I was chatting with an acquaintance from the “wiki”:http://www.hrwiki.org tonight and he said something in passing about me being against Microsoft. From my website he saw that I’m not fond of IE, and assumed (understandably so) that I must be equally opposed to all things Microsoft. I suppose I should set the record straight.

Honestly, IE is one of the only things about Microsoft I don’t like. I tried “OpenOffice”:http://www.openoffice.org once, but it seems to hog resources and it lacks the robustness of Microsoft Office (though I did like the “Save to PDF” option). Office just works, and it works well. I might be persuaded to try OpenOffice again when they’ve banged some of the kinks out, but right now I’m perfectly happy with Office.

I’m a huge fan of Windows XP, and I’m looking forward expectantly to Longhorn (though I’m not happy about the integrated browser bit). XP is a stable (albeit insecure) operating system, and it has a lot of great features. I’ve honestly considered a switch to Macintosh ever since they moved over to a Unix-based core, but I would have to replace all my hardware, and everyone knows Mac hardware isn’t cheap. I’ve tried a few different flavors of Linux before, but none of them has seemed as put-together as Windows. They all remind me of Frankenstein’s monster. I’ll hopefully be getting a laptop in the next couple months, and I am planning to partition my drive for Linux (if anyone can recommend a good flavor, please comment). Even so, I’m sure I’ll keep XP as my primary OS.

So, there you have it. Yes, I’m vehemently against IE. Microsoft is certainly not without it’s flaws, but they do make a number of good products and they deserve recognition for that. In fact, they haven’t been entirely without merit in the browser world. It was because of better standards support (circa 1999) that IE won the browser wars in the first place.

My final point is this: please don’t assume for a second that I use [Firefox] because of some preconceived distrust or hatred toward Microsoft. The last thing I want is for anyone to walk away from my site thinking Firefox is for people who hate Microsoft. I use Firefox for one reason and one reason only. *It’s simply a better browser*.

[Google] released a slick new tool this morning: “Desktop Search”:http://desktop.google.com. It allows you to search your own computer with the same speed and accuracy as a Google web search.

It requires a thin client installed on your computer, which adds a layered service-provider to your winsock and an icon to your tray. The service keeps a constant watch over your files, re-indexing as often as you make changes. With the client installed, a new “Desktop” item appears next to the familiar Web, Images, Groups, News, and Froogle options above the standard Google search box.

The desktop search indexes the entire contents of Outlook, Outlook Express, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, along with transcripts of your AIM conversations. It also indexes all of your text files and your web history. On top of all that, it indexes your entire file system by filename.

Incidentally, [ContentWatch] has always had trouble with third-party winsock services, but the Google desktop search LSP seems fairly benign. ContentProtect is still filtering my Internet without a hitch. My guess is that the desktop search should be compatible with most firewall and antiviral software.

h4. External Links

# O’Reilly Network: “[“Google Your Desktop”:http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2004/10/14/google_desktop.html]”
# Wired News: “[“Lost Files? Google the Hard Drive”:http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,65341,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_8]”

A friend of mine has been using [Firefox] for a few months now. Today he popped up on my instant messenger and asked me:

bq. Joey… in two words, what is the best thing about firefox? My friend is looking over my shoulder, and I’m not the biggest advocate… I’m not even sure why I use it, but I do.

The ensuing conversation was a lot of fun, and we both agreed that the “two word” format was effective and entertaining. He also asked that I post the list on my site as a ready reference.

Here it is:

* More secure.
* Tabbed browsing.
* Popup blocker.
* Standards compliant.

After these first four, my friend asked me:

bq. Most other browsers do better than IE in those cases. Why firefox over other browsers?

Here’s how I answered:

* Open source.

“Opera”:http://www.opera.com, arguably Firefox’s biggest competitor besides IE, is not free. It is ad supported, but can be purchased for a small fee if you don’t want the ads.

* Platform independent.

Many other browsers (open source or not) are only built for one operating system. “Safari”:http://www.apple.com/safari and “OmniWeb”:http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb are only available for Mac OS, “Konqueror”:http://www.konqueror.org and “Galeon”:http://galeon.sourceforge.net are only available for Linux, and IE is only available on Windows and Mac OS (but they haven’t released a new version for either platform in at least 3 years).

* Experienced developers.

Many of the Mozilla developers were part of the same bunch that created Netscape. At that, my friend asked me if there was still a version of Netscape available.

I replied:

* Frequent updates.

Yes, there’s another Netscape which was recently updated after a two year hiatus, but it will never be updated again.

He then asked me:

bq. Is there another regular Mozilla?

To which I answered:

* Small footprint.

Yes, there’s another Mozilla. Mozilla App Suite 1.8 will be released soon, but it’s bloated. It’s got _way_ too many features, many of which are not used often enough or by enough users to justify inclusion in the program. The download is huge and the browser is a kludgy resource-hog.

Firefox (under most circumstances) runs faster than IE and takes up less memory. The download is a mere 4.6 MB.

Last but not least, I added:

* “Cute mascot”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda.

I hope this was fun and informative for others who read my site. If you’re a Firefox advocate, feel free to submit your own “two words” in the comment form below.

I received a fun little package in the mail last week: the “Strong Bad Sings CD”:http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php/Strong_Bad_Sings_CD.

Some of the songs are lame, but for the most part it’s a great CD. I especially like “The Cheat is Not Dead,” “Techno,” and all the songs by Limozeen and Taranchula.

I’ve almost matched my former [Movable Type] blog using [WordPress].

Here’s a list of things that still need to be done (I’ll cross them off as I go, and may add more as they come up):

# Validate XHTML 1.0 Strict.
# Fix front page (3 entries with excerpts, 5 with titles only).
# Enable unique page titles (currently all pages say “Home”).
# Fix imported entries:
** Add newlines before and after “more” links.
** Set all to “Allow Pings.”
# ‘Figure out middot before “Comments” link’:http://wordpress.org/support/3/13941 (shows up by itself on individual entry pages).
# Fix “Information” page (create two separate headstart.inc files, or fork it using a variable?).
# Bring back familiar emoticons.
# Interblog menu.
# “Commentation” sidebar — recent comments (do I really want to keep this?).
# Numbered comments.
# Comment preview.

For my [Foundation] blog, the following things will need to be figured out before a switch is possible:

# Scripture linker.
# “Edification” sidebar. Find a plugin like MT-BookQueue? One possibility: WP-Amazon. Will I need a separate blog?

Here are a few other things I’d like to add when I find the time:

# Figure out WordPress links manager — add “Interpolation” and “Correlation” sidebars. (done with [del.icio.us].)
# Figure out how to display a closing quotation mark in blockquotes. Use :first-child pseudo-class?
# Figure out Next and Previous links on archive pages.

I’m grateful for all the help I’ve received so far in switching to WordPress, and would ask that if anyone knows a quick way to cross off one or more of the above items, do let me know. Thanks.