Becoming a designer
Boy, it’s been a while. An oxymoronic combination of being lazy and busy, I guess. Anyway, for this post I wanted to talk about design. It’s a topic that comes up a More »
Support for Windows 7 ends today
It is a sad day, as Microsoft is officially ending updates and security patches for Windows 7, the popular OS still being used by a large majority of PCs. Windows 7’s popularity More »
Returning Home: World of Warcraft Classic Comes Online
On August 26th, fans of the original World of Warcraft (henceforth referred to as WoW), and those who are just curious to see what all the hubbub is about, were finally able More »
The Lawnmower Man, and Vintage CGI
Inspired by a couple of Reddit forums to which I am subscribed, VintagePixelArt and VintageCGI, and being a fan of all things historical as it pertains to technology, I uploaded to the More »
Jony Ive leaves Apple
As someone who teaches extensively about design as it intersects with technology, and is also a computer and technology historian, I am conflicted about Jonathan (Jony) Ive leaving Apple. Mainly because he’s More »
The Animated Fountain
A couple of you asked about the animated fountain video that was shown very briefly in class. It was originally posted by Allwyn in the comments of the post about animated GIFs, but since it received such a reaction I thought I would repost it in all its glory here.
It took some time, but I was able to learn that it is called the Space Printer fountain as the water is actually falling about a foot-and-a-half in front of the wall behind it as you can somewhat see in the header image. It is illuminated from the top, and is essentially functioning like a printer; in other words, images are stored on a PC and the fountain emits drops of water to recreate those images in a manner similar to how an ink-jet printer puts drops of ink onto paper. The fountain was built by Koei, who has developed other artistically-minded fountains as well.
And now for some student-submitted links
I thought I would use this post to highlight a couple of links that were brought to my attention by you guys, one a serious security issue and one a serious debate between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Keyloggers Installed in Hotel Business Centers
In a comment on the post about the massive data theft that’s been ongoing, Nikolaus linked to the Krebs on Security website, which has a post about data thieves installing keylogger software on machines in hotel business centers. Those will record everything a user types, including usernames, passwords, and account numbers and email it to the thieves. It’s considered so serious that the none other than the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center issued a communication that was not made available to the public and indicated that their investigation discovered the malware on machines in hotels in the Dallas area. The communication, lifted from Krebs’ website, is below. Oh the irony.
Epic Rap Battles of History
Allwyn sent a link to a video from what I learned is a series titled “Epic Rap Battles of History.” The specific one he sent was Albert Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking. I watched that one (which I have to say Stephen Hawking won), but I noticed on the list of related videos they had Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates – there was no way I would miss that. Even though the lyrics aren’t always factually accurate and HAL 9000 makes an appearance for some reason, I loved it, and you will too. I have embedded it below, but for this one I can’t tell who won. I’ll leave it up to you to decide.
A site for drone Photography.
Not too long ago I made posts about taking a drone tour of the world and a drone filming fireworks from the firework’s point of view, so a site for drone photographs and video makes perfect sense. And it’s called just what you’d expect: Dronestagram.
The photos are very impressive: The image you see above of the eagle in flight – taken in Indonesia – is the first place winner in a recent contest they had for best picture taken with a drone. But many of the posted pictures are quite remarkable. It’s an interesting perspective that we don’t always get to see, a midpoint between pictures taken from planes or satellites and pictures on the ground or rooftops. I think it would be quite nice if this became a new style and method of photography, and for all the bad press drones get this is a positive side of the technology. I’ve included a few images below to give an idea, but there are many, many spectacular photos on the site.
Chatfield State Park, Denver, Colorado
Corpus Christie, Texas
Verniette, France
Quiltoa Lake, Ecuador
Roxborough, Colorado
Nozzano, Lucca. Tuscany, Italy
Massive information theft unveiled
Over on Tom’s Guide is a post revealing that a massive, and I do mean massive theft of information has been taking place for many years and by the same attack.
