer companies always seem to be going at it, in some way or another. Maybe its just me, someone who’s been become fairly apathetic about the political process; in some way, I think I’ve become fairly apathetic about politics in the digital realm. Windows asserts smug dominance whilst its foundation is eroding. Mac blasts PC with baseless claims and smug elitism. Slashdot condemns everything but Linux and FOSS. Google continues to dominante, slips in certain places, gains in others.

Oh, why can’t we all just get along?

In any case, there are a few things that have been on my mind.

Google Chrome

Despite its initial success, Chrome is starting to lose some of its shine. The way I see the problem is that Google really isn’t trying to promote Chrome in any way. Being a beta product, it’s been noted there are still quite a few things that it can work on. Yes, they fixed some bug. Yes, they changed their EULA. And that’s about it.

Unfortunately for Google, not even commenting much on its new browser offering, let alone releasing more beta builds, is pretty much sentencing the software to obscurity. The browser market is very cutthroat; IE still dominates the market, Firefox is determined to keep its hard-earned user base, Safari… is just Safari, and Opera still struggles with desktop significance (though apparently it does well in the mobile market, and I guess the Wii as well).

My pitiful recommendation to Google? Keep it a hot topic. Have a blog where you keep us updated on what you’re working on, or highlighting upcoming features. Give us more builds of Chrome (it’s a beta, of course it’ll still have bugs and crashes).

In other words, don’t leave your user base hanging.

And fix things up so that I can view streaming video on Flash-heavy sites without it wanting my computer to explode. Venturing into Nico Nico Douga is always a trial with Chrome, even with such a simple action as scrolling the webpage whilst the video is loading.

Search – Google Desktop Search vs. Windows Desktop Search

Back in the day, I was a very avid fan of Google Desktop Search. The ability to harness the power of Google to search your own information was just incredible. Incredible enough that even Microsoft decided to release its own desktop engine, and have it embedded into Windows Vista (as simply Windows Search).

Unfortunately, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with GDS. The key to it for me was the quick aggregation of information whilst not utterly destroying my modest computer (a 2.00 GHz Intel P4 Northwood, 512MB DDR, Windows XP, 80GB HDD at 5400 RPM). While it doesn’t quite destroy it, GDS does interfere with normal day-to-day operations.

One of my greatest complaints about it was the fact that I couldn’t control the times when to index, and when not to. I’m all for automation, because the vast majority of users could benefit from it. I am most definitely a power user, though, so I have the know-how and drive to tweak my settings to best suit my needs. Microsoft is easily able to have a “Index Now” button ALONGSIDE the normal automated approach. Why can’t Google? A little more user empowerment for those who want to tinker, and nothing else changes for the non-technical users.

The other great complaint I had about it is the general slowing of performance that GDS had. For me, first and foremost, GDS is a digital search appliance. It must fulfill that function, and it must do it well. Performance is key to search. Yet, Google has this mind-boggling philosophy that GDS should be Widget Central. Oh, my, Lord. Aside from aggregation of multiple data sources, why should resource-using widgets become such a huge focus by Google? Not to be presumptuous, but let developers develop for it, while you (Google) work on improving the information platform itself.

For the time being, I’ve been using Windows Desktop Search, as the performance and indexing issues for GDS were just too aggravating. WDS does what it does: it searches and indexes, it tells me about its progress without trying to open a whole browser window, and it lets me retrieve information fast and easily. In some ways, I find it better (right-click context is better, better indexing controls, less intusiveness and lag). In some ways, not as good (no CTRL, CTRL combination to start a search like GDS, searches take a little longer), but it gets the job done without messing with my computer much. Which is exactly what I’m looking for.

Of course, after I say all this, I realize there’s a relatively new GDS version that focuses on performance.

I hate my timing.

Terramaria Woes

My Mac likes and doesn’t like me. Well, I guess it’s mainly Safari. And iPhoto. iTunes is a bit tsundere to me. But whatever.

