Browsers and Operating Systems

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I've been playing with the new Safari beta.  On windows, so on my machine at work obviously. (did try with wine but the installer was having none of it, heh)

What do I think of it?  It's a browser.  Another one to add to the growing collection that as a web developer I obviously need to have... (no, really)

I'm slightly suspicious of anything Appley anyway, cos they're rather too fond of over hyped expensive proprietry stuff and mac fanboys are weird and scarily obsessive.  But windows safari seems vaguely the same as mac safari in terms of how it works and rendering and stuff.  No real surprise there.

At work at any given point I've generally got at least two browsers on the go.  Today I decided that I should try to use safari as the 'main' one, to give it a real test.  But it has no webdev toolbar so that didn't entirely happen...

Good points:

  • you can resize text boxes. Tiny textareas are one of my pet peeves so this is a very good thing
  • um...
  • it's not IE

Bad points:

  • double clicking on the tab bar does not spawn a new tab.
  • tab close buttons are on the 'wrong' side of the tab
  • too obviously not a windows app

That last one is the really annoying thing.  I mean, yeah, it is a mac app... but as far as I'm concerned if you're going to port your software to another OS you could at least try and fit with its behaviours.

All my other windows programs have the same window decorations.  If you change the colour scheme, they all change.  But not Safari - it sits there looking all fake metally and has a different style of close button.  To resize anything else I can just grab any edge and drag - but not safari.  That has to stay all mac-like and only resize with the handle in the bottom right hand corner. grr

This is partly me being petty, but it's one of those little things...  If I'm using windows or linux, I know how everything is going to behave. 
Same with OS X - if I'm using that I'm fine with having to resize using one specific corner only, or having menu bars that aren't attached to the rest of the window.  That's fine, because everything on the screen is the same.  But mixing stuff up is annoying and confusing :|

London 2012 - like bad pink graffiti

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there are no words

So, the 2012 London Olympics logo... I love it! 

In the way that I really hate it, think it is absolutely disgusting and ugly and a massive waste of money (£400k - how? why?!).

First reaction on seeing it at some point yesterday lunchtimeish was an interesting mixture of laughing and disgust.  Seriously?

But apparently it's meant to be aimed at the 'youth' of Britain, quite possibly in the same slightly cringy way that politicians like to think they are 'cool' and 'down with the kids'.  So not at all then...

Not found anyone saying anything good about it yet either, heh.  But the whole reaction I am finding hilarious :)  Didn't take long for b3ta types to get their hands on it, but then the best thing ever happened and the beeb actually picked up on a rather obvious goatse version. Genius!  Part of me hopes this was down to someone at the bbc with a slightly twisted sense of humour, rather than just general ignorance.  heh.

But no, it gets better! Today someone important has decided that the animated version (which I have avoided seeing) may trigger epileptic fits.  Good to see that all that money has gone on really properly researching every aspect of the project then.  duuuh. 

Oh yeah, and rather predictably the designers' website is a big mess of nasty flash that is in no way accessible to anyone.  Why am I not surprised by this?  

New MP3 Player

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I've bought myself a new mp3 player.  One of these.  It's small and shiny and rather nice, and came with the shortest usb cable I have ever seen - 12cm including both connectors!  The player could really do with a clip though, but I can buy that as an accessory and it'll still work out much cheaper and better than an ipod shuffle :P

Only problem is, I'm sat here now listening to it (because hey, it's new and all), but I keep getting confused because I'm pressing win+b on my keyboard to skip to the next track and nothing's happening.... duuuhh!

Now if only I could find my cassette adapter for the car.. not that it works anymore, but still