Does Safari work somewhere? anywhere?



  • Is it just me or what? I tried Safari several times on my Windows XP computer, the first time when I read about it in the newspaper and while it was still beta. Last time just now with version 3.1. Installation goes through flawlessly. Then I launch it - and stay stuck on a bright white screen. Well, there is a menu on top, and it tries to open the default site from within somewhere inside apple.com. Won't do it. Then I try some other page: won't do. The address bar starts to cover in blue from left to right, but somewhere around the first third, it stops moving. At least I can still close and uninstall it.

    I can't believe this is happening. This is the first and only piece of software that fails so miserably on my computer. IE never fails me, much less Firefox. WTF?



  • I've had no problems here with 3.0.4. Gonna try 3.1 now.



  • Just updated to 3.1. No problems here.



  • I just downloaded and installed it. I'm writing this post using it so yes, I think it's safe to say that it works somewhere. The only WTF i noticed was the setup deleting the install files after it ran.

    Now let's see how the editor mangles my post..



  • Downloaded it to see why my website wasn't working correctly in it (was asp.nets fault), installation was fine but in the 15 minutes or so I was using it it crashed 4 times. I wasn't impressed.



  • Do you happen to have some Internet Security suite running and forgot that you once told it not to allow connections from applications named Safari? Because it seems very odd to me that Safari wouldn't be able to make a normal http connection on a default XP installation. 



  • @Alex Media said:

    Just updated to 3.1. No problems here.
     

    Will the next edition be Safari for Workgroups?



  • @shadowman said:

    @Alex Media said:

    Just updated to 3.1. No problems here.
     

    Will the next edition be Safari for Workgroups?

     

    Safari Bob.



  • @shadowman said:

    @Alex Media said:

    Just updated to 3.1. No problems here.
     

    Will the next edition be Safari for Workgroups?



  • @TGV said:

    Do you happen to have some Internet Security suite running and forgot that you once told it not to allow connections from applications named Safari? Because it seems very odd to me that Safari wouldn't be able to make a normal http connection on a default XP installation. 

    Not that I'm aware of. I am usually quite free with permissions for internet access. Firewall software can't do a good job of inhibiting it anyway...


  • @shadowman said:

    @Alex Media said:

    Just updated to 3.1. No problems here.
     

    Will the next edition be Safari for Workgroups?

     

    I think it'll be "Safari, so good".

     



  • @shadowman said:

    @Alex Media said:

    Just updated to 3.1. No problems here.
     

    Will the next edition be Safari for Workgroups?

    Depends on how fast the 3.0 version of Firefox is pushed through to release. If they wait too long, it may be named Safari Webkit Passes Acid3 While The Official Release of Firefox Still Doesn't Even Pass Acid2 So Nyaaah. (I'd love to see that show up in Software Update...)



  • @The Vicar said:

    Depends on how fast the 3.0 version of Firefox is pushed through to release. If they wait too long, it may be named Safari Webkit Passes Acid3 While The Official Release of Firefox Still Doesn't Even Pass Acid2 So Nyaaah. (I'd love to see that show up in Software Update...)


    Tell us again why we should care if a browser passes some aritrary set of tests?


  • @Aaron said:

    @The Vicar said:

    Depends on how fast the 3.0 version of Firefox is pushed through to release. If they wait too long, it may be named Safari Webkit Passes Acid3 While The Official Release of Firefox Still Doesn't Even Pass Acid2 So Nyaaah. (I'd love to see that show up in Software Update...)


    Tell us again why we should care if a browser passes some aritrary set of tests?
     

    Because those tests tell us how well a browser conforms to standards that no web designer works to, since IE doesn't conform!



  • @bstorer said:

    Because those tests tell us how well a browser conforms to standards that no web designer works to, since IE doesn't conform!

    The IE8 beta is [url="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html"]supposedly conforming to all web standards[/url] (in it's default state). Unfortunately, nothing works on it at the moment. Like it's too late to turn back now...



