http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/get-the-facts/browser-comparison.aspx

If you looked at that and got a head-spin, you are not the only one. First let me note the language the so called “facts” are presented in. One would expect more from the “worlds biggest software company”.  http://kilianvalkhof.com/ie8fun/ makes more sense.

Now lets talk about the lenghts MS is going to promote IE8

• First off, a connection of  videos http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/videos.aspx that surely cost them plenty

• Secondly, more videos promoted by several celebrities: (for free ? i think not)

  http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/nethistory/

• Thirdly, they are trying a pure giveaway on a pay per download to charity
  http://browserforthebetter.com

$1.15 per download to Feeding America® up to a maximum of $1,000,000

They only want to get 860k downloads ?  Firefox 3 got 8mill in 24hours http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ and Safary got 11 mill in 3 days http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/06/12safari.html.

• Hey, if they are giving away loads of money why not give it to the people, eh ? Or at least the lucky fella who will get the 10 grand promised by Microsoft today:

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/default.aspx

* Hekos expects a banner with ” you just won 10,000$ ”
<Hekos> blinking and all
<Hekos> you can only see it in IE8 cause FX has a working ad/popup blocker
<Hekos> and you cant see it in <ie8 cause it crashes your system
That’s for making me stay up late to debug IE again, M$.

Hey MS what do you think about people just not caring about you ? Fact is, if they KNOW about other browsers, they are using them. If they are using them, they know you are full of sh1t. No add is going to help you. If you want people to upgrade, why not force the upgrade on them with a Update like you always do ?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

Related Links:

http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/06/busting-ie8s-mythbusting/

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Taking_Microsoft_to_Task_Over_IE8__Myths_

Related articles by Zemanta

• FxKeyboard: A Firefox keyboard for touchscreens (rawdev.net)

Finding a virtual keyboard that works good on any of those is a hard thing to find. I failed at finding it.So, how about a keyboard that works inside Firefox as a plugin ? Thats exactly what I imagined when i started on this project.

Here is a working plugin in my language and set for my specific needs.
FxKeyboard 1.1 – 3kb
fxkeyboard 1.1 English – Due to demand, a slightly more English version ( same layout as with the last one but English buttons, if someone makes a mockup for a real usable English layout, i will be glad to add it.)

GNU/GPL as usual, but i would like it if you ask for my permission before you use it in public accessible areas. If you are doing a kiosk system, you might also be interested in keeping firefox on the homepage using FxGrounded.

If you need customization, have a idea worth sharing or anything else, write me a email or comment this post.

Quite simple this one:
It locks the browser on the homepage + derivates (any page that has the url containing the homepage url). For example, if i had my homepage set to http://somepage.com I would be able to access http://somepage.com/some/dir/something.html. At this moment, subdomains are not supported.

If there are external links, this plugin blocks them, unless the links are displayed in a frame. If  by some chance anyone might be able to get trough this, the page is redirected to the homepage when the top document is somewhere not in scope of the homepage.

Ideas, comments are always wecome.
fxgrouded 2kb – MD5: 501e943b8f174874db077de24c2b1ba9

Marko Zabreznik

Creating a kiosk environment.
The tools:

• Touchscreen Monitor

The requierments:

• Firefox 3
• Linux
• Non-exit-able
• Onscreen Keyboard

As you might expect, I tried everything.

R-Kiosk. Perfect.

A inline javascript Keyboard. While it did what was needed, it fails on forms that are on the bottom of the screen and in Iframes. Good side: Language was dependant on the page’s language. But Fail.

xvkbd. While I did manage to place it on top of Firefox and lock it so people cant close or edit it, and change their language.. it was annoying to do so. Moving it around the screen more so. Porting it to win32 impossible. Fail.

Ok, lets try a different aproach.
http://stlouis-shopper.com/~jtjsoftware/software/vkeyboard.xpi is a firefox Addon I found. A simple tweak made it work on Fx3. Here is what I made. The first step in porting the app, is thus in bad shape. ~Win.

If there is enough interest in such a plugin for Fx3, I myself and the original author will continue to work on it. A lot of things are already on my mind that I want to do with this project. Suggestions ?