The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!

How cool can it get. On the very first day at office you get to do things that you just simple love doing?

The Case : A page is displayed with a certain width in IE. But is taking the whole width in Fx … icon smile The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!

Sounds familiar ? They where about to tag it as an Fx bug. Wait a sec!!! That’s not a BUG in Fx. Its just the way Fx is handling things. Pop in some things i read at Joel’s blogMartian Headsets. Voila!!! all agree that its not a bug… icon smile The Case of a Firefox Bug!!! . I’m happy, they are happy … icon smile The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!

Here is my simple explanation :

Its all with the implementation difference of the two browsers.

In US you drive on the right side of the road. Hence all cars are left-hand drive.

Bring the same car to UK/India where we drive on the left side of the road, things seem to be a bit mixed up. You car is not buggy nor is the law in place. Cars are always designed to place the driver towards the center of the road. in UK it has to be the right side of the car, but in US it has to be the left side. There is no way out.200px Orange McLaren F1 interior The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!

Why is there this problem? Coz all the countries doesnt have the same traffic rules. They have some basic guidelines in place and have the law built around it to match them. Simple!!!

To solve these confusions. Own a McLaren F1 car. It has a 3-seat setup, with the driver in the center. You never will have problem again. Just that you would have to be filthy rich .. icon smile The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!

Should You Download on June 17th?

180x150 02 Should You Download on June 17th?

Bruce Almighty, the movie starts of with Bruce, a TV Reporter, asking an old woman, who owns a Patisserie -

“So tell us mama, why make Buffalo’s biggest cookie?”

“Well, man from the health department say he find rat pellet in store. I say no is big chocolate chip. So we close store down, clean up, and make big cookie for to bring back customers”

I see no difference in that and this -

Come June 17th and there is going to be this multitude of people from around the world, who are just going to download Mozilla Firefox v 3.0. Why? Just because they are attempting to set a world record on the maximum downloads of a single software in 24hrs. What a creative reason to set a record?

So what is so great about this download spree that the guys at Mozilla are hyping about? Does the people who download it get a free mug every day for the rest of their life? Or is it something like the spam mail, ‘If you dont download Fx in the next 24 hours, your system will be infected by a deadly strain of I love Fx virus!!!‘.Its all for the sake of a record and damn publicity!!!

I use Fx and its not that i wont be using 3.0. Its a great browser and i’m sure just like the way it has changed my browsing experience, it has done for millions. The plugin support is amazing. To download it on that particular day is a personal choice. I agree. But just because you like a piece of software doesnt mean that you need to join a drive just to download it.

The way i see it, is as a smart marketing strategy. If they are really as good at the cookie that they sold, then why do they need such a drive. If a product is good, people who use it becomes the biggest marketers for it. They spread the word and the number of people who are using it expands. Why does Fx3.0 need such a drive? Fx2.0 was brought in with a big bang. But it suffered as it began to eat up memory. A normal session of Fx2.0 with 3-4 tabs open is enough to consume 10s of MB of RAM.

Memory is cheap, i agree. But that doesn’t mean that an application can take up as much memory as it desires. I’m not too good at judging as to what is wrong. But can say that the memory management was poor in Fx2.0. At the time when Fx2.0 was released people with normal browsing habits found that the systems slogged badly, Windows and Linux alike. They opted to move out. Intermittent releases didn’t solve the version either. How annoying is it when you get a new version to download every couple of weeks?

Fx3.0 is hailed to be faster and secure. The Release Candidates a.k.a Beta are better than Fx2.0.

… As several of the linked posts below accurately reported, we’ve decided to add one more beta in order to make further improvements in the areas of polish, performance, memory, and overall quality … [from Mozilla: For the Record]

The question remains, are they still the same old Patisserie reopen by making a big cookie, after the Health Dpt. shut’em down?

Windows 7 – First Thoughts

I will try not to be too much biased against Windows. But will like to point out what is wrong.

Hearing the news of the Demo/Preview/Debut of Windows 7 at D6 conference by Microsoft VP Julie Larson-Green, my first reaction was, Oh NO not again!!!

fp  fp  fp  vista2bp81 Windows 7   First ThoughtsI had my concerns. Microsoft has been stealing the show with its sleeky looks and publicity. If there is somebody at the market that can sell a rickety old-bus just by repainting it, its Microsoft.

Though all the other OS-es has evolved with age, windows simply refuses to budge more or less. The system requirements just to run a basic version of their latest OS takes more than twice the power that is required to run the latest Open Source OS. The fact remains that will less overhead the Open Source counterpart gives the looks and the WOW-ness.

How far can they drive along by just adding the new features without correcting the basic problems.

XP came and by the time people got adjusted to the response time, reaction time and usability, Vista was born. Now why the hell do i have to go for double the configuration for a new OS. Then again i will be doing the same things but that is going to add another transition phase in my life. From my own personal experience, the very simple task of setting an IP which took 4-5 clicks in XP, took me 5-10min in Vista just to figure out how to get the Properties window. Though basic functionality of an OS that the user looks for needs to be kept the same across versions, Microsoft fails to comply.

If the new version is going to be more user friendly than its previous one, why do you still need to pack the age old Win-98 looks with XP? They need to realize what the other OS-es in the market are doing different to keep things abreast with feature improvements, usability and performance.

At this point they just need to stop stuffing in features into an OS. It more or less looks like a huge american burger. A bite at one end will have half of the things falling out of the other end. By the time you get used to the new tasty burger in comes a new version double the size.

Tete-a-tete with CTO of Xerox

scobleizer tv Tete a tete with CTO of Xerox

Scobleizer has done this video, a talk with the CTO of Xerox, Sophie Vandebroek at Palo Alto Research Center.

She has talked about some really interesting things.

Xerox as i knew was just about making ‘xerox’ copies. The term Xerox has now become synonymous to make a copy. But the real Xerox is into many more fields like Biomedical, clean water, etc.

She says, “Its fun to work in Xerox because we create the Future, Today!!!” and “We no longer makes copiers…”. WOW!!!