  • @Aaron said:

    Tell us again why we should care if a browser passes some aritrary set of tests?
     

    In general, if software passes a testing suite that provides it meets the published specs, it will be more likely to work correctly for you in real-world situations.

    I'm not really sure that this rule is all that applicable for ACID tests and browsers, since (a) the ACID suite gives disproportionate weight to obscure edge cases at the expense of common cases, and (b) on the web, there's no guarantee that real-world situations will be conformant to W3C specs anyway.

     



  • @bstorer said:

    Because those tests tell us how well a browser conforms to standards that no web designer works to, since IE doesn't conform!

    Actually, I was shocked to discover that a lot of "serious" sites are apparently no longer testing with IE. An associate of mine was trying to download some necessary documents from an official certifying group -- I won't tell you which one to preserve anonymity, but it was a "you must comply with this group to get a license to do your job" thing -- and IE would neither let him get all the documents nor print the ones he could get. He asked me for help, and after futzing with it for a while in IE (because everyone supports IE, right?) I downloaded Firefox out of desperation, and everything worked instantly and properly.

    As for "why the tests are important": a browser which is updated to comply with ACID tests will (a) eliminate a lot of "edge case" bugs, which can be important, and (b) reduce the amount of browser-specific code necessary for websites, which makes it more likely that people will work with that browser. If Safari requires 500 lines of custom code, nobody designing a complicated site will support it. If it requires 10, then its chances improve dramatically.

    Even IE is officially working towards compliance with ACID2, because (despite what some trolls say) the beancounters in Redmond have noticed the recent and significant downward trend in IE usage. (Of course, they may not actually bother to comply, now that they have officially announced the initiative -- in the eyes of Redmond, it's good enough to convince people that standards compliance will happen someday, without doing all the work of actually making it so...) And, of course, outside the US Firefox has been gaining ground with official installations, so if Microsoft doesn't produce a compliant browser, they're in danger of losing even more ground.



  • @The Vicar said:

    Actually, I was shocked to discover that a lot of "serious" sites are apparently no longer testing with IE. An associate of mine was trying to download some necessary documents from an official certifying group -- I won't tell you which one to preserve anonymity, but it was a "you must comply with this group to get a license to do your job" thing -- and IE would neither let him get all the documents nor print the ones he could get. He asked me for help, and after futzing with it for a while in IE (because everyone supports IE, right?) I downloaded Firefox out of desperation, and everything worked instantly and properly.
     

    One story does not "a lot" of sites make.  I know I have to switch semi-frequently because some website or another doesn't work in FF.  For example, I can't pay my American Express bill online using Firefox.  The site login only functions properly in IE. 



  •  @bstorer said:

    @The Vicar said:

    Actually, I was shocked to discover that a lot of "serious" sites are apparently no longer testing with IE. An associate of mine was trying to download some necessary documents from an official certifying group -- I won't tell you which one to preserve anonymity, but it was a "you must comply with this group to get a license to do your job" thing -- and IE would neither let him get all the documents nor print the ones he could get. He asked me for help, and after futzing with it for a while in IE (because everyone supports IE, right?) I downloaded Firefox out of desperation, and everything worked instantly and properly.
     

    One story does not "a lot" of sites make.  I know I have to switch semi-frequently because some website or another doesn't work in FF.  For example, I can't pay my American Express bill online using Firefox.  The site login only functions properly in IE. 

    Thats what happens when you have an organically grown system which nobody wants to comply with. (w3c)



  • And the question raises itself.  Why does Redmond care?  It's free (as in beer) software, and as far as I know, noone gets a penny regardless of whether I use Opera, FF, IE, or Safari.

    I understand that for Linux, it's a "warm fuzzy" thing, and the devs want people to use something they've created, so they gladly donate their time, but MS is a business.   



  • @belgariontheking said:

    And the question raises itself.  Why does Redmond care?  It's free (as in beer) software, and as far as I know, noone gets a penny regardless of whether I use Opera, FF, IE, or Safari.