I’m inclined to think that the horrid crashes I’ve been getting on the Mac has to do with the graphics card, which is this old 32MB AGP artifact. I do have a 64MB nVidia GeForce4 MX440 sitting in a closet that I’ve been meaning to swap in.

The thing that bothers me is that the crashes only happen whenever I’m using Safari. Not only am I using the most updated version of it, but I’m also exclusively reading text when I’m using it: Wikipedia, some simple webpages of mine, and some PBwikis that I add content to. I would be reading several blocks of text on the screen only to find I can’t scroll the page or move the mouse cursor. Bleh.

I’d love to install Firefox or Opera as a replacement, but that defeats the purpose of learning tips and tricks with Safari. Moo.

Also, according to arai, he owns the patent on saying “moo.” I guess I owe him ten bucks now… damn.

Victoria Comeback

I’ve been itching to reinstall Windows Vista again, because I’m at least open-minded enough to actually use it effectively. With more and more people forced to use it, though, it’s been kinda’ lonely. Yet, I’m still apprehensive about putting it back on my machine.

It’s not so much that I hate Vista or hate using it (I don’t). It’s just going to be a real pain in the rear creating a quad-boot rig. XP Professional, Server 2003, Solaris 10, and Vista.

Not fun, for completely different reasons.

Yet Another Computer

In case you haven’t heard, I recently acquired an old Apple PowerPC G4 to better familiarize myself with Mac OS X. Specifically, I’m using 10.4 Tiger, and while it’s only UNIX-like, that’s fine, as I have Solaris 10 for my UNIX needs. That, and there’s not really a huge difference between Tiger and 10.5 Leopard.

I remember being quite disappointed when Apple moved off of the PowerPC platform and onto the x86 one. Sorta’ like watching the noble spirit of Apple die off to be consumed by the iPod/iPhone Religion of Steve Jobs.

The computer can be booted to into Mac OS 9.2.2 as well, though a foray into that ancient OS left me cringing and crying. As OS 9 can’t be run on an x86 architecture, this is probably used through Classic, which is basically dropped in Leopard. In any case, the G4’s Mac OS X persona (which I’ve named “Terramaria”), is fine for my purposes.

The system is a little slow, but generally everything still runs smoothly. Presentation has always been Apple’s strong points (though, sometimes they rely on this a little too much), so there’s little on-screen jerkiness to indicate your computer is pushing its limits.

I’m inclined to use Safari, of course, as this is all supposed to be a learning experience for me. Switching to another browser would put me back at square one. In any case, Safari blends much better with the OS than it does on Windows (where it clashes badly with visual styles).

iTunes was easy enough to use, though I found it a little tedious to create a new custom playlist. In Windows Media Player, I’d search for a song and drag it over to its place in the List Pane (in Edit Mode). iTunes is much more geared towards people who are too lazy to make their own playlists; I have to manually drag-and-drop my music onto my playlist entry, and the playlist itself isn’t in view in case I want to change the order. Boo. (Edit: Updating iTunes to the most current version seemed to have added the feature to add a song to a playlist through the context menu, though it’d still be nice to actually see my playlist grow.) I’m also not interested in the vast majority of music in iTunes Store, as my interest primarily lie in Japanese pop, soundtracks, and anisongs. So, yeah. Not my cup of tea.

Of course, like any other OS, I was able to successfully crash it through absolutely normal operations. Having successfully set it up with an Internet connection through my XP machine, I browsed a few sites to see if things were working correctly. I also browsed my local webserver. The problem occurred when I tried to access one of my local MediaWiki installations again; while my server was processing the request I decided to minimize the window.

FREEZE. And this is the first day I’m using it.

Boo.

We’ll see how much I can figure out about this OS, that way I can develop a more mature and authoritative opinion about OSes in general.