The attack, dubbed NightHunter by the security firm that discovered it, has been using an unusual form of hostile software to carry out the theft. Using keyloggers (which record keypresses and relay them to a third party, something we’ll talk about in class) embedded in phishing emails (fraudulent emails asking for account information, something we’ll also talk about in class), they were able to steal information – including login information – from sites like Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn, Google, and bank sites to name only a few.
As far as I can tell this is a new revelation, and the attempt to figure out who is behind it is still going on. In the meantime, be careful. Keyloggers are the most difficult type of malware to identify if your machine has been infected.
You’d better watch this video right now.
This post will dovetail with the one below, so you might want to read them together.
Are you familiar with Net Neutrality? If not, you should be. It’s one of the single most important technical challenges we are facing as a country, and as a global community. The Internet is under regulatory attack on two separate fronts, and no one seems to care. As crazy as we go over soccer or the Kardashians or legalizing pot, the future of the Internet just doesn’t get a lot of public attention.
But it should. Because we may be on the brink of losing the Internet as we know it.
The first issue is the handover of ICANN, the organization that controls the creation and control of web addresses, from the control of the United States. Honestly, it’s not really under the control of the United States, as other governments have a say in issues that come up, but it’s headquartered in California and it’s generally considered that we’re the final authority. It wouldn’t normally bother me that a global entity such as ICANN ends up under global control, except the countries that really fought to have it released include Russia, China, and North Korea, some of the most oppressive countries on earth when it comes to the flow of information and the right of people to voice opinions. They couched it in terms of concern over security in light of the Snowden leaks, as have other countries, however I’m of the firm belief they so desperately want this to happen so they can more heavily regulate what appears online, especially dissent.
But the much, much more immediate threat is the end of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality essentially means all Internet traffic is treated equally, and no one’s data is more important than anyone else’s.
However, with appointment of former cable-company lobbyist Tom Wheeler as head of the FCC, the bizarre decision by the Supreme Court to end legal requirements to maintain Net Neutrality, and the impending merger of two of the largest cable providers in the country, Net Neutrality has a fight of Biblical proportions in front of it.
If it ends, that means some services will be forced to pay for better service for their customers. For example Netflix would pay Comcast to not slow down their service, but that would mean a higher cost that Netflix would have to pass on to you. Or, if a cable company has an investment in one service, they could stifle the speed of a competitor that you are using making it unusable. We have already seen the issue crop up. The Internet will never be the same; you will be charged more for inferior services, and be at the mercy of the providers.
This might not be far off.
However, after typing all this, rather than typing another 1000 words I am just going to let John Oliver explain it. He does an outstanding job. shows charts and graphs that really illustrate the problem, and you’ll have a good chuckle along the way. Don’t miss it, it’s a very, very important issue that can end up impacting all of us.
Data speed record broken with existing copper wire
One of the big problems we are having these days is that our Internet speeds simply aren’t fast enough. If the extent of your Internet usage is reading webpages and checking email then it likely is, but anything beyond that and you’ve probably said to yourself ‘this connection is slow.’ Slow connections can manifest in many ways including blurry video, slow file downloads, long page-load times, and others. Not only that, even if you have a fast connection, many, many other aspects can affect your speeds. Speed of the transmitter, conditions on the network, type of conduit, and so on.
Cable companies offer tiered packages, but do you really get faster speeds? You might, but as any cable company will have written in their agreement with you, those advertised speeds are not guaranteed.
Coupled with the fact that the U.S. lags woefully behind many other countries for high-speed Internet access and the much-vilified potential merger of not just the two largest cable companies in the country but the two most hated as well – Time-Warner and Comcast – the future doesn’t look good. (Below graphic from gottabemobile.com)
That was the U.S.’s ranking in 2013 for average Internet speed.
But there are some bright spots. Google has been laying down superfast fiber in some cities, and some regional ISPs are doing the same even while those cities try desperately, and I mean desperately, to stop it. Even CenturyLink offers high-speed fiber in some areas of North Las Vegas. Traditional cable companies are scared.
The big problem with fiber is it requires a whole rebuilding of the network infrastructure, ripping up roads, yards, and utilities, putting new hardware in place: The cost for Google alone could rise into the billions, with the cost of a country-wide revamp costing much, much more. And even with fiber, the wire that actually goes into your house, known as the last mile, is still copper although similar advancements have been made there as well.
