The Opera 8.0 Challenge
Posted by jerothe in 
Frequently I read DSLReports, and this is where I think I first heard about “1 Million Download Challenge” issued by Opera’s CEO, Jon S. von Tetzchner.
I haven’t used Opera predominantly for about a year and a half, but I still try to keep abreast on the latest version of browsers, and download them. I must have missed version 8.0, and what better opportunity then to download it after I heard this story.
Basically, this funny techie business owner (John) was going to swim the ocean, from Norway where Opera is developed, to the USA if there were 1 million downloads of the newest version of Opera, version 8.0 in a 48 hour period.
Well, it happened. Now, this was a claim that he made while standing around a water cooler, that type of jesting situation. So even though he didn’t have to do anything, they made a huge funny event out of it, sending John into a raft into the ocean, only to have the raft start to sink and they had to save him.
It made pretty good press though, which is what Opera needs right now since Firefox came out of nowhere in the last year and is kicking their butt. If you want, you can read the full article at <a href=”http://www.opera.com/swim/” title=”This link will open in a new window” target=”_blank”>Opera’s website which is very amusing, as well as see the photos of the boss, in the water floudering around.
Here’s a sample…
Additional details about IE 7.0 released
I was surfing this morning and I came across a follow up to the Internet Explorer 7.0 beta release article from last month.
This announcement basically states what the developers are working on currently, the two most important aspects of 7.0 beta being better support for Alpha transparency and better CSS consistency including floats. They are also working on correcting to major well documented problems, called the “peekaboo” and “guillotine” bugs. I don’t think I have actually ever ran into the peekaboo bug, but I have run into the guillotine bug.
The guillotine bug involves as quoted from the referenced website, “The Guillotine is a bug that chops off the bottom part of floated elements when certain links are hovered over.” Basically, what this meant for me, is adding a clearing object after the floated object, and the main container. Fortunately this whole idea was fixed when the technique for cleaing elements without using structural markup was developed. Either way, let’s hope that IE fixes their stuff.
Go ahead and read the announcement on Microsoft’s site for more details.
Adobe buys Macromedia.
What a bombshell!
Somehow I managed to be suprised, to the point where I couldn’t explain why I felt sick, and my heart was racing.
Adobe buying Macromedia? But yet, we live in an industry where the shelf life of certain electronics has a maximum of ten years, and that is always shortening. Change is inevitable, I just never would have guess this. Not in a million years. But when I read the stats, I guess it made more sense.
Last year, I read that Macromedia made somewhere in the neighborhood of $370 million. Pretty darn good. But low. Adobe, who owns the print industry, I figured would be a little higher. But to the tune of $1.7 billion in revenue? Wow! That is quite a difference between two companies that I figured were on a level playing field.
When the merger was approved by both boards late Monday, they released statements that involve vague plans on what will be done when the moguls combine, like increasing support for development on a wireless environment and how stockholders came out of the deal. If you want, go and read Macromedia’s release or Adobe’s release. Either way, I was sick to go to Macromedia’s site and see the Flash banner there, which I posted above, about the two “joining” forces.
But obviously my biggest concern, is what will happen with the software. Nothing. At least not for awhile. The merger should wrap up in the fall, like the press release claims.
Adobe does print. But they design their layout programs for web, like print is just like web. And it isn’t. It is all about drag and drop for Adobe, making this poorly coded websites, and it makes me nervous. Let’s run down each program.
Adobe Illustrator vs. Macromedia Freehand
I use Freehand heavily because you can trace something really quick, copy, and drop it into Fireworks, no problem. You can’t do that with Illustrator to Fireworks. But, I will say hands down, that Illustrator is a better program because it is broader and facilitates print better. I have had my problems trying to create complex documents in Freehand for print publications.
Verdict : Adobe WILL drop Freehand. It may incorporate some of it’s automated vector creation tools into Illustrator for the web, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Will I lament this change? Only briefly.
Adobe Photoshop vs. Macromedia Fireworks
This is not really a logical matchup. Photoshop is this amazing program that you can never learn enough about, it bounds are limitless. Fireworks, is geared specifically to making webpages, and it is an awesome program. Editable raster graphics, easy export options, everything you need to pump out something fast. Photoshop feels just like the situation it was in, an awesome program that had to go back and work in Web tools that just aren’t as easy, and don’t make as much sense.
You may be able to create more detailed masterpieces in Photoshop, so in that case, you should, and then bring them into Fireworks and incorporate them into your design. But these are seperate programs with only a handful of overlapping ideas. Both do their jobs in a great way, and are geared at seperate things.
Verdict : Adobe WILL do away with Fireworks. This is what I fear. They shoudn’t. They should just make it better for web prep, and take all the web crap out of Photoshop, or stop adding more to it. This will be a long change though. I fear they would piss more consumers off by completely ditching this product sooner than later than they would with Freehand. I just hope that if they incorporate it’s features into Photoshop, they make it just like Fireworks.
Adobe GoLive vs. Macromedia Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver has a stranglehold on the market, and this will be an interesting battle to say the least. How long do they develop for both? Do they make their decision swift and just piss everyone off now, or piss them off later?