    I understand that for Linux, it's a "warm fuzzy" thing, and the devs want people to use something they've created, so they gladly donate their time, but MS is a business.

    Duh, the web is the future of computering.  If Google introduced a web-based operating system tomorrow, Microsoft would be out of business by lunch.  Steve Ballmer knows this and he's doing everything in his power to destroy web standards.  As long as Microsoft can keep people locked into Internet Explorer, consumers will have to choose between forking their cash over to a convicted monopolist or getting Grandpa that operation for his large intestine.  Hopefully there will still be some of his intestine left by the time Safari becomes ACID3 compliant, but it's hard to say...

     

    That's why the Javascript is the future of secure webbing: no semi-colons. 



  • @bstorer said:

    For example, I can't pay my American Express bill online using Firefox.  The site login only functions properly in IE.
    I remember this being true at one point in the past, but I have not had any problems accessing AmEx using FF for over a year now (even from a freshly installed FF without any add-ons).



  • @belgariontheking said:

    Why does Redmond care? 

    i worked in a big company before. if their project is not successfull, project managers loose credibility, are not invited to company lunches and generally do not feel warm and fuzzy.

    they have been given IE and they are paid to care for/about/etc it. simply cogs in the machine.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    That's why the Javascript is the future of secure webbing:
     

    No, frames are the future of secure webbing ... They mediate securely ...




  • @Nelle said:

    No, frames are the future of secure webbing ... They mediate securely ...

    Your revisionist history has no place in a well-respected forum of academics such as The Daily WTF.  Frames were originally invented to "hold" different web pages in a single browser window.  They trapped the content and by extension enslaved all of webkind in their tentacled grasp.  Javascript liberated the frames, allowing them to interoprate freely, in a world without Class struggle.  Frames don't help you see the world until lenses are placed in them.  Javascript is that lens.  Javascript is peace.  Frames are slavery.  XHTML is strength. 



  • @Mithious said:

    Downloaded it to see why my website wasn't working correctly in it (was asp.nets fault), installation was fine but in the 15 minutes or so I was using it it crashed 4 times. I wasn't impressed.

    Yep. Same for me. And it violates all Windows UI rules I can think of, maybe apart "make the window rectangular":

    • The "close tab" button on the left of the tabs, while the "close application" button is on the right of the window
    • There is no visible hint you can click in the upper left corner and get the application menu
    • The right click highlights a word or a space just because you did the click on some text
    • The options dialog is not modal, you can browse while changing your preferences
    • The window title is centered
    • Doesn't give a damn about your system color scheme
    • No "OK" or "Cancel" button in dialogs
    • Right click menu is surprisingly short, no "refresh" or "back" positions
    • No "Apple" or "Safari" or whatever group in the Start menu. Just sits there, in main directory, like Office 97, along with Apple Software Update.
    Don't get me wrong, it fits well with MacOS X. But on Windows it's just wrong to do all of the above.


  • @morbiuswilters said:

    ...
     

    Um, have you read this?



  • @Kiss me I'm Polish said:

    Yep. Same for me. And it violates all Windows UI rules I can think of, maybe apart "make the window rectangular":

    • The "close tab" button on the left of the tabs, while the "close application" button is on the right of the window
    • There is no visible hint you can click in the upper left corner and get the application menu
    • The right click highlights a word or a space just because you did the click on some text
    • The options dialog is not modal, you can browse while changing your preferences
    • The window title is centered
    • Doesn't give a damn about your system color scheme
    • No "OK" or "Cancel" button in dialogs
    • Right click menu is surprisingly short, no "refresh" or "back" positions
    • No "Apple" or "Safari" or whatever group in the Start menu. Just sits there, in main directory, like Office 97, along with Apple Software Update.

    Don't get me wrong, it fits well with MacOS X. But on Windows it's just wrong to do all of the above.

    Be glad you can at least maximize the window.  I don't care for Safari on OS X or Windows and the number of Windows UI conventions it violates is obnoxious, but I was surprised they let you maximize the window because OS X has no such feature. 



