Headlines that I thought were otherwise interesting today.

• Amanda Congdon leaves ABC: Mat Ingram has the best explanation so far — her considerable “assets” were special as a vlogger, but on a mainstream outfit, they’re quite … flat. Now, Ms. Congdon claims she’s got something great lined up, although it will only start “next year”. If everyone will still remember her … “next year”.
• Google Planning Multi-Terabit Cables To Cross Pacific Ocean: Actually, only one part of a larger plan for Google — the company that most people associate merely with search and ads — to build or acquire physical assets, so that it literally owns the bandwidth to fuel its future plans for world domination. [Do I *sound* like I'm kidding?]
• PirateBay Strikes Back: Wonder what the *real* result of an embarassing leak of internal emails last week from MediaDefender? Well, it turns out that your favourite p2p site (PirateBay) is using them as evidence of illegal activities, and is bringing a very familiar fight back *to* MediaDefender. I, too, love the pure schadenfreude.
• Smart People Can Be So Stupid: A popular MIT student claims that a taped electronic blinking device on her chest — while gripping a piece of silly putty — was merely “art”, after being arrested at gun point at Logan Airport, in Boston. Right. That’s about as real as the hair dye you’re using, honey.
• Google Continues to Pwn Search: … according to the comscore report for search in the month of August. Google pulls in 56% of searches, which is actually *up* a couple percentage points since the last report (July). Nothing else to see here folks, just Google doing its best to own search … keep it moving …
• Firefox Memory Leaks Evidence Open-Source Not Infallible? … merely the corollary of “Firefox continues to have memory problems even though the whole community is trying to plug those leaks”. Somewhere Bill Gates is having a chuckle, I’m sure.

In what has to be either the most: a) insulting b) drug-induced c) stupidest d) all of the above … statement of the year on Firefox, Mozilla President (of Europe) in a recent interview with TechCrunch UK has gone on — amongst other things — to deny that there is any bloat in Firefox. In fact, its getting “speedier and speedier”.

Ugh.

I have claimed a great many things to be absurd, ludicrous, and just plain ol’ stupid. Hearing that Firefox *isn’t* bloated, when it regularly eats up 200-300+ megs of RAM for *me* (and I’m not the only one) while using minimal plugins (and other settings) is simply beyond the pale.

What’s more outrageous is that Tristan Nitot goes on to champion the user by using DRM as a foil (and a rather cheap and easy one at that), by going on to say

“I don’t think DRM has a future. Treating your customers like thieves is bad business practice. Today the customer is not ‘king’, they are considered thief first.”

Mssr. Nitot, you know what else is bad business practice? Treating your customers like puerile idiots.

Firefox has had problems with bloat and memory leak for a long time and its the one thing that successive iterations never seem to address properly. Its almost like Mozilla is saying “well, its your fault for not optimizing Firefox and not having enough RAM — fools.”

I have no idea when Firefox will fix this issue, or if Firefox will get its comeuppance for this ongoing sin. But its just sad when the chiefs at the top won’t even acknowledge this issue, which has been plaguing an otherwise fine product for ages.

Hey, I love Firefox like everyone else.  Glancing at my logs for DJI, it looks like the majority of you do to (60% of you, in fact; 35% IE, and 5% Safari, if you’re interested).  For me, the best part about Firefox is the fantastic plugin / theme support.  Where would any of us be without firebug or webdeveloper or greasemonkey, right?

Having said that, I am SO glad that its shadier aspects are getting a little bit of a spotlight at Wired.

I mean, am I the only one who is tired of Firefox’s bloated size and gi-normous RAM footprint?  Yes, yes — I know, I should limit the number of tabs I have open, and limit the number of plugins I’m using.  Fine.  But, you know what?  I kind of do, and if I leave Firefox open for more than a day, I too find that my PC grinds to a halt.