Edit: iTunes is incredibly copy happy, wasting large amounts of space creating DUPLICATE ENTRIES when I’m adding in an updated folder of music (taken from my XP machine). It seems like someone needs to learn how to manage databases correctly…

Unneeded Paranoia

The initial spurt of Google Chrome enthusiasm seems to be wearing down. Of course, even with this, the moment anything is released onto the Internet, rapid dogs continually descend upon it from every corner of the world.

One thing that has certain people uppity are automatic updates. That is, Chrome will automatically update itself with security patches without user intervention, checking in every few hours to do so.

And, in all honesty, I think these people need to get smacked in the face with a shovel.

Power Users’ Perception of the User Population

There are quite a few people (outside of IT) who want complete dominion over their computer, making and authorizing each and every decision about it. Well, that’s just awesome for you. But 99% of all users don’t care about that. They just want their computer to work, get things done, and keep their identity safe.

And, you know why I’m pretty sure that most people don’t care? Because I watch them use computers. Because I listen to what they say whenever the subject comes up. Because I have to fix their computers whenever something breaks down far beyond what they can comprehend. Because they talk to me about what they feel is important about computers, and don’t talk about what’s not important.

Let me tell it flat out.

People don’t read messages on the screen. A pop-up message comes up. They scan it a bit to see if it’s a virus or spyware or adware. If it isn’t and they have a good feeling about the message, they hit OK. If they don’t feel comfortable with it, they hit Cancel. They never really understand the message, which vanishes from their memory within fifteen seconds.

You think people really want to know about each and every thing? Look at Vista’s User Account Control and the reaction to that.

Normal people don’t like having to maintain their computer. In this day and age, you have to be wary of all sorts of things. Viruses. Hackers. Adware. Spyware. Trojans. Security flaws. The solution? Anti-virus scanners. Firewalls. Adware cleaners. Popup blockers. Spyware sweepers. Security patches.

That’s quite a lot of things for someone who just wanted to read their e-mail, look at stocks, read the news, and do an Internet search on something. And a lot of it could be automated to give people back their time, money, and peace of mind.

Normal people just want the thing to work. Surprise, surprise! For many people, computers are a means to something, not an end in itself. They use it at work so they can get their job done and get paid. They don’t need it to work exactly like they want it (their expectations tend to be rather low), but if it does its job with the minimal amount of hassle, that’s fine.

Getting things done quickly gives people more time to do more entertaining things. Like watching a movie, getting drunk, and/or going to sleep.

And so…

Normal people don’t want to worry about manually updating all of their programs. They don’t want to be bothered with messages they don’t understand, but they just want the thing to work. Those are their priorities. Not “user control.” So, a company working with those two interests in mind would want to implement updates that don’t requires a user intervention. Hell, you could argue complete automation because if the user could just end up cancelling the update because they “don’t feel like it.” And this creates a worse problem: a program with proven security flaws.

The problem that a lot of people have is that they try to impose their own rules of their hobby onto the day-to-day lives of normal people. This rule by the computer elite dictating the workflow of “normal users” just sickens me. Lives shouldn’t be forced around it. Computers were made as enablers to human life, allowing us to do things that were impossible or impractical without this digital revolution.

Oh, and for the people who don’t agree with my view of the user population…

Normal people are too busy to comment on blogs and articles about computer minutia. They’re too busy doing their jobs, playing games, socializing with friends (in REAL LIFE), doing chores, and getting sleep to go comment on some random thing they might see on the Internet.

Yeah, I’m not one of those normal computer people. But I want to make the computing world a better and easier place for them. Not like the out-of-touch digital elite.

Browser Wars, Part II

So, it seems like Google Chrome caused quite a stir from all sorts of people. The anti-IE8, taking market away from Firefox, paving the way for the Internet as a Google platform, privacy advocates scared of the EULA, speed tests, compliance tests.

Me? I’m just glad I’ve got a WebKit engine to test my stuff against, since I wouldn’t be caught dead with Safari again.

Through some quick and informal tests, this is what I’ve found out.

