Pick a Standard! Any Standard!

My OS of choice is Apple Macintosh. Macintosh usually gets the shit end of the stick when it comes to developing applications, but seriously… I find it a tad ridiculous that after over a decade in the era of the Internet, I am still relegated to having three different browsers open to view the World Wide Web.

Here’s a run down of my favorite browsers and their pros and cons:

Firefox

Ahhh Firefox. The supposed “MSIE Killer“….

Pros:
• It’s generally an overall superb browser and does pretty much everything it purports.
• It appears to be faster than Safari.(Sorry, you aren’t getting me to waste time on benchmarks.)
• I can edit phpwcms WYSIWYG mode.
• I can edit this blog in it (b2evolution) with no fear of the BB code dropping the tags at the bottom of my entry, although it does have a wacky bug that slams you back up to the top of the entry every time you put in a [em] or [strong] tag in, so doing several in a paragraph is particularly hellish.

Cons:
• Reading the giant ubiquitous Flash smilie ads that have become the New Porn spam scheme of the millenium. Name a reference site and you’ll see them, any lyrics site, dictionary.com, imdb.com, even bartleby.com, who should know better. I’m not against internet advertising, but my god, is it necessary to slap two or three of this idiot banners on one page?

Firefox just sits there frozen when hitting a site with these internet billboards of obscenity. I’ve read this happens in both Windows and Mac in several forums. After a Macromedia representative posted to this blog a while back, I thought it may be them or the browser - it definately happens in both Firefox and Mozilla, so… The only other reason I can think of for this annoyance is that these similie hucksters have apparently hired people who don’t know that 30fps is not necessary in the export of Flash for online usage.

Only two options here. Boycott these sites until Smiley Central is dead and buried or use Firefox with an Ad Blocker installed.

Omniweb

Pros:

• As an alternative to Firefox, I downloaded the demo for Omniweb. (Yes, you have to pay for it, eventually.) It’s a really great browser with tons of solid usable features.
• Prettier than all the other browsers.

Visit the site to see why this browser is so great.

Cons:
• Forget about using any php goodies such as phpwcms or b2evolution. It’s response is almost as slow as Safari and when you try and edit online in forums or blogs using “BB” code, it doesn’t put the tags around the word, unlike Firefox, it puts them at the bottom of the article. (Considering it’s code is based upon Safari, this would make sense.)

• It doesn’t allow the editing of WYSIWYG in phpwcms.
• It seems slower than Firefox but faster than Safari.
• It crashes consistently when opening the OS “save as” dialogue box.

I guess what I’m trying to say in my fractured and poorly researched rant is that I cannot stand the fact that the internet (if we’re sticking to the information super highway metaphor) is chock full of lemons. But if I may point my waggy little finger at someone it would be the (most likely) 30 fps banners that have plagued me recently. Do I really have to buy a G5 just to surf the web?

Besides, it’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.

Anyway, it looks like I have to browse in one browser, edit php in another, watch Flash in a third. I can’t be bothered to try any more browsers. I’ve given up on MSIE and I already have Mozilla, the defunct Camino, Firefox, Netscape, Omniweb, Opera. Is Windows any better? Does anyone care? Should I get off this damned zombie box and go back to pencil and paper? Who knows. I do know that the computers will, once again, be the death of us all.

Win-blows: OS of the Damned!

I’m not usually one to get into a debate about which OS is better, since I think all computers are demonic utensils designed to drain the life-force from any one who dares to use them, but seriously folks, I can’t take this shit anymore.

Designing sites for some kind of non-existent “standard” that the World Wide Web Consortium tries to put into serious consideration is a fucking joke when it comes to the bullshit I have to deal with testing websites in Microsoft Windows Explorer.

The OS I just happen to design websites on is, you guessed it, shrimp. No, no… I mean Apple Macintosh. Now, I’m not saying that Apple is God’s one and only gift to the digital age and I’m not saying that it’s better or worse than Windows. As I’ve stated above, I could fucking care less what brand name is on these fucking rat-trap zombie machines. I only hope and pray they’ll keep running properly so I can pay my bills. And honestly? Even that’s too much to ask for in this Future-Shock, Nowhere Generation, war-mongering, shit-heel decade.

I do enjoy fucking around with one of these things, but in a “ham radio” kind of way - to rely on computers for a career is a frustrating exercise in self-flagelation. This ennui-inducing, pissant, worker-bee existence is kife and if I was any younger I’d get on a fucking plane and you’d never see me again.

The “Internet Pundits” like to use the child-like metaphors of cars, highways, traffic and various other definitions of (and simulated freedom) to describe the intricacies of something most people will never understand, nor care to. I think we should extend these metaphors to the next level of the physical manifestation of their meanings.

Computers are ephemeral nonsense. What with it’s constant destructive-inducing behavior, myriad of daily breakdowns, scams and spam, it should be outlawed or at the very least, most people should have to take a six week course and garner a “driver’s permit” before they’re even allowed to sit in front of one.

Well aren’t you the ‘fascist totalitarian’ you’re probably muttering to yourselves. Better than being a communist or whacked out religious nut is my answer to you. And then again, any kind of flagrant zealousness is probably not good for anyone except me, so ok, I’m a totalitarian. So sue me.

Which brings me to the worst offender of the heathenous ilk that traverses the net and makes money off “Internet Land”. Microsoft and their horrendous, plagurized, market-saturating, share monopolizing, K-Mart doctrine software, Windows.

I hardly know where to start to begin bashing this OS and it’s moronic logic, setup and execution. Let’s skip the obvious, like it’s as ugly as sin and as clunky as a blindfolded mongoloid. Let’s just get the fact out of the way that all businessmen and pornographers use it. (I’ll exclude filmmakers from this list since they’re all on Macintosh.) And if I must make gross generalizations to alleviate my hatred and frustration for having to even look at a Microsoft product, it’s as cheap and satisfying as a two dollar whore.

Its marketing campaigns are asinine and aimed at dumbo industries that haven’t yet switched over to the “New World Order” and it’s felonious president is Satan himself.

They haven’t broken a single convention or tried to push the envelope since they began.

Which OS is better (Mac or Windows) is an age old battle, not unlike Pepsi and Coke, if Pepsi had 10% of the market share.

Anyone who uses Windows is simply too cheap to buy a worthy computer and it’s accompanying OS or too un-informed to make a decision other than to buy what has a hold on the consumer market’s mind set.

On a simplistic level, this would be exactly the same as a Windows user presenting the argument that McDonalds is better than going and paying for a 40 dollar steak at an fine restaurant. We get what we pay for. If Apple’s OS is the BMW of computers, then Windows is a Ford Focus.

Now, it is EXTREMELY rare that something used by the swinish multitude, is cheap and genius in it’s design. No one has ever paid 40 dollars for a hamburger. (Okay, well, maybe some have, but that would be idiotic, now wouldn’t it?)

Cheapness is not the only fault of Windows. I have used it extensively, unlike the psudeo-computer expert that uses the battle cry of “Mac suuuucks!” But then, they really have no other argument. Not an empirical one anyway.

If you want to talk interface, ergonomics and ease of use, then let’s talk - but for all it’s little stupid little “wizards” (how I despise that word - and how I hate a computer program overtly trying to “help” me), constant security updates and factory presets that are set to do nothing but monopolize my choices, Windows does nothing for me but ask me the simple and nefarious question: “Would I like Fries with That?”

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Now, what started this ill-informed, rage-filled and sloppy rant you may ask?
Oh, something as simple as trying to use HTML tables in a web project.