  • @upsidedowncreature said:

    Um, have you read this?

    Yes, that's why I referenced it in my first post.  That and the follow-up were both full of lame Javascript puns.  Hint: "semi-colons" and "Class struggle".  There, I explained it and ruined the joke. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Duh, the web is the future of computering.  If Google introduced a web-based operating system tomorrow, Microsoft would be out of business by lunch.  Steve Ballmer knows this and he's doing everything in his power to destroy web standards.  As long as Microsoft can keep people locked into Internet Explorer, consumers will have to choose between forking their cash over to a convicted monopolist or getting Grandpa that operation for his large intestine.  Hopefully there will still be some of his intestine left by the time Safari becomes ACID3 compliant, but it's hard to say...
     

    I'm not sure exactly what you're smoking, but judging by the effect it's had on you, if it's not illegal, it should be.

    Or wait... have you been playing with SpectateSwamp's stones? 



  •  @morbiuswilters said:

    @upsidedowncreature said:

    Um, have you read this?

    Yes, that's why I referenced it in my first post.  That and the follow-up were both full of lame Javascript puns.  Hint: "semi-colons" and "Class struggle".  There, I explained it and ruined the joke. 

     

    Damn these cheap Chinese sarcasm detectors!


  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Your revisionist history has no place in a well-respected forum of academics such as The Daily WTF.  Frames were originally invented to "hold" different web pages in a single browser window.  They trapped the content and by extension enslaved all of webkind in their tentacled grasp.  Javascript liberated the frames, allowing them to interoprate freely, in a world without Class struggle.  Frames don't help you see the world until lenses are placed in them.  Javascript is that lens.  Javascript is peace.  Frames are slavery.  XHTML is strength. 
     

    I read a book, once, that states similar opinions, it starts something like this:  

    The tags shall control the means of rendering ...

     



  • @Rootbeer said:

    In [b]theory[/b], if software passes a testing suite that provides it meets the published specs, it will be more likely to work correctly for you in real-world situations.
     



  • @Rootbeer said:

    In [b]theory[/b], if software passes a testing suite that provides it meets the published specs, it will be more likely to work correctly for you in real-world situations.
     

    There. Fixed that for ya. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Duh, the web is the future of computering.  If Google introduced a web-based operating system tomorrow, Microsoft would be out of business by lunch.  Steve Ballmer knows this and he's doing everything in his power to destroy web standards.  As long as Microsoft can keep people locked into Internet Explorer, consumers will have to choose between forking their cash over to a convicted monopolist or getting Grandpa that operation for his large intestine.  Hopefully there will still be some of his intestine left by the time Safari becomes ACID3 compliant, but it's hard to say...

     

    That's why the Javascript is the future of secure webbing: no semi-colons. 

     

    Uhhh... Wrong. While the web is important, there will never be a "web-based operating system", and anybody who thinks there will be is an idiot. And, based on all of the FUD you keep trying to spread about MS, you're just another ignorant /.er who should just STFU until someone gives you a clue.

    A web-based OS won't work for so many reasons that they're not even possible to count. Show me a serious graphics shop trying to use PhotoShop via the web to do heavy graphics editing, or a movie studio creating something like Cars on a "web-based OS", or even a major accounting firm trying to keep all their customer's books across the web. Or the  person who is into any kind of serious gaming (WoW aside) playing with all of the latency provided by that web-based OS.

    Go on now. Do yourself a favor and be a good little boy, and go back to playing with the other script kiddies before you embarrass yourself even more in front of the grownups.



  • @KenW said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Duh, the web is the future of computering.  If Google introduced a web-based operating system tomorrow, Microsoft would be out of business by lunch.  Steve Ballmer knows this and he's doing everything in his power to destroy web standards.  As long as Microsoft can keep people locked into Internet Explorer, consumers will have to choose between forking their cash over to a convicted monopolist or getting Grandpa that operation for his large intestine.  Hopefully there will still be some of his intestine left by the time Safari becomes ACID3 compliant, but it's hard to say...

