Goodbye Bookstores - Hello... book "stores"

Yesterday I went to a strip mall that used to have a Borders bookstore in it. It was sort of sad - I had frequented it more than a few times - just browsing the latest releases, looking over the titles in the technology "section", maybe taking one or two volumes back to a reading table with a cup of coffee...

Ah, yes - the "good old days."

As I was reading the Google blog - they had a short video about a new Chrome experiment they were toying around with - a virtual bookshelf application. The idea is that you have an infinite, virtual bookcase that shows (literally) hundreds of thousands of books - organized by one of 28 categories.

You can choose a category - and the bookcase zooms into position. You can then "spin" the thing and because it's like a coiled double helix (think Slinkee) - you can just go round and round and move the entire thing up and down to browse to your heart's content.

When you see a book you would like more information on - simply click it, and you'll see the front cover. When you click the book - it opens (like a real book) to reveal a synopsis and a QR code (those strange barcodes you see everywhere) so that you can open the title on your device.

Now, it's still in the "experimental" stage - and they recommend you use Google's Chrome browser (naturally) and a "powerful computer with a good graphics card" - and there are plenty "your mileage may vary" disclaimers - but it's still well worth a look-see.

They are visually presenting a lot of information that could be (and is) presented in the typical "list" format. I mean, you've seen the listing of books with covers but it just lacks the brevity and excitement of looking through a bookstore shelf.

Apple was at the forefront of this type of visualization - but they did it with your music collection. Their "Cover Flow" technology allows you to "flip through" your collection of "albums" by displaying the cover artwork - rather than a listing (like a playlist).

I think this is where the future of software and user interfaces is going - especially given the fact that our devices are getting smaller (less screen real estate) and there is more information. This type of visual paradigm is perfect for displaying huge amounts of information in an itty bitty space.

Could You Live Your (Computing) Life Only In The Cloud?

So the first batch of Chrome OS computers started shipping this week - one by Samsung and one by Acer. They're basically like a standard laptop, albeit an under-powered one - think netbook specs. They both have about a 12 inch screen, weigh under 3.5 pounds (1.6 kg), have a couple of gigs of RAM, a solid state 15-20GB hard drive, a SD card reader, couple of USB ports (no ethernet), built-in WiFi (no ethernet - but Samsung has a 3G radio option) and a built-in webcam/microphone. They both retail for about $350 (WiFi only) to $500 (WiFi + 3G).

Short Rant: Adobe - Patch THIS! (UPDATED)

Holy crap. Really? ANOTHER set of patches for Flash? This is the second time in 9 days that Adobe has issued a "zero-day" patch that affect Flash (and also, Google's Chrome browser that includes Flash). Oh yeah, and it also updated Adobe Reader and Acrobat fixing 13 MORE vulnerabilities at the same time.

If you use Gmail - you REALLY, REALLY need to make sure that you've got the latest patch - because on June 5th Adobe issued an "emergency" patch to fix a vulnerability that would allow nefarious baddies to steal your Gmail login credentials.

I don't know about you - but I have more than one device that uses Flash. I use Google's Chrome browser at work (3 Windows machines), at home (2 Macs + 6 virtual OS instances) - and I'm just getting pretty damn tired of updating all this stuff - all the time. But yet, if Adobe comes out with a "critical" patch - and you ignore it - your machine might get hacked - or your identity stolen.

Really? Identity theft from a browser plug-in used to play media or display a PDF document?

I'm especially worried about those "less technically savvy" people in my life - since I'm the "family IT guy." If they don't patch, it means I'm going to have to do all kinds of stuff to un-gunk their computers - because (technically inclined brethren) you KNOW they DO click on every single "pretty picture" on every single site they visit on the inter-web.

Now, I love PDFs - don't get me wrong - and because reader is now installed on 95%+ of all computers in the world - getting away from using it will be a challenge.

For those of you who are really smart out there - why don't you come up with a PDF to HTML5 converter that would just bundle up the PDF into a double-clickable HTML document? At least then we could be free from the eternal Adobe Patch Cycle...

