Thursday 5 May 2011

"640k is enough for anybody" - Standards in web browsing and desktops

In years gone by the only way to get a stable browsing experience was to use Internet Explorer 4 on Windows an OS not even built for networking. Nowadays we have Firefox, Chrome and some element of cross-platform integration. But, there are still times when things don't work properly. Web Folders, or instance. Linux has support for WebDAV, but yet no amount or Naulitus, Firefox, or Command Line trickery can get a proper connection with my networked Web Folder from school. Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid. I have to use IE, or go on the HTML read-only view. Even a Mac can access some Web Folders, to some extent. Googel made a colution by imitating IE in Chrome (with an extension), but they don't actually imitate IE. It needs the browser installed, so it can run a n instance of it inside Chrome. And they then go and say the extension works with Linux.Er, no????

Another example is desktop ideas. Gnome now has 4 interfaces for its next version: Gnome Shell, Classic Gnome desktop, Unity 3D, and Unity 2D. It was bad enough with different desktops (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, ICceWM, etc) but now different shells within desktops? Utter madness. I say find something that the public can use and suits their ways of working, and if you don't like the desktop developers, customise it. People will change their desktop, but like something to work on. I had a single bottom panel, changed to a bottom panel with the dock on it, got rid of the panel, had 2 docks, and now have a top panel with Global menus, App Switcher (icons) and Window buttons. Madness. I don't mind different desktops and web browsers, that is what choice is for, but please, please, please, please PLEASE can we have some standards to join them together. :)

No comments:

Post a Comment