Copper wire. Faster than we all thought.
But there may be hope for us all yet, and perhaps a hidden respite for the beleaguered cable companies. Researchers at Bell Labs managed to create record-breaking speeds of 10 Gigabits per second across plain old copper wire (press release from Alcatel-Lucent at this link). That’s crushingly fast, especially since most of us deal with speed in the Megabits per second, and even fiber provides around 1 Gigabit per second. In other words, it’s one thousand times faster than what most of us deal with right now.
If a technology like this could be deployed, it could be a huge boon. Existing infrastructure could be used, costs could be kept down, availability of fast broadband could be accessible to almost everyone, streets wouldn’t need to be ripped up, and the U.S. could hopefully not be in the embarrassing position of having such poor broadband access. On the other hand, this was a lab experiment, and the L:R ratio (lab-to-reality ratio, a term I just made up) can be years for this kind of thing. Still, it’s a promising development.
If Google was a guy
Ok, here’s the deal: Since it’s the weekend, I’m going to post a video sent to me by one of your classmates, but I won’t single him out. Let’s just call him…Kevin. Kevin C. Anyway, he sent me an entertaining video with questionable content, a badly misworded title, and a relevancy to my earlier post about browsers.
Titled “If Google Were A Guy,” and offering no description, it shows what the experience would be like if instead of a search engine Google were actually a person, and people were asking him the same questions they type. This is also my problem with the title: It sounds like the video wants to parody the stereotypical womanizing beer-guzzling fairly dumb dudebro. You know, type in “Hawaii” and Google would say “DUDE! I was totally surfin’ there last year! Tons of babes, totally awesome place dude, you should totally go!” Then put up a picture of this guy.
But it’s not that. It’s just saying what if instead of typing searches into a search engine, you had to verbalize those searches to a real person sitting in front of you. “If Google were a real person” would have been better.
Anyway, I digress. The video is below but BE WARNED: It contains some mild NSFW content (if you’re unfamiliar with the acronym, please click here for a rundown), and a little profanity. Don’t watch it in the company of, well, anyone really. Here it is!
Using the Bing homepage to test a new method for creating animated gifs
If you’re unfamiliar with GIMP, a little background: It’s an open-source, and free, photo-editing and image-manipulation tool with capabilities similar to Photoshop, although not necessarily with the same usability. It’s not impossible to use, but there’s a steep learning curve. That’s an image of the GIMP environment below:
Anyway, I learned there was a plugin for GIMP called the Gimp Animation Package that allows for the creation of animated GIFs from a video, so I thought I’d give it a try. An animated gif is a file that is actually animated; made up of multiple images that run one after the other, like a flipbook animation. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format, and it used to be used mainly for images like clipart and small photos because it can only display 256 colors and compresses photos like crazy to maintain a small file size. CompuServe introduced the format in the late 80s when sending large image files over phone lines was not practical. Recently, however, there have been HD GIFS and even a huge debate on how the acronym is actually pronounced. There are whole pages dedicated to the pronunciation debate, with the developer of the GIF himself saying it’s pronounced ‘jiff.’ He’s wrong, of course.
I brought up the Bing homepage animation from Friday, loaded up screen-recording software called Action! that I’m testing, and recorded one animation loop off the webpage. Then I loaded the video into GIMP, converted it to a series of individual frames, and exported those separate frames as a single GIF image. It wasn’t easy; I used this site to step me through the process, and even their instructions didn’t match up perfectly with what I had on my screen.
But I’m impressed with the result, that’s it below – my first animated gif ever. It’s a huge file; 800 pixels wide and 11 megabytes, but I kept it big for the purposes of the test, and so I could see it. It’s unlikely to run very smoothly in your browser, however.
The result of my animation experimentation
All of the software I used to create it is available as a free download and I have provided links in the post where appropriate. If you would like to experiment and see what you can do then I would encourage that. If you create something you’re proud of, send it to me! I’ll make a post showing off your creations.
Can you go 99 days without Facebook? Also, Why I Deactivated My Account and the Posts That Made Me Do It.