... until someone hacks HTML5 readers... sigh.

UPDATE June 17, 2011 - Well, it seems as though the good folks over at Mozilla are SICK of the buggy Adobe Reader as well - and are going to build an extension (and eventually put into the codebase)... wait for it... a 100% HTML5/JavaScript PDF rendering engine! Hot off the wire from ComputerWorld:

Mozilla is working on a project that will add PDF rendering to Firefox using HTML5 and JavaScript, eliminating the need for users to run Adobe's own plug-in.

We can only HOPE the other browser folks get behind the open-source pdf.js project as well! God speed Mozilla folks!

IE9 "INNOVATION!"

DOH! I just noticed that my last blog here was 6 MONTHS ago... ummm... oops - my bad. (to my loyal 10 readers - I'll try to be better about updating this thing on a more timely basis)

So Microsoft just released Internet Exploder 9.0 and a "special" download site beautyOfTheWeb.com. Now, let's get this out in the open right from the start - I am NOT a huge fan of Internet Explorer. In fact, it's such a bloated, slow and outdated piece of crap that I've long since changed the default browser on every computer I touch to Chrome.

Before I get hate mail from die-hard Mozilla users - it's not that I dislike Firefox - it was the "cool kid" and unlocked the door of the tyrannical IE lock-in suffered by so many for so long. However, Google's Chrome browser simply blew the doors off Firefox in terms of performance, simplicity and elegance. To be fair, Firefox 4 is just about ready to be released - so we'll see how it goes - but for now, for me and mine - Chrome is the bee's knees.

OK, so I hope you get the fact that I like Chrome. A lot.

What was I talking about again? Oh, yeah - IE (small internal groan - followed by a sigh).

It was with great fear and trepidation that actually downloaded and Installed IE9 on my Windows 7 box. I was expecting the "usual" 10 minute download of the installer, the 20 minute install process, the inevitable reboot, etc.

BUT - the download process was pretty easy - they have a little "shell" downloader (like Chrome) app that comes down and actually does the download/install. The installation process itself was actually pretty quick (less than 5 minutes)... I was beginning to think it was going to actually be a "good" experience!

Did Microsoft finally "get it?" Did they finally realize that customers hate bloatware? Did they actually give a crap about the... dare I say it... "user?"

Answer: nope.

You STILL have to do a restart. After you install a BROWSER. In 2011.

Really.

"Well, it IS Microsoft after all", I tell myself. It's almost reassuring that they have kept the process somewhat familiar regardless of how screwed up it is... but I digress.

After installation and reboot, I'm finally ready! IE9! Here we GO!

What the ??

Did I launch Chrome by mistake? (I literally had to check the task bar)

Wow. Microsoft managed to copy Chrome! Gone are all the "crap bars" that hose it all up (like Chrome). Gone are the menus, replaced by a cute "gear" icon (hey, they couldn't use a "wrench" like Chrome - that would be "copying"). You can type in address bar to perform searchs (like Chrome). The rendering speeds ARE significantly and noticeably faster than IE8 (like Chrome). They added process isolation (so if one tab crashes - it doesn't take the whole app down - like Chrome).

Hmmmmmm... it actually doesn't suck.

It's like Chrome - but rather than using an open-source, standards-based HTML rendering engine - they're still using their closed-source, Windows-only, born in 1998 "Trident" engine. And, although Microsoft claims they've updated it to support CSS3 and HTML5 - you gotta' just KNOW that they're "embracing and extending" (read: making stupid, incompatible changes to standard tags and putting in new ones that no other browser supports).

Microsoft doing a browser update can cause a number of different responses - depending on what camp you find yourself in:

If you're a casual user: NO IMPACT - you're probably still using the default IE 6 that came with XP and either your computer is so filled with viruses that you've given up using it - or you don't actually use it to surf beyond your webmail.

