Biggs' Zone

A Geek's Cogitations, Conjectures and other Cortical Experiences

Category: Technology

Biggs On: IE, Chrome & Firefox

By

On March 23, 2011

In Biggs On, Technology

A very unusual thing happened this month, the top three browser companies all released majors versions of their browsers: Chrome 10, Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4. Since that time the internet and the competitive natures of their respective fans has been on a rampage trying to promote their favorite and discredit the others. ZDNet was quick to put each browser through a battery of performance tests and Chrome 10 was the victor for  most of the tests, IE and Firefox tied. ZDNet concluded that while Chrome 10 was clearly the faster browser, overall all three browsers were comparable.

It’s no secret to most that I am an avid Firefox fan. I have been using Firefox since its early versions. I only use IE if its absolutely necessary. I have tried Chrome a couple of times but I still find myself going back to Firefox every time. Naturally I became defensive when I see an article pop-up on ZDNet today with the heading “Why IE Will Survive and Firefox Won’t”. I completely disagree with the author, I think there is plenty of room for three competitors and its those “cult followings” that the author referenced that will keep Firefox a competitor. Microsoft is still playing catch-up. They haven’t come up with something truly innovative since C#. They are barely keeping their head above water trying to compete with everyone else; and if they can’t compete, they sue (ex: Microsoft is suing Barnes & Noble for patent infringement – obviously because Barnes & Noble is striking gold with the nook and Microsoft is pouting that they didn’t think of it first).

If the worst should happen, and Firefox starts to dwindle away, those that do jump the proverbial ship will most likely go to Chrome before going to IE. Honestly, I’m OK with Firefox losing to Chrome. It’s a nice browser. It’s a fast browser. It’s the dawning of a new era and the Internet Explorer era is the one that is reaching its twilight.

Cheers.

Biggs’ iPad 2 Wrap-Up

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On March 7, 2011

In Apple, General Cogitation, Technology

iPad 2About a year ago I did a “Biggs On” post about the iPad and I think I was pretty harsh. I gave it a pretty average review and I probably wasn’t very fair. Over this past year I have tinkered with the iPad in the stores and played with the ones my co-workers have bought and I actually started to enjoy them more.

Then, in an astonishing turn of events, I became very excited about the announcement of the iPad 2 on March 2nd.The announcement came as no surprise to the community; actually the bigger surprise was Steve Jobs was there to make the announcement. By this point there are probably a hundred different websites and blogs that will tell you about all the new iPad 2 features or you can simply go to the apple website (http://www.apple.com/ipad). I will quickly review those features but I’m not going to spend any time delving into their importance or their meaning, just the features about the iPad 2 (and iOS 4.3) that I found most interesting.

  • A5 processor (dual core) and 9 times the graphics speed – Steve Jobs said it’s “Dramatically Faster”
  • Front and Rear camera (no surprise there, everyone knew that was coming)
  • gyroscope (this will make for some nifty games)
  • 33% thinner then the iPhone 4 (approx 8.8mm)
  • same battery life, same pricing structure
  • personal wi-fi hotspot (iOS 4.3 – SWEET – assuming AT&T doesn’t frack it up, which they will)

Considering Apple has paid out billions to app developers, the new features in iPad 2 will create several new opportunities for more apps, bigger apps, hopefully more intellectual apps (I don’t want to see a new Fart app that responds to pictures of your bum!). Opportunities that I think will make the iPad more enjoyable, more useful and more practical.

So, with all this said, you might be wondering, what is my opinion of the iPad now that we are into version 2.

I think I will save that for after I pick one up on March 11th (by the way, there is free shipping and free engraving if you order from Apple’s website on the 11th).

Snippets: [JQuery] Toggle Expand/Collapse

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On October 9, 2010

In Programming

I have posted a new snippet on Snipplr. It’s another jQuery snippet that handles the expand and collapse of a div (or span) section. The idea for this snippet is that the user would click a plus (+) image, the code would display the hidden section and change the image to a minus ( – ). The reverse, of course, would happen if the user were to click the minus.

Here is the snippet:

The #img and #div should match the ID attribute of the page elements the code needs to respond to.

You can see this and more of my code snippets at Snipplr.

Happy Coding!

Blu-Ray

Taking the Multimedia Modern Leap

By

On January 24, 2010

In Movies, Technology

Blu-RayWell, the day finally came when I upgraded to a Blu-Ray player. As is becoming my usual custom on Sunday’s, I check the new Best Buy circular to see what movies are on sale for the week. Transformers Revenge of the Fallen was on sale and at first I was excited (I missed last weeks sale) but that excitement quickly changed to lament when it was only the blu-ray version (the 2-disc too!) was on sale. After expressing my regret to my wife she and I discussed that eventually we are going to have to upgrade to a blu-ray player and we should consider buying movies that we want on blu-ray that are on sale (i.e. Transformers). We investigated the circular further and found that a samsung blu-ray and DVD up-converter was also on sale at Best Buy.

We felt the coincidence was fortuitous so we purchased a Samsung Blu-Ray player, both Transformer movies (2-disc) and all three Bourne movies (all of these movies were on sale for excellent prices). I have too many movies to warrant replacing all of them with their corresponding blu-ray version therefore only movies we feel worthy of the blu-ray quality will get replaced and the same would go for new releases.

We have already watched Transformers Revenge of the Fallen and we are extremely satisfied with the quality of blu-ray movies. I look forward to many more movies on my widescreen television and surround sound.

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