IE 8 Beta 1 is released
I’m a huge fan of the great work the IE team is doing for this release. The first beta, targetted mainly at web developers, is now available. In addition to excellent standards support, it includes some cool new user-facing features like “Web Slices,” Activities (XML driven extensions for doing things like mapping an address), automatic crash recovery, and more.
My favorite feature out of those? The fact that IE now separates the tabs and the frame into separate processes. This is part of Automatic Crash Recovery (link contains detailed explanation). Here are some of the effects of this change that I have enjoyed:
- When a web page / add-in (like Flash) crashes, you hardly even notice. The tab(s) restart automatically and the only thing you notice is the little balloon telling you that IE just recovered a crashed web page.
- Crash recovery saves form data whenever possible.
- No longer do you need to launch links to trusted/intranet zones into a new window. In IE7, this was necessary because the process has to start with a higher integrity level (Protected Mode: Off). Now, because the frame is one process and the tabs are separate, you can have one tab with Protected Mode turned on, and one with it turned off, in the same window.
- No more ieuser.exe needed, since the frame runs at normal IL and serves the purpose that ieuser.exe used to serve.
Grassroots Mom over at the Daily Kos has a fantastic breakdown of both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama’s track records through 2007. She looks at the bills and amendments they authored, who co-sponsored them, and how many they actually got passed.
The result of this analysis may surprise you, especially if you believe Hillary’s claims that she’s the only one who knows "how to get things done in Washington."
Here are a couple examples from the article:
In her ads and speeches, Clinton claims that she’s fighting to stop foreclosure while implying that Obama is empty rhetoric. Actually, Clinton is calling for "enhanced disclosures to consumers and enhanced regulation", while Obama’s bill will "stop mortgage transactions which operate to promote fraud, risk, abuse, and under-development." After looking at the two bills, Obama’s appears to be tougher, more directly addressing the problem.
Speaking of Obama, here’s a list of some of his proposed legislation.
Four bills on energy including
• S.1151 : A bill to provide incentives to the auto industry to accelerate efforts to develop more energy-efficient vehicles to lessen dependence on oil;
•S.115 : A bill to suspend royalty relief, to repeal certain provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal certain tax incentives for the oil and gas industry; and •S.133 : A bill to promote the national security and stability of the economy of the United States by reducing the dependence of the United States on oil through the use of alternative fuels and new technology, and for other purposes.Clinton had only one bill that I could find that addressed the same issue, S.701 : A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose a temporary oil profit fee and to use the proceeds of the fee collected to provide a Strategic Energy Fund and expand certain energy tax incentives, and for other purposes.
Obama wants to "repeal certain tax incentives for the oil and gas industry". Clinton sees the answer in a "temporary oil profit fee" and to "expand certain energy tax incentives" for alternative energy. Obama’s alternative energy bill (S.133) was co-sponsored by Harkin, Lugar and Salazar. Clinton’s bill again had no co-sponsors.
I just got linked to this article via Neowin, about a guy who had an Xbox 360 for two years that had been signed by various Xbox, Bungie, and Rooster Teeth staff (and also had some cool custom artwork drawn on it).
He tried to arrange with the repair facility to have either the same console returned (after being repaired) or to have the case transferred to the replacement. Of course he feared the worst, that he wouldn’t get the same console back.
Except that what happened did seem worse, as he got the same console back, but believes someone had wiped off all the signatures (with some smudges left that support this theory).
My first thought was not the same as most people’s, apparently. If you look at the comments, they seem to all present theories like “Some jackass obviously stole his console and faked the smudges so he’d think it was gone forever.”
Come on people. Why so cynical? Remember the old adage, “Don’t attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Or more appropriate, ignorance.
My theory?
Someone did their best to fulfill his wishes, and made sure he was set up to receive the same console back. Things were looking good, until someone further down the line saw the console and assumed it was a refurb / repaired unit being sent to some random joe who sent in a different console. They then decided in ignorance to “clean” the console according to their standard policy, removing any foreign markings that might not be welcomed by its new owner.
It’s just a theory, of course, but a plausible one I think. One that doesn’t assume people are evil or that this was an act of malice, but simply an unfortunate mistake made out of ignorance.
I feel really bad for the guy, I know I’d be pissed in his place. But at least it seems that Microsoft has contacted him personally. I don’t know if they’ll be able to completely “fix” things, but I hope they’ll be able to do something for him – as whatever the explanation, the outcome really sucked.
If you haven’t heard about it yet, or seen the TED presentation, do yourself a favor and go watch the video. There’s a high-ish resolution MP4 you can download here.
I absolutely cannot wait until this is released to the public.
Seriously Yahoo, what were you thinking?