This is long. I’m just warning you ahead of time that this is long. In fact, I’ve been working on it for a few days. I think it might be getting longer on its own – I’ve created the first living, breathing post. Bow down to your new overlord!
So, apparently Facebook is pretty popular. Over 1 billion users. The determinant of whether you are cool or uncool. The ability to affect your mood. Something known as Facebook Stalking. Academics using it for sneaky research. People all over the world, and even all over time, connecting. What I wouldn’t give to see how Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, whose 158th birthday is today (or July 10th for those reading later), would have argued over who invented what on Facebook. It would have been glorious.
Now, in response to the previously linked-to article about the social experiment Facebook was complicit in running, in which posts were selectively presented to affect users’ moods, there is a new movement that is asking people to leave Facebook for 99 days and see how they feel. Called ‘99 Days of Freedom,’ participants will be surveyed at equal intervals in their absence to see how their moods, and lives, have been affected. After all, some are saying Facebook makes you sad, so it makes sense giving it up for a while would have the opposite effect, right?
Could you go for 99 days without Facebook? It’s like the phone question I asked in the first class. If you feel you can, sign up at their site and keep us informed of your progress. Sadly, only about 4,000 people have signed up thus far.
I was on Facebook for a little while. Not too long, and I was a serious latecomer, only signing up in, perhaps, 2011. Even then, I only did it at the behest of my now ex, who – just to add to my points above – claimed a relationship couldn’t be considered official until it was something known as “Facebook Official.” I didn’t know what that meant, but everyone else I knew was on it, they were all talking about how great it was, so I figured this was as good a reason as any to jump in to the fray.
Almost immediately I started getting friend requests. And not just from my regular friends, but from people I hadn’t seen in years. Sometimes many, many, MANY years. People from other countries I knew from my youth, my piano teacher when I was a kid, high school buddies, it was exciting.
I made my first post with but a little trepidation, as I wasn’t familiar with this new social medium, but everyone who knew me knew me, and I assume knew the types of post I would make, and it went over well. Acceptance! That was quite nice too. I’d make posts about music, and random things that struck me, I’d read with interest what other people were up to, even administered a page with 500 followers that displayed incredible photographs of spiders. Over the couple of years I was a member, many interesting social experiences happened. I participated in a distant kind of way in weddings and even a funeral. Four of my exes, spanning the years from high school to college and all long since married sent friend requests, as did people I barely knew, or didn’t know at all (but they knew me). An old friend who lived in Sweden that I hadn’t seen or spoken with since I stayed with his family for a summer in 1983 sent a friend request, saying he had been looking everywhere for me, then never contacted me again. I watched a married couple I know have Facebook conversations with each other when they were clearly in the very same room. And that’s when it started to happen.
I became disenchanted. What was once a fun, interesting place to be where friends would share vacation and wedding photos and make posts about things that were interesting and fun to read about began to morph into a place that was not what it once was. Instead of a broad range of posts, I would see the same types of posts over and over, and they weren’t interesting, they were…irritating. This isn’t a condemnation of my friends (for the most part), but rather an effect of the medium; It doesn’t encourage deep, thoughtful conversation or meaningful debate, I’m of the opinion it actually discourages it. After a while, I had had enough, I was becoming agitated when I would log on because of the posts I was seeing, not entertained or enraptured, and it was then I knew I had to do it.
It was in March of this year that I deactivated my Facebook account, although since I didn’t delete it outright if I log back in it will apparently all come back. There were doubts; Facebook is so popular that I wonder if I have missed out on someone who is trying to find me, although I have a LinkedIn account they could find. Honestly, LinkedIn is no better, it’s the same inanity couched in the thin veil of professional networking, as opposed to Facebook’s social networking. I even had someone I used to know contact me through LinkedIn, tell me how excited they were to have finally found me, then never responded to my response, just like what happened on Facebook. Maybe it’s me.
Perhaps.
