From: Simon Wistow Date: 17:07 on 04 Sep 2003 Subject: browsing is a world of hurt At work we use a heavily customised version of BSD and our own packagement system. Don't ask. There are good reasons or so I've been told. During the course of my work I have to do a lot of stuff in a web browser. Some, nay, most of this is in areas where I have to be authenticated using our single-signon doodad. Just now, my browser crashed. Again. This must be the thirtieth time today. As I was firing up the various windws I had open before and typing in my username and password a squillion times it occured to me that WHY SHOULD I PUT UP WITH THIS SHIT? I've tried a variety of browsers - mozilla, firebird, galeon. Galeon used to work fine but for some reason, one day, somebody suddenly flicked the "look like ass" switch and all the fonts came out weird. Firebird and Mozilla looked fine. They all had the same font settings. Go figure. So I start using Firebird. It starts off fine, then starts crashing once a day. Then practically constantly. So I switch to Mozilla. Which is slow, And has some really annoying features (like switching immediately to a tab I've just opened). But it worked. Except now it crashes all the time as well. Muttering something about shmmap being out of space or something. Fuck knows what that's all about. I'm guessing I may have to reboot. Sometimes it mutters about illegal space access or something. And crashes. Nice. Oooh. It's just crashed again. Fan-fucking-tastic. And I'm putting up with this. I accept that this is a normal thing. Well, obviosuly not at the moment because I'm ranting to you but tomorrow I'm going to go back to accepting it. Because I have to. Because I have no other choice other than Netscape which seems stable and appears to be faster but which no fucker is supporting because "only 5% of people have it" and because it doesn't let them do their fancy fucking dotted line boxes round the meaningless, empty, hollow, self congratualtory wank that they spew all over the place. "We only design for IE, it's the market leader". NOT SO FUCKING FUNNY NOW IS IT YOU FUCKS! IE is abandoned, maybe to become part of the OS again (wasn't that decalred illegal?) but at the moment it's like some crippled half browser comapred to other ones. So mostly Netscape is unusable. So I have to keep using Sir-Crash-A-Lot. What I don't understand is - why are browsers so fucking complicated? Why do people seem incapable of writing a decent one (although I hear that under the stable monocultured homogenity of MacOS X things are fine). I mean - they're not that big a deal. It's a document viewer. With a network retrieval layer. Yet they seem to have evolved into the most fricking difficult programs to write ever. They shouldn't crash. In fact - no software should really crash. Especially not from segfaulting. Memory corrupting is so 30 years ago. ... And again. Fuck this. I'm going to go and get drunk.
From: Earle Martin Date: 17:21 on 04 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: browsing is a world of hurt On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 05:07:53PM +0100, Simon Wistow wrote: > [Mozilla Pain] > > So I start using Firebird. It starts off fine, then starts crashing once > a day. Then practically constantly. I just downloaded it. It seems quite shiny. Then I noticed this: http://downlode.org/pictures/misc/firebird-prefs.png HELLO? This is the version linked for download from THE FRONT PAGE. And when it starts it says the version you're using is over a month OUT OF DATE. Doesn't anyone proofread things these days? > Fuck this. I'm going to go and get drunk. I'll join you.
From: Scott Francis Date: 18:13 on 04 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: browsing is a world of hurt --W+6OBRXnxr3QV2xI Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 05:21:26PM +0100, hates-software@xxxxxxxx.xxx said: > On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 05:07:53PM +0100, Simon Wistow wrote: > > [Mozilla Pain] > > > > So I start using Firebird. It starts off fine, then starts crashing onc= e=20 > > a day. Then practically constantly. my personal experience (so far Windows only, since I'm not running OpenBSD current, where Firebird is now in ports) has been good with Firebir= d. No crashes (although way _way_ faster on Win98SE than on Win2k, oddly enoug= h. Popping up from minimized in the taskbar on Win2k to regular size, it comes up as an outline with a blank center and can just stall for 5-15 seconds sometimes before rendering whatever was already in the browser window. Same behavior with Mozilla. Of course, MSIE runs along quite zippily.) > I just downloaded it. It seems quite shiny. Then I noticed this: >=20 > http://downlode.org/pictures/misc/firebird-prefs.png >=20 > HELLO? This is the version linked for download from THE FRONT PAGE. And w= hen > it starts it says the version you're using is over a month OUT OF DATE. >=20 > Doesn't anyone proofread things these days? I found something more amusing than that ... in the current stable release version for Windows (0.6.1), select Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> and then click the little + next to 'Download Manager History' ... read the nice developer TODO note left there ... "The Download Manager keeps track of recently downloaded files. XXXben - blake, we need at the very least a toggle here, probably a retention window as well." =2E.. <rant style=3D"offtopic"> (also: death to ActiveX and an agonizing death to those fscktards who do web "design" that only functions in MSIE - use a fscking standard you fscking boneheads. ActiveX is not one. And then there's all the fun security featur= es of ActiveX ...) </rant> --=20 Scott Francis || darkuncle (at) darkuncle (dot) net illum oportet crescere me autem minui --W+6OBRXnxr3QV2xI Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE/V3K+WaB7jFU39ScRArBCAKCSw0NJAw/+RjsD294E+OqBUIiWdgCeO9Ki zeXilF9awdcZ+YL4mFPclqM= =vrHg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --W+6OBRXnxr3QV2xI--
From: Earle Martin Date: 18:25 on 04 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: browsing is a world of hurt On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 10:13:34AM -0700, Scott Francis wrote: > > http://downlode.org/pictures/misc/firebird-prefs.png > > I found something more amusing than that ... > > "The Download Manager keeps track of recently downloaded files. XXXben - > blake, we need at the very least a toggle here, probably a retention window > as well." Umm, Scott, did you look at that screengrab?
From: Scott Francis Date: 19:25 on 04 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: browsing is a world of hurt --WetXT0Y5FME7H56p Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 06:25:52PM +0100, hates-software@xxxxxxxx.xxx said: > On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 10:13:34AM -0700, Scott Francis wrote: > > > http://downlode.org/pictures/misc/firebird-prefs.png > >=20 > > I found something more amusing than that ...=20 > >=20 > > "The Download Manager keeps track of recently downloaded files. XXXben - > > blake, we need at the very least a toggle here, probably a retention wi= ndow > > as well." >=20 > Umm, Scott, did you look at that screengrab? [click] okay, I'm a moron. duh. --=20 Scott Francis || darkuncle (at) darkuncle (dot) net illum oportet crescere me autem minui --WetXT0Y5FME7H56p Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE/V4N8WaB7jFU39ScRAncdAJ0SurlUDGt2IF31s2M6YVZ9CLr48gCePD9G Vj4FIFaHIA/Bl9YBhBDcQ6w= =k93E -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --WetXT0Y5FME7H56p--
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 17:28 on 04 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: browsing is a world of hurt > So I switch to Mozilla. Which is slow, And has some really annoying > features (like switching immediately to a tab I've just opened). But it > worked. Except now it crashes all the time as well. Muttering something > about shmmap being out of space or something. > Fuck knows what that's all about. I'm guessing I may have to reboot. > Sometimes it mutters about illegal space access or something. And > crashes. Nice. [...] You know, I think maybe you need to direct some hate at your highly customised BSD. Because while I have my own bitches with Mozilla (spaghetti inheritence makes old fashioned assembly-style spaghetti Fortran look EASY) I don't have that kind of a problem on FreeBSD 4 or Windows NT 5. Not that your basic "why do browsers suck" rant is wrong, it'd just be a bit better focussed if it was focussed on more mass-market suck rather than your boutique incompatible environment suck.
Generated at 10:27 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi
