Wednesday, January 8, 2003

Downloaded and installed the new Mozilla 1.3 Alpha browser today. A nice new feature: a little New button on the tab bar that lets you create a new tab without Ctrl-T or going to the menu. Tabbed browsing is the way to go. I love Opera's MDI interface, as browsing the web is a multiple-focus thing: one link leads to three others leads to... a whole bunch of windows. Tabbed interfaces are a great way to keep it under control. However, I hope the Moz team will consider a way to save a set of tabs on demand - I'd love the ability to save a "research set" of links all at once. They have the feature on startup to load a set of pages, but Opera' ability to "save a window set" still has them beat. I love innovation and competition in browsers for real features!!! 6:31:54 PM    comment []

SUVs Deemed "Uncool". Consumers are finding several reasons to rethink these gas guzzlers. [The Motley Fool] SUVs are uncool. For people who transport bricks and tools, they're cool. A mob of soccer kids, even. But a solo commuter on a highway to work, uncool. It seems like most of the traffic accidents I see in New Hampshire involve difficult road conditions (rain, snow, fog), aggressive driving, high-speed, and SUVs. Three tons and four wheel drive mean nothing to black ice. Good riddance. People who guzzle gas support our dependence on the oil industry, foreign oil, instability of foreign countries, and perhaps terrorism. (Okay, terrorism is a reach, almost as bad as the current administration's anti-drug commercials. Nobody's buying them, either.) Not very All-American, is it? 3:54:53 PM    comment []

Tina Gasperson's review of Mandrake 9.0 is interesting for the lack of technical detail. Are we becoming so inured to the challenges of installation, or is it that changing distributions has become as easy as changing desktop backgrounds? It's wonderful to see that many distributions (RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake) are easy to install and use. But the breadth and richness of the desktop has to be matched with depth as well. In several cases, I've been greeted with the equivalent of "I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave" when trying to configure a NIC or Samba or users, and when the GUI tool stops, there isn't a lot of help available. The Answers Are Out There, and I'm not hesitant to Google an error message or RTFM the HOWTOs and FAQs, but I like to think my resourcefulness is beyond that of the "average" user. We still have a way to go to integrate the ease of the GUI with the depths of control Linux offers. 10:51:47 AM    comment []

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