During his last public speech for Microsoft as Chairman of the company, at TechEd 2008, Bill Gates made some interesting announcements regarding Internet Explorer 8 and Silverlight 2.0. In the meantime, Windows XP made the headline news at CompuTex.
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Member since:2005-09-21
Flash works alright for me on Linux. And the open source implementations like gnash are starting to mature.
Absolutely not. I would much rather have a somewhat inferior official Linux version of the Flash plugin than Moonlight, which isn't even officially acknowledged by Microsoft, and could be obsoleted or shut down by Microsoft at some point in the future.
Competition is good, but I will complain to any website that uses Silverlight. It's a big threat to alternate platforms. It's pretty common sense not to let the dominant OS maker also control a big web media delivery mechanism. Adobe is not great, but at least they have no motivation to lock out competing platforms.
Really? So far I've had nothing but good experiences with Firefox 3. But I guess there are lots of system variations. Hopefully your issues get addressed before release.
Edited 2008-06-04 02:57 UTC
Member since:2006-09-26
You are of course welcome to not use Moonlight, but to say it isn't officially acknowledged by Microsoft is completely false.
Here is the Microsoft press release on Microsoft's site about it: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/sep07/09-04Silverligh...
Member since:2008-04-15
Member since:2007-02-05
Opera havea "on-the-fly-fixer" built in.
It's a set of what technically is "User JS"(or in Firefox jargon: greasemonkey scripts) for the most popular websites that modify them on the fly to make them complaint.
Personally I find Opera's true, non-compromise approach to web standards very appealing. 
Anyhow, it's been some years since I've noticed any problems with sites though. The only site I can think of is my company intranet(and their support for Firefox is bellow decent), and a friend of mine also said that the new beta gmail also have problems.
Member since:2005-11-11
"The reason why you were marked down is because it is a dead horse that is contiously flogged by people here"
While baseless Vista bashing does get old, I think the OP was bashing Vista less than he was pointing out that it takes more resources than XP, a reality Microsoft themselves acknowledge by "extending the life of XP Home for 2 years for budget laptops". As such, I don't think it's unreasonable of him to state that had they not done so, the higher requirements of Vista (making for a less performant** experience on ULPCs) might have driven a few more people than otherwise to use Linux on such devices.
Some people may object to the way he phrased it, but I'm not sure how one could quibble with the basic point he was making. If they can, I'd rather about hear it than see a comment moderated down with no reason given. Ah the new moderating system
** neologism ahoy!
Member since:
2005-07-06
The reason why you were marked down is because it is a dead horse that is contiously flogged by people here (btw, I didn't mark you down, I don't mark anyone down on this site). There is nothing wrong with Vista, simply people doing cheerleading high kicks whilst screaming "Vista sucks" does start to wear a little thin after a while.
As for Internet Explorer 8 and Silverlight; given the crap quality of the Flash plugin by Adobe on non-Microsoft platforms (and even on Microsoft platforms), I would have thought that the non-Microsoft OS users would be the first to celebrate. Maybe if Adobe was subject to some competition, they might actually get off their behinds and hire some decent *NIX programmers who know how to programme.
Internet Explorer 8 is going to be interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing what it'll be like when it is shipped; Firefox 3.0 is a great browser, but I am hesitant right now given the number of unfixed bugs in their nightly builds and in some cases, regressions that are occuring. Opera is doing no better with their refusal to fix log standing compatibility issues between Opera web browser and websites. Simply blaming the websites doesn't help anyone - the end user will simply look at the browser not doing what it should and conclude that the browser is crap. You either step up fix the compatibility issues or step aside and allow someone else to take the spotlight.