stuandgravy

Firefox 'View Page in IE' extension

Beautiful. The number of sites I visit which require Internet Explorer is rapidly dwindling (hey, even my bank don't mind Firefox nowadays). For the few that are left the simple, inspired IEView extension makes things just that crucial pinch easier.

Via Phil Ringnalda

Essential XML Quick Reference

TheServerSide.NET have published a handy quick reference to all things XML, including XML Schemas, XPath, XSLT, SOAP etc. Unfortunately there's no nicely marked-up version, but you can't have everything for nothing.

Via Larkware

Electronic Frontier Foundation wins Grokster

This is a good thing. A very good thing.

The EFF have won their case to allow suppliers of peer-to-peer file sharing software (spawn of Napster) to be legally separated from the use of their platform - in the same, obvious sense that VHS manufacturers cannot be held responsible for pirate videos.

The decision will cause yet more upheaval in the corporate worlds of music and film, some of it unfortunate. Undoubtedly, much popular media will continue to dramatise any unpleasantness, particularly inside the vested interests of Murdoch's empire. However, this decision will encourage creative innovation and continue the decentralised upgrade of the internet.

Gizmodo T-Mobile Rant

T-Mobile, the American cellphone company, don't operate in Australia; the quality of their customer service isn't something I care deeply about. However, this scathing rant by Joel Johnson, editor of Gizmodo, serves as a classic case study for any modern service company.

Gizmodo is a fairly popular site, attracting over 50,000 visitors per day. Significantly, it's a site that's read and respected by influencers and early adopters: T-Mobile's market for their premium products. Most importantly, Gizmodo's a site that gets a lot of GoogleLove: 7th in the Technorati Top 100, this article will get linked and will shoot up the Google rankings.

Clearly, one article from one gadget site is not going to destroy T-Mobile's business. It is going to cost them a whole lot more than it would have done to give decent service to several thousand potential Joel Johnsons though.

Recall Toolbar

Dan Grigsby's put together an IE toolbar that creates a local index of the sites you visit. Looks like an interesting approach to the Pages I've Read problem.

Two hurdles stop me using Dan's implementation, unfortunately: 80% of what I read is in Outlook, through RSS, plus I use Firefox for the little browsing I do. I'd love to see an implementation of his concept for a wider environment though.

A Firefox Eulogy

I've been meaning to direct a virtual hat-tip at Jonathon Delacour for supplying me with a Gmail invite, and now he also reminds me to 'do my bit' for Operation Firefox.

I switched back at Firebird, following Joel Spolsky's glowing critique. I was immediately sold on tabbed browsing, Ctrl+Wheelie text resizing and no more popups. Since then I've added the GoogleBar (which I prefer to Firefox search), BugMeNot (to avoid a thousand web registrations) and AdBlock (to hide advertising graphics). I've even written a little extension to integrate with NewsGator.

Right now, Firefox is several thousand internet-years ahead of Internet Explorer. With Microsoft reforming the IE development team it's looking like this open source effort may just have caused enough of a stir to get prompt some real action in the browser world. Whatever happens from here, having a strong alternative to Microsoft's offering can only be good for the web development platform.