Space — Page 3

Upon further consideration,

November 14, 2000 by Michael Boyle

although Netscape 6 does work in broad terms – and what it does well it does very well – it is so rife with bugs I can’t even think of any commercial software or shareware that I’ve ever used that is as unfinished.

Luckily few of the bugs are crashing bugs, and my machine hasn’t frozen due to any of them. But they drastically affect the usefulness of Netscape as an alternative browser. Some examples of bugs I’ve found:

text entry boxes are flaky (text jumps around, spaces and soft wrapping is wonky);
it uses its own interface elements, not widgets from the UI, and so is very slow at rendering certain things, and when it does, they don’t conform with the OS under which it runs;
changes to preferences don’t always take;
new windows are quite slow to open;
some of the program’s other behaviour deviates both from what one would expect from the OS and from older versions of Netscape;
and the whole thing takes at least twice as long to load (in spite of having fewer plugins in my case) than IE;
the whole thing takes up twice the space (browser only, no email stuff included on my machine) and more memory than IE5;
and I can’t seem to drag and drop URLs or links onto the favourites bar.

Add to that the fact that I can’t scroll with the wheel on my mouse and their own skin updating/loading procedure doesn’t seem to work and it’s a mess. The worst though? They’ve buried their release notes so you can’t even make a reasoned judgement for yourself without downloading the installer. It should be online, and prominent. [I found the release notes after posting this]

email email email

October 23, 2000 by Michael Boyle

Wired News reverses itself (sort of) on the whole hyphen question. Far more disturbing, though is the use of double dashes instead of space-dash-space when they want an en-dash. It’s wrong wrong wrong. The computer is not a typewriter!

I don’t normally

October 10, 2000 by Michael Boyle

resort to foul language in this space (I reserve that for verbal exchanges), Tim Cavanaugh’s account of a recent experience with Business 2.0 is totally fucked. Sadly, I can’t say I’m really surprised.

The idea of user-developed wireless networks

September 20, 2000 by Michael Boyle

The idea of user-developed wireless networks is great in so many ways. First of all, whether the commercial space is ready for it or not, such open wireless access is how the whole thing will have to work for it to avoid ultimately being no more significant than Compuserve or the old Prodigy – which were important but couldn’t really last in the face of the internet. But it’s also pretty cool that the guy in London is using Web Stalker as his network mapping system. Web Stalker was an art project. An award winning art project – and very cool, if inscrutable. What I like about it is that it reaches back to an earlier era on the web – when people were still getting used to browsers in the first place, Web Stalker came along as an alternate browser, deconstructing an idea that had barely taken root in the public consciousness. Kind of like the wireless project itself.

Hmmm. This is

September 1, 2000 by Michael Boyle

interesting: HomeRF Gets Up to Speed. Anything that moves things along the path to wireless is worth watching. Massive broadband will never come through wires – I’m talking 70-90% penetration in North America, and not just to a single box or two, but to a whole home.

I’m curious to see whether there’ll be a wire into the location and then a transmitter or if everything will be wireless. I suspect the latter, with every network transaction encrypted, auto-config of new devices entering the space according to rules, and a distribution of network monitoring duties among devices (i.e., no central server in a location controlling everything).