Loading Speed

Chrome is clearly a speed demon now; it loads up faster than Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, Firefox 3.0.1, and Opera 9.52. Page rendering seems a lot faster, but I didn’t bother to test that part. For that, you’ve got five million more technical tests that do things far better than I can.

Next up in loading speed is IE, though I’m sure part of it is because IE integrates itself with Windows a bit. Not that I really mind or care, because I don’t really care if a browser is standalone or not.

Just behind IE is Opera, which has always been a fast loader and well-featured. Honestly, why don’t more people use Opera?

And, of course, dead-last is Firefox, which has a several second startup for me. And that’s with all my add-ons disabled.

(Initial) Memory Usage

For this test, I loaded up a Google search and two advertisement-heavy blogs into separate tabs.

Opera seems to have the smallest memory footprint of the two. It kept to around 64 megs of memory and just a little less than Firefox. I was a bit surprised. After a period of non-use, it would drop to 43 megs or so, though it seemed to go up again after a page loaded.

Firefox was about the same as Opera, and even exhibited the same behavior. It had slightly larger footprint than Opera, but this was on the order of a few kilobytes: not significant. Of course, Firefox is notorious for memory leak problems, and I didn’t want to sit around for it to build up problems.

Chrome came in next at about 71 megs. This probably has to do with the whole “separate process” thing that is touted around.

IE came in last at 79 megs. Again, this probably has to do with the whole “separate process” thing, but it seems like it’s just a bit heavier than it should, as IE integrates partly with Windows.

Acid3 Tests

Acid Tests are some accepted web standards test to see if a browser renders things as it should. It seems a bit arbitrary, but at least it’s a quick test.

Coming in dead last was IE8, which flopped with a horrible score of 12/100. As a browser thats being held up as a model of standards-compliance, I’m rather disappointed.

Next was Firefox 3, which scored an impressive 71/100 when compared to IE8. Of course, when the top two browsers in the world don’t at least score a “B,” I get a little worried.

Chrome ranks in at 79/100. Not bad for a version 1.0 browser, but there’s definitely more work to be done, especially since several sites I go to have very weird and awkward formatting errors that make some tasks impossible.

Coming in first place is Opera, at 84/100. Not that I’m too surprised; Opera has always been very standards-compliant, and I constantly use it in tests for my own web development.

Conclusion

And that’s that. Opera seems to have aged rather well, Firefox still has problems with memory and loading speed, IE still fails at rendering, and Chrome is… well… Chrome. A mixed bag here and there, but I think it’s a welcome addition to the browser ecosystem.

It’s a hardware problem, not a software one!

I am the king of being sidetracked when it comes to major undertakings (relatively speaking) that I initiate myself. Yesterday I decided to move an old computer under my desk. I have a love-hate relationship with this computer, and while it’s an utter piece of <garbage> in terms of parts (it has a Cyrix PR200, which is equivalent to probably a Pentium 166MHz), it can get basic tasks done. Anyways, the space that I moved it to had a lot of old computer game boxes, such as Warcraft II and Final Fantasy VII PC (yes, I actually buy games in this day and age, and I have the boxes to prove it).

… See what I meant about getting sidetracked? Obviously, I consider blogging a major undertaking.

I have a lot of junk in my room that isn’t mine, but I can’t exactly move it. For example, my closet is basically inaccessible and stuffed full of random boxes and old toys that were fun at the time, but would kill the average kid nowadays do to America generally becoming stupider. There is still some room in that dark closet of obscurity, however, and since I was going to end up redoing a bunch of computer cords at my desk, anyway (the major things being interconnected are two desktops, one laptop, two monitors, two sets of speakers, and a TV), I decided to shove as much ugly stuff into the closet as I could.

In the course of tearing apart my room to actually access the closet (stacks of boxes in the way), I found my the box for my Logitech Wingman Force 3D joystick, and lamented that the joystick itself was unusable; when connected, the stick would jut hard to the upper-right or slight-left, and it was next to impossible to get it to move in all directions, let alone calibrate correctly. The joystick was packed into a box at a bad angle at one point in its lifetime, so I considered that the likely cause of the malfunctions.