     

    That's why the Javascript is the future of secure webbing: no semi-colons. 

     

    Uhhh... Wrong. While the web is important, there will never be a "web-based operating system", and anybody who thinks there will be is an idiot. And, based on all of the FUD you keep trying to spread about MS, you're just another ignorant /.er who should just STFU until someone gives you a clue.

    A web-based OS won't work for so many reasons that they're not even possible to count. Show me a serious graphics shop trying to use PhotoShop via the web to do heavy graphics editing, or a movie studio creating something like Cars on a "web-based OS", or even a major accounting firm trying to keep all their customer's books across the web. Or the  person who is into any kind of serious gaming (WoW aside) playing with all of the latency provided by that web-based OS.

    Go on now. Do yourself a favor and be a good little boy, and go back to playing with the other script kiddies before you embarrass yourself even more in front of the grownups.

     

    Wow... I really thought he was kidding... Otherwise I would have been waist deep in the laying of flames...

    Hmmm was my humor detector on the fritz?


  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @KenW said:

    <flaming bullshit snipped>
     

    Wow... I really thought he was kidding... Otherwise I would have been waist deep in the laying of flames...

    Hmmm was my humor detector on the fritz?

    Agreed.  That was so obviously a joke.  Yet again KenW needs to be slapped upside the head. 



  • @KenW said:

    Uhhh... Wrong. While the web is important, there will never be a "web-based operating system", and anybody who thinks there will be is an idiot. And, based on all of the FUD you keep trying to spread about MS, you're just another ignorant /.er who should just STFU until someone gives you a clue.

    A web-based OS won't work for so many reasons that they're not even possible to count. Show me a serious graphics shop trying to use PhotoShop via the web to do heavy graphics editing, or a movie studio creating something like Cars on a "web-based OS", or even a major accounting firm trying to keep all their customer's books across the web. Or the  person who is into any kind of serious gaming (WoW aside) playing with all of the latency provided by that web-based OS.

    Go on now. Do yourself a favor and be a good little boy, and go back to playing with the other script kiddies before you embarrass yourself even more in front of the grownups.

    joke:  ============WHOOOOOOOSH!!!!========>>>>

     

    you:    O->--<



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    joke:  ============WHOOOOOOOSH!!!!========>>>>

     

    you:    O->--<

     

    Phew.. I thought I was losing my humor comprehension skills. Of course, I would fit in a lot better around here... but whatever.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    And the question raises itself.  Why does Redmond care?  It's free (as in beer) software, and as far as I know, noone gets a penny regardless of whether I use Opera, FF, IE, or Safari.

    I understand that for Linux, it's a "warm fuzzy" thing, and the devs want people to use something they've created, so they gladly donate their time, but MS is a business.   

    It's because Microsoft's business model is based almost entirely around consumer lock-in. (I'm not saying they're evil for it; it's just a fact.) If you use Windows as a platform to run OpenOffice.org and Firefox, then you could quite easily switch from Windows to Linux, or to Solaris, or (if you're buying new hardware anyway, which people generally do every few years) to the Mac. Microsoft wants you to use products which run only on Windows, or (failing that) which they can charge a lot for. (That's why the only non-Windows versions of IE were discontinued years ago -- it wasn't for Windows and it made no money.) So Microsoft's ideal is for you to run Windows in order to use Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, and Windows Internet Explorer with ActiveX controls, and to program using Windows-centric APIs such as DirectX and .NET. Each program they can provide to Windows users is an extra piece of job security for Windows, and the dominance of Windows guarantees a market for those programs. If either half of the equation slips, their business plan threatens to fall apart.

    This is relevant to the discussion because of how they use IE to do consumer lock-in. At one time, they pushed for custom IE-only elements in HTML, and "unique" (i.e. WTF-y) rendering behaviors within IE. This worked well when IE was a young product with new versions coming out relatively frequently (four major versions in just over 2 years!), because it meant that web designers could get extra features by developing for (and only testing in) Windows IE. But three things have changed since then which make this an unsuccessful strategy.