Today Yahoo announced their “Open Search Platform” – saying that it will “allow third parties to enhance the Yahoo Search experience.”
You might assume that this means they’re doing something cool with OpenSearch – the set of open standards once established by A9 and later embraced by IE / FireFox to hook up search providers, and recently used by Microsoft’s SharePoint and Search Server products as the means by which to support federated search results.
But you’d be wrong. Apparently Yahoo thinks that by adding a space between “Open” and “Search” nobody will be confused that their offering is not, in fact, OpenSearch compatible.
A commenter I know on TechCrunch even asks if we’ll soon see “Yahoo announced a Really Simple Syndication Platform” that isn’t RSS based?
Change the name, Yahoo. This attempt to co-opt the OpenSearch label is distasteful at best. And we’re trying to buy you why?
A great Obama endorsement
The media makes a big deal about endorsements like that from Ted Kennedy. But I pay much more attention to one like this one given recently by a favorite web comic of mine, XKCD.
The author, Randall, outlines some of the most important reasons I support Obama. And rather than copy what he wrote, I’ll just let you go read it yourself.
A couple weekends ago some friends and I took a trip up to Whistler in Canada for a few days of winter fun. It was my first time up there and I finally see why it has such a great reputation.
The skiing on both the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains was fantastic, and the weather was decent enough. On our last day there, I stopped for lunch at the Longhorn saloon, the origin of Windows Vista’s codename (chosen because it sits between the Whistler and Blackcomb lifts).
Macs at Microsoft? Why not!
Update 2/23: Apparently the infamous Fake Steve Jobs has linked to this two-week-old post because of the little anecdote at the end, with an interpretation I didn’t quite expect. After all, the main purpose of “the wall” is to remind us how awesome the work we’re doing is by comparison. As always, Fake Steve is good for a laugh, although it’s a bit less enjoyable when you’re the one being picked on! “Microtards?” Ouch. Of course, I think it should hardly be surprising that people in any business compare themselves to their competition. Can you imagine any place where that doesn’t happen?
David Morgenstern over the Apple blog on ZDNet wrote yesterday and said:
Like the Japanese car in the Dearborn auto plant parking lot, Macs and iPhones must create problems for switchers working at Apple competitors as well as companies with a PC-or-die IT policy.
He then goes on to link to this very blog!
However, Microsoft appears to be okay with at least one of its employees running Vista on a MacBook in the office. Blogger Chris Pirillo pointed to Brandon Paddock, a self-described geek who works on search technology at Microsoft (but not in the Microsoft Mac Business Unit, where it’s okay to show up with Mac hardware and software, or at least it is at the “SVC,” the Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View, Calif.).
It’s true, I’m a Microsoft developer (on Windows no less) with a Macbook. And an iPhone! I’m also rather fond of both of them.
I’m not the only one, either. I see as many iPhones as Blackjacks these days, maybe more. It’s really an awesome device and it doesn’t surprise me at all that geekier folk would pick one up.
I also wasn’t the first on the shell team with a Macbook. My friend David used to be an SDET on the team, but is now a PM. His primary machine is a first-gen black Macbook. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at least one Macbook Pro in a nearby office, and my boss has an iMac at home.
Many of them are like me, and run Vista pretty much exclusively on them. I know some didn’t even keep the OS X partition around when they installed it. It’s neat to play with once in a while (and the VMware Fusion and Parallels stuff is getting really impressive), but not terribly useful for practical purposes, especially if your life revolves around building a competing OS.
If you do run OS X, you can even get it on our network, although some things like getting on the WiFi take a fair bit of extra work. Luckily there’s an IT help page that walks you through it.
But as I said, in my case it’s pretty much a PC. A stylish, well-put-together PC. I even recently put a Vista orb sticker on top covering the backlit Apple logo (which likes to shine through while it’s running, creating an eerie, ghostly effect). Not because anyone ever cared that I carried a Mac around, but because I’m very proud of the team I work on and what we do there. And it fits perfectly =)
If I haven’t mentioned it before, I love working at Microsoft. I love that I can carry a Macbook around to every meeting and have others think nothing of it. I love that others on the team are willing to look at, use, and sometimes even live with our main competitor’s product. I think it’s important to know what “the other side” is doing, and to understand what users are talking about when they make comparisons. I think it’s also important that we respect the great things they’re doing down there, and strive to do better if we see some area where they’ve got an edge on us.
Little tidbit on that note: One day a friend of mine on the team printed off a couple dozen screenshots of Leopard, showing off various tasks the user can do in OS X, and hung them on one of our hallways. Across from it are pictures of the same tasks in that incredibly well-kept secret of a project that we’re working on. There are post-it notes and markers next to each wall where passersby leave comments / questions.
I wonder if any hallways in Cupertino have something like that?