I’d rather use Netscape. I like it more than Internet Explorer 6. I’m also building web pages with Netscape Composer.

That was a flashback. Remember?

The good ol’ days when I used Netscape Composer to code web sites and IE6 to test them. IE6 was quick, top of the line and… the only one. Netscape Navigator was slow, and sometimes not respecting standards. Remember the Yahoo bug when not specifying a background colour, assuming it white, yielded a grey backdrop? Seems like yesterday.

I know I coded two websites using Composer and, by viewing the HTML 3.2 , I learned to code using only Notepad. Took a while to perfect and used Macromedia UltraDev and Dreamweaver.

Oh, but enough with off-topic stuff, Google Apps drops IE6 support (finally),  as noted in an email notice:

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

IE still owns supremacy, as noted by a Guardian.co.uk survey:

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 has finally become the world’s most-used browser, according to Net Applications‘ figures based on monitoring website usage. IE8 has taken over from IE6, which has been hit by the decline in the use of Windows XP.

In January 2010, NetApps reckons IE8 had 22.31% of the market, with IE6 on 20.07%. Firefox 3.5 took third place with 17.01%, ahead of IE7 (14.58%), Firefox 3.0 (5.29%), Google Chrome (3.92%) and Apple Safari (3.55%). Actually, IE8’s lead is even larger if its 3% market share in “compatibility mode” is counted.

The decade-old IE6 had a transitory spot at the top of the chart because of IE7 users switching to IE8. This put both IE7 and IE8 below IE6, according to NetApps, even while IE6 was losing 8 points of market share.

The ugliest browser market breakdown bulleted list:

• IE8 - 22.31%
• IE6 - 20.07%
• Firefox 3.5 - 17.01%
• IE7 - 14.58%
• Firefox 3.0 - 5.29%
• Chrome - 3.92%
• Safari - 3.55%

Don’t you just feel a bit betrayed? While you, as a web developer, designer, programmer and optimizer, preach the use of Firefox, Chrome and even Safari, Microsoft works behind your back and pushes IE8 to companies. It’s so easy to use a preinstalled browser and see all those coloured toolbars getting added by themselves. What am I saying here, you ask? What the tech degree of intelligence of the people using IE? Zero? You tell me.

I taught my mother how to use Firefox and I’m happy.

I can’t help watching and playing with the videos in my previous article. Immersive Media has more movies on their demos page here.

Can’t wait to see what new demos they bring up, as promised.

Google and Immersive Media are working on a next generation Street View technology, StreetScene. Possible applications of this new technology are many and will change dramatically the way one interacts and explore 360° worlds end environments.

I’ve always enjoyed walking inside Google’s Street View environment, but the following movies are way beyond the current technology.

It just ocurred to me being at a virtual concert and looking wherever I want, or focusing on diferrent instruments. Or a sports event with a camera mounted on top of the playing field.

I am looking forward to get new software in 2010. A quick top 5 of these software solutions is:

1. Firefox 3.6

It’s been in beta state way too long and it’s time to have it live.

2. WordPress 2.9.1 (maybe 2.9.2)

With a lot of bug fixes from a minor release, 2.9.1 should be ready by January 2010.

3. Server2Go 1.8.0

Again, a long time since a release, Server2Go should upgrade PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, and provide speed optimizations.

4. Open Realty 2.6.0 (maybe 3.0)

A lot of bugs in the current releases, but Open Realty is the number one script for Realtors. I use it for 2 clients, and write 3 more from scratch based on Open Realty features.

5. jQuery 1.3.3 (maybe 1.4.0)

I don’t really hope for a 1.4.0 leap, but the current version needs more optimizations and simplification.

To be fair with myself, I’ll release in January fresh versions of Whiskey Air WordPress theme with 2.9 optimizations, Portable phpMyAdmin, Butterfly Query Admin, Butterfly Organizer and (em)phasis.

I also have several other undisclosed projects to be released sometimes in 2010.

While actively developing Firefox 3, and beta updates are knocking on our doors, the Mozilla team released some alpha UI concepts.

As noted on the 3.0 Windows Default Theme Issues Wikipage, Firefox feels dated and behind on Windows. Especially Vista and Windows 7. These issues include absence of Glass, anemic purple toolbar color on Vista, tall and bulky UI footprint, element overload, inconsistent toolbar icon usage/style, lack of a tactile look & feel and perhaps too great of a divergence between the look on XP and Vista/7.

[...]

Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menubar has been systematically removed from Windows applications built by Microsoft and other vendors. It has been replaced with alternatives like the Windows Explorer contextual strip or the Ribbon found in Office 2007. The Ribbon UI is now also used in Paint and Wordpad for Windows 7. Many apps still retain the menubar as an option to be pinned or to be shown briefly by holding the Alt key.

Firefox isn’t the type of application that necessarily has contextual actions in the same way Windows Explorer does. So how to handle the functionality of the menubar if it is hidden? Chrome and Safari (and to a lesser extent IE7 & have solved this by sorting, trimming and collecting the menubar functionality into two separate buttons. One of these buttons has items that apply to the webpage and another to the application itself. Now they don’t always agree on which item should go in which menu, but the general principal is sound. This is a good solution.

The menubar as a UI is pretty good at one thing: hiding complexity. The general purpose of the menubar is to contain all of the things that you want your program to do but you can’t(or shouldn’t) cram into the main UI. So the menubar generally ends up with a lot of stuff that isn’t used very often, if at all, and yet is reproduced on every window and takes up a significant amount of real estate. It also has the tendency to become a dumping ground for new or hardly used features. This experience can be made worse with sub-menus, or even sub-sub-menus, which are hard to find and hard to target.

A progress bar can make waiting seem slightly less painful and let you know if something might be hung-up or not. It won’t actually make things faster, but it might make them feel faster.

Instead of the indeterminate progress indicator in use now, we would like add a progress “line” under the location bar on the active tab and at the top of each background tab. This will let people know about how much longer their background tabs have until they load and it also looks cool.

Several variations of the App Button have been explored. Various factors of consideration include what color to make it, whether or not to have an icon, just an icon, icon and text, part of the tab bar, a separate button or attached to the top of the window.

Presently it is orange and attached to the top of the menu simply labeled “Firefox”. The color plays off of the Firefox icon and is noticeable. The placement attaches the button to the top of the window and suggests that its items apply to the whole menu. It also corresponds to the area of the window where someone would look for the menu bar. Using text only is reminiscent of a menu item.

Want some Linux flavour?

Go here. Or here.

Sources:

• https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/3.7_and_4.0_Theme_and_UI_Revamp/Direction_and_Feedback
• http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/2009/11/20/sketch-day/
• http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/2009/12/21/windows-themeui-update/