physical graffiti

with the release of FireFox 3 - i am back to using FF as my default browser.

I love these pretty interactive flash adventures. Not so much a game as an interactive story

http://219.101.39.52/~nanahiro/main.html

Google has released an online calendar application, 'gCal'. It is creating a lot of buzz. I have tried it out and i like it. Unfortunately, it does not work in Safari, my browser of choice, these days.

The first question is , why use gCal?

One reason is that i use both macs and PCs, and I have not found a really good iCal compatible calendar app on my PC. Also , having the calendar live online means that i can find it and EDIT it wherever i am. It has some other nice features as well, which you can read about.

The second question is, do i need to switch browsers again?

So i downloaded camino, which is like the love-child of firefox and safari: mozilla based, but built specifically for mac. It is really fast. and it has some nice options like 'play animated gifs only once'. You might not notice this , but if you go to a website that has some stupid advertising looping over and over, it uses up a HUGE amount of CPU.

So for now Camino is king.

I happened across this short essay on the state of the internet

http://www.internetisshit.org/



The Fugees - Family Business

I am writing this entry in Internet Explorer Beta 7.
My browser preferences have a long history... i probably can't even remember all the browser's i've used.
I started back in 1994 with NCSA Mosaic in Windows 3.1.

I think, if memory serves that the various versions Netscape became my browser of choice until Internet Explorer version 5 (or was it 6) came out and was clearly better. That was the demise of Netscape and the browser wars were over. Then M$ sat on their asses and didn't do any significant development for IE. Sure there were other browsers, like Opera, but the are insignificant in terms of overall market share.

When firefox was released, i quickly became a HUGE fan of tabbed browsing and mouse gestures, as well as the ability to add extensions to streamline my online life. When i used some one else's computer who was using IE i would roll my eyes in frustration!

"HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITHOUT TABBED BROWSING??!?!?!?!"

Finally, M$ has released what appears to be an essentially reverse engineered version of firefox. It supports tab browsing, even using the same shortcuts (ctrl-T opens a new tab, ctrl-clicking on a link opens it in a new tab). i have only begun to test drive it, partially because firefox has been pissing me off, and partially because i'm doing the best i can to procrastinate.

I have to say , it looks slick. there is a minimun of wasted space. it has built in pop-up blocking (like firefox), it has a search window (like firefox), it has a nice security feature for your parents - the automatic phishing checker. Essentially, if someone foolishly clicks that link in their email suggesting that they log in to prevent ebay from cancelling their account, it will catch it.

Some people love to hate M$. Not me. I judge a product on its merits. If IE7 is better than firefox then i will use IE7. until firefox 2.0 comes out ;)