After a week of playing with Chrome as my main browser, I’m back to Firefox. Chrome’s fast, but sometimes too much like Breathe-o-Smart.

Me: Why won’t you show me the full (relatively long) URL of this link?

Chrome: You won’t want to look at the full URL with Chrome!

Me: But what if I do?

Chrome: Trust me, you won’t. You’ll never need a URL again.

Me: But what if I need to look at it just this once?

Chrome: Well, I suppose you could actually follow the link. Or copy it and paste it into a text editor. If you really must have the URL. Not that you’d want to, of course.

Me: Why should I have to do that just to look at a URL? *headdesk*

  • Today I learned that keyless ignition makes it easy to accidentally leave your car running. Good thing it was only 5 minutes. The fact that it idles silently (no need to run the motor unless it’s charging the battery) was probably a necessary factor too.
  • Amusing: Apple has released Safari 4.0.4. Seems appropriate for a web browser.
  • By Fox “The Cancelator” standards, waiting 4 episodes to cancel Dollhouse Season 2 is generous.
  • WTF? I just tweaked my *other* shoulder doing nothing more exciting than reaching for my mouse. Nowhere near as badly, at least!
  • Right shoulder seems OK. Left shoulder still recovering from whatever the heck I did to it yesterday. The dangers of…office chairs?

IE7Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 yesterday, for Windows XP and Vista. So if you’re still running IE6, or someone you know is, it’s once again time to think about upgrading — or switching. (Assuming, of course, that you’re not locked in by corporate policy or another piece of software.)

  • IE6 is now two versions behind the current release.
  • IE6 is almost 8 years old (it was released in 2001).
  • IE6 is lacking in many capabilities that all other modern web browsers have, in web technology, in security, and in features you can use.

You can read a review at Wired, a write-up from the IE team, or a summary of technical changes from WaSP.

Of course, Internet Explorer isn’t the only option out there. There’s Opera, Firefox, Chrome and a host of other alternative browsers that are worth checking out.

If you’re still running Windows 2000 or some other old version of Windows that can’t run IE7 or IE8, I’d absolutely recommend Firefox or Opera. Either will be much better than IE6, both will run on Windows 2000, and Opera will even run on Windows Me and Windows 98 (but you really ought to move to something more current than Windows Me.)

Opera Chrome Firefox