The frustrating thing is that although this “problem” with Firefox isn’t new, it never seems to have been directly addressed by Firefox.  There are work arounds to the problem thanks to fiddling with the about:config, or even some separate plugins, but are these really optimal solutions?

I mean, while you couldn’t copy Firefox’s community, nor its gargantuan library of extensions, themes and plugins, I do wonder if this represents an opportunity for another browser to surface — one that is slim, fast, and is absolutely thrifty as it comes down to memory usage? One that adheres to all W3C standards?

Could it be done?

Does it already exist, but hasn’t yet gotten enough traction from the Geek community?

If so, let me know.

For the moment, I find myself using Firefox Portable, which is about 30MB, and seems a little faster than the “normal” version.  The “portable” aspect of it represents a rebuild so that it can be used off a portable storyage device, like a USB key.  Its not ideal for me, since it can’t “remember” anything (cached or otherwise — it doesn’t record a “history” for example), but it is faster, which is a trade off I’ll happily make.

Yes, I love Firefox — which self respecting nerd doesn’t?

But  like many others, there’s one thing about Firefox — regardless of the version — which I absolutely detest. It curls my toes. It makes my hair stand on end. It makes me … (shudder), hate Firefox.

Its a love-hate sort of thing, I guess. ;)

That “thing”, of course, is how much of a memory hog Firefox is.

Now, I’ve read all kinds of things — it depends on the number of tabs you’ve opened, the kinds of extensions you’re using, and even the entirely specious argument of “well, that’s what you have RAM for!” All of It all may or may not make a difference.

What I DO know (and what makes that argument so specious), is that when it starts taking up 250 - 500 megs of RAM, it starts S-L-O-W-I-N-G things down to an utterly unacceptable rate.

After all, the same behaviour that allows me to use multiple tabs is the same behaviour that allows me to have Messenger, Photoshop, Pando, Mozy, and Picasa open at the same time.

Anyway, I’m glad that with the release of IE7 and all of the hoopla surrounding its release, someone has finally mentioned what I think is the great unmentionable when it comes to these two browsers:

(more…)

… because I’ve added the (x)html to the ver 0.2 of portable web apps — web dev suite often enough, might as well include in my “Lists” page off to the right.

It includes links to appropriate websites AND “install this” links/xpi’s as well in one handy place for the following:

• Web Developer 1.0.2
• ColorZilla 0.8.2
• Aardvark 1.1
• Measureit 0.3.5
• Firebug 0.4
• IE Tab 1.0.9.5
• Screengrab 0.7
• LoremIpsum Content Generator 0.4.2
• Greasemonkey 0.6.5.20060727
• UserAgent Switcher 0.6.8

Go to my Lists page

So there I was, feeling smug about my new ver 0.2 theme, and I get to hospital to bask in its glory when I had a deep realization of panic — it breaks when not viewed in FF1.5!

(gasp!)

And its not optimized for resolutions less than 1024×764!

(double gasp!)

MSIE practically strokes out when it tries to render!

(triple ga– *faints)

What to do, what to do, what to do?

I guess at some point in the development cycle of a ’software’ project you get to the *un*fun part, and that is the bug stomping and otherwise tweaking for maximum compatibility-ness.

I used to do a lot more web design a few years ago — before Medical School (1999), and with the Browser Wars it made browser compatibility issues such a headache I just didn’t bother.

Although there are seemingly MORE browsers around these days (Firefox, Opera, MSIE, Safari, and so on), the consensus seems that there is a better trend towards compatibility and web standards than the past.

Thank God.

Well, for all of the two people who know or read this website (thanks Mom! thanks honey), I may get around to tweaking this theme — optimizing for other browsers and resolutions, if for no other reason that at hospital it looks so sick.

(Not “good” sick, but really sick sick — not cardiogenic shock, sick, but more like nosocomial pneumonia type sick)

The fact that right now it really only looks ok with higher resolutions and firefox mostly betrays my own bias in the browser conflict.

Yeah … I go with Firefox. (more…)