February 23, 2010

Microsoft’s Browser Selection + User Ignorance Lets Google’s Chrome “cheat”?

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Michael B. from the Mozilla Marketing list recently posted an hypothesis on why Google Chrome may suddenly start taking a much larger chunk out of the browser market now that Microsoft’s browser selection screens are appearing in the EU.

I’ve a hypothesis to explain Chrome’s recent and sudden surge of usage share the last couple months. Let me first say that almost every time I ever ask what web browser someone uses, the answer I get is Google. After I explain that Google is a search engine, not a web browser they usually tell me that they have no idea. I later find out that they are either using Internet Explorer or Firefox. Enter Microsoft’s new browser ballot into the equation. Instead of just saying “Chrome,” Google’s web browser says “Google” and then says “chrome” in smaller letter. People are asked what web browser they want so they think, I want to search with Google of course so they choose Chrome. If this is the case, it might be a problem that should be addressed.

Perhaps user ignorance on what a browser actually is will give Google a major boost.  Because, admittedly, even my own father reference to Internet Explorer as “my internet”.

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February 4, 2010

Thanks Microsoft!

Microsoft Expression
Image via Wikipedia

So, Microsoft sent me a complimentary copy of Microsoft Expression Studio 3 today for being a partner.  Kudos to them.

As to Expression Web, it works wonderful for prototyping but, doesn’t really handle CMS themeing that well.  Will be playing around with Expression Blend a bit later to see what geekiness I can come up with.

It has an interesting screen capture utility too (try the demo flash video below full-screen).  Oh yeah, I’m gonna have fun…

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February 2, 2010

Web 2.0 MacGyver

MacGyver
Image via Wikipedia

TV shows like MacGyver and Junk Yard Wars, as well as real world survival and minimalist training [even camping] tell us that it’s cool to take bits of whatever is lying around, and jury-rig it into something useful, and potentially vital to our survival.  Today as I was thinking about the plethora of hacks we need to do something insanely simple…like…embed a flash video and have it work properly in all browsers. This made me realize, anyone who does web development or design is a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, certified, Web 2.0 MacGyver.

We use CSS hacks to get things to look right in IE, load extra images or add a wack of useless tags to get rounded corners to work.  And, don’t think HTML5 is going to save our butt, it won’t.  We’ll need to make videos in 2 different formats and nest three different video and embed tags and hacks for it to work (seriously).  Worse, one of those formats we’ll need to license and pay for (or, as is the online way, hope we don’t get caught for not).

So, developers, hold your heads high; we’re holding the world together with duct tape and paperclips, and we make it look easy.

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February 6, 2007

I’m going to try to get back in the habit of making these daily nuggets of developer statistical goodness, and now that 5.0 is out, it should be a lot more interesting! :)

In the past 24 hours:

The following issues were fixed:

Fieldset titles sometimes invisible in Garland filed by RobRoy [Fixed in 2 months] (5.0, HEAD)
two semicolons ending the line filed and patched by hass [Fixed in 2 days] (HEAD
Undefined variable $versions in install.inc filed and patched by dopry [Fixed in 4 days] (5.0, HEAD)

The following features were added:

Add sticky headers to tables proposed and patched by Steven [Added in 12 days]

The following regressions and bugs have been added or changed:
Only bugs with patches needing review are listed.

node_type_delete() invokes hook on no data filed by njivy (patch) [0 days old]
pager displays when it shouldn’t filed by drawk (patch) [0 days old]
Add $_GET wrapper that allows caches to analyze usage filed by David Strauss (patch) [0 days old]
bootstrap_invoke_all use of module_list filed by earnie (patch) [0 days old]
Side-effect caching support filed by David Strauss (patch) [1 day old]
Tabs Episode 2: Attack of the Clones filed by chx (patch) [2 days old]
Convert files to be associated to a user id instead of a node id. filed by dopry (patch) [4 days old]
Refactor l() and url() filed by Steven (patch) [16 days old]
Add jQuery Teaser Splitter filed by Steven (patch) [1 month 1 day old]
Sqlite port filed by tachyonxv (patch) [8 months 1 day old]

Oddities:

At least rename the ‘content’ region to ‘below content’ – (DEV FIGHT)

QOTD: “<mozillamonks> Druplicon! You rememebr me! <druplicon> mozillamonks: Admin commands in privmsg only, please.”