I decided to give it one more go and confirmed that it was hosed. With the warranty long expired, I figured there was no problem in opening the sucker up and seeing if I can locate a jam or something.

Well, there definitely was a problem; I couldn’t even figure out how to detach the base!

All the screws were taken out, yet the thing refused to pop off. Like everyone else sane in this world, I turned to Google for answers. The first result was a winner: a discussion board about fixing the rudder on these type of sticks. I found a highly informative yet entertaining PDF that some guy took the liberty of creating for the other people that were too cheap to buy a new controller (or too poor, like me).

When I had gotten to the base and saw the circuit board and motors, I didn’t see anything wrong. The thing DID start jamming up whenever I connected it, though, which made me wonder what was wrong.

Then it hit me. It’s a software problem, not a hardware one!

You see, I had a habit of pumping up the force feedback up to 150% power back in the day. MechWarrior was that much funner when a barrage of missiles kept you from even coming close to lining up that shot with your ER PPC. From what I can surmise, the software that comes with the joystick sets the force feedback configuration on the joystick itself. Apparently, at some point, the configuration on the joystick bugged out, causing the force feedback mechanism to jam the stick up at odd angles. This continued until I reinstalled the software and reset the defaults.

Magically, the problem was gone. Of course, neither was the mess in my room.

Looks like I’ll be able to play MechWarrior, Freespace, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and X-Wing: Alliance again. Especially since an old friend of mine has been trying to gather people for some XvT.

Woot. I feel like Noodle. Except the solution was more in my area of expertise. Kinda’ weird.

Title Origin: Microsoft will tell you that if a problem occurred while using their product, OBVIOUSLY the problem is with your hardware. Hardware companies will tell you otherwise. Meanwhile, Microsoft is quick to offer software solutions to anything you’d want to do or improve upon, whilst hardware companies will offer a device that you can attach. The fight is endless.

A New Challenger Has Appeared

Yes, from the guy who rarely ever posts anything in his blog.

Google Chrome beta was released today. This is the day after Google accidentally published a “comic book” outlining how it works, and decided to just let it go ahead and let the beta get released. I, being an enthusiastic Google supporter, anxiously downloaded it and fired it up.

For a beta product, I’m actually quite pleased with it. It has problems here and there, but overall, I think they captured the spirit of the modern web browser while removing (or tucking away) most of the bloat that most users don’t use. Heck, some people don’t even know what it does.

On the Plus Side

Using the WebKit rendering engine, Chrome renders pages fairly well. I’m probably alone in this, but the Safari browser (which also uses WebKit) just looks plain horrible to look at, not meshing in with windows at all. (Brushed metal, I feel, is way overrated and overused.) Chrome, despite having a more metallic name, greets me with a soothing set of soft blues and whites while clearly dilineating the different functional areas. If I recall correctly, studies shown that blue is a good color to use, as it helps keep a user more alert and attentive. (Green, on the other hand, was considered the most soothing of the colors.) Too, Chrome features a rather large default viewing space for webpages, having only three rows right now: tabs, address bar/controls, and bookmarks. Everything I need.

You’ve got the web domain highlighting that Internet Explorer 8 Beta has (which I’m also having fun testing). A nice touch, even if it really doesn’t matter to me as I’m smart enough to read the whole URL. On the other hand, if people are like me (bahahahahaha), they tend to put bookmarks on a toolbar, as it’s a daunting task to go through a whole list of bookmarks from a menu, most of which you’ve forgotten about. So, Chrome automatically places bookmarks (CTRL+D) on the bar. Simple, but rather useful (and less likely for people to forget).

