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Firefox 1.5 seems to do a better job at popup blocking

Not for me.

These are my results with popup blocking. I'm using IE6 with the tabs/popup blocker add-ons which I think was part of their desktop search. Initially it said it blocked it in IE, then allowed the pop up window. Opened it in Firefox 1.5rc3 and originally blocked 2 pop ups. I click on a link to view the screenshots, and I get pop up from an advertiser. So neither one really blocked the pop ups. Guess its personal choice.

Firefox users - try Adblock + Filterset.G (or whatever the hell its called). Popup blocking gets a lot better that way

Adblock doesn't really work well for me, in 1.5RC3 at least.

That's a known issue with both browsers. One site which I regularly visit has some annoying javascript popups which Firefox doesn't seem to block. It is annoying as hell trying to click a link and you get 2-3 windows opened.

In that particular scenario, IE blocks those popups while Firefox doesn't. But I've also seen cases where IE wouldn't block popups, while Firefox did.

Unfortunently we live in a world where most of the sites are controlled by morons who don't seem to get that users don't like popups and most probably won't even see the ad, becuase they close it shortly after. But I wish the Firefox team would at least spend more time fixing the popup blocker as it is not much better than the IE's (if even).

There is. Disable javascript.

Odd. My experiance was the opposite. Visting the links using Firefox showed no pop-ups. Visting in IE however did.

Funny, I'm using FireFox 1.0.7 with adblock and I tried every link without seeing a single pop-up window.

Indeed, I tried the site using Firefox 1.5 and did not see any pop-ups.

I did not try with IE though. I am not anal enough to look at the same site using different browsers to see the differences.

My brain automatically forces me ignore pop-ups and close them anyway.

NOTE to pop-up makers.

Stop wasting your time, they don't work anymore. We do not need "Smiley faces" in our emails, we do not need "Screensavers for free",

but the best one, one I actually clicked for a laugh......

I do not need you to "check my PC for speed improvements and better memory management under Windows", when in fact, your own site detected that I was using Linux... but still offered to sell me the Windows package.


Knobs

Get a proper job

Whether it's too small or not, I haven't seen a single pop up in IE for at least 5 months. For me one pop-up is too many...

I haven't seen a single pop up in IE for at least five months, either.

Because I use it once a month to run Windows Update, and that's it.

You can't possibly tell me that you're replaying the exact same 100%-identical usage pattern in both browsers 100% of the time, so therefore your point isn't entirely valid, and it simply becomes your opinion (or, to be more precise, your opinion based on your own experiences).

Instead of belittling the guy for pointing out that in this one instance, IE does something right and Firefox doesn't, a better response would be for someone with enough technical skills to look at the webpage's code, figure out what technique is being used to defeat Firefox's popup blocker, and file (maybe even fix) a bug.

The only chance OSS has is to listen to complaints from users and use the power of the many to fix them, not simply bash anyone who points out a flaw in an OSS product.

Konqueror is just as bad as a night more as IE coding wise.

Yea, it does look better. I still don't think I could stand looking at it all day, but it's getting better!

I agree on that one point about not being able to stare at it all day. I haven't actually used Vista yet, but looking at the screenshots I can fairly say that so much use of the blurred glass effect is rather unattractive to me.

It seems to me like the blurred glass effect is entirely asthetic at the cost of practicality. For example if a dark colour is behind the blurred glass and some dark text is above it would be harder to read the text. Also the blurred glass will allow whatever is behind it to distract you with flashing, blinking and whatever else it may do.

Fortunately though I'm quite sure there is still a classic theme in Vista, when I have to use Windows XP I still use the classic theme.

That is kind of the point with OSS. Instead of having _ONE_ funded project you have _MULTIPLE_ volunteer projects.

While the genrel quality of the ouput of those volunteer will be lower. Odds are that one of them will have a higher quality than the single funded project.

With a larger pool of volunteers the odds go up.

Now a days it isn't unusual for some of the "volunteers" to be funded though.

Edited 2005-11-23 21:28

Speak for yourself, I hate fuzzy fonts...
Give me freetype and I'm happy: Fonts can only get so good.

IBM was doing the same sort of thing, dedicating large teams for long periods on tiny little tasks: It doesn't really save you in the end; it opens you up to some really bad waste.
I'm not saying the font team at Microsoft is bad, just that having a dedicated font team doesn't mean you'll have the best fonts.

Not to mention, did you notice how many people switched over to XP to get cleartype? It's just not that important.
People want fonts that don't cause pain, don't look blocky, and don't show color bleed.

I personally think ClearType is the best font rendering technology out there. If the fonts look fuzzy to you, then you can adjust the settings on ClearType to be more blurry or more sharp. ClearType is very crisp, and I applaud Microsoft for their work with it and their work on fonts. It's one thing they have done an amazing job with and deserve praise.

Same here.

btw, use this to further tweak. You can download it and it will install into control panel.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx

Agreed. ClearType is excellent. OS X does a pretty good job on larger-sized fonts too.

Perhaps the parent is trying to use ClearType on a CRT monitor in ignorance?

