Since European Commission’s antitrust complaint against Microsoft, I read a lot of stuff like :

If Microsoft were to sell Windows without Internet Explorer, how would we get to download Firefox?

But also :

Apple puts Safari in every Macintosh, and there already is Firefox in every Linux version. What is the difference?

I think that something is really unclear. The complaint is not that Microsoft gives you Internet Explorer with Windows. Imagine buying an OS without web browser. No, giving IE with Windows is good. Giving Safari with Mac OS is good. Giving Firefox with Linux is good. You won’t sue a car manufacturer because you don’t like the wheels it’s selling the car with.

The complaint is about the fact that you can’t uninstall Internet Explorer. You can change the wheels of your car, but you can’t get rid of Internet Explorer. Even when checking Firefox as a default web browser and checking “do never use Internet Explorer”, IE will launch if you click on “check mail” in Live Messenger. And IE is a red moving flag saying “Hey, viruses, I am here! Catch me while I’m slowly and badly displaying some standard websites!”.

With Linux or Mac OS, you can get rid of Firefox or Safari, you can just put them in the trash, empty the trash and install something else, Opera per see. But with Windows, you just can’t. And it’s a pain in the ass for both users and software developers.

★ "Have you ever closed a window and hit “Do Not Save”, only to realize a split second too late that it was exactly what you didn’t want to do? That’s a bad habit developed trained into you by a bad interface."

★

★ It's incredibly fast, it supports all the new CSS effects and pass the Acid 3 test. You know that. But it's also very innovative.

Innovation in web browsing is not easy. It's always the same features in Firefox, Opera and Safari. The thing is to understand how to make a feature comfortable and useful for the user.

I especially love the full-page zoom. It's a zoom functionality like in Firefox, but actually useful. The smart adress field is also a pretty good feature : instead of a crappy "awesome bar", you get a clever list of suggestions, well designed and organized. The top-of-windows tabs now replace Safari's title bar, so you now just have the tabs bar, the adress field and the bookmarks bar. It's one bar less. That means more space for browsing.

It's not the quantity, it's the quality.

★ Also, Michael Arrington write for them.

★ Twitter is perfect for this kind of search : I can see that Gmail is down.

Panic in the geek world.

Well, luckily for me, I'm using Gmail in Offline mode with Gears since last month.

I’ve just received this e-mail on my school adress :

• Object in capitals : check
• Incomplete name of the sender : check
• Spelling mistakes : check
• Wrong paragraphs organization : check
• A space instead of an apostrophe : check
• Empty lines : check
• Unintentional advertisement for Hotmail : check
• Missing signature that forces to look in the object to understand who is the sender : check

Good work, Altran.

★ "When I was in college I imagined companies containing gleaming, well-documented, well-architected code. The kind my Professor would give an A. I thought people actually USED those verbose comment-blocks we were forced to incorporate in our class projects.

In the real world shit has to get done."

Interesting article from a Facebook developer. Every EPITA student should read it.

★ I want this one.

No, this one.

No, this one.

Ghaaaaa…

I know what feature is missing : random wallpaper in iPhone!

★ The most interesting part is in the comments.

Touch screen and colors aren't useful for such a device, but the ratio screen/keyboard is still not good enough. A slide-in keyboard would have been a good compromise.

I still think that there is way too many buttons on the current design, though. Three is enough : on/off, previous, next.