The Browsers

A long time ago a then young company had come up with this awesome browser a window into another world. Everyone who saw it was entranced with what they saw including things they had never dreamt to be possible.

They had developed this browser on a platform that almost everyone had and could use. Now when the platform creator found out about this new browser thing they decided it made perfect sense and that such a thing should be included as a basic part of the platform so they made their own browser.

The company who had made the first browser now had competition but the new browser wasn't as good so they didn't worry too much they just kept making theirs better.

It didn't take long for the creator of the first browser to get all puffed up thinking the browser on it's own was better than the platform it was built on and soon declared to take over the platform and make everything else on it obsolete by making it's browser the foundation of everything on the platform. Let's just make the browser the platform.

Well the platform maker didn't like that to much. This was a threat to everything they had done so they took took the step to do just what the creator of the first browser had said they would do, only to make their browser the new foundation of the platform. It would be the new browser and the new platform. Everyone could build on this new platform and could write code which could be used everywhere and there wouldn't be a threat anymore.

Soon people were using the new browser more than the first because it was now included in the platform. The creator of the old browser tried to keep up but the new one was everywhere. No one had to go look for the old one to add it anymore so it was loosing ground. The creator of the old fought back against the new taking them to court. But now the new browser was so much a part of the platform that they couldn't remove it without destroying the platform.  So the creator of the first mostly gave up, handing the code to volunteers to keep it going.

Now that this threat was gone the platform creator didn't need to keep working on their browser quite as much, it could now be a stable piece of it's platform that didn't need to change so they stopped working on it and with the lawsuit on their heads they couldn't really do anymore of what they had planned to do to move everything to be written as the browser as the platform.

So they decided to start from scratch with the platform and rewrite it with a new language that was similar to what the browser used but was written in a way that was more uniform and could work better with the platform. Who needs a browser when your platform can be what was on the other side of the browser?

But as they worked on it they just kept adding and adding to it and then delaying and delaying it. It was getting better but it was nowhere near where they needed it to be to be what the old platform.

Those volunteers by now, had been working hard on the old browser, they had it up to the level and beyond of the new one. And they started to convince many to start using theirs instead and people were using it.

While deep in trying to work out the flaws of the new platform the platform maker looked up to see that the browser they had made was starting to loose ground, and they also started to realize their new platform wasn't coming together all that smooth. So they put aside the new platform and picked back up the old one and worked to make it better, while they also did their best to fix their browser which had stagnated.

But that uniform vision of a platform based on a different all encompassing browser is still the vision, it will just take more time to slowly dish out.

The revamped platform wasn't quite what was originally envisioned but it was better than what they almost ended up with. The new browser was now somewhere along the lines of being as good as the one the volunteers had done but it still needed more work.

Then comes along a late comer huffing and puffing and screaming foul play, you can't make your platform a browser! I won't be able to play! His call goes to the courts and the courts decide the platform must provide a choice in which browser is used.

Again another new platform and a new browser from the volunteers and the platform maker. And the new platform has to conform to the new rules while the others wag their tongues and point laughing.

Now the platform maker and the volunteers were in competition neck and neck with the little guy puffing up from behind, when a slick new guy steps in and looks around, he decides to make a browser of his own; He starts by pulling together pieces of other browsers that other volunteers had created and then makes it faster than any of the competition.

The two who where fighting neck and neck over features had to stop, the new guy could over take them if they weren't careful, so they all four are now racing to see who has the best.

Then while pulling ahead the new guy gets all smug and declares that his is the best browser of them all. Hey, it's even better than the platform so why do we need a platform at all? Why don't we just make the browser the platform?

So this new guy goes off and pulls together from among the works created by more volunteers, a new platform; one made almost entirely out of his new browser and one that doesn't work with the everything built on the other platform, except for what can be viewed through a browser. Even the other browsers won't work with this new platform, everything must be the browser.

Now we end up with volunteers with a browser which relies on other platforms and a platform maker with a platform which is forbidden from integrating a browser into the platform having to compete with someone who is doing what the other two had been trying to do in the first place.

We are still in the midst of the battle, who knows what will happen. The playing field is changing and the rules are no longer fair. It's certain that something is going to happen, what I do not know. But it will be an interesting race to see what comes of it.

But should the browser be the platform?

