June – 2008 – OSnews

IE8 Beta 2 in August, XP Lifespan Extended for ULPCs

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-03 Microsoft 21 Comments

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.

Perk

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-03 Comics 10 Comments

Comic: "Perk".

Goosh: a Shell for Google

Submitted by ohxten 2008-06-03 Google 26 Comments

It's an ever-continuing debate: what is better, a graphical user interface, or a command-line interface? Graphical user interfaces may be easier to learn, but complicated operations may require a lot more user input than with a command line interface, which can perform several complicated operations by using a short sequence of words and characters. However, a CLI has a much steeper learning curve than a GUI. Google has always had a certain CLI-quality to it, and Stefan Grothkopp decided to take this a few steps further: say hello to Goosh.

Webkit Introduces New Javascript Interpreter

Submitted by Hakime 2008-06-03 Internet 26 Comments

"WebKit's core JavaScript engine just got a new interpreter, code-named SquirrelFish." According to the Webkit blog, SquirrelFish is 1.6 times faster than WebKit’s previous interpreter. This detailed blog entry explains exactly why the new engine is so much faster and the Webkit team's plans for continued improvement in rendering speeds.

Ubuntu 8.04 vs. Fedora 9

Submitted by stonyandcher 2008-06-03 Rumors 58 Comments

Recently we've seen the releases of both Ubuntu 8.04 'Hardy Heron' as well as Fedora 9 'Sulphur', to mostly positive reviews. PCWorld Australia decided to pitch these two popular Linux distributions against one another.

IBM Releases Lotus Symphony 1.0

Adam Scheinberg 2008-06-02 Office 49 Comments

Last week, IBM unveiled the first version of their OpenOffice.org offshoot, Lotus Symphony. Symphony is aimed at professional users in a corporate environment, but brings to OpenOffice.org many UI enhancements in an attractive, single tabbed interface. Symphony 1.0 runs on Windows and Linux; while the site used to suggest a Mac version was forthcoming, there is currently no reference to a Mac native version of Symphony. The Lotus Symphony website has been updated to reflect the recent release, however, downloads are very slow at the moment "due to high demand."

From Win32 to Cocoa: Part III

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-02 General Development 106 Comments

Ars has just published part three in their series "From Win32 to Cocoa", in which Peter Bright explains why he thinks "Windows is dying, Windows applications suck, and Microsoft is too blinkered to fix any of it." Part one dealt with the history of both development platforms, part two dived into .Net, different types of programmers, and Windows Vista, and part three details the development platform and tools Apple has to offer, and in what ways they are superior or inferior to Windows'.

Call For Editors and Writers

David Adams 2008-06-02 OS News 32 Comments

OSNews is looking for editors and writers to help with posting daily news, writing feature articles, research and investigative journalism, doing interviews, covering events and conferences, writing product and book reviews, doing editorials, and all around increasing the amount of original content published at OSNews. If you are an OS enthusiast and have experience in journalism, blogging, editing, or other writing, please contact David Adams.

Screencast: Showing Off KDE 4.1

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-01 KDE 63 Comments

KDE 4.1, which is supposed to become the KDE4 version usable by 'normal' people, is coming at the end of July. When Ars reviewed the beta release, they were positive in that it was moving forward at an "extraordinary pace". Despite the positive notions in the news, many seem to have problems actually seeing all the new stuff being done in KDE4 - just like how people fail to see the massive amount of work put into Vista. KDE developer Rafael Fernandez Lopez (I'm sorry for the lack of diacritical marks, an OSNews bug we're working on) decided to put together a screencast showing off all the new stuff coming in KDE 4.1.

Windows UI Taskforce: Your Help Wanted

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-01 Graphics 65 Comments

As I already explained in the first Usability Terms article, consistency goes a long way in ensuring a pleasurable user experience in graphical user interfaces. While some user interfaces appear to be more graphically consistent than others, Windows has always appeared to be worse than most others - probably because it carries with it stuff that dates back to the 16bit era. IStartedSomething agrees with this, and started the Windows UI TaskForce.

Desktop Linux: Got Vision?

Submitted by tbutler 2008-06-01 Linux 72 Comments

Back in 2001, there was a company who thought they could launch a sustainable business model around a file manager. They wrote the file manager itself, and figured they could profit from offering online services delivered through the file manager. However, the company ran out of money quickly, and wen they released version 1.0 of their file manager, they had to fire everyone, only to go down a few months later. That company was Eazel, and the file manager was Nautilus. Apparently, some saw this as the demise of the Linux desktop - others didn't.

Monthly Archive:: June 2008