Tab support is something I dreamed about back when I first used Firefox 1 (I started using it during the period it was called Firebird). Like most browsers now, you can rearrange tabs by dragging them. Thankfully, Chrome animates this, so its easier and more intuitive on my eyes. The thing that takes the cake, though is being able to grab a tab and pretty much rip it out of the tab bar. This will actually create a new window for just that tab (which is probably pretty easy given the architecture of the browser). I find this incredibly useful when I have to look at two different webpages at the same time, but don’t want to go hotkey crazy to get the same effect relatively fast. (ALT+D, CTRL+C, CTRL+F4, CTRL+N, ALT+D, CTRL+V, ENTER). Plus, you can easily snap it back into the tab bar by just dragging it back. God, thank you for object-oriented methodologies.

Speaking of snapping, the browser itself is pretty snappy. I wouldn’t call it a speed demon, but it loads up simple webpages pretty darn fast. It’s better than some versions of other browsers that I remember.

IE8’s been getting me to use the address bar more as the so-called “omnibar,” which incorporates search into it. I remember using this sort of thing a long time ago, and I wasn’t too impressed when it kept searching for things I didn’t want to search for, or looking for a website when I wanted a search term. IE8 renewed my faith in the system, and Chrome surprised me by doing the same. It works well, and is arguably a little quicker/snappier at it than IE. Which is good, because there’s no search bar in Chrome, freeing up more space.

I’ve used the word “snappy” to describe Chrome a lot. I saw some people on slashdot saying the same thing. Is it just me, or is “snappy” the one word that best describes reactions to Chrome?

For the more tech-savvy people, Chrome comes with its own freakin’ Task Manager. Its nice to know where that memory is going to. Especially when you want to pinpoint that one tab that’s basically screwing your computer over with some ill-prepared Flash advertisement that cycled through. It also includes “Stats for nerds,” a more detailed memory comparison that even goes so far as to show how Chrome stacks up against other browsers that are open. Really nice.

On the Other Hand

Chrome is nice. However, it is a beta product of a 1.0 version. There are still things that it lacks in, and some quirks and bugs that need to be worked out.

The much-touted V8 JavaScript engine that Chrome uses has some bugs that breaks a few pages I use. I work with a few PBwikis for various projects, and the JavaScript-heavy PBwiki 2.0 seems to break on it. At least, when trying to edit a page, which is one of its essential functions. According to the rather prompt and excellent customer support, the fault probably lies with V8, though they’re still looking into it. I’m inclined to agree as Safari (which also uses the WebKit renderer) had the same problem but was fixed months ago.

Too, as a budding web developer, I took some painstakingly difficult times to make some JavaScript that was really bad (AJAX with innerHTML) into a best practice (AJAX with DOM manipulation). IE8 ran the code fine under its Standards Mode, as did Opera and Firefox 3, but Chrome meant with only partial success, rendering it fine initially but unable to update the page via JavaScript to reflect choices the user made. I’ll probably try to debug some more, but with three out of four browsers working fine, and WebKit proving to be generally reliable, I’m probably going to say V8 is to blame.

I started using OpenID a while ago for easy PBwiki access, and using certificates was a great way to do things; no passwords! Chrome seemed to import my certificates correctly, but myOpenID couldn’t seem to find them. Meh, rather annoying.

It reminds me of a Dark Heresy RP I was playing where some door refused to budge for some acolyte. As well as our friendly Tech-Priest buddy, who ended up activating the security system and nearly getting us all killed.

All in All

All in all, Chrome is a very nice start to a browser from Google. For trivial things, it seems to work pretty well. Heck, I’m even writing this post from Chrome. Unfortunately, it interferes with some of my daily activities, which is basically signing into OpenID and using PBwiki. Hopefully, this matter will be resolved, as I see a lot of promise in this browser.

Regarding AX day summaries, does anyone really care? I have a few of them written in Notepad, but…

Update: According to my research and analyzing my code, it looks like V8 handles event listeners slightly differently. Some of my code involves setting the onchange attribute to a particular value, and using that value as an argument for a new function when using addEventListener(). While other browsers will replace this element, V8 won’t allow it, and onchange will remain null, further making addEventListener() useless. So, meh. Well, at least that’s ONE quirk out of the way…

Up Next: The Next Round in the Browser Wars!

