Author: Portfolioso

Get with the times Mozilla, You’re so… 2000s

January 1, 2010

Computer/ Tech Related

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At the start of the new decade, Google Chrome is currently winning the browser war. Don’t get me wrong Firefox is solid, and I still love it to death, but there are three things that Google does much better:

  • Simplicity Google Chrome is very clean, has minimal toolbars and has no clutter. Firefox has an antique, confusing menu structure, a bookmarks toolbar and a huge set of navigation buttons. The mockups for Firefox 4 themes mimic Chrome and look sweet, but Firefox 4 won’t be out for a while. 3.6 will be released soon, which implements more HTML5 properties that Chrome and WebKit lack. However, developers need to code sites for multiple browsers, so this is not very important right now since these fancy new features will not be implemented for a while. Drag and drop file uploads are cool Mozilla, but it’s not practical yet. I want to see a UI overhaul. Since it’s such a major change, they are waiting for Firefox 4 – and we’ll probably have to wait well into 2011 for that.
  • Private Browsing This is my biggest pet peeve with Firefox. Ah yes, Mozilla rushed this one out of their asses. That’s because IE8 had a feature called InPrivate and Chrome has its incognito mode, both of which were released before Firefox 3.5. Once again, lets put aside the joke ass IE browser and get to Chrome. They implemented private browsing perfectly. It opens in a new window with a cool looking detective dude on it. At the same time, you can still access your other webpages that are not in private browsing mode. And this is my absolute pet peeve about Firefox – if you turn on private browsing, it hides your current windows and tabs, disconnects you from AJAX-ish sites, stutters, lags, calculates pi and then finally opens. It almost looks like it closes out of one window and opens the next. Pathetic. Suppose I need to open a private page, but still want another window with my GMail open. Not happening on Firefox. But you can with Chrome. When you exit Firefox’s private browsing mode, it then restores your windows, and is again clunky.
  • Speed Before I get to the JavaScript benchmarks, Google Chrome hands down starts faster than Firefox. With that being said, let’s move on to JavaScript and get a little technical to explain some terms. Lots of modern webpages use a lot of JavaScript. A browser has a JavaScript interpreter which interprets the code and as a result, the page behaves accordingly. Javascript is not written in machine language, so it is slower. Mozilla got smart and created a new JavaScript rendering engine called TraceMonkey, which was added to Firefox 3.5. TraceMonkey compiled the code so it runs at machine level, which is ultimately faster. Sweet. Two seconds after this happens, Google decides to break balls and release its new JavaScript engine in Chrome, called V8. This engine is the fastest thing ever (except on Mac OSX – Safari is faster, sorry Google). Anyway – my point: If you have to take one thing away from this whole rambling paragraph, Firefox is significantly slower than Safari and Google Chrome on JavaScript benchmarks. (And forget IE, it’s 40 times worse than Firefox. But no one should have taken IE seriously after 2003, so shut up.)

There are a lot of other things Chrome does really well (syncs bookmarks, looks cooler, does the dishes, etc.) but I am too lazy to go looking for them. I still use Firefox as my main browser, but Chrome is technically better and I use it interchangeably when I need to log into a site without wanting to log out in Firefox and mash around cookies. Mmmmm cookies.

Portfolioso’s orders: Grab a copy of Chrome and try it out. It’s neat. If not, use Firefox. And NEVER use IE. Only morons use that.

It’s 2010, So…

January 1, 2010

Computer/ Tech Related, Useless Update

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… there are some blog updates. Last January 1, I rolled out some new blog features. Without even trying or planning, I’ve done so again. They are mostly behind the scenes and don’t matter unless you’re me. Yes, I’m selfish like that. I also got rid of the CAPTCHA (the image code thingy you need to enter correctly to post comments). It was annoying and marketing research has shown that no one likes them. Maybe the 4 people who read this will actually comment, now that there’s one less step (doubtful because of the 75328 social media sites around). Seriously though, I hate CAPTCHAs and never got the letters right. There are better ways to block spam – and I’m doing that now. So hit me, spammers – you’ve got nothing.

Oh and resolutions. Expect lots more blog entries this year, like multiple posts per day… About whatever – because this site is pointless, and I will have more free time (possibly). It’s 2:18AM on New Years and I’m sitting home blogging like an asshole. Crazy partayyyyyyyy lots of beautiful women here…

Closing out the Decade

December 31, 2009

Useless Update

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As the decade comes to a close, here is a quick recap of whatever. We’ve come a long way, considering I had dialup internet until 2001 and analog cable until 2005. These are in no particular order and are completely random. I didn’t cover everything and may have missed stuff. I apologize for this book of a post.

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Come on, WordPress…

December 31, 2009

Rants, Website Related

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You know what really pisses me off sometimes? WordPress. Never use the schedule post feature – it’s a useless piece of shit. WordPress allows you to write a draft blog entry and then schedule it to publish at a later date. Every time I do this, it always misses the schedule and then I struggle severely to get it published because it keeps scheduling it. Well maybe I don’t want it scheduled you stupid bitch, I just want it live. I set my end of the decade ramble to publish at 8AM and was supposed to wake up with it here. Instead it’s being a shithead and now I can’t get it published. This also happens on another WordPress blog I maintain. Could be a server setting, but it’s poorly documented. Fix your shit.

Edit. Okay so I Googled this a little bit. Seems like what happens is that WordPress runs a cron (automation) job. There’s a setting in wp-includes/cron.php where it checks every .01 seconds, so if the server is a slow piece of crap and can’t keep up, it misses it. I set it to check less frequently and that might work.

Change:
$cron_url = get_option( 'siteurl' ) . '/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron';
wp_remote_post( $cron_url, array('timeout' => 0.01, 'blocking' => false, 'sslverify' => apply_filters('https_local_ssl_verify', true)) );
TO
$cron_url = get_option( 'siteurl' ) . '/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron';
wp_remote_post( $cron_url, array('timeout' => 20, 'blocking' => false, 'sslverify' => apply_filters('https_local_ssl_verify', true)) );

A post (the decade recap) is scheduled for 11:45AM EST. It better work.

Absolutely Useless Update

December 31, 2009

Useless Update

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I was sitting in bed yesterday and something really pissed me off. I had some epic rant about something, and kept thinking to myself how awesome of a blog post it would make -but I can’t remember now… So whatever. I’ll be closing out the decade later on today, so look for another update.