If you're a web developer: HAIR ON FIRE ALERT! Refill your Starbucks card immediatelty - because now you have to support yet ANOTHER incompatible version of IE!

If you're a die-hard Microsoft-only shop: REJOICE! You can now actually "load pages quickly". Make sure you update all your customers/users immediately - and for goodness sakes make sure that you immediately hard code all your external-facing sites to only render in IE9!

If you're a die-hard Mac/iOS user/developer: IGNORE - the Mac team at Microsoft uses the same Safari/Chrome WebKit rendering engine in the Mac version of Office 2011.

So, do I "like" IE9? Sure. It's a helluva lot better than IE6, IE7 or IE8! But that's like saying Windows 7 is better than Vista. It IS. But it had BETTER BE!

The inspiration for this post was not that IE9 came out. It was all about a very insulting quote by Dean Hachamovitch (the head of the IE development team) came out with:

"Other browsers dilute their engineering investments across systems," Hachamovitch said. "Because we focus exclusively on one, IE can make the most of the Windows experience and the hardware."

Ummmm... excuse me? Yeah, you're right, Dean... why the hell would you want to support other platforms? Why would you want the same browsing experience across multiple devices? Why would you want to go with a standards-based approach - when everyone at Microsoft KNOWS that closed-source and proprietary is the future.

The Gleam of Chrome

For the past few days - I've made Google's new browser - Chrome the default browser on my system - just to give it a proper test drive.

Ok, so Firefox 3 was eating tons of memory (it even popped into virtual memory on occasion) because I keep a bazillion tabs open in each of 4 or 5 windows. Now, I'm heavily invested in Firefox - it has all the bookmarks, quick links, certain site passwords, etc. all set up - so making the switch for me was a bit difficult.

I decided to take a man pill - and tough it out - and frankly, I'm glad I did.

I'm not one of those users that has 50,000 plug-ins and extensions in my browser - I use my browser to, well, just browse the web. I don't expect it to do my laundry and wash my car - just serve up pages quickly and let me have 1,000,000 tabs open in 5 windows and not slow down or crash.

The interface (or lack thereof) takes a bit of getting used to - it's unlike any browser you've used before. It has a tabbed interface (duh!), but the tabs are above the address bar, not below it. There is no "File", "Edit" menus - and there's not even a "home" button. There are two icons to the right of the address bar that contain all the commands you'll ever use (and keyboard equivalents for everything).

One more thing - there's no title bar (that thing that would normally have the icon and shows the title of the page - with the minimize and maximize buttons on it). NOPE! Not there. Google's intent was to make the browsing experience as stripped down (UI wise) as possible - but still make it powerful.

Each tab is, in effect, it's own browser - so if one page blows up - it doesn't take the whole application down - it just blows that one tab up. Me likkie. The other thing that's interesting - is that because it was built from the ground up to be optimized for browsing - there are some cool, albeit somewhat hidden, features that give you almost too much information about what's going on under the hood.

For example, choosing Developer -> Task Manager (or Shift + Esc) - you can see how much memory every open tab is taking - and how much memory plug-ins (like Flash) are consuming and you can kill any process at any time with the click of a button.

If you're really into code - check out the Element Inspector. Just right click on any object on a page and you'll see the Inspector window come up with the HTML of the page with the selected object highlighted. It will also show you all the CSS information and JavaScript in a collapsible tree view that you can navigate.

There are a ton of other features in there - like when you open a new tab rather than it being blank it shows the 9 most visited sites. Also, when you open a new tab manually - it goes to the far right like you would expect, but when you click on a link in a page and have set it up to open a new window in a new tab - it will open the new tab directly to the right of the selected tab. This really makes it easy to hop back and forth - and is just one example of the neato features that just work.

There are a ton of other features in there - if you're interested you should have a look at the ComputerWorld article by Preston Gralla - he goes into terrific details about how to use them and where they are.

If your idea of what a browser should be is just a browser that's optimized for browsing - and you're on Windows (for now) - then I would highly recommend you check out Chrome.