Archive for the 'Browsers' Category
October 6, 2005
JPEG Patent Woes?
Just saw this on Paul Bissex’s blog: Burn all JPEGs?:
Some recent news is giving me flashbacks to 1995, when Unisys sprung their GIF patent surprise on the young World Wide Web. We got quite angry and some enterprising people even built a replacement for the beloved GIF.
Are we going there again? Forgent, a Texas company that “develops and licenses intellectual property and makes scheduling software” (it makes me feel dirty just to type that) is suing 40 companies, including Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo, for infringing on JPEG-related patent No. 4,698,672.
Sounds like patent trolling to me. Hopefully this will not become an issue (I imagine it will unite a big chunk of silicon valley to fight it if it does).
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
September 20, 2005
Opera Web Browser Now Free
The Opera web browser is now available for free without embedded advertising. From the site:
Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal.
Hey, how about that. An actually competitive browser market has returned with more than 2 free options. Welcome back to the mid-to-late-90s!
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
June 30, 2005
Nick Bradbury on Microsoft & RSS
You may have heard that Microsoft announced recently that they will be building in RSS support to a great extent in their next operating system. Nick Bradbury provides his perspective on the move. He talks about some interesting possible outcomes and how, as a newsreader developer, he isn’t worried about MS eating his lunch, something they have been known to do in the past.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
April 20, 2005
s5 for Web Demo
I gave a demo of our intranet yesterday. I had a few slides of background material I wanted to cover first and then jump into the site for the rest of the presentation. So, I grabbed the S5 presentation template and created an HTML-based slideshow and linked to the intranet on the last slide. The beauty of this is that I didn’t have to do any awkward application switching between powerpoint and the browser. It really made the presentation much smoother by running the whole thing through the browser.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
July 26, 2004
Netcraft: Will Firefox repeat Netscape’s mistakes?
Netcraft: Will Firefox repeat Netscape’s mistakes?:
Against this background, the news that Mozilla will be working with Adobe, Apple, Macromedia and Sun to develop an open, scriptable plugin model is worrying. The logic behind this move seems to be that in order to capitalise on users’ increasing willingness to consider alternatives to Internet Explorer, Firefox needs to match it in all areas, including plugins. What is particularly ironic about this move is that it represents an eerily exact rerun of an earlier - failed - strategy.
This post argues that Firefox may be going down a somewhat proprietary path with this plugin approach and possibly creating security risks along the lines of ActiveX. I am not too worried about that for one reason: firefox remains open source. If the developers take it in a bad direction I’m confident that another group will pick up the source and go somewhere else with it. While competing forks of firefox is not ideal it is better than having no choice at all.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
July 13, 2004
Can We Do Away with Pop-ups Now?
Vast majority of pop-up click-throughs are a mistake:
Rob Stevens, head of business behaviour at Bunnyfoot, said: “Achieving an over-inflated click-through rate might help brands to justify their spend, but they are only deceiving themselves. The brand, which we used in our research study, is not only wasting up to 90% of its budget by paying for unintentional click-throughs, it is also frustrating and deceiving users.”
When the august firm of Bunnyfoot Universality says it’s so, it must be. :) Perhaps a few more studies will be done to confirm this and drive a wooden stake through the heart of pop-up advertising.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
June 10, 2004
Tour of Firefox 0.9
Neil Turner has posted a review of the latest version of Firefox: Firefox 0.9 Tour. Firefox is my browser of choice. I’m looking forward to patching up once 0.9 is released.
Spotted via RC3.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
December 12, 2003
Mozilla Partially Vulnerable to URL Spoofing
Looks like Mozilla is somewhat vulnerable to the same URL spoofing attack as IE is. Wonder who will have a patch our first?
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
July 21, 2003
Mozilla Firebird Extensions
Mozilla Firebird Extensions allow you to extend the functionality of the Firebird browser. Lots of good stuff in that list. Be sure to check out Search This!, an extension that lets you quicly search Google, IMDB or Amazon.com using selected text in the browser window as the search query.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
July 16, 2003
Netscape Is Dead, Long Live Mozilla
This has been reported all over the place but for posterity here it is:
It has been learned through public and private sources that AOL has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla in a mass firing and are dismantling what was left of Netscape (they’ve even pulled the logos off the buildings). Some will remain working on Mozilla during the transition, and will move to other jobs within AOL.
The good news, however, is that the Mozilla Foundation has been set-up to foster continued development on the open source Mozilla (aka Firebird) browser. If promised money comes through it should have a nice endowment from the get-go.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
+1 (410) 742-9088 | david@highcontext.com
Copyright © 2008 High Context Consulting
Privacy Policy: HCC will never share your information with anyone without your permission.