Anyway, I realized that part of the problem is that there were really only about ten different kinds of posts/posters I was seeing, the variety that used to be there was gone. Occasionally there would be a gem among the nonsense, but it was rare. So I have decided, for cathartic as well as informative reasons, to share with you my take on the most common types of posts and posters I saw. These had to make up at least 90 percent of everything that came across my feed. They may not apply to everyone, they may simply be a result of the type of people I know, but that made them no less aggravating.
Here we go:
The Foursquare Check-In
Foursquare, apparently, allows you to check in at a location so friends know where you are. But does anyone really care? I’d see them all the time: “So-and-so is with their husband/wife/Significant other/dog/cat/religious leader/function/whatever.” Do people actually see that and say “Hey, so-and-so is there, let’s go there too and interrupt them!” Why would you want people to know where you are all the time? Isn’t one of the privileges of adulthood *not* having to do that? One person would make these Foursquare posts ten times a day, letting us know every movie/restaurant/retail store/dog park/wedding/whatever else they were doing at all times. All it told me is they weren’t home and their house was unprotected. Thanks, that’s good to know.
The “One-like-equals-one-prayer” post
This might be not only one of the most offensive types of posts that can be made, but one of the most offensive things I’ve ever seen. A picture will be posted of someone suffering from a terrible disease, and the poster will have the audacity to claim that if you ‘Like’ the post that is the equivalent of one prayer, and if you ‘Share’ the post, that is the equivalent of ten prayers.
Everything is wrong with this, and nothing is right. First of all, who designated these quantities? What authority came up with these numbers? Why is one ‘Like’ not two prayers? Or four? or one hundred? Same for shares. Also, is this really implying that G-d himself is sitting up there somewhere allocating prayer reserves based on Facebook interaction? Is it implying there may be some hope for a terminal disease if enough people just ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ hard enough?
The intention behind these posts may be genuine, but the result is nauseating.
The self-promotion flood
One of my friends plays in a band. A good band. Another friend plays in the same good band. I liked the band page to be supportive. The problem was, when there was a gig, or after a gig, all the members would blast each other with “Awesome gig dudes!” and “We were tearin’ it up at Vamp’d tonight!” and post tons of pictures and that kind of thing. The problem was, they’d all share each others posts and soon my wall was flooded with 75 copies of the same pictures, the same posts and the same people over and over. I didn’t want to block them completely, but when these happened Facebook was almost unusable. It was like being at one of their shows.
The deliberately vague plea for sympathy
These were the first types of posts that really started getting under my skin. This is the post that clearly lets EVERYONE know something is wrong, yet provides exactly no information. Posts like “Well this sucks” or “I guess it’s all happening again” or “Could it get any worse?” Instead of simply confessing the problem, this type of posts begs you to respond and shower pity on the poster. You’re supposed to say things like “Oh no, what’s wrong?” and “Is there anything I can do to help?” and “I’m here for you!”
These bug me because they’re asking for expressions of generic pity. If something is wrong, say it. I don’t mean to sound like a heartless jackass, if someone needs my support I will be right there for them. I am very aware that a support structure is the most important thing anyone can have in a time of crisis, but you need to tell me what’s happening, don’t require me to deduce the situation. If you tell me what’s wrong I can help; if you don’t, I can’t.
It’s like the person who runs up to you completely agitated saying “Oh god, oh god, this is terrible” and when you ask them what’s wrong they say “I can’t talk about it right now!”
The “Please Like and Share!” posts
Don’t tell me what to do with your post. First of all, the concept of Facebook ‘Likes’ rubs me the wrong way. Saying “Like my page” or “Like me on Facebook” sounds SO pleading and desperate I don’t even ‘Like’ the use of the word ‘Like.’ I dislike ‘Like.’ I’m also not sure why I keep putting the word ‘Like’ in quotes. Or capitalizing it. I don’t ‘Like’ that.
So when a post wouldn’t just make its point but also ask me to “Please Like and Share!” I immediately didn’t want to. The post is on Facebook, that’s what people do. They ‘Like’ and they Share. You don’t need to make a pathetic plea for validation. If I like it, I’ll ‘Like’ it, and if I want others to see it, I’ll share it. But if I don’t think it warrants either of those, or even one but not the other, I’ll take care of it.
I don’t ‘Like’ those.
