I came across this youtube video in a tweet. This is simply amazing and it expresses a lot of what I have felt developing applications to work in IE. The composition is awesome and well sung!
Showing posts with label Firefox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Firefox. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Guinness World Records
If you have studied MIT, Manipal around the same time that I did, you would think I was talking about the successful attempt by students of MIT to break the Guinness World Record for the longest chain of straws in the world. Around 1500 or so students of MIT joined hands and made a straw chain of over 8 kilometers if I remember correctly, breaking a record by made by some 16 school kids in the US. The record made has already been broken by someone else quite a while back, though I think it still holds good in the Limca Book of Records.
So how did a thousand students decide to come together to break into the Guinness Book of World Records? Was Manipal such a boring and dull place that the restlessness of the students got the better of them? Well, by no means is Manipal dull. With just students it is one of the most vibrant and energetic places to study in India.
The Guinness World Record attempt was a branding and marketing strategy by my old pal Rishabh Sachdeva, for the inaugural edition of techtatva. He wanted to create a niche brand for the event among other similar events in the region, and if I may say so, it is one of the most successful marketing and branding strategies that you will come across. Not only did it generate a buzz within Manipal, but was also responsible for attracting sponsorship for the inaugural edition of the event. Without this strategy I wonder how would the sponsors have looked at the event which was happening for the first time! The sheer genius of the idea is why I would have Rishabh be the marketing and strategy guy if I were to start a company some day.
Anyway, the idea behind the post was not to discuss about Rishabh or Manipal, but how Guinness World Records provide a great way to market your product. That is what Mozilla Foundation is doing by targeting for the maximum number of downloads in 24 hours for Firefox 3.They are calling this initiative as Download Day, which is on June 17. I have tried the beta version and it was pretty impressive. It is supposed to be fastest browser till date. I have already pledged my support for the initiative. What are you waiting for?
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Save The Developers!!
Who is after them anyway? Well, the day is not yet here when AI programs can create programs themselves and you don't need developers to code. We are still years from what I call "Matrix" era programs ending the era of developers building applications. So what is the threat to developers? While some may think I may be talking about the credit crunch and the ongoing cost cutting going on in companies, even that is not the case. It is about the Web!
Save The Developers is a movement to bring about browsers that are web standards compliant. What do I mean by this? Well if you go through the Browser Usage Statistics at W3schools you find that 30% of the users still use IE 6. So what is the problem with that? I realized the problem when, a sample UI I had made for a web app, on my system at work, which has IE 6, was run on a colleague's notebook which has IE 7. The layout was completely haywire! Even though the W3C is working to bring in standards across the web, many companies (read Microsoft ;) )have implemented rendering and other features in their own way. IE 7, thanks to Mozilla Firefox, is I heard (not confirmed) more standards compliant than IE 6. Microsoft also showcased IE 8 this year and said it will be their most standards compliant browser yet. Huh! What the hell was Microsoft doing till now providing its own standards? My guess is that because Microsoft used have the single largest share in the browser market, they really didn't bother about the standards. After all, during the OOXML and ODF ISO Standards debate, one of the arguments Microsoft was giving was that "Office dominates on the desktop worldwide and that OOXML is a de facto standard anyway."
Perhaps Microsoft thought that with IE being the single largest browser over the years, it had won the Battle for the Browser by defeating Netscape, and that the standards would change to what Microsoft preached. But with Mozilla Firefox teaming up with Google, a new challenger had come which seemed a potent threat to IE's domination. And it was as the statistics tell you. So while Microsoft may try and show a face that it really is concerned about developers and their call for standards compliance it is because of competition that Microsoft has been forced to change its ways.
All said and done, it means that we now have more standards compliant browser available, from Microsoft and other vendors as well. But still we have a long way to go before you have to stop worrying as a web developer/designer about IE 6. So join the movement and upgrade your browser! And save the developers!!
P.S: Personally I prefer Mozilla Firefox, which you can download by clicking on the banner at the bottom of the page. Alternatively, you may try the new Flock browser which you can download by clicking on the image to the right!
Save The Developers is a movement to bring about browsers that are web standards compliant. What do I mean by this? Well if you go through the Browser Usage Statistics at W3schools you find that 30% of the users still use IE 6. So what is the problem with that? I realized the problem when, a sample UI I had made for a web app, on my system at work, which has IE 6, was run on a colleague's notebook which has IE 7. The layout was completely haywire! Even though the W3C is working to bring in standards across the web, many companies (read Microsoft ;) )have implemented rendering and other features in their own way. IE 7, thanks to Mozilla Firefox, is I heard (not confirmed) more standards compliant than IE 6. Microsoft also showcased IE 8 this year and said it will be their most standards compliant browser yet. Huh! What the hell was Microsoft doing till now providing its own standards? My guess is that because Microsoft used have the single largest share in the browser market, they really didn't bother about the standards. After all, during the OOXML and ODF ISO Standards debate, one of the arguments Microsoft was giving was that "Office dominates on the desktop worldwide and that OOXML is a de facto standard anyway."
Perhaps Microsoft thought that with IE being the single largest browser over the years, it had won the Battle for the Browser by defeating Netscape, and that the standards would change to what Microsoft preached. But with Mozilla Firefox teaming up with Google, a new challenger had come which seemed a potent threat to IE's domination. And it was as the statistics tell you. So while Microsoft may try and show a face that it really is concerned about developers and their call for standards compliance it is because of competition that Microsoft has been forced to change its ways.
All said and done, it means that we now have more standards compliant browser available, from Microsoft and other vendors as well. But still we have a long way to go before you have to stop worrying as a web developer/designer about IE 6. So join the movement and upgrade your browser! And save the developers!!
P.S: Personally I prefer Mozilla Firefox, which you can download by clicking on the banner at the bottom of the page. Alternatively, you may try the new Flock browser which you can download by clicking on the image to the right!
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