Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 10:53:30 -0600 From: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net> To: Stephen McKay <mckay@thehub.com.au> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Browser wars (was Re: Taming Netscape Navigator?) Message-ID: <20020305105330.H3880@over-yonder.net> In-Reply-To: <200203051407.g25E7WF10805@dungeon.home>; from mckay@thehub.com.au on Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 12:07:32AM %2B1000 References: <Pine.LNX.4.43.0203011634360.2796-100000@pilchuck.reedmedia.net> <3C7FB956.18428.510B414@localhost> <20020301201318.C3880@over-yonder.net> <200203051407.g25E7WF10805@dungeon.home>
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On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 12:07:32AM +1000 I heard the voice of Stephen McKay, and lo! it spake thus: > > How interesting! As soon as I saw Opera's tabbed interface, I was sold. > > The few times since then that I've had to use Netscape with its one-page- > per-window scheme have been tediously painful. I can't imagine going back. > With Netscape I could usefully open maybe 30 windows, and I would lose > them in the clutter. With Opera, I can open about 100 or so. After that, > it gets a bit slow, but with a fast Athlon and half a gig of ram, it's fine. Well, my line of thinking goes something like this: A) Opera is a web browser B) Web browsers are designed and optimized for rendering HTML and related tasks C) When you have more than one independant window in an area (be that area a desktop, an individual application parent window, whatever), there are a number of tasks involved in managing them, including handling resizing, iconifying, maximizing, naming, selecting, etc. D) There is a class of programs called "window managers" that are designed and optimized for managing windows So, given (A&&B)&&(C&&D), trying to make a web browser act like a window manager doesn't make much sense. Also, with all-in-one, it's impossible to interleave the browser windows with my other windows; additionally, it's practically impossible to see more than one webpage at a time, unless I make the Opera window itself a completely insane size, which then causes blocking of everything else on my screen. Now, in some environments (the !@$& idiot Windows UI, say), it makes sense, because the window manager such as it is is completely inadequate for the task once you open more than a very few windows, so you HAVE to have your applications do internal management to add "layers" so to speak. But in a X11 environment, when you can pick and choose among a number of WM's with great configurability and scalability... what's the point? > The thing I really need now is a good HTML filter to remove some of > the more repulsive web garbage (popup windows, flashing fonts, scrolling > messages in the status bar, target="new" on links, etc). Just never quite > get around to writing one. Well, keeping Javascript turned off with a vengeance like I do is pretty good for most of those ;p Opera and Mozilla both have options to ignore target="_blank", I believe. You could also do some fiddling with stylesheets to turn off the annoyance of <blink> etc. > Now, about your assertion that dual CPUs are more wonderful than wonderful, > consider the effect of adding a cpu usage limiting scheduler that caused > processes that were using 50% or more of the cpu to sleep 1 clock tick out > of 2. Wouldn't that be just like two cpus at half the speed? Doesn't that > mean I could fake up a dual 700 from my Athlon 1400 for little more than > a bit of kernel hackery? Maybe your dual PPRO