The Drinker
All this person does is make posts about alcohol. Where they’re drinking, what they’re drinking, why they’re drinking, where they’ll be drinking next, where they were drinking before they were drinking, where they’ll be drinking tomorrow, who they are drinking with, where they were drinking yesterday, where they’d rather be drinking, what they’d rather be drinking, who they’d rather be drinking with, why aren’t you drinking with them, drinking is awesome, they can’t wait to start drinking.
And now they’re hungover. There’s a pot and sports version of this person as well. In fairness to them, I don’t drink, use drugs or follow sports and never have, so maybe I’m just missing the point.
The out-of-nowhere (or phony) sorrow
It’s always sad when someone passes away, even the posts about animals moving on to the great beyond are heart wrenching. However, when a person who used to play a bit-part in a 70’s sitcom passes away, while I don’t get any joy from it, I wonder why some people seem to be devastated. “I just heard the guy who played drunk #21 in Barney Miller passed away. Very sad. You were one of the funny ones, you’ll be greatly missed.”
Yes, by his family and friends. But prior to today, I never heard you mention Barney Miller, never knew you to watch Barney Miller, never heard you mention that actors name, now all of a sudden it’s a great loss and you’re in mourning? Again, I’m not minimizing anyone’s death, but where does this come from?
I hope I get the same recognition when My time comes. Don’t let me down! I can see the posts now: “I just heard that dude with the hair who taught me about disk drives at NSC bit the dust. Very sad day. I think his name was Hank. Maybe Bill.”
The chronic petitioner
Some of us convinced a mutual friend of ours to sign up for Facebook since we were all scattered all over the country. We had entered into a venture with him and it was a good way to communicate. Once he joined, the only thing he ever posted were pleas for us to sign various petitions. Random petitions, too, no apparent theme. Petition to not tear down a drive-in, petition to remove Soylent Green from chocolate milk, petition to require penguins to wear long pants, petitions to change the spelling of ‘turtle’ to ‘blarty,’ and any other weird sort of petition you can imagine. And he meant business; each post came with a lengthy, passionate explanation of the cause and why he believed in it. He wasn’t being facetious, he really felt that penguins should wear long pants.
The generally inappropriate post
Random posts can be really funny. With this classification however I’m referring to the posts that just make you want to shower, or go outside, or call your mom, or something to dilute what you just read. “Met a girl last night, ended up back at my place doin’ the worm.” “Hey everyone, look at this picture and tell me if this is a wart or a boil, I can’t tell. Part of it came off in the bed if that helps.” “It’s time to overthrow the Communist American government! Who’s with me? Meet up at Bennigans to begin the assault!” “I’M DRUNK!”
These are the types of posts and people that finally caused me to deactivate, but not delete, my account.
When I tell people the things I’ve expressed in this post, I get a lot of feedback about how I can just block people or unfriend them. I get that, but why would I do that? I’m glad to have connected or reconnected with them, why would I accept a friend request and then block or unfriend them? I’ll say it again, it sounds like this is a condemnation of the people I know, but it isn’t. They’re not dumb, they’re not inane, they’re not vacant, if they were we wouldn’t be casual acquaintances, let alone friends. Everyone is idiosyncratic and has their own character, that’s what makes us great. What I needed was a general break from the overall experience. I haven’t missed it.
I also haven’t tried the new, trendier networks like Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter, although I have considered a Twitter account for this class, although I’m not convinced of its value as a pedagogical tool.
My very close circle of friends, who frankly you could count on one hand, I am still in touch with through email, texts and calls. They were all very understanding of my thoughts about Facebook, and even expressed some similar feelings.
Let me say that I have nothing inherently against Facebook, and I’m not one of the virulent anti-Facebook preachers either. It actually is a great way to keep in touch with, and reconnect with, people from all over the world and even across time that you may not have seen in ages. I just needed a break. Perhaps someday I’ll take another look and see what’s going on.
(This was my cover image. Bask in its glory.)