    First off, there are now multiple versions of IE with significant market share. Right now, there are two big ones, IE 6 and 7. (5 is used by a small enough minority that it is safe to ignore.) Web designers who want to take advantage of "unique" features must either test in both -- because IE 6 and 7 don't render complicated pages identically -- or else resign themselves to having a site which doesn't even work in all the currently-major versions of IE. If they do the former, they might as well test in Firefox (or Opera, or Safari...) as well; it isn't that much of an extra hassle. And if they do the latter, then they're building a site which works on less than half the computers on the Internet. Not a good choice.

    Also, there is now a formal standard for what constitutes valid HTML. Very few sites pass validation, but even so the existence of a standard has improved the general quality of HTML. Fewer websites (as a percentage) rely on IE-specific rendering behavior because valid HTML generally does not do this. And thanks to the standard, perception is changing from "your browser doesn't render my site properly" to "my site is poorly-written because your browser can't render it". Clients for professional web designers are much more likely to ask why the sites they are paying for can't render in anything other than one browser, and are less likely to accept "IE is all you need to worry about" as an answer.

    And, finally, Microsoft has tied IE upgrades to OS upgrades. Until IE 5.5 came out, every version of Windows which could run IE could upgrade to the latest major release. (And 5.5 only dropped Windows 3.11, the Mac, and the obscure Unix version, which hardly had significant followings.) IE 6 SP 2 was basically XP-only, and originally IE 7 was going to be Vista-only, although Microsoft relented and brought it out for XP as well. It's much harder to convince a developer to embrace the latest "unique" features if those features won't be available to all potential viewers -- most web designers would rather not put up a notice saying "hey, to view this website you gotta pay Microsoft for a Windows upgrade, and maybe buy a whole new machine, too." They'd much rather put up a notice saying "you'll need to download Firefox, which is free and runs on your current system" if they can.

    Since custom behavior is no longer as attractive to Microsoft (it's still attractive, it just doesn't have the same returns that it used to) they are falling back to the obvious second choice, which is to announce the best-possible standards compliance. The marketing message changes from "you don't need any other browser because we own the market" to "maybe we don't own the market but you still don't need any other browser because we do the best job possible". Whether they will actually follow through on this claim I don't know -- certainly in the past it has proven to be enough for Microsoft to claim they will do something, rather than to actually do it. But if IE 8 can pass the ACID tests, you can be sure that Microsoft will advertise that fact as third-party verification of their claims.

    ACID2 was very much a "can you handle this weird case" thing. Each part of the test was a weird, fairly unlikely (but technically in-spec) chunk of code. ACID3 is different -- it's 100 separate tests, many of them multi-step, covering lots of edge cases and exception handling. If all the browsers currently under development could pass ACID3, it would be a huge leap forward for web designers -- lots of DHTML things which currently require lots of browser-specific code would become trivial.



  • Somebody needs a whackin' with the clue-by-four!

     

    First, Microsoft obviously wants you to buy anything they can sell you.  You know, just like any other company in the world.  Part of the strategy is to tightly integrate their products so that if you use one it is easier for you to use others.  To me, this is a perfectly legitimate strategy and what any sane developer would want to accomplish with their works.  Microsoft has definitely played the lock-in game, but far less than most software companies.  Apple, Sun, IBM, DEC and Oracle also engage in lock-in, and I would say to a much stronger degree than Microsoft.  Hell, most of those companies even tried to lock you into their hardware solutions as well.  I think that's why Microsoft has been such a phenomenal success, because they focused on a few narrow markets and tried to be as compatible as possible with everything else.  Their wide hardware support enabled the commoditization of PC hardware, which resulted in dramatic price drops.  I'm not implying that Microsoft has never engaged in practices that aren't in the best interests of their customers, but I also think they have a lot better track record than their competitors, which is surprising given their dominance is so many markets.  If MS really wanted to create a shitstorm, they could have broken compatibility with all kinds of 3rd party hardware and software, but I think they learned from their own successes: they saw that companies like Sun and Apple who tried to completely control their customers ended up losing out.  There are many examples of Microsoft going out of their way to emulate broken behavior in Windows NT just so badly-written 3rd party Windows 3.1 apps would continue to function.  Obviously they were motivated by self-interest: they realized that good interoperability gave them an upper-hand that their more restrictive rivals couldn't match.

