October 15th, 2003
I don’t think this page existed before today’s major releases. Interesting to see Mozilla 1.5 in the comparison chart. I haven’t used the web browser in the Mozilla suite since Phoenix 0.4 and it surprises me that it doesn’t have configurable toolbars and the bookmark panel already.
Anyway, gimmicky as that chart may seem, there really is no reason to use IE in this day and age unless you’re forced to, either by circumstances at work or just because you were born a masochistic Microsoft crony, or because some of the following reasons:
- You’ve never heard of Mozilla Firebird - “The Best Browser, Bar None”. Yes it may sound corny and somewhat unbelievable, but take my word for it - it’s true.
- You think it’s cool and “in” to use IE because everyone you know is using it - hint: it’s not cool, it’s definitely not “in”, and you’re probably mixing with the wrong people. Unless, of course, you’re one of the following people: Microsoft employees, politicians, lawyers, masochists.
- You like getting those popup or pop-under ads because you actually click them. Maybe you find them exciting. Like how you find any new advertisements with David Beckham in it exciting :p. Popup blocking? No thanks, I like my popups fast and pornographic.
- You find that having many IE windows open makes you look busy. Your boss sometimes looks over your shoulder.
- You prefer obscure error messages when the JavaScript for a website has errors. Who needs a JavaScript console that actually spews out helpful error messages? In fact, you must think fellow web developers wusses when they use Venkman - the JavaScript debugger for Mozilla-based browsers to debug their JavaScript. I’ll just use my extreme debugging skillz of being able to guess what is wrong by looking at every line of code, thank you.
- You welcome websites which install a new toolbar for you, or set your homepage to their site without asking you. You believe that is the Ultimate user experience a website can provide. Anything which deprives you of that experience should never ever be installed on your system. Non-invasive surfing is an alien concept to you.
- You think tabbed-browsing is just some kind of weird anti-Microsoft “web-browsing paradigm” that actually makes you lose productivity instead of gain any. Why would I want tabbed browsing for anyway? One webpage, one new window is your philosophy. After all, I have lots of RAM.
- You haven’t heard of “find as you type“. Ctrl-F, type in search term, click “Find next” is all you know, and you’re reluctant to try any of that new-fangled stuff that oh they say would speed up your searching.
- You enjoy getting Windows updates (that is, if you use Windows). Getting the latest security patches for IE vulnerabilities makes you feel like a geek superior.
- You are a new computer user and don’t know how to install programs - your son/daughter showed you how to use IE the first time you got on the Internet.
Anyone reading this has any other reasons please to speak up so I can add to this list :).
October 15th, 2003
Have you seen the beta version of the new Mozilla website? It’s pretty! It’s tableless! If you hover over the form elements at the top right, you’ll notice that they take advantage of the :focus pseudo-class that works in Mozilla browsers (it doesn’t work in IE). And the mini-tabs for the navigation bar at the top are neat too. Ah finally a nice-looking face for the Mozilla Foundation - something I can show converts-to-be without having to hide the ugly-as-my-mug website. Although the current one is pretty decent, but it isn’t really that sleek.
Great job Mozilla.org webmaster, whoever you are!
Update: I found out soon after posting that the person behind the redesign was none other than Dave Shea, that guy whose blog mezzoblue is one of my favorite reads (thanks to Kyrah for pointing that out too). Dave has made some entries on his thoughts behind his mozilla.org redesign here and here.
October 15th, 2003
Mozilla Firebird 0.7 has been released! Just a quick entry because I’m at school right now.
Thunderbird 0.3 has also been released and so too Mozilla 1.5.
I think as I’m writing this they’re updating the website.
Update: I just had to post this even when I was on campus - I was actually visiting the releases directory now and then while doing my work because I knew it was going to be released soon. I’m such a nerd ;)
October 13th, 2003
Anyone remember or even actually heard of the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks? That was my first ever contact with the world of medieval fantasy which made me the big fan of the fantasy genre that I am now. I remember that it was back when I was in primary school (or elementary school if you prefer) that my then best friend introduced me to this thing called gamebooks and hey, you know, Lone Wolf is the best. It wasn’t long before I bought my first Lone Wolf gamebooks. I even remember clearly I bought Book 4: Chasm of Doom and Book 5: Shadow on the Sand - that was about 13 years back.
I don’t think I really loooked back - I’ve most of the Lone Wolf gamebooks up to the Lone Wolf Grandmaster series, when I outgrew gamebooks and converted to reading fantasy novels. I never left Lone Wolf though as I continued to read the novelized version of Lone Wolf called the Legends of Lone Wolf series. Unfortunately, the series was prematurely terminated at book 12, which left me high and dry. I even wondered if something had happened to the author. To this day I don’t know what happened, but I surmise it’s due to publisher difficulties. It was an excellent series - I like to think that it was the reason behind my good English result at the GCE ‘O’-levels.
Well, so that was quite a bit of personal history that isn’t very interesting, so I’ll cut to the chase. For Lone Wolf fans, you’d be interested to know of Project Aon if you don’t already. I came across the site recently with my StumbleUpon toolbar. Project Aon offers free online versions of the Lone Wolf gamebooks (currently up to book 14) and there are plans to include the Freeway Warrior series (also a good gamebook series!) also by Joe Dever. There’s even a StatsKeeper script that keeps track of your stats, inventory, experience points and stuff like that. Don’t worry about the legality - the books are donated free by Joe Dever himself. As for the books themselves, they’re full reproductions of the books only you have the convenience of clicking a link to go to, say, section 333, instead of having to flip the pages.
A big thank you to Joe Dever for his generosity and to the Project Aon staff for their dedication!
October 10th, 2003
This one’s pretty neat because it’s so damn unbelievable:
If you don’t believe it, use a color picker tool (like Color Picker) or crop out the 2 squares with a graphics program.
Source: Edward H. Adelson’s Checkershadow Illusion with explanation
Comparing Mozilla Firebird with other browsers
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