Google are rolling out their new features for mobile documents editing, it’s not available for every one just yet but over the days to come we’ll have more to see.
The update will allow users to edit all document types and not just spreadsheets, and will allow users to collaborate in near realtime. The update will be available to Android Froyo (2.2) and iSO 3.0+ users.
Imagine Internet Explorer was everyday life
What Internet Explore 6 is to Web Developers as Everyday life is to Normal people.
Long has it been lamented that Google Chrome does not have an automatic RSS feed detector. For those of us who use
We Love RSS Feeds Google !
Google Chrome as their primary browser the lack of this little and often over looked feature is some what frustrating.
Not any more … Ha. With the release of Google’s extensions for their browser we can now not only enjoy the beauty of the RSS feed detector, but the browser can also read feed data and process it into a human readable format. Goodo.
So go get the RSS Subscription Extension and while you’re at it you might what to get the Google Reader Notifier so that you can see a live update of all your latest feeds.
In fact there are a heck of a lot other extension for Chrome, some useful, some not so much, some annoyingly distracting and some are incredibly useful, so check them out now it is well worth a peruse.
One point I should make clear, though, is that as much as this is a little song of praise in the general direction of Google, they really need to sort their browser out and make this kind of functionality standard. Even Internet Explore has got this one down! Come on Google you’re making us look bad.
This tickled me;
http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&q=”because+IE+sucks”
It’s code in the Google code library that essentially is a work around to work in Internet Explorer, ode to the frustration things like this causes it’s been commented with “Because IE sucks”. But below is the most amusing thing I stumbled across …
http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&q=”i+hate+IE”
Proof Google hate IE, lol.
Why Web Developers Hate Internet Explorer
Years ago I used to browse the internet with IE6 and from a user’s perspective I didn’t really think much about the performance of the program, the speed of download or tabbed browsing. As far as I was concerned that was the the internet and that was how it was. It wasn’t until my brother showed me this cool new web browser he’d started using (something called “Firefox”) that I realised exactly how slow and buggy my internet experiance had been.
When I started to develop websites, Internet Explorer quickly became the cause of so many head aches for me. I’d write what seemed to me a perfectly coded page, upload the files and view it on Firefox, Safari and Opera (these were the days before Google Chrome) and it looked exactly as I intended it to look. But then I’d try it on Internet Explorer … and it was a complete mess!
I think I went through the standard phases most web designers go through when they start out;
Confusion, “The code’s perfectly XHTML compliant, how is this possible?“.
Self Doubt, “Is it me? Maybe I’m not up to the grade, my code must be wrong some where.“.
Frustration, “But it works perfectly on every other web browser! What’s going on?“.
Denial, ”Well it can’t be the browser, maybe it’s my computer.“.
For a long time I think I settled some where between Self Doubt and Frustration, and stayed there until I relalised my problem wasn’t unique to me.
I found alot of guys out there that were having the very same problems as me, check out I can haz real browser? Infact when you read about IE and search for it you find that an overwhelming number developers have a real dislike for it, and the same issues keep cropping up;
The biggest problem of all with IE is that you can’t ignore it, if you are a developer you are tied down to the buggy limbo that is coding for Internet Explorer because 65% of web users are browsing with IE. That’s alot less than it used to be, it was around the 90% mark a few years ago, so we are going in the right direction, but we are not where we’d like to be.
IE is a Microsoft product, it’s not like there is a shortage of funds that would hinder development of a quality product. So how is it that IE is the most inferior web browser about? How is it that a team of supposed paid professionals are being out stripped by people who develop as a hobby? I’ve heard people argue that it is complacancy with a lack of competition they stagnated and their products became stale. Probably so, but that doesn’t excuse non-compliance with the standards or being a resource hog. Regardless of the answer this is translating in to IE becoming less and less attractive, from a user point of view, when compared to the alternatives out there (as is evident with the fall in market share over the years). Alot of people seem to have a lot of hate for Internet Explorer, one Twitter campaign that made me laugh was the IE6 Must DIE campaign.
So if IE is so bad why do people continue to use it? Most of the time it is convience, ignorance or impotance. For most people they use a computer, which runs on windows, and it will be preinstalled with Internet Explorer, and so why would they need another browser? For others they know that IE is a pain and that it crashes alot and makes the computer go slow or stop altogether, but they aren’t aware that there is another way. The most frustrating senario is when you want to change browser but you can’t, and this is where alot of users find themselves. I read an interesting article on Dig on this subject, and the jist is basically people want to surf with the browser of their choice but lack the admin powers to make this happen.
What about the future then? I hope that IE get their act together and finally produce a product that can stand up next to its rivals. Not so much for IE’s sake but for my own, if I don’t have to spend an extra half hour to sometimes five hours IE debugging, for every one hour spent writing web code I’ll be very happy. My ideal solution would be for Internet Explorer to vanish altogether, Whether that will come to pass I don’t know, but I really hope so.
Why not investigate (if you can) the joys of the other browsers;
Google Chrome (my primary browser)