Firefox, some alternative browsers, and a nifty trick
Last night in class we talked about the nasty memory leak that has plagued the Firefox browser for years. We learned that ‘memory leak’ is a misnomer because it happens when a program doesn’t release the memory it was using when you close it down. It’s because of that that I moved to what I felt has been the best browser for a long time, Opera. You can read all about the browser in this post I made all the way back in January. I was also a fan of the Pale Moon browser, which is the Firefox browser only without the developer tools and therefore without the resultant memory leaks.
That being said, I always had a fondness for Firefox. A product of the Mozilla Corporation, itself a part of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, which had developed the first publicly successful browser, Netscape, it represented a rebirth of sorts for browsers. It also just celebrated its 20th anniversary. Internet Explorer had dominated through what some considered the heavy-handed and even illegal business practices of Microsoft, exacerbated by the fact that Internet Explorer is not, and never has been, a good browser. It’s better now, but it’s still not good. Either way, it successfully defeated Netscape in the first-ever browser wars.
Even so, with the breaking away of the Mozilla foundation and its subsidiaries from parent company America Online, development continued on its internal project, Firefox, and from it was born one of the most successful post-Netscape browsers. It was the first to truly offer competition to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and was very popular. A user could download add-ons that enhanced the browser’s functionality (I personally run one that blocks flash ads, automatically starts YouTube videos at their highest available resolution, and provides a very customizable speed dial with multiple groupings which you can see in the image below).
Then the memory leaks started. Version after version was released, and with each one the leaks became worse. Complaints were lodged to message boards and forums, blog posts and guides were made, articles were written, yet for years and for reasons unknown, they were never addressed. They became so bad that I was forced to choose other browsers, my machines just couldn’t handle the oppressive commandeering of their RAM.
Now, however, version 30.0 has been released and I am cautiously optimistic that the problem has been solved. I have gone back to it after years and years, I am very pleased with its interface, its functionality, and most of all its utilization of system resources.
Even with all this, one of Firefox’s most valuable capabilities is the developer tools it provides to allow website designers to evaluate many aspects of a webpage. And now that this release appears to be stable, I have decided to show you a neat Firefox trick using those tools that will let you see the construction of a webpage from a very unique perspective.
First, you’ll need to bring up the developer dashboard. You can do this pressing the Function (Fn) and F12 keys together, or you can click on the options menu which is the three horizontal bars in the upper-right corner of the browser. That will open up the options menu as seen in the screenshot below:
Click on the ‘Developer Wrench’ at the bottom of that window, then in the new menu that appears click ‘Toggle Tools’ and the developer dashboard will open.
Once the dashboard is open, if you are using the newest version of Firefox you will need to click on the small gear at the far left of the developer toolbar, circled in the following screenshot (If you’re using an older version, you can skip this and the next step):
That will open up a menu with some checkboxes on the left hand side. Scroll down until you see ‘3D view’ under ‘Available Toolbox Buttons’ and check that box if it is unchecked.
Once you do that, you will notice a little 3D cube has appeared in the toolbar icons on the right. Again, if you are using an older version of Firefox it will be there by default. I have circled it in the following screenshot:
Now the fun begins. If you click on that little cube, your page will fall back into the browser and be rendered in 3D. Using your mouse, you can spin the page, you can see it from the top or bottom or even from behind. You can click the little ‘x’ to the far right of the cube to see the page in all its 3D glory, or you can leave the developer tools up. The advantage to developers is that the 3D view actually shows all the individual elements of the page and how much nested HTML (Hypertext Markup Language, the base language in which web pages are developed) they use. In other words, to display an ad, there may be HTML that allocates the space, more HTML that selects an ad, more HTML that ensures the ad is appropriate, more HTML that positions the ad, more HTML that displays the ad, and so on. Each of those layers would be represented. If you click on an element and have the developer dashboard open, the relevant code will be highlighted in the dashboard. Clicking the cube again or pressing escape will return the page to normal (NOTE: Only once that didn’t work, and I had to close then restart the browser, so be aware).
But don’t listen to me! Try it, and be amazed. It works on any page. Here are some screenshots of this blog with the 3D view in full force.
You can even view the page from behind!
Below you can see a page element highlighted, and the related HTML highlighted in the dashboard underneath.