     

    @The Vicar said:

    and Windows Internet Explorer with ActiveX controls

    Which was EOL'd by Microsoft years ago.  The only thing that will remain from ActiveX is XMLHttpRequest, the foundation of Web 2.0, which Microsoft invented over a decade ago to enable interactive web pages.  I guess it's another example of their "lock-in" strategy... 

     

    @The Vicar said:

    At one time, they pushed for custom IE-only elements in HTML...

    Netscape did this too, and to a far more damaging degree than Microsoft did.  Also, when IE5 first appeared it was praised as being the most standards-compliant mainstream browser.  Opera was negligible and Mozilla and Safari didn't exist.  Netscape was a horrific mess of standards-defying shit.

     

    I agree that the general quality of HTML has improved, but it still has far to go.  First, we now have people trying to create full GUIs using a document mark-up language, a document styling language and a poorly-defined, quirky, insecure and slow scripting language.  Microsoft had great network-based application APIs over 15 years ago but they never quite caught on.  Part of it is that I think the evolution of HTML, CSS and JS has been pretty slow which allowed people to start with a simple HTML form, move up to some simple Javascript validation alerts and CSS styling and then advance to well-formed HTML, decent-looking CSS styles and XMLHttpRequest interaction.  There wasn't the same demand for network apps 15 years ago as there is today and progressing from tag-soup HTML to a decent, interactive experience was a lot more natural for many developers than learning an entire framework.  Still, I think a lot of Web 2.0 is a hideous mess.  I'm a web developer but I'm still shocked we are using a mediocre scripting language to manipulate documents in order to create UIs.  It's akin to using Word macros to build a full-featured app in Office.

     

    Also, I would attribute the solidification of web standards to Microsoft, for better or worse.  By bundling IE for free they crushed Netscape and put and end to the constant one-upping that the browser wars had become.  Then they sat on their ass for 5 years because they didn't think there would be anyone who would want to write rich GUIs in HTML and Javascript.  While they sat, standards bodies took what was the de facto standard of IE, cleaned it up a bit and set it in stone.  Open Source projects like Mozilla followed those standards to a T and eventually Microsoft felt the pressure to get IE up to the same level as the other competitors.  I really hope the future of network apps is something like Silverlight or Flash, but Microsoft is hedging their bets, and I'd say that is a smart move.  The ACID tests are little more than P.R. wanking, though.  I've been doing web development for awhile and when Safari passed ACID2 it was still a piece of crap.  In fact, the Safari team admitted that passing ACID2 was a major goal.  But even then, pages that would render near-perfect in FF, a few pixels off in IE and reasonably well in Opera would look like puke splattered on pavement in Safari.  Safari has come a long way and Safari 3 renders about as well as FF, but the fact that it was ACID2 compliant when it couldn't even handle simple floated menus doesn't give me a lot of faith in ACID3 compliance.

     

    I have used FF exclusively since 2002 and I wish the Mozilla developers would just focus on handling rendering and Javascript in more than one thread so that a slowish AJAX page doesn't freeze all my other loading tabs.  Also, FF has gone from being fast and light to being a sluggish, memory-leaking beast.  I hear good things about FF3, but I'm still waiting for it to go public.  Just my $0.02.



  • @KenW said:

    A web-based OS won't work for so many reasons that they're not even possible to count. Show me a serious graphics shop trying to use PhotoShop via the web to do heavy graphics editing, or a movie studio creating something like Cars on a "web-based OS", or even a major accounting firm trying to keep all their customer's books across the web. Or the  person who is into any kind of serious gaming (WoW aside) playing with all of the latency provided by that web-based OS.
     