While I don’t think it’s anywhere as violent as Netscape Navigator vs. Internet Explorer (back then I sided with Netscape… and was sad when they lost), but I do think that the current war is ever as important. Today, the players are primarily Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, with some other minor browsers desperately jumping up and down for attention.

Opera 9.5 came out Thursday, and I’m glad there’s a marked improvement over the beta I tried out before. While the UI wasn’t particularly ugly in previous releases, it really wasn’t all that great once you got down to using it. Tabs looked more like buttons instead of… well… tabs. It kinda’ reminded me of an Apple product redesigned by Linux programmers to target Windows users. In other words, kinda’ all over the place. But whatever.

Unfortunately, it seems to still have some kinks in it. One particularly strange and annoying one is that, even as I write this post, Opera doesn’t know how to correctly parse me writing a new paragraph. If I hit ENTER after a paragraph, guess what? It adds a line above it! Go to add a line above the paragraph, and you get a line below it! Oh fun fun. I wonder if Opera will ever go above 1% market share.

Safari 4 is due out, with a preview already available. As a guy who’s actually concerned about having a standards-compliant browser (with that the caveat that the standards should actually be practical), I should download it and give it a try. Honestly, though, I never really like Safari. Or rather, I never really liked its interface and skin. I don’t know about you, but that brushed metal covering makes me think I should be piloting a ‘Mech instead of surfing the Internet. It just seems to utterly clash with the smooth colors that dominate webpages and OS themes.

To me, the only reasons people use Safari is 1.) they use Macs, and to use anything else would get you ostracized by the Church of Steve Jobs, 2.) web developers were unknowingly baited into testing against another browser once Safari was released for Windows, and 3.) it’s stuck on their iPhone. But whatever. Internet Explorer 8 and its super-standards mode is still in development. Of course, being a product from Microsoft, it receives a lot of flak no matter what direction it goes in. I think breaking existing website that don’t conform to standards is a good thing, even if IE was partly responsible for it. IE helped grow a dynamic Internet, whether people like to admit it or not, and if the will of the people is to finally move towards standards compliance, Microsoft should be commended for doing the right thing even though they’ll lose a lot of their supporters. Plus, I think a lot of web developers are real idiots, anyway.

Speaking of idiots, I do hope the IE developers do something to the UI. Design by committee was obviously a huge mistake. Having your the File menu BELOW your address bar kinda’ ruins the whole Windows look-and-feel, and the buttons are just a huge mess of I-don’t-care-about-that-feature and what-the-heck-is-that. It’ll be a bad, bad day if things start looking like a universal remote control.

For the record, I use IE6. Because I find IE7 incredibly annoying and has some stupid bug that plants a huge IE icon on top of other file icons whenever I go browse a data CD or DVD of mine. Don’t you dare mess with my file browsing.

And then, good ol’ Firefox 3 is set to arrive on the 17th, trying to make a world record for downloads or something. Not that I particularly care, because I’d rather get a copy free of stupid bugs (like the one in Opera) that will get patched a couple days from release. In any case, the speed improvements will be a very welcome change, along with the host of other neat things that I’ve already forgotten about since I first used the beta. Firefox, especially if loaded with add-ons that I commonly use, is a huge resource hog, if you haven’t noticed (or rather, if you’ve been living under a rock).

And, I should have gotten to this earlier, but the main big political issue nowadays for browsers is standards-compliance. If all things go as planned, pretty much all four of those browsers will be pretty darn standards-compliant, to the point that probably the average user (e.g. not me) will probably be unable to pick out any difference.

Speaking of standards-compliance, I decided to pick up Solaris 10 to use as an alternative OS, seeing as it’s about the only free option that’s Single UNIX Specification 03 compliant. I felt like choosing UNIX over Linux because 1.) Linux fanboys irritate me as much as Apple fanboys, 2.) I’ve better prior knowledge of UNIX than Linux, 3.) I care about standards, 4.) I generally like Sun Microsystems, 5.) I was reminded of NoodleKnight and his ol’ SPARCstation that I was impressed with, and 6.) I care a lot more abut “free software” than “open source software.” As long as it’s doing good, I honestly don’t care how it was made.

