Windows in Desktop
I just read a very interesting article about how “ready” is MS-Windows for the desktop. I know that sound crazy, as for most of you, Windows is Desktop (sadly). Now I find his approach funny, although he did not give any false statement in his article. He forgot the most major factor in advantage of Windows “Everyone uses it” .. well not everyone, I don’t, but most people do.
Back in Amman, we have 2 GSM mobile networks, FastLink and MobileCom. Now it is wildly known between Jordanians that Fastlink sucks, the quality and availability of their services is very low compared with MobileCom. But still, Fastlink have at least 10 times more subscribers than MobileCom, why is that ? FastLink was there first, and MobileCom came 5 years after FastLink, so when new members wanted to get mobile lines these days, they are most likely to choose Fastlink because “Everyone Uses Fastlink”. For me, as I am a rebel, and do not like the “everyone uses xyz” reason, I had MobileCom phone, and convinced my family to all get Mobilecom :) Just because MobileCom is better, as Linux is better.
I have some comments about the article:
1. Writing a paper: When Microsoft include some free software ready with the Windows installation like IE and Media Player, its accused that its monopolize company and prevent competition between other like software, but when it include simple document editor, its again accused, but this time that the editor is not much professional, this seems ridiculous.
2. IE vs. MOZ: It seems writer didn’t even develop HTML pages and test them using IE, I’m developing web solutions since more than 3 years and I can say that IE -version 6.0 and higher- is fully w3c compliant and can properly handle CSS than any other browsers.
about Tabbed Browser, its good feature, despite I don’t know why many people consider it extreme powerful amazing feature that how stupid IE doesn’t have it, I have different opinion, sometimes when I use Mozilla or Opera -which have Tabbed windows- suddenly the main browser window crashes and you have to shut down the main window and lose any opened session, in Opera there is an option to restore the last accidentally closed session next time after crashing, I don’t know about Mozilla.
Built in Pop-up blocker come with Windows XP Service Pack 2.
3. Instant messaging: Microsoft is not forced to let MSN Messenger interact with IM like Yahoo Messenger. However, there are existing software do that like “mecca”.
4. Creating a presentation: like point one.
Hi,
Just couldn’t help but reply to this guy’s comment and to your blog :)
Fero, I come from a development background too, have been developing for over 5 years now and I know IE is the browser our work always looks great in no matter what kind of html our code is generating, lol.
But if we look underneath the hood and try out the full set of standards, especially when it comes to a bit more advanced CSS, IE actually sucks.
As for tabbed browsing, I love it. I don’t think it’s a stupid feature at all. And I like that Opera saves my session when it crashes. Mozilla & Firefox still don’t do that.
But still you get worse stuff from IE when it crashes and it closes all it’s open windows.
I’m not anti Microsoft nor anti open source, I’m pro creativity, quality and usabilty.
It is funny to see the writer of the article turn things around and ask if Microsoft is ready for the desktop, but obviously the guy isn’t being objective, he’s pro-linux & open source and anti-microsoft and is talking from that perspective.
I won’t be getting into which is better for the desktop although most people would argue that Windows still is. What I would like to highlight is that Linux has made some very great steps to become more usable on the desktop and I think it can be a great alternative for many people. Still I would like to see linux becoming more creative and leading the way into new things instead of catching up on what others are doing.
First, I’m developing web pages more than 3 years, range from simple HTML to complex content, I don’t remember that I faced problems regarding CSS under IE. Instead, in most cases it give me what I expect from it to do. I’m really interesting to hear such examples of things let you get suck using CSS under IE, may I have work around, or if not then at least to know it. You can contact me about this directly using my email, so Isam’s web log not going to convert to discussion forum.
Second, about Tabbed Browsing, I didn’t say it’s a stupid feature, and I can tell you that in addition to the worst stuff that IE has regarding closing all windows in crash situation, I can tell that Mozilla has similar behavior, some times I open some tabs under Mozilla, I leave them, return next day morning and try to activate Mozilla application again, blaaa, either it freeze or it stuck , I have to terminate the application and open it again.
Third, I’m like you not anti Microsoft or anti open source, and respect all the technologies and appreciate all the efforts spent in them.
Well, I’ll tell you some facts about IE. First of all it doesn’t really comply to w3c standards. Sepcially CSS standards. Some people have created complete css hack files to fix some issues in IE.
On the other hand, Opera & firefox are w3c compliant. It really kills me when I need to fix things just to make them work for IE. HTML & it’s sister technologies should be 100% portable and work on all browsers, But IE is not playing fair.
If you are a web developer, you should try firefox with the following plugins. They really saved me hours debugging my web applications.
1- Live HTTP headers
2- Web Developer Tool bar
I wrote a short blog describing some nice features you can read it here: http://gnuix.com/ammar/index.php?p=6