My Hope for the Future of Laptops

Way back when Natural Keyboards were all of the rage and gelled wrist rests were new, I was looking at the advancements in human interface input devices and started thinking about what my dream interface would be.
At the time there was this cool keyboard I saw advertised in the gaming magazines which had removable templates which would give you a themed lit keyboard. I was fascinated with it, what if instead of templates you could stick one of those really thin screens in there? Wouldn't that be cool? And what if it had some sort of touch interface to it? What if you could have programmed keys that you could reprogram and move around anyway you want? What if you could even raise the surface of the keyboard screen so you could touch type with it? Wouldn't that be cool?
The Idea I ended up with would have packaged it all up into a two monitor laptop with one defined as a screen and the other a keyboard. Then there would be a stylus for interfacing with the screen. You could type on the keyboard screen then pop up a different keyboard scheme for gaming, even have two sets of arrow keys for letting two gamers play at once.
I seem to remember making a little tiny mockup of the idea though I drew the keyboard using pencil and it had a track ball drawn on it as they were all the rage back then.
Later I started wondering why the screen should even be opaque? what if the screen was transparent and you could selectively make parts opaque or transparent/translucent at varying degrees. Then, what if you could even selectively make the screen reflective so a window could act a a mirror? Wouldn't that be cool?
Over time it has been fascinating to watch and see the advancements that have occurred to bring it closer to reality.
Screens have been getting thinner and thinner, more efficient and usable. LCDs now come in color and You can now look at from multiple angles. The advancements in OLED screens and color electronic ink display displays makes me drool at the possibilities if they could just be combined.
The advancements in touch to the point that it is now built into major operating systems around and with support for multi-touch it makes the dream even more interesting.
The only thing missing today is implementing a way to raise the surface of a transparent material so that it could be used to provide tactile clues and feedback for touch typers. [Update: This Brail E-book Looks Cool!]
I was excited when I found out OLPC was thinking along the keyboard screen for the XO-2. Microsoft working on the Courier tablet is excitedly similar as well.
Awhile back I read about a Sony VAIO laptop which has a transparent screen.
Now if the displays could also be 3D…

Poor Mouse

Grr. It looks looks like my mouse is starting to wear out, the left click is beginning to not respond. This mouse has served me well for about three years and though it has visible signs of wear it will be sad should it die.

So it might be about time to look into buying a new one.  The Microsoft Bluetooth notebook mouse 5000 looks interesting. But I should do some shopping around to see what I can find. And wait to see if I can get a job soon…

Microsoft Security Essentials

Woo! Hoo! It's available!

I have been waiting for this for some time. At last Microsoft has released a free antivirus! You can go and pick it up now at:  http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

I've heard good things from the Beta; like it is supposed to be really light weight and it is supposed to be easy to use and unobtrusive. I'm uninstalling AVG right now and I'm installing Microsoft Security Essentials. Let's see how it goes!

Precision

I used to argue with my dad on the matter of precision. My dad is and engineer in education and personality as was his dad and his dad's dad and so on, so I inherited the mentality critical thinking and interest in mechanics, processes and technology of an that such a personality brings (Which sadly doesn't help with personal relationships:).

At one point I had decided I wanted to design my own game engine. I had decided I wanted to use the most precise decimal system I could find in 'cough' VB for storing the locations of points. In the process of designing the basics of the engine I tried to find pi to the most decimals that would fit in the desired unit. I had learned the 22/7 trick from my Drafting instructor but was completely unsatisfied with the accuracy of only 2 decimal points.

My dad asked why I thought I needed any precision beyond two decimal points; in the mechanical engineering world two or three decimals are usually considered accurate enough for almost any consumer products, as anything more precise makes little difference, and just the expansion and contraction of materials alone exceeds the difference such precision would bring. 

But I was using a computer and despite what the 1950s and the movie industry hope to tell you, computers are inherently inaccurate at least when it comes to trying to calculate decimal and floating point numbers.

If you use floats for storing points in a world you can move around in, you would find that the precision of the locations of points in the center of the world is quite high, but the farther away you move from the center the less precision you have because the whole number portion of the value is getting filled with the larger numbers sacrificing the precision and storage space of the decimal portion. So at the edge of a large map you could end up with unexpected gaps in your world.

Well, okay if you were to only use integers the gaps could be reduced, but when you want to try to copy the nature of your surroundings you might find you want more precision. The thought might come up to use fixed point, sure it could work but you would have to be very careful with your rounding and your geometry.  You also end up with geometry that can look a little blocky depending on the resolution of your values.

But I never got far enough along to be able to see any degradation. So now days, I've stopped caring. Well almost, when I go back and play with old geometry code I am still tempted to write everything as doubles rather than singles, but now I've learned to think processor capacity and the effects on speed too.

Photo Tags

There are two graphics applications I use on occasion which automatically scan through photos and identify faces. They are Google's Picasa and Microsoft's Windows Live Photo Gallery. They both have their own unique uses and they are both getting better, but every time I move to a different computer or install a new operating system I find myself doing the same thing all over again.

On my little network hard drive I have tens of thousands of photos must of which are of people. Right now I can remember who many of them are, some I have forgotten their names already, but I want to make sure I keep track of who the people are. I've started a few times tagging people and adding comments to pictures, but then I go on to another computer only to discover the information was stored on the first machine only.

