recepticle=Monday, August 14, 2006
i'm cool. i'm home with the downies
once every couple of weeks or so, an opportunity comes along that will change the way you think about the universe forever. for me, it was just before the weekend when my firewall crashed. at this point, my computer quite literally bent over, grabbed its stubby little ankles and spat on its own anus, preparing itself to be absolutely fucked up the ass and its virtual bowels inseminated with a thick, creamy load of spyware.
i've just spent the last two days using six different spyware killers to remove every last trace of the diseased filth that was running my poor little box into the ground. after several sweeps, quarantines, disinfections and more reboots than i care to count, i'd finally managed to swab out the last vestiges of infection. so everything is fixed, right? BRANG!
apparently my browser had developed a heroin-chic addiction to the spyware that was eating its brain, and this morning internet explorer crashed six times within half an hour of me booting up. so, i downloaded IE7 Beta 3. i usually have to be pushed pretty hard to upgrade anything, so it was a fair leap of faith for me to spend two and a half hours waiting for the installation to run its course. for those of you who haven't made the jump, let me tell you about a couple of 'new features' in IE7:
the menus are, by default, hidden. you have to right-click and choose an option to have them shown. and then, they're below the address bar. i had to make a couple of minor registry hacks to get the menus to the top of the screen. y'know, like every other application ever.
the navigation buttons (back/forward) are tiny, immovable, and stupid-looking. i now have to search my screen for them like a computer-illiterate mom trying to purchase her groceries online.
the option to 'lock the toolbars'. well, that's a bit misleading, isn't it? because if you don't have any toolbar add-ons like the google or yahoo toolbar, you can, in fact, only move one toolbar. and you can only move it left or right. the address bar, menu, navigation %26 favorite buttons and the integrated google search are all fixed in place. you can't move them. don't even try.
i can hear your caterwauls of "firefox!" from here, but two points come up immediately with firefox:
a) i'm a designer, so i have to have a plethora of browsers at my disposal to make sure that everything i do looks okay in every environment. since microsoft still has about 75%25 of the market, it's something i still have to take into consideration.
2) firefox doesn't have the ability to run activex components natively, and therefore shits its pants every time it comes across any flash with a transparent background. and that, my friends, is bullshit.
- posted by lawrie at 4:21 PM ~ comments