OT: Virus protect pro

[Fyron]

With adaware and spybot, you are already covered for spyware/adware. Nortons not that great against virus/trojan stuff, but it works.

[Azselendor]

norton is bloatware.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html
there you will find some good solid tools for securing and optimizing windows.

However, he's dead wrong on internet explorer, I feel.

[Fyron]

Dead wrong on all things browser related, really. Well, other than Opera being fast.

[capnq]

He's right about Opera not being compatible with some webpages, and Firefox being slow. I normally use Opera, but recently had to install Firefox to get into a site that neither IE or Opera could load properly.

[Fyron]

The 10-15% incompatibility is way off, though (unless he is counting every single minor display variation resulting from IE's backwards implementation of parts of the DOM box model). Its not really Mozilla's or Opera's fault that there are still people out there that only design sites for IE bug sets and not standards. They try to accommodate the bugs and poor implementations for compatibility, but its a huge challenge. Luckily IE is slowly moving more towards standards compliance now. IE7 was a baby step; let's hope IE8 can pass the acid2 tests.

FF seems just as "fast" as IE to me on the machines I've run it on. Opera tends to be snappier, but he was comparing the speed to IE mostly. I'm not sure how many people actually believe FF is faster than Opera... just more "common myths" this guy has concocted for a longer article. Sure there are idiotic fanboys, but most people aren't at that level.

[Azselendor]

the guy running the IE7 team is making IE into a better browser for the betterment of the net, not microsoft. and i that I applaud (including his efforts to reach out to firefox for cross-compatibility).

However, IE has a long road to go. And firefox still loads faster for me

Opera is okay, but I dislike the fact every so often I see pages without the CSS loaded upfront.

Web designers like myself have to design pages with piles of hacks and crap to get them look the same in all browsers. This is because of IE6, however if more web designers would embrace the CSS-Zen Garden method of design, then we can get great pages on modern browsers and still serve content (even to old browsers) without breaking the page or the browser.

[capnq]

Azselendor said: Web designers like myself have to design pages with piles of hacks and crap to get them look the same in all browsers.

Perhaps people would get better results if they just tried for "legible" rather than "look the same".

[Azselendor]

I think you misunderstood me. I was referring to cross-platform & cross-browser compatibility. Legible content is, on to itself, another major issue in web design as many web designers don't know how to write copy for the net.

(the trick is to front-load documents for skimming, then build out into detailed content)