Windows Live Photo Gallery has built in tagging of people which is nice, the auto identification could be improved however. The manual tagging is almost as good as FaceBook. Actually it would be nice to be able to sync to FaceBook and other accounts to help identify who someone is, as it is now the only option is a Windows Live account.

Picasa doesn't seem to be able to locate people using just the installed application, but it can when the photo is put online and the identification online is actually pretty good, but I don't want to put all of my pictures online, I don't have enough space available for that on my account for that and I'm not wiling to shell out to get more right now.

What I wish would happen is they would write the tags directly into the photo's metadata so that it travels with the photo. And it would be nice if they used a method that would be interoperable between applications so that you could identify someone in one application and it could be associated as the same person in another application. Okay, that might be a near impossible idea but it would sure be nice.

Safari Testdrive

Okay I decided to download Safari to add it to my testing tool belt. I'm writing this post from Safari now. It was definitely not designed for Windows. The resizing borders are missing, It feels naked like this. Eek! Give me my borders please! It also added a desktop Icon without an option to not install one. One of my pet Peeves. Off you go to hide in the Quick Launch.

One thing I noticed, that I do like, is that it seems to have some interaction with the OS, or at least other browsers. I started typing the address to get to this blog and it actually showed up in the list.

Gasp! The middle click worked! It opened a new tab! Shocking! coming from an Apple product. Okay now to test the Print Preview on my Blog. Something FireFox can't handle... Cool. It works about like Opera with Print Preview. that is good.

One of the first pages I had to try of course was the Recipe page I had been working on. And... It looks just the same in Safari as it does on Opera, FireFox, and Netscape. IE and Maxthon look a little different because of a little bit of an odd spacing issue, but I think it is cool that I don't need to change that design to get it to work is Safari.

The metallic grey interface is a little depressing. I really started to love the tan color of Windows XP Luna Blue. Vista's Black is depressing too though. I specifically went online searching for a Desktop Wallpaper with a little color in it, a few weeks ago just for that cause.

I think I will stick with IE as my choice of browser it still loads faster than any of the others and I have become comfortable with IE7. I will keep it on my tool belt though to test websites against.

More Browser Wars are acoming

Hmm. Apple has released a beta for their browser, Safari for Windows. I'm a little torn about it.

For one thing, in my own oppinion, Apple has never really gotten the hang of programming, quality software for Windows. I don't trust ITunes or QuickTime on PC for that reason.

But I am hopeful that if the rendering is identical on PC as it is on Mac, that I won't have to buy a Mac to test web pages for Mac. Wouldn't it be great to have "One Machine to test them all! Mhaw ha, ha, hah. Oh."

On the side of competition, I don't really know how much good it will do. It will certainly be something to watch.

On a side note to the subject, apparently hackers have, within two hours or release, come up with ways to compromise a system running Safari for Windows. It is after all only Beta.

I'm a little hesitant to download it yet. But from the screenshots I have seen, the style they are touting is; the very style I have grown so annoyed at with Itunes and QuickTime. I am one of those that don't like it when someone arbitrarily skins their application for "Cool" not taking into consideration that "I want uniform conformity to my system styling". Brushed metal simply doesn't look as good on every Theme.

You know, I think I am starting to see a trend to Apple's products of late. They are building up a reputation for high end hardware more and more... They are in the process of switching from Motorola to the more Windows friendly Intel Chipsets... Their newest Systems now run Windows Vista... They are starting to port software to Windows... They are making fun of PCs.. Wait that one doesn't quite fit.

Okay I foresee the day Microsoft will make the OS of the Mac. Apple will make applications and high end hardware, as well as their now favorite mobile hardware. Well, who realy knows, only time will tell.

Okay, enough of my opinion.

Junkware

After a little searching around, I finally found a decent replacement for QuickTime. It’s called QuickTime Alternative. If set up right, it allows you to play QuickTime files such as Mov files in Media Player.

QuickTime has been one of those pains in the side pieces of software from the first time I ever installed it. The first time I needed it, it came as part of a game, and it overwrote the newer version of QuickTime that was already installed, thus corrupting it. Since then I have tried to avoid installing and using it. And pretty much every time I have had to use it since, I have found the player even slower, with more features I don't want to use. With the addition of ITunes messing up the registry and my files it has become even more of a nuisance. I don't buy music; I hardly even listen to music. I don't need ITunes.

The next most annoying media player is Real Audio Player. With its ads and spamtacular registration Its hardly worth installing

For it there is also a codec Real Alternative for Real Audio Player, but it doesn’t work with steaming audio, which is what you would want Real audio for in the first place. So it doesn’t seem to be worth it yet.

This time I’ve decided to keep my computer as clean of junk software as I can.

Other popular junk software I’m trying to avoid? Well, Let’s see: WinZip, QuickTime, ITunes, RealAudio, WinRar. Oh yeah and Symantec’s antivirus. I have had enough headaches because of it, I don’t want it.