Luci Sandor’s blog

At first, I decided not to comment on Robert Vamosi stance against Internet Explorer. But then I saw this meaningless article linked on Asa Dotzler’s blog (that’s a Mozilla developer).

When I mentioned wanting to view more than one Web page at a time, you just laughed, said it couldn’t be done. Well, I knew that wasn’t true. Opera, Netscape, and now Firefox, they can all do it. You can’t open multiple Web pages in Internet Explorer? Are you mentally challenged or what? And with the clustering of similar windows that Windows XP adds on the taskbar, you are only one click away from a list of tabs.

And don’t get me started with those late nights you’ve spent rendering thumbnail images in Windows Explorer. You’re all over Windows and, what, you just expect me to turn a blind eye? Indeed, you idiot, you can’t really walk away from Internet Explorer unless, you are buying a Mac. You don’t seem smart enough to run Linux.

When was the last time you picked up a new feature? Two years ago? Three? and then… You simply don’t want to discuss change. And when you do, it’s only because of someone else. A certain someone else: Windows. Don’t deny it. You didn’t think twice when Windows XP SP2 offered you its shiny new pop-up blocker. Or gave you new firewall protection.. But all the Internet Explorer updates are included under the generic name of Windows updates! Whenever you get a patch for MSHTML.DLL, you patch the Internet Explorer engine, and that goes back to the beginning of the Windows Update website and the new popup blocker has come exactly on the same pathway as Internet Explorer 4.0. I am led to believe that the popup blocker is not a feature of the browser, but of the operating system, which still escapes my logic. On the other hand I fail to see how Vamosi protected his PC during browsing sessions using the firewall.

I don’t want to keep upgrading my operating system just to keep you around. This kind of update-fearing people make Symantec’s money.

With Mozilla Firefox, at least I know where I stand. The code is open source, built from the ground up, clean — not recycled. Who cares about sources? The millions of Mozilla users aren’t reading the sources and I doubt that that will change when they will be joined by a guy who can’t open two browser windows. Built from ground up? This summer I had to update Mozilla from 1.7.2 to 1.7.3 because the code handling the certificates was unmodified since Netscape 4.8.

If such idiots are moving from to Internet Explorer to Mozilla, it is likely that malware creators will assume Mozilla is a target and will start striking it. At this moment, only one antivirus deals with its web cache and its mail archives and I would really love to see Vamosi columns erased by a viral Mozilla extension.

One of my colleagues, has this book, The XP Files: Windows’ Hidden Tools for Secure Sharing, Communication, and Collaboration. I had 5 minutes to waste, so I took a look. The title is not the most inspired, since talking about NetMeeting has nothing to do with the new tools in Windows XP, but more likely involves bragging around about its missing shortcut. But anyway, writing about NetMeeting brings the underlining of its unique capabilities and observing that Internet Connection Sharing doesn’t work on one-way satellite connections is the starting point for an interesting discussion about the internet connections available in USA (e.g., I had no idea that there are contractual clauses between satellite connected users and ISP’s that asks you to not use your full bandwidth).

A funny outdated detail made me smile: Europeans are using some different kind of ISDN "in the hope of getting the euro to catch up with the dollar in value". Oh, gone are the days when Internet Explorer 5 was the standard… Our savings are in $ and each morning I wake up a few $ poorer.