I have seen GoLive’s capabilities in demostration on the CS Tour. I have even thought about switching (which may now, not be a choice) because of some of the neat features, like zooming in on a layout in development, and making a PDF of the layout in development. Having said that, they claim great support for CSS layout, but that is only if you use “layers” not write div tags from scratch. There is no GUI in GoLive to do that, nor Dreamweaver, but at least Dreamweaver claims display support, not a full CSS building machine. Golive also adds all this extra commented crap for those developers who embrace their drag and drop ideals.
From InDesign to Illustrator, you can drag your layouts into GoLive, and it will insert exterraneous commented code so that the two programs can communicate. Granted you can take that out, everytime you put it in, but then you can’t update the source file and have it make the changes automatically. So a double edged sword that has me asking, “What is the damn point.” Stop making a tool for hack print designers just to offer a crappy service and flood the internet with bloated page design.
Verdict : I just don’t know with this one. I hope they drop GoLive and add all of their good standards compliant type ideas to Dreamweaver. You have to hope that will happen, as the brains behind Macromedia are coming over to Adobe. But the idea of Adobe keeping Dreamweaver just doesn’t seem likely either, so this will be the matchup to watch.
However, not everything is bad and horrible.
Now, all doom and gloom aside, I am pretty pumped to see what they will be able to do with the new Adobe Flash (God that hurts to say that) integrated with the awesome capabilities, and platform independence of PDF’s. I have seen how you can incorporate Flash in PDF’s and I think it is amazing.
Plus, now that I have had time to set, I am a little excited to see what they can do for wireless development, as I see that as a highly technical market, and Adobe does have a way of making everything a little more graphical and user friendly when it comes to development.
Either way, a landmark in my career. I will probably always look back on this entry and laugh, and talk about this as one of my design “war” stories. But only time will tell what they future holds, and I will be right here, to comment on it when it does.
Firefox Extensions Part 1 – Flash Got, Bookmark Backup, and Session Saver.
After I wrote about how great some of the features are in Maxthon, it didn’t until this week occur to me to check for Firefox extensions that do exactly the same things.
I found just that. At Roundtwo and Pike’s Firefox Extensions, you can find these three great extensions; Flash Got (Roundtwo) and Bookmark Backup and Session Saver (Pike’s). As I understand it, and read on DSL Reports this week, the founder of Roundtwo used to work on the Firefox project, and it really shows as his site is really professional looking and his extensions are very practical for the everyday designer and user.
Flash Got
Just like the one click icon to save Flash from Maxthon, now Firefox will allow more ease to save Flash files out of websites.
Rating : 4 of 10
Granted, I didn’t look at this extension very long, but I thought it didn’t really help me personally that much. Nested up in the tools menu, a couple of clicks can help you get those Flash movies you really like. But knowing how to find the source, and knowing that when you put in the direct path to a Flash movie in Firefox, it lets you save the movie, this wasn’t any easier for me. I actually like the one click solution in Maxthon better.
Bookmark Backup
Like the site says, this will backup your bookmarks every so often automatically in a local folder so in case you have some sort of corruption, you can back them up at any time.
Rating : N/A of 10
I haven’t had to use this yet, so I will have to write about it once I do. But the premise does sound cool and useful.
Session Saver
The one feature that I really missed from Maxthon, this is a great extension. Install it, and away you go, the browser doesn’t even ask you at shutdown whether you want to save your windows. I may work in up to 30 windows at one time, with different articles I read through the day, reference sites, and other design related materials.
If my system crashes, or I have to force quit for some reason, this will open up all of those windows again for me instantly.
Rating : 9 of 10
The only reason I didn’t give this a perfect rating, is because, nothing is perfect bascially. Plus, if you want this feature, but aren’t a designer, chances are you don’t need your tabbed windows opened again. Althought I am sure there is an option to shut this off, I haven’t found it yet. Because I haven’t looked.
There are so many others out there, that is what is great about open source technology and a browser like this. To have designers and coders contribute a module that will do a task they really need. Making a browser work for them in their habits, that is what the web should be all about.
Go exploring, I know I will. It will be a dark day before I switch favorite browsers again.
New version of Maxthon browser released, version 1.2.2
I used Maxthon heavily from last May to October, but then it got really buggy. I had problems with the tabbed windows limiting me to three windows, my back button would stop working, and then the browser would crash when I closed it. But it appears all of those bugs have been fixed and we can concentrate again on what is really great about this browser.
It is a shell that is built off of Internet Explorer, so you have their base browser which is nice, but is also comes enhanced with many more features.
Plugins : Flash Save and View Source. One press buttons to download flash movies from websites and you can quickly view the site’s source with one button, instead of two clicks to the main view menu, or the right click context menu.
Tabbed browsing : As far as I knew, Maxthon was the first browser that had tabbed windows, or maybe it was the first one I discovered.
Window Save on Exit : That’s right. If you have to force quit, or reboot or something, this is one of Maxthon’s greatest features and isn’t in
any other browser I have found. It will reopen all of the tabs you had up when you closed if you would like.
Mouse Gestures, enhanced favorites, and skins this has all the works. Except, I am pretty pissed that the new version 1.2.2 does no longer support Google Toolbar, which stinks, but I haven’t been using that in Firefox either, so no big deal.
Check this browser out either way as a cool alternative.