…the blog into two pieces that is.

So no, I’m not quitting the blogging business, I’m just splitting the tech/geek stuff off to a new site I’m currently working on. To explain further read on…

My first and only original blog, Just Thinkin’, first started out nearly 3 years ago as just a personal type of thing running on the old Blogger service (under a different title) and that went on for 6 very frustrating months or so until I moved it to WordPress.com as Just Thinkin’ and finally to it’s own custom install (here).

In it’s own install, things went a lot better until that fateful and inevitable day when my old tech head/geeky-ness reared it’s ugly head once again and as a result more and more tech type posts involving Firefox, WordPress, various blogging tools and writers, tips and tricks, how-to’s and more began to sneak their way in amongst the personal and opinion type posts to the point that over half the traffic I received was tech related. Meanwhile, Just Thinkin’ was supposed to be evolving into a more “Boomer” type “IM[not so]HO” type articles which were being overshadowed by the tech related stuff. This obviously was not where I wanted Just thinkin’ to go so I needed another place where I could put these “geek” posts.

And so was born Green Mountain Geek. It’s not even close to being the finished product yet but at least now I have a place to put the tech/geek articles instead of trying to blend them in here. It might even be a fairly decent site once I finish setting it up, ya’ never know. Until then, wear your hard hat.

In the meantime I’ll be editing several of the existing Firefox and WordPress posts, bringing them up to date and republishing them on GMG even though it’s not finished yet. The idea is to keep anymore tech type posts off of here so I can finish turning Just Thinkin’ into what it should be.

The theme to GMG is called Structure and the blogging platform is WordPress (of course) and I’m going to have a hell of a good time writing for both of these sites or at least I will once I finally manage to get things properly set up and that horribly (and wonderfully) complicated theme figured out.

To be continued…

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So without further ado, here’s a pic of this year’s vernal egginox.

And have a Happy Easter as well everyone.

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But what about now? What about the 3 main browser makers that are getting close to releasing their next version? We’ve got 3 different beta versions running around and playing in the streets even as I write this so how do they stack up I wonder? Especially the new kid on the block, IE 8.0. Well let’s find out shall we?

For this round I’m using Internet Explorer 8.0 beta, Opera 9.5 beta and the latest nightly build of Firefox 3b5pre. The Acid2 test results are below: (and yes, the nose turned blue when I hovered the mouse over it on the first two results).

Firefox 3b5pre

Opera 9.5 beta

IE 8.0 beta

Whoa! Now wait a minute. Wasn’t it announced on the IE Blog way back in December that IE 8.0 passed the Acid2 test? Why yes, I believe they did. So why the failed result above I wonder? Well, it could be due to the info in this comment left by Chris Phillips left at the Ajaxian. I think I remember reading about this back then.

I wonder if IE8 passed a working Acid2 test:
http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/002/

Or the broken Acid2 test:
http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html

Acid2 on the webstandards site is broken because it uses an invalid embedded link that is returning 200 instead of 404.

Source: IE 8 now doesn’t trip on Acid

Yup! I remember now. At the time the IE developers ran their new baby through the test it was “broken” and for all those watching, it passed the test. If anyone is running IE 8.0 beta, give the 2 links a try and you’ll see for yourself.

Tomorrow I’ll run these beta’s through the dreaded Acid3 Test and see what kind of results I get. I can already tell it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Tags: Acid tests, browser wars

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I shall now stand on my head in a deep dish cheese pizza while playing "Hail to Odin" on a tin whistle while also wearing purple spandex shorts with yellow polka dots.

I’ll also believe it when I see it.

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The beta 4 code freeze was supposed to have taken place back on February 26th and for all intensive purposes it’s true. The slightly longer than normal delay in getting Firefox 3 Beta 4 out to the public is simply because of the amount of patches and fixes that have "Beta 4" labels stuck on them that need to be incorporated in the new Beta 4 build before release.

Anybody that has attempted to improve on anything from software to business models to remodeling a kitchen and everything in between has found out for every single item you fix 3 new problems crop up so I had to chuckle at this head slapping remark of an obviously frustrated, self criticizing developer on the need for a fifth beta due to the new bugs cropping up:

“We’re not breaking them because we’re jerks but because we’re stupid,” quipped one of the developers. “No one is really happy about this. Obviously, .. the goal of beta 4 was [to be]the last beta but it’s not.”

Firefox 3 beta 4 code freeze tonight, beta 5 release looks likely | Open Source | ZDNet.com

And I remember that feeling well enough during my years doing R & D. For those of you having a twisted technical frame of mind like myself you might want to take a look at the results of a set of tests that were run on Firefox 3 Beta 3 in this article by Percy Cabello at Mozilla Links. From the looks of those tests and from running a few of those tests myself, receiving close to the same results, shows that not only has there been large inroads made on significantly improving the performance of scripting and memory recovery (for example) in Firefox 3 but consistency between users as well which is equally important.

For the rest of us there’s been some polishing done on the icon sets, most obvious of which is looks of the keyhole style back and forward buttons of the standard navigation tool bar as seen in this example from my XP powered PC (sorry, I’ll do Vista when I can afford to buy a brand new PC and/or when the majority of Vista users stop complaining about it).

Also the Add-ons Manager recieved a new icon for the Plugins. I’m not too sure if I’m hip with the new purple color but the color and shape of a singular icon IMHO is hardly worth griping about.

And finally a bit of "buffing out" to the Options dialog to finish it off. To be honest about it I know that some (very) minor changes have been made within the last few builds but for the life of me I can’t remember the looks of every single nightly build I’ve downloaded. Maybe one of you can see what it might be. Either way, I like the latest "polish".

If you’re a Firefox user you certainly can’t say that the beginning of 2008 has been boring at all. The developers at Mozilla seem to be absolutely obsessed with stomping all of the bugs flat this time. As an old(er) beta tester I can attest here and now that it’s simply not possible to  get all of them, it’s just the nature of the beast, but I can honestly say that I haven’t seen such a concentrated effort on the part of a development team as displayed in the past several weeks by the Firefox team. Hope they meet with success otherwise I fear for their mental well being.

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