For the record, Solaris 10 crashed during installation. These OSes all just hate me, it seems.

Currently, it’s trying to boot for the first time. Ooo, yay. Login. I guess it’s time to hammer out some of the weird bugs, see if WinXP is still working, and create a non-root user.

It’s All The Same

So, I decided to download and burn Ubuntu 8.04 today, giving Ubuntu another stab. This time, I wanted to stick with it and give it a proper chance.

Popped in the LiveCD. Worked fine… I guess. I sorta’ got called away to do something menial so I couldn’t stare at the boot up process and make sure things load up fine. Doesn’t matter. I was greeted by the somewhat familiar brownish orange desktop that sorta’ assaults my senses. Sorry, but scientific studies have shown that blue and green-based themes are better for the human brain. But I semi-digress.

First thing I do is, of course, to play a card game. I open up a game of Blackjack. Thought it look kinda’ neat… until they started dealing cards. Oh god, the horrible looking card faces. The lack of impact or tension when playing.

I played a blackjack game on Windows 3.1, with the good ol’ Windows Entertainment Pack. I miss that game.

Played some Chess, screwed around and got my butt handed to me. Not that I really care, as the graphics that were available to me on the LiveCD weren’t too impressive.

To be honest, I had more fun jiggling the windows once I upped the graphics settings. Even if xkcd says that Ubuntu is basically Vista with some custom themes, I’d argue that it handles better than Vista in terms of utilizing the graphics card.

Hell, I refuse to use Vista’s touted Flip3D without installing the Switcher, made by a Microsoft techie named Bao Nguyen. Sure, it kinda’ makes it look like it ripped off of MacOS, but at least it made Flip3D useful.

Anyways, after changing to a nice Mist theme with a 1280 x 1024 Saber wallpaper to match, I started exploring all the icons on the screen. I found somet things nicely placed, giving me better, quicker access to things I myself would rather do than go through the cumbersome Start Menu (i.e. direct access to programs instead of going to All Programs in Windows XP).

That’s when I found the network connections icon. Not a bad interface. As Ubuntu seemed to have recognized my wireless USB dongle and detected a few wireless networks, I decided to connect myself the Internet and try out Linux version of Firefox. I go to connect…

… and Ubuntu crashes.

Everything freezes up. Can’t move the mouse. Can’t type on the keyboard. The screen has frozen still.

I guess that’s another operating system (or, more specifically, operating system flavor) that has crashed right before me for no good reason at all. It joins the long list of MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000 Pro, Windows 2000 Server, Windows NT 4.0, Windows NT 4.0 Server, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista… and UNIX, some GNOME Linux distro that was just a major pain in the ass, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, my cellphone, my calculator, my PS2, a DVD player, my Gameboy, my N64, my NES, my SNES, my crappy MP3 player, an all-in-one printer at Office Depot…

In case you haven’t figured it out, I have this awesomely dumbfounding ability to crash anything I come near.

So, to me, this is all the same. Linux (or at least Ubuntu) isn’t a magical silver bullet, a cure-all panacea, a miracle drug, or the Holy Grail. It’s just another OS.

I wonder how well my games will run under this, though. I don’t look forward to using Wine…

Oh, by the way, I’m using Ubuntu to write this post, following the exact same prodedure I used previously. And it works now. Which means it was a weird fluke that crashed my system, and not having stupid hardware or having a PEBKAC.

Oh, thank you, Lord, for introducing such randomness to computers.

I hope I can squeeze in some space on my HDD for Ubuntu. Unlike most people, I actually like to keep my hard drives from being filled to the top.

So ends this post.

Oh, right. Working on the SHIROU SEAL, which I’m sure none of you care about.