Well, the portability between kernels is nice on Unixlike and Unix systems, but you would agree with me that nearly all of the developers and users for these larger desktop environments and GUIs are on Linux specifically. Technically, you can run them on Darwin even..
I would say Mozilla/Gecko was a very good choice when the project started. Webkit itself was just being open-sourced at the time and cross platform compatibility was lacking.
Hmm.. it must be even harder to develop for such a fragmented platform as the personal computer, then, where there is essentially nothing guaranteed except the OS you are writing for.
From a perspective of the general types of apps sold on mobile phones to similar mostly one-function apps and games, I think the comparison to Windows vs. Mac holds through. On Windows, most of the smaller utilities and games are generally free and it is hard to sell them to the average consumer, whereas on Mac it is much more common to find small-scale projects that are commercial. This divide is only going to be more accelerated with new easier ways of payment for applications such as the app store.
Did no once else even consider that there would be a problem with this? I figured it was just access of my data that I upload to a server and that only I can access. I already do the same with MediaTomb, but I didn´t know it would make a world of difference to move to a third party instead of my own private server.
The gap is way shrinking. The mobile web originally meant browsers that barely supported HTML (does WAP ring a bell?), picture support was sketchy, and bandwidth was a major concern as connections were very slow. Now the majority of mobile use that use it more than once in a blue moon have the same rendering engines as most desktops on connections that rival (in my case surpass) what we have available through telcom ISPs. Screen sizes are really the only difference oftentimes. Indeed, even the plug-in landscape is similar as many smartphones over Flash plug-ins and so forth.
I would have been interested to see the Unix and Mac versions of IE 5 included. And wasn't IE 5.5 a significant upgrade to 5.0, which was not included?
Has anyone tried browsing with IE6 lately? At the time, everything was probably compatible with it.. but my school still uses IE6 and I am finding more and more common web pages are broken by it. At this point, it probably serves more as a content filter than anything.
Way to bring an OS not mentioned in the article into the discussion. But to be fair, I think your point about K-9 makes a great point about the power of open source. And now Google has the ability to merge those changes back in, but even if not, the choice is there for users. I, for one, have not had the problems listed that are revelant on my Droid 2 with Android 2.2 either on Motoblur or my current Liberty. The one time I needed to transfer 800MB (for quite a while, mind you!) of data from a Macbook Pro of a colleague to my phone there were no issues. I have connected to several hidden SSIDs as well. The other issues all relate to the use of the Google Accounts... and it is well known going in to the platform that it is current very Google-account dependent.
Those fonts are ridiculously ugly in the screenshots. Maybe it is the monitor type the machine used for testing used with a combination of font preferences, but they are still hard on the eyes... and I having been using Linux since Red Hat 6.1 and am posting from Fedora 14.
Being a shareholder is kind of a weak claim to authority when anybody can be anyway, isn´t it? If he picked up a couple of NOK stock is he able to be taken exponentially more seriously?
A browser can be fully modern and platform specific; I fail to see your argument. Could a browser not be specifically developed for Haiku, Mac OS 9, or any other current or legacy platform and still be a modern browser even if it has the full feature set of Chrome?
I usually get about 2mbps on my Verizon 3G, which is faster than my home ADSL connection. I´ve thought of my wireless as very fast, though perhaps not from a global perspective.
I found webOS to be superior to iOS and Android in most ways, only to be hindered by poor hardware and marketing. WP7 will not take off just because it is objectively better in some ways.
My own experience with the app on Android would have me warn you that speech recognition is sub-par. English generally works, but it is sketchy. Spanish didn't work with me; I thought maybe it was my non-native accent, yet it managed to fair worse when I had some native speakers try it. It couldn't catch even basic phrases no matter how many times tried.
It is a pain, whether the restrictions are carrier-induced or not, to do this. I had a truly open and flexible desktop-like operating system when I was running Maemo OS2008.. I could install and compile my own software, it was common to have desktop software ported to the device, there was tons of interest in hacking on different supports (I had Wiimotes on a NES emulator, a regular sized USB port, etc.). I have an Android-powered device.. and it is definitely not at that level, despite having a custom rom and the whole nine yards.
All this does is make me regret paying more for extra memory... With a dozen programs open, I am sitting at 2.3GB free, according to this. I guess it was wrong to splurge for that extra memory.
I recall having this problem on Windows as well. I have a Windows laptop (XP with Turion X2 processor) I keep on hand in case I ever need Windows that I hauled out of the closet the other day as a Skype friend wanted to play a game (I´m on Linux). I installed Skype and was greeted with a behemoth that this computer couldn´t handle. Incidently, I was surfing in the background while I ended up just chatting due to poor video quality and came across a website that took your Flash webcam and did effects with it and the video would not load. I rebooted (sans Skype being open now) and it worked.
I agree. I never use applications written only for one website unless it provides additional features (e.g. the Facebook application includes hooks to the whole system for uploading pictures and such). I find it unnecessarily tedious to think beyond needing a web browser for web browsing.
Didn´t something like this used to be achieved with meta tags anyway? I remember when it was common to have meta tags with author names, editors (I have often seem the generator often used on many WYSIWYG editors assigned to the author´s text editor), and contact information.