Farsong Blog-o-Matic

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Of course it's going to give me an error; I'm not even using a Gecko-based browser!


• And speaking of the webkit base, “Firefox seems to think they've built a better browser than Safari.”


I didn't download Firefox to-day. Mostly, this was due to the fact that everyone kept telling me to do it, and that made me not want to do it. When someone tells me to do something, I immediately don't want to do it.

Well, that, and the fact that the actual execution of Firefox's GUI on OSX, while better than 2.5's, is still sub-par. In fact, it's downright ugly and doesn't even use Cocoa! That's on top of the odd behaviour of the address bar, which also doesn't follow OSX's normal GUI standards.

Opera is no better, either — they both have pseudo-aqua interfaces that don't conform closely to OSX; while that's fine on systems like Windows where every application has a different GUI, and nothing conforms or looks like it belongs together — but OSX is well-designed in the fact that it actually tries to be uniform throughout both the OS's own windows and third-party applications. While I do bemoan the loss of both the pinstripes and the brushed metal, OSX has outgrown its pinstripes, and the system that had three different interfaces (Pinstripes, Brushed Metal, and Unified) in 10.4 has become unified into one standard visual interface in 10.5.

The third reason is because Safari is faster, both when loading and when rendering both pages and Javascript. Webkit is simply a far smaller engine. And I'm beginning to find that every processor cycle is valuable, with a slowly-aging computer, and Safari is simply lighter on its feet than Firefox. Plus, it has break-away tabs.


Though, I did hear that Internet Explorer baked Firefox a nice cake.

I'm impressed. Microsoft has gotten its act together.

I've just been playing around with Microsoft's IE 7, beta 2. It's actually quite nice. It's a big change from IE 6 (deemed the 8^th worst tech product).

I heard that Microsoft had released a beta version of IE, but I didn't think much of it—I have a PowerMac (as opposed to one of the newer Intel ones—a matter I hope to soon remedy) and I run OSX, so Safari is my browser of choice. Mac OS was left in the metaphorical dust of IE technologies with the buggiest browser ever: IE 5. The thing is a joke, and breaks pages left and right. I really pity any Mac user still out there with that browser. Perhaps it was good in its time, but that time is past—there are plenty more worthy browsers for Mac.

While I didn't leap at the chance to check out IE 7 beta (I would have to use Windows), while I have been working on computers, the thought crossed my mind: I should at least take a look at IE 7.


The app (should I say “program”?) is actually very nice-looking, inheriting a lot of its design from the still-pending Vista. The interface is a lot more stream-lined, even eliminating the menu-bar. The interface is overall quite clean (though, to Mac users, this sort of design will be nothing new). The address bar even goes as far as to include a Google search box (not an MSN one, proving the Googleplex's ubiquity!).

A good two years after tabbed-browsing went mainstream, IE finally acknowledges its existence. Of course, Microsoft did it right, too. IE's execution of the tabbed interface is stellar, akin to that of WebKit-based Shiira's “Tab Exposé”; clicking the “Quick Tabs” tab (or pressing Ctrl+Q—a scary prospect for a Mac user) yields a window filled with thumbnails of the current tabs, to keep track of the open tabs.

However, with multiple tabs open, the tab bar can get a little cluttered, especially on a smaller screen (around 1024x768); IE ends up hiding the tabs, much in the same way as Safari and Firefox (I've found that Opera's wrap-around feature for the tabbed-browsing is a lot nicer).

IE also features support for RSS feeds, and a rudimentary RSS reader for subscribing to feeds that puts Firefox's “Live Bookmarking” feature to shame. The RSS aggregator doesn't have the OS-level integration Safari has, though the up-coming Vista is supposed to have RSS integration built-into the OS, to a greater extent than OSX.

Overall, the browser seemed snappy and responsive to the rudimentary browsing I did, though I was using a laptop with rather low RAM content (a mere 512 Mb, with the shared Video memory bringing it down to a paltry 448) and the execution on the part of Microsoft is stellar. I might just have found a new browser for the PC.

And if this is any indication of how Redmond can get its act together, I'm excited for Windows Vista has in store.

IE really deserves a second look.

It's Friday, isn't it? I have a feature, but not much in the way of drawings.

I went to Best Buy to-day, to get a new flash drive, as my old one … bit the dust. I also looked for a new set of earbuds, as I am rather hard on those sets that I have owned. I actually like the earbuds for listening to at night; mostly, it's the BBC I listen to at nights. I'm notoriously hard on these earbuds, and they are also rather infamous at having bad sound and not fitting properly. They're more comfortable for sleeping on, though; that's their only redeeming quality.

An odd thing of note, the new 1 Gb Flashdrive doesn't draw as much power as the old one, enabling me to actually plug it into the keyboard without overdrawing current. The keyboard is only USB 1.1, though. The new one has one chip of 1 Gb flash memory, while the old one had two 512 chips. I also think that I might be able to fix the old one with a little bit of soldering and a cut-apart USB cable. I'll need a soldering iron, though, and some way to test the wires. I named the new one “Otto,” after Otto von Bismark. Yeah, I'm probably insane. The now-deceased one was named “Elroy.”

Also, I got a new game. I told myself that if it were there at Best Buy, I would get it. Specifically, it's Tales of Phantasia, released for GBA. It's really quite fun, and reminds me of a cross between Zelda: Link to the Past (possibly the hardest game ever), and ChronoTrigger. I think I like the battle system more than Final Fantasy's system, and the game is excellent fun. If you like RPGs, this is a game you should consider getting.


Now, onto other things.

In the past two weeks, I have tried three new, different browsers.

Now, I'm not going to pit each browser against each other one, but I will run through pros and cons of each. It's also mostly-relevant for PC-using people, too.


Feature: Browser Roundup
( Feature: Browser Roundup )


And, to close, one really cool but completely pointless thing: the ASCII Movie Player. It plays quicktime movies in Terminal as ASCII text. Awesome yet completely pointless! Yay for Unix.

I have decided to change browsers. Again.

This time, trying out Opera. I'm actually quite pleased with the responsiveness, and the fact that there are a lot of built-in features, such as Mouse Gestures. I had forgotten about mouse gestures, but they're really quite nice.

The browser feels a little clunkier than Safari, but it's quick at loading pages, and doesn't break as many pages. It's on par with Firefox, but comes with more built-in features. Firefox, of course, has extensions, but those are extra and often increase memory footprint to an ungodly size. I'm going to stick with Opera for a few days and see how I like it.


I really love the rain. I'm glad to be here on the west side of Washington; the weather is cloudy and rainy and brisk. As people, we are conditioned to think only of sunny days as good, not rainy ones. If anything, I actually prefer the rainy ones. First, for the smell: rain is a sharp, crisp, clean, and sweet smell. Second, it makes things green. Third, it makes everything misty, and the mountain-ranges and horizon cannot be seen. Fourth, it is better for photography, as the cloud-cover diffuses the light from the sun; indirect light is better for photography (which is why, to compensate for direct light, I use a flash for photography in the sun).