2006-04-25

Falsetto à la Fox

The killer feature in Opera, compared to Firefox and other Mozilla products, is the ability to restore the content of all tabs at every browsing session; not just after experiencing a crash, but in a systematic way, whenever starting the application. I have finally found a Firefox plug-in that does that: Session Manager. Why isn't this a standard feature in Epiphany and Firefox?

Epiphany vs Firefox compatibility issues

Meanwhile, I have encountered yet another essential site (online booking for my favorite airline - this time) that blocks Epiphany but allows Firefox. Yes, I know that their webmaster is to blame for resorting to browser-agent filtering. No, I don't expect anyone at customer service to understand and to rouse their javascripting minion into fixing it. Unfortunately, it also means that I still cannot switch to Epiphany.

Even though Firefox and xulrunner are essentially the same codebase, the different browser-agent is enough to make Epiphany unsuitable for everyday use. As I recall, Rosbeh and several others reported this as being one of two reasons for shipping Firefox as their default browser, the other being a question of brand recognition: Firefox had the full-page ad in the New York Times and is multi-platform, while Epiphany is virtually unknown and GNOME-specific.

This must be fixed.

2006-04-20

Ubuntu 606

Am I the only one who thinks of a silver drum machine, when looking at the Dapper release number?

Closed for Business: Google, MSN, Yahoo

Today marked yet another phase in my dissociation from closed business models:

I wanted to view someone's photo album on Flickr. However, because this brilliant picture sharing community was recently bought by Yahoo, the service's infrastructure has been progressively overhauled into something that forces users to have a Yahoo passport to logon.

Sounds familiar? Yup, it's the same old tired MSN recipe for shotgun marriage: buy cool service startups one by one and suddenly make them inaccessible to people who refuse to provide oral sex to their whole product line. Not surprisingly, on the same day, I got a similar invitation to view another friend's photo album on My Space, which would have required a similar MSN passport there. Perkele!

Now, which other megacorporation has been quietly adopting trend-setting companies and Free Software projects through the backdoor and progressively forcing people into their own passport model? Hintti: search engine, gay male, gay talk.

User lock-in is not a business model; it is a mentally ill infestation that shall be eradicated.

2006-04-13

Standing in the Shadows of Birthday

From a great album that was the inspiration for this blog entry's title:
I'll be searching everywhere
Just to find someone to care.

Yes, again... *sigh* Давай!