BurningbirdWeb technology
Post wasn’t pulled, just not propagated across all the data centers. Did I happen to mention I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for the last few days? Disregard the paranoia.
However, there is a silver lining. Thanks to Seth for pointing out this Google data center tool. Put in the search term, and then switch among the data centers.
Firebug has released a beta of the first full version, 1.0. The previous version was extremely helpful. This version is beyond helpful. I dare say it goes all the way to, “Wow!”
I don’t use Firebug because I’m a Firefox browser user. I’m a Firefox browser user because of extensions like Firebug.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Writing Learning JavaScript and now Adding Ajax, as well as creating web page applications such as my photo popup has led me to an epiphany: Microsoft really doesn’t want us to use IE. No, I’m not being facetious–the company would probably prefer that people move to another browser.
Let’s look at the facts.
First, web developers must add additional tweaks in scripting code and CSS in order for web applications to work with IE7; yet no specialized code or CSS is required for other web browsers. Now, why release a new version of a browser that’s guaranteed to be incompatible with all other browsers? It’s not as if any of the technologies are new: most have been out for five or more years.
Backwards compatibility doesn’t explain this deliberate nonalignment. One can continue to support something like attachEvent while adding support for addEventListener using application wrappers. Developers have been providing backwards compatible wrappers in code for years. I can’t believe that the Microsoft developers aren’t familiar with this technique. It shouldn’t be a burden within the code, yet keeping something like a proprietary event system just continues to add developer aggravation, as well as adding to the number of sites that break.
IE7 is also a nag. So much so that I’ve finding I can’t load applications, visit pages, do much of anything without some warning or another popping up. It nags constantly, and much of this can’t seem to be turned off. It’s wearying to use IE7–it is not an unobtrusive element of the web browsing experience.
Then there’s the new, ‘helpful’ way to test in both IE 6 and IE7–Microsoft is providing a Virtual PC image preloaded with XP and 6 just so you can test your pages with IE 6, while having IE 7 loaded on your regular installation.
No need to buy a license for XP within the VPC image. How sweet. But you do have to load an application that loads another version of the operating system in memory, just so you can test a web browser. A web browser! I don’t know about all the people who are tossing flowers at Microsoft’s feet for this ‘kind’ gesture, but this ‘workaround’ is an insult to web developers, and a mockery of the concept of a browser–you know that simple yet powerful application that opens the world but leaves a small footprint? Yeah, that browser.
According to the IE weblog, this VPC image will only function until April 1st, 2007, but I think the April Fool’s joke is getting people to reserve both memory and disc space–as well as having to go through Microsoft’s validation process–just to test against a browser. What happens after April, then? Are all the Windows 2000 installations going away? There will be no need to test for IE6?
Add it all up, and I think the facts equal Microsoft making a strategic decision to phase out Internet Explorer.
Microsoft was challenged back in 1994/1995 by an upstart company that said the web and its browser would eventually replace the need for an operating system like Microsoft’s Windows. Microsoft couldn’t let that slide, came out with IE, and proceeded to blow the doors off of Netscape’s Navigator.
Once the house of Netscape began to crumble and fail, and more importantly, once the browser space began to develop an open source following with the Mozilla effort, Microsoft lost interest in the browser space. The company’s bread and butter is based on operating system, Office and entertainment applications, and developer tools–not browsers.
IE has also been plagued for years with security flaws; flaws costing the company time and effort, true, but more importantly, costing the company credibility. The security flaws associated with Windows do not get the media play that security flaws with IE get. As such the issues of security associated with IE potentially could impact on the perception of the company’s new golden goose, Vista. There is no such thing as a 100% secure browser–so why take the chance? Drop the browser, and push the burden off on other browsers, while the company touts the security of it’s new and improved operating system.
You can see the seeds of IE’s growing lack of fit with Microsoft global strategy in the choice of Ray Ozzie as lead tech architect for the company. Ozzie is not a web man. His background is in distributed computing, not web services; his focus is going to be on applications built on Windows OS, based on Windows development architecture, and locking customers in to Windows OS–not the free for all that is the web.
Microsoft doesn’t need to prove a dominance in the browser space anymore. If it needed to do that, it would have released a more complete browser–and it would have issued new releases more regularly. It definitely wouldn’t have released the application so encumbered that one has to load a VPC image just to test new browser releases.