Well, I use ClearType on my CRT monitors with no problems. You should always run the tweak tool though, or it generally will look a bit too sharp or too blurry. Most people enable it, think its too blurry, and disable it. Not only do they not run the tweak tool, they don't give their eyes enough time to adjust. Enable it and run the tweak tool, and your eyes will adjust properly within 20 minutes.

Sorry, but the whole basis of the ClearType technology is that it uses the sub-pixel components on an LCD. There is a stark difference in how CRTs and LCDs display a pixel, and ClearType takes advantage of the LCD method.

On a CRT, fonts with ClearType will have bleeding colours around the edges, regardless of the strength setting used. They just look plain blurry on a CRT.

Uhh... I've used it on both LCD and CRT. With a good CRT monitor, it looks fine, but you HAVE to tweak it and HAVE to let your eyes adjust. Once in a while, I see bleeding edges, but it is rarely.

I understand how it works, by taking advantage of LCDs side-by-side use of Red Green and Blue in a pixel. But it still produces crisp text on CRT.

I've *got* a good CRT monitor, and I've tested ClearType on many other good CRTs. The effect is nowhere close to what it is on an LCD. On an LCD, the text actually becomes crisp and edges soft. On a CRT, the entire font becomes soft, and there is no crispness to it.

Cleartype looks good on big CRTs (19" and above).

Linux does have quite nice fonts, just because you don't like them is no reason to say OSS will never match up.

And quite frankly I've had a good look at the new MS font and it doesn't look any better than what's been in Linux for at least a few years so far. If you have ugly fonts the distribution you tried probably didn't take the time to clean them up, and you either didn't try, or didn't know how to choose a better font.

I for one much preffer the anti-aliased fonts in Linux over what Windows has, this new Vista font at best brings Windows back up to par.

Distro fonts are always either much too small, or much too big. Windows and OS X strike a nice balance.

I shouldn't have to tune fonts when I install a distro -- they should look good out of the box.

Windows default font size for the user interface is 8pt, which in my opinion is too small for higher resolutions.

Linux fonts in some distributions are good, in others you're right they can be too small and in some they're big enough to adorn billboards.

I don't know about Gnome since I don't use it, but changing the font sizes in KDE is simple. Changing the font size in Windows might be a little quicker since there are three size presets to choose from without having to change any manually.

As for tuning fonts, that's a fact of life for every OS except maybe OS X and some good Linux distributions. OS X and Windows don't have the same default font sizes, Windows fonts are size 8 and OS X fonts are more along the lines of window's size 10 for the tahoma font.

Yeah, you're right about Windows being too small for high resolutions. When you think about why that is, it makes sense -- Microsoft designed the Windows UI back when 800x600 was more or less the standard, and the UI hasn't changed much since then.

Vista will be fully resolution-independant though ... I'm looking forward to that.

MS TTF fonts are nicer on my Kubuntu laptop than they are on my friends' WinXP desktop. And the only thing I did was to uncheck the "hinting" option in the KDE control panel.

This is as true for UI fonts as it is for fonts in apps.

That said, I can still be functional on a Windows XP or even a Windows 2000 machine, despite the fonts being of lesser quality than on my Linux laptop - which goes to show that productivity is not directly linked to font quality.

Apparently you're so negative against him as a person and all the past negative stuff that you failed to note that he was paying Microsoft a compliment (a target of much hatred and improper criticism on here and around the world; though they deserve a certain amount of both, they seem to get more than deserved by others that would logically be named :Microsoft is Poo" ) for caring for the little things many F/OSS developers don't pay attention to, and are unlikely to pay as much attention to. Perhaps you should read more carefully

The transparency is done using pixel shaders. If you are referring to the about dialog, that isn't the desktop background you see through the dialog, it appears to be a shader giving the glass a different look in various places. Look at this shot and you'll see the same pattern.

http://www.activewin.com/screenshots/vista/nov05ctp/Vista-5259-4.PN...

I think they realized that ridiculous oversized widgets are annoying.
However, given the way avalon draws *all* widgets (according to their marketing) it should be no problem to have all the control widgets size controlled via a slider-bar somewhere.

It's not just a pixmap, so size is irrelevant.

Agreed about MacOS X - I've got Tiger 10.4.3 running on this Apple iBook G3 600Mhz, and the text quality is fabulous - infact, better than my flat mates Windows XP Dell Dimension setup - its sad.

Agreed. Though I don't think the Start button is as much of a problem as the close button. I don't have this build but I hope they don't have any dead pixels around the X button like OS X does (or so I've been told). And Apple fans think this is a good idea! There's nothing more painful then trying to aim for the X where you could just flick your mouse in the upper right corner.

Can someome with this build confirm that there's not dead pixels around the Start and X button?

Microsoft fixed the problem with the Start button and Close buttons on maximized windows a while ago.

I can say with certainty, since I just tried it, that Luna (silver) on WinXP x64 doesn't have this problem.

I know that Luna in XP doesn't, since this is the theme where they finally fixed it. However the round start button in the screen shots of this build of Vista would break what Luna in XP fixed.