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roadrunnertwiceMatt, a casual pal of mine from school, started working at the AF just recently, and while I was sitting next to him today yesterday, I saw him go to the actual Yahoo.com web page in order to run a search for something. He was browsing with Firefox anyway (the AF PCs have some revision of 1.5 installed), so I leaned over and suggested he use the search box in the right-hand corner instead, pointing out that if you click on the search logo icon in the 1.x series, it drops down into a menu of search engines (which includes Yahoo by default and can be added-to at whim). I swear I saw the top of his head come off. It turns out that he uses something called Netcaptor at home (which makes the second time I've ever heard of that browser), and the ready presence of that kind of raw power--by default--kind of blew his mind.
So I did the socially responsible thing and blew his mind the rest of the way, demonstrating (in rapid succession) Live Bookmarks, incremental find, and the use of apostrophe-start FAYT plus ctrl-enter to open links in new tabs without looking at the screen. (THAT one was the real pisser, since it turns out he's a mousehater.) Then I wrote down the URL for today's Windows nightly of Bon Echo and told him he should skip 1.5 and go straight for that, since it will let him start using the new inline spellchecker, beefed-out search engine manager, and improved feed handling well before the rest of the world knows what it's in for. I am pretty confidant that Team Mozilla has a new convert.
Man, imagine if I was this dedicated a shill for someone who paid me for it.
In related news, I randomly ran into (γγγͺγεΊδΌγ£γγnot "collided with") Josh today on the way to work, so we biked most of the way to Mac together. I'd forgotten he was in the city, and it turns out he's living like five blocks away from me. So we'll try and hang out once he gets back from his pending California trip.
So I did the socially responsible thing and blew his mind the rest of the way, demonstrating (in rapid succession) Live Bookmarks, incremental find, and the use of apostrophe-start FAYT plus ctrl-enter to open links in new tabs without looking at the screen. (THAT one was the real pisser, since it turns out he's a mousehater.) Then I wrote down the URL for today's Windows nightly of Bon Echo and told him he should skip 1.5 and go straight for that, since it will let him start using the new inline spellchecker, beefed-out search engine manager, and improved feed handling well before the rest of the world knows what it's in for. I am pretty confidant that Team Mozilla has a new convert.
Man, imagine if I was this dedicated a shill for someone who paid me for it.
In related news, I randomly ran into (γγγͺγεΊδΌγ£γγnot "collided with") Josh today on the way to work, so we biked most of the way to Mac together. I'd forgotten he was in the city, and it turns out he's living like five blocks away from me. So we'll try and hang out once he gets back from his pending California trip.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 06:29 pm (UTC)Oh, and if you don't have a 3D video processor, performance should stay pretty much the same, but if you've got anything reasonably modern at all, life will suddenly become very, very fast--all HTML/CSS rendering is going to be hardware accelerated.
There's nothing on the web yet that really benefits from a decent 3D card, is there? (Aside from more complex Flash stuff, but that doesn't count.) Maybe some of the really advanced stuff done using ajax?
Man, it's weird to realize that Flash is probably going to be unnecessary in a decade, or at least that it won't be the one thing people go to when they need animation.
It's also weird to realize that web technology (browsers, languages, etc) is in its own little stone age right now, and that it's going to go through enormous changes over time. Just twenty years from now, what we know as the "web" is probably going to be unrecognizable. The standalone "browser" app will be in a tech museum somewhere. MS integrated IE with their OS once upon a time, got sued for it, and ended up making gazillionaires out of the higher-ups at antivirus companies, but in the future the integration will likely happen again in a bigger way, across all common OSes. Huge web apps and remote storage will be the norm. The common 'net access machine (an advanced thin client/Internet appliance) will probably be built inside the walls of a house when it's first constructed, and it'll make itself available to a wide variety of I/O devices, like UHDTVs and weird keyboards of the future, all embedded everywhere. (Heh. Imagine seeing Microsoft or Apple branding on your walls.) It'll all be serviced remotely, or by handymen/women, or by the shrinking portion of the general population who actually knows anything about these unseen and unheard machines. Only nerds, scientists, and other riffraff will go on buying and customizing PC towers, and putting them in their rooms and stuff, as enhancements to the gizmos in the walls. 2026 will finally be the year of Linux ... since most of the other OS juggernauts won't be developing desktop OSes anymore.
Anyway, I wonder if Mozilla will still be around in 20 years, and in what capacity. Makers of a respected net OS? Hardware manufacturer? No idea.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-18 01:02 pm (UTC)Whoa, did I get derailed there.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-19 03:07 am (UTC)Interestingly, one of the very few backend enhancements FF2 brings to the table is a local storage API for web-apps.
And I'm TOTALLY excited about MS trying to make IE7 into a real browser. Lights a fire under people to improve the stuff I actually use. =p The threat of IE7 already made improved tab behavior a more urgent feature for FF2.