IE is an anchor now. It brings in no accolades to the company, and gets little respect. It costs money, though, and associates security problems with the Microsoft name. Solution: get people off of IE, and for those that stubbornly persist in using IE, put so many security roadblocks in the way that there is absolutely no chance the company can be held accountable for any security violation through IE.
Why else would the company release a new version of the browser with so many glaring and obvious incompatibilities with other browsers? Why else make it virtually impossible to visit any web site, without running against multiple warnings and blocks? Why else make it so difficult to test existing and new versions of the browser, that you have to run a completely new OS image?
Microsoft management must want people off of IE.
An update on my recent difficulty with Amazon: I received the product, but the company still showed it as ‘in process’, to be shipped in January. It took four emails and finally a phone call to get this one removed so that I wouldn’t get shipped another.
On the other hand, when we opened the second season of a TV show my roommate purchased (through my account), we found three duplicate disk 1′s and a missing disk 2. Since we had bought the series over two months ago, I wasn’t expecting Amazon to replace it, but they did–sending out a replacement season via 1 day shipping, and a pre-paid mailer to return the defective one. Now that was good customer service.
Ooops, spoke too soon. The item I’ve been trying to get removed has reappeared on my ‘to be shipped’ list.
Unlike that shown at Best Buy: Recently, a Missouri couple bought an expensive camcorder, but when they got it home and opened the box, they found a jar of pasta sauce instead. $1600.00 for a jar of pasta sauce was a bit much. The Best Buy store would not provide a replacement, and eventually Sony ended up replacing the camcorder because of the publicity. Sony did make a point that the only reason they stepped in was Best Buy wouldn’t–there was no way this item would be shipped as it was, because the camcorder comes from Japan, and that type of pasta sauce is rare in Japan.
According to another St. Louis Today story, this is typically the result of a ‘returned item’ scam, where a person buys a new item, replaces it with worthless items of equal weight, tapes up the box and returns the item for a refund. The store’s employees don’t have the time (or don’t take the time) to ensure it is the proper item returned, and just restocks the item.
Many stores will make good when this happens, but I gather from a few of the more coherent entries in a discussion thread, Best Buy is not one of them. In fact, from the stories, I gather that Best Buy thinks if you sell something cheap enough, you don’t need to provide customer service. I’ve not had problems with Best Buy purchases, but I have returned an item and noticed that the customer service person did not check to ensure what I returned was the actual item. Before you ask, no it was not a camcorder.
A good rule of thumb seems to be if you’re making a closed box purchase at Best Buy, for yourself or as a present for someone else, you might want to open the box and check the contents before you leave the store. In fact this is good advice for buying more expensive electronics at any store: open the box, make sure everything is there before you leave the store. Oh, and try not to get arrested for having a big knife or box cutters along.
Another person in the thread mentioned about having problems with Sears. I stopped shopping at Sears when I read the story of the company sending a representative to a bankruptcy proceeding in order to demand that the used toaster and other items of this nature bought on a Sears credit card be returned.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon is running around to Web 2.0 conferences, hyping the companies new Web 2.0 offerings, such as S3. In the meantime, the company’s order system is failing. This is the Web 1.0 portion of the company–the one that puts bread and butter on the company’s table.
I ordered a PC audio switch so that I could plug in both headphones and speakers, and I get a notice that this is going to be delayed until January. However, when I go to cancel it, I’m told the item is in process of being shipped, and can’t be canceled. When I send an email, I’m told by customer service to disregard the shipping date listed with the item, because it’s shipping this week–November 14th. I’m also told:
However, if you do not recieve(sic) your package on November 17, 2006, or
do not want this package anymore, you may of course return this to
us for a full refund.
When I don’t receive my package on Friday, I’ll be sure to send it back.
What is the problem on this shipment? It was an order with more than one item, and the rest was able to ship. This isn’t unusual, and in the past, the company’s systems could manage this. Now, though–it’s completely haywire.
When I look in order history, past orders show up duplicated or even triplicated. When I access the site with Firefox on my older TiBook, the Flash ‘snow on penguin’ causes my system to race so badly I have to shut the computer down. I just noticed the penguin is gone, so I have a feeling I wasn’t the only one who suffered from this ‘effect’.
I put in to be listed as author on several books, so that I can write up a note on each, but I’ve not had a response back. I like the concept of being able to personalize my book pages, as well providing useful information (such as where to find the book examples), but I can’t seem to get Amazon to respond to my request.
I like the company. I signed up for the Amazon Prime service, and have been very happy with the service up until a few months ago. Now it seems like the company just doesn’t care about it’s old “Web 1.0” customers.