OT: A Little Info for Those New to the Two Main Web Browsers

Internet Explorer
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been one of their key tools in dominance of the software market. The browser, notorious for its security problems and poor support of web standards, has for a while been tightly interwoven with the Windows kernel, making it impossible to completely remove the software. This decision on the part of Microsoft has been the subject of several lawsuit attempts, once resulting in Microsoft settling by offering to place links to their competitor’s (at the time, Netscape) products on the desktop. The latest IE (version 7) has moved somewhat away from the integrated approach but still has numerous hooks into the core of the operating system.

Mozilla Firefox
Firefox, technically superior and more secure than Internet Explorer, was a breath of fresh air to the web. Though the Mozilla Suite had been knocking about for years, which a rich feature base, it was relatively bloated and slow, and did not have a particularly large user following on Windows. Up until 2004, Internet Explorer was used by over 95% of web users. When Firefox was released, the figures changed dramatically, with Internet Explorer’s market share rapidly dwindling. It is currently estimated to be at around 80%, with over 10% of the remainder representing Firefox users. In countries such as Germany, the Firefox usage figures are even higher, peaking at around 25%.

Conclusion

Just a quick overview there for anyone new to this game. Remember: stay safe out on the big wide web. If you have to use IE, make sure you've got a nice big firewall and ActiveX disabled ;)

New and Gooey Dead.

Sorry guys, but New and Gooey won't be happening anymore, at least not in this form.
a) I have no time at the moment for these projects
b) A new contact list has been chosen, you're probably familiar with it, it's in SVN.
c) The chatwindow is probably gonna be written by myself and some other develoeprs using TkHtml, a html engine for Tk (no shit :P) and once it's mature enough for us to use, we will be able to have chat windows themed with html (so, backgrounds in chatwindow etc)

Sorry again
Tom

Call for help

Hi,
At the moment I don't have much to do, and so I have decided to ask you, the reader, to help me out.
I want emails/comments with ideas for GUI features - no protocol features, please. This means things which will make using Amsn easier, or more fun. Here's the main thing, though:
I don't care how silly, crazy, or obscure your ideas are. I want them all!
(If you've read Enders Game by Orson Scott Card, think of it like Bean's little toon in Ender's army.)

Whenever you get an idea or something just comes to mind, email me with it. In a week or so, I'll write up a list of the ideas I like most and attempt to code them.
You can email me at:
bluetit {at} users [dot] sf (dot) net

Thanks!!
Tom

Chat window

Long time no see! Sorry about that! Life has been a bit hectic recently.
But not so hectic that I haven't come up with something new for you!
So, here you are, the future (I hope) of the chat window! Obviously the yellow statusbar and mypic yourpic stuff is only temporary until I've done those bits properly....
Screenshot:


Tom

group backgrounds

nice, huh?
have a cat sitting on my lap so cant type much!

Tom

Contact list

Hey!
Have been playing around with the contact list (ok, I totally re-wrote it but hey) - and it's fun! Also note truncation of nicknames is supported - and it's fast! Even when you have like 200 contacts on your list. So woohoo for that.

Screenshot (look slightly familiar? :P):

Hi!
Menus now support underline-accelerators.
This basically means you press alt+f to open the file menu, etc.
Thanks to Donal K. Fellows of the Tk team for pointing me in the right direction :)
Screenshot:




All that remains to do now (I think!) is:
1) Keyboard shortcuts printed at right hand side of menu (eg Ctrl+O for Open)
2) Bindings for option buttons.
3) Moving menus in-screen if they are posted (partially) off-screen

Tom