One of the new features that came with Windows XP way back in 2001 was a new version of the Internet Explorer browser in its sixth incarnation. Sadly not much has evolved for IE6 since then giving other browsers such as Opera and the Mozilla-derivates (Netscape, Firefox, …) the chance to catch up.
With the release of Vista comes a new version of Internet Explorer as well, quite originally called Internet Explorer 7. This version is now available in public beta for everyone (that has a legal version of windows, ahem) to try. I downloaded my copy early this week and installed it on my company laptop that, after receiving its third hard disk in under a year, just received a fresh Win XP Pro install.
First looks are important. The main window has been reorganized a bit with the back/forward, reload and stop buttons having been redesigned and put in other locations. The menu’s are switched off by default as well so the overall view does seem fresh and new at first glance – yet I switched on the menu’s again after about 10 minutes but I have to admit that I haven’t really used them at all, so probably going to disable them again later on.
The big hoot is obviously that, finally, IE7 comes with “Tabbed Browsing†– a feature often claimed to be invented by the open source community in its Mozilla forks but having actually paid money for Opera on Windows 3.11 late in the previous century I clearly remember using tabbed browsing back then, we’re talking Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 2 days here people. While working for DHL I also used the Netscape 7 version of tabbed browsing so mostly I’ll compare features with that browser, my system is Mozilla Free at the moment and I don’t intend to change that. Opera is installed on another system mostly to test my CSS and to fool sites where the webmaster intentionally makes them “Firefox Onlyâ€.
Pro’s :
- The small empty tab at the top right of the tab-bar where you can quickly open a new tab with the mouse
- The Quick Tabs (CTRL-Q on your keyboard) that will show all open tabs at a glance and you can just select the one you want
- In the Favorites a small arrow appears next to a link. Click the link and it will open in the current tab, click the arrow and it will open in a new tab.
- It takes getting used to, but I can cycle thru tabs with CTRL-TAB
- ‘Open in new tab’ is at the same location as ‘Open in new window’ in IE6 (right click, 2 times cursor down, enter - yes I’m a keyboard nut)
- CTRL-Click defaults to open in a new tab instead of new window
Con’s :
- Unable to close a tab without activating it first (possible however on the Quick View page)
- Open tabs are not saved when the browser exits (cfr Opera), you have to select ‘Restore last tab group’ when starting the browser and right clicking on the first tab
- ‘Open in new window’ anchors cannot be redirected to open in tabs instead of windows
Except for tabbed browsing IE7 includes an RSS reader as well. I’ve used FeedReader until now but since I’ve got IE7 installed I haven’t really used it anymore
Pro’s :
- Only new items are displayed
- The ‘Feeds’ icon in the toolbar automatically becomes active when a website has feeds available, no need to go hunting in the page
Con’s :
- The default refresh setting is located in a not too obvious position (Right click an entry, Properties, click the “Default Options†button)
- No option to refresh an entire folder at once, you have to click each individual refresh icon
There are plenty of others obviously but I’m just listing what I’ve enjoyed, and scratched my head about, during a single week of using this second beta. Some other random points I’d like to mention
Pro’s :
- Pages actually seem to load and render fasten when compared to IE6.
- Its now possible to (in Opera style) to already show empty blocks for the images while loading so that the site does not completely redraw multiple times when loaded.
- Clear error messages when something goes boom
Con’s :
- Pages still load faster in Opera
- CSS handling is at the moment even worse then IE6, whereas there is expected to be a large improvement in CSS handling in IE7.
- The installer added various “sounds†to my “no sounds†user profile (control panel stuff)
Now I fully realize that this is a public beta and final code is 6 months away at least when Vista will ship so probably many of the con’s listed will be taken care of, or improved at the least. Yet this is a good start of where it’s supposed to be going and I can’t wait to see the final version in full action.
Links :
Internet Explorer Beta 2 Preview
3 weeks to go till Breakpoint y’all. The PC invitro got released as well some days ago and I have to admit that it is a nice change of style from the 3D demos that everyone has been doing for, well, the last 10 years. Say hello to wonderful design, great graphics, fantastic music and a general feeling that you have not the slightest idea what the entire thing is about. Amiga demo’s are back ;-)
Links :
Breakpoint 2006
FR-049, the 2006 Breakpoint Invitation
FR-049 on Pouët
When changing to the new engine some months ago I ran with one of the default CSS sheets and codebases that came as an example for most of the time.Darkman changed some colors to make it more readable here and there but that was about it.
Growing tired of the sometimes weird and ugly decisions made by the original CSS creator, not to mention that the CSS buildup was a complete mess as you were unable to basically trace what came from where, during the last week I’ve been playing and doodleing about in various CSS editors and the result is now online.
While most of the general layout is still the same I finally got the look and feel a bit how I want it and the screaming colors are gone for the most part. My major annoyance that the menu sticked to the right hand side of the browserwindow is gone as well. What still needs to be removed is the ‘wrapping’ of the long menu items, if someone has an idea how to do this please let me know ;^)
Now lets hope that most browser don’t have that much issues in the CSS… I didn’t use any fancy stuff, mostly CSS1 actually, so I’ve got good hopes for it.
Up next is a somewhat splitting up of the site into technical, english, articles and a lifelog in flemmish/dutch for the native people of belgium. Important stuff will be posted in both languages – giving me more work but what the hey.
A picture tends to say more then a thousand words. Check the pictures that Hugo snapped from the riots in Paris that followed on a demonstration against new legislations that will allow French companies to hire (and fire) young people in a more flexible way.
Links :
Demonstrations photoset on Flickr
Hugo’s photos
Risking a future reaction of “I’m getting too old for this shit†in a way that only Murtaugh could pronounce from the Lethal Weapon movies, Friday night was spent at the Silo in Leuven where the people from Technonation installed a pretty sweet electro line-up with the doctor himself as top of the bill.
For those unfamiliar with ‘the doctor’ and fear an oncoming Dalek invasion should not be worried as I’m talking about Doctor Lektroluv - a Belgian electro DJ that, with 6 compilation cd releases and since recently his own vinyl label, brings the best of old and new electro in his sets in flawless mixes. Upon arrival the people were treated to a live set from The Backlash who mixed live stuff using some laptops followed by Spacid who worked up a nice groove till 2am when the green masked man himself took over for the next 90 minutes. Respect for throwing in Amnesia’s Ibiza and the semi-obligatory Blue Monday, and to keep his cool during the 5 minute power failure that occurred in the middle of the set bringing a sudden yet cool pause where people started to shout towards the green dude. It has to be noted that the Doctor suddenly appeared in a different outfit, dropping the usual “doctor†suit for a nice smoking almost looking like a secret agent – a link that becomes clear when you know that his next compilation album will be called “007â€. Starting and ending the set with the James Bond theme did help to illusion as well obviously ;-)
Some mystery is surrounding Doctor Lektroluv however as it is relatively unknown who goes behind the mask. Some curiosity from my side and about 15 minutes of Google uses later and I’ve found the man to be known under the name of T-Quest a Fuse resident DJ and long time underground music DJ since the 1990’s. (This suddenly explained the high number of people in ‘Fuse’ t-shirts for me as well)
A highly recommended DJ to check if you get the chance and are into electro music. There is a full gig list on the website.
Links :
Doctor Lektroluv
Dr Lektroluv @ Chrome
T-Quest @ Discogs
The doctor without the mask
Amnesia’s Ibiza
Another one form the ‘Depot’ archives. This is the sound technician from Woodface, the new band around Gert Bettens – whom you’ll probably remember from K’s Choice. This one was really stretching the limits of my Coolpix camera with extreme long exposure times and very grainy result. Luckily the blue halo fixes a lot in this one so unless you look really hard you don’t notice that the right forearm is missing
Links:
Het Depot fotoset @ Flickr
Woodface
Het Depot
Today I’ve found out that Volkswagen is installing a pretty high quality of windshield in it’s cars when a pigeon decided it would be cool to try a collision with my the hump of metal that makes up my car. A large thud, feathers in my rear view mirror and just some dirt on the glass that was easily removed by the wiper-system. What I am uncertain about however is that, after being in contact with a ‘wild’ bird that could have been the carrier ofthe H5N1 virus, my car will have to be decontaminated or not…
Usually my tech gizmo’s don’t really die on me (last thing to stop working on me quite suddenly was an Apollo 68030 accelerator card for my Amiga 1200 in like ehm.. 199-something) but it has happened again !
The keyboard of my cell phone has died. The entire top-right area has gone numb so forget the usage of keys “2†and “3†combined with that little joystick-thingy as well. Basic phone calls still work obviously but try entering an SMS or Calendar entry without using letters A, B, C, D, E and F from the alphabet. I wish you good luck in any language. Maybe Klingon ?
I spent close to 2 weeks mailing and calling people and companies in order to get an RMA address for the phone. I got it online in Holland as the model that I wanted was not really available in Belgium so yes this mini support horror story is party my own fault – but I also blame QTek Holland for not accepting any support calls except those to their, not reachable from within Belgium, 0900 number. Yet in the end it seems I can send my phone to MobilePlaza.nl and get it fixed at that location.
So now I need another phone as a temporary replacement. The guys at the office provided me with a Nokia 3410 (aka Nokia Ugly) the day that I started and I have used that phone for a maximum of 3 hours. It’s HORRIBLE. Even compared to old DHL provided Nokia 6310i this was no better then a clay tablet from the ruins of Knossos.
Still no phone though, luckily Duvel still had some old demo models lying around that were perfectly usable so I picked up a QTek 8010 from his drawer and went home with that one. And “hello demo settingsâ€. Seriously nothing worked on this phone as it was totally configured and misconfigured from demo usage the last year or so. Now if you have some configuration fuckups the thing you usually do is reset the thing to its factory defaults. But how do you do this with these phones ? Seems that there are 2 magic functions on most of the QTek phones: a ’Hard Reset’ to factory defaults is performed by keeping both Softkeys pressed and tapping the power button for just the right amount of time. This will then show a small screen inviting you to push “zero†and there you go, everything back to default with all your stuff erased from the phone’s flash memory. A second function seems to be left in there by HTC (QTek OEMs the phones from HTC) that brings you another firmware selection screen. Being quite unknown to me I didn’t play around in it – as I did not want to kill off another phone – but if you feel like it : hold the ‘Camera’ button while powering on the phone. If you get a screen with all kinds of rasterbars you have succeeded.
All that is left now is to send my QTek 8020 back to Holland, and quietly hope that it will be replaced by a QTek 8310 running Windows Mobile 2005.
Links :
Nokia 3410
Qtek 8310
HTC
Some people would call the Belgian demoscene close to extinct. To counteract this Djefke told me that there was a small meeting of former (mostly PC) demosceners in Antwerp yesterday. Most of the guys were ex members of The Natives and were active in the early to mid nineties (image demos in DOS running on a 486-DX4 top of the line model with a Gravis Ultrasound card) with Doom 2 being the very latest and cool game that you play in a coax-cable based networking over IPX/SPX. Yeah baby, those were the days !
Continuing on the by-weekly demoscene topic here’s some other stuff that has been going on in the C64 corner of it. The Breakpoint invitation is already covered but plenty of other stuff is here, among others the release of the 4th episode of 8bitMayhem – so you do want to check that one out…
Links :
The Natives on Pouët
8Bit Mayhem
Stuff to do on a Thursday evening ? Well I didn’t so with an idea pitched by MrVazil it was time again for a visit to the town of Mechelen together with Zavke. Usual meeting spot is De Gouden Vis in the old city centre, next to some water that lost it’s nice smell when it flowed thru Leuven upstream.
As this place has a nice big entry where you can put all your posters it lacked something ‘je sais quoi’ but ‘la reponse’ arrived ‘tres vite’ being that a Drieduizend poster was lacking. A-Ha ! (the word, not the boysband). A quick dash to the car, grab the stock of poseters and scotch tape hidden in the trunk, put the poster on the wall, take picture. Done…
Celebrations ? Hell yeah.. Durum and other munchies at Merad, close to the train station. Open till 4am.. Jummy… Still wonder where MrVazil stuffed that ‘half turks brood met varkensvlees’ (half Turkish bread with pork meat) after all those Duvels.
Links :
MrVazil’s hideout
Drieduizend
De Gouden Vis
Editorials, English | FRaNKy | 
March 24, 2006 12:58 pm | 
Comments (0) 
Subscribe