    Actually I remember reading an interview with someone important in gaming industry who said that the future of games will be fully online as in render farm that renders the game and sends the rendered frames over a highspeed network to a stupid terminal like a tv. 

    I just lost15 minutes and couldn't find the link, sorry... 

     

    as far as the photoshop goes, XWindows are working like a charm I do not see why would a graphics editing application be a problem.

     



  • @Nelle said:

     

    Actually I remember reading an interview with someone important in gaming industry who said that the future of games will be fully online as in render farm that renders the game and sends the rendered frames over a highspeed network to a stupid terminal like a tv. 

    That person was fucking high!

    I'll keep my xbox 360 as it does rendering just fine thank you very much. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Somebody needs a whackin' with the clue-by-four!

     

    First, Microsoft obviously wants you to buy anything they can sell you.  You know, just like any other company in the world.

    What part of "I'm not saying they're evil for it; it's just a fact." did you not understand? I even pointed out that they're not pushing for custom rendering behavior so much any more. Take the massive chip off your shoulder before you read!



  •  @belgariontheking said:

    I'll keep my xbox 360 as it does rendering just fine thank you very much. 

    well they are looking into ray-tracing now, so in couple of years you'll have to buy a new console anyways ...

    http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6126&Itemid=61 



  • @Nelle said:

     

    well they are looking into ray-tracing now, so in couple of years you'll have to buy a new console anyways ...

    http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6126&Itemid=61 

    So at some point in the future:

    a)  Intel will not suck in the gaming market

    b)  Intel Extreme Graphics may in fact be "extreme" for once in its life.

    assuming this article represents truth.  I don't know enough about this to determine. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    joke:  ============WHOOOOOOOSH!!!!========>>>>

     

    you:    O->--<

     

    Absolutely right. :( In my defense, however... I just spent the better part of the past month arguing with someone higher up in the food chain here against making an internal application  web-based, because it made no sense to do so. The application is a rather complex CRUD application that processes medical claims, does massive lookups at the time claims are entered, and does some pretty complex validations and conversions to adjudicate each claim. There are also megatons of reports that are generated, and a batch process that runs weekly to actually issue payment for the claims. Also, it's a single executable run by around 5 people at a time, all sitting in the same section of our office. IOW, the exact application that does NOT need to be web-based. However, according to the person I was arguing with, "The web is the future of computers. We might as well start moving there now."

    I finally convinced everyone concerned that this app would be harmed by making it browser-based, and it would have a major negative impact on productivity here.

    And then I stumble across your post, already in a major bad mood from the above, and...

    I'd like to offer my humble apology, morbiuswilters. :( 



  • @belgariontheking said:

    Yet again KenW needs to be slapped upside the head.
     

    Yet again? Care to be a little more specific? Where were the previous needs, and why wasn't I informed? 



  • @belgariontheking said:

    assuming this article represents truth.  I don't know enough about this to determine. 
     

    well fudzilla is a tabloid and everything read there is to be taken with a grain of salt, but as far as this goes, the Pohl guy really works for intel and is really a wizz when it comes to raytracing ...



  • @KenW said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    Yet again KenW needs to be slapped upside the head.
     

    Yet again? Care to be a little more specific? Where were the previous needs, and why wasn't I informed? 

    One comes to mind.  You flamed some guy when he said that when you view a website, you owe nothing to that site (meaning you don't have to view the ads).  You got your head slapped for that one.

    Can't find the thread because the pre-2008 threads are not indexed. 



  • @KenW said:

    I'd like to offer my humble apology, morbiuswilters. :( 

    Nah, it's okay, I know you didn't mean any harm and if somebody had said what I did in a serious post, I would flame them as well.  I thought the puns were pretty obvious "no semi-colons" referring to the intestinal operation and "Class struggle" referring to Javascript's object model.  Still, I could see how someone might read it in a hurry and misinterpret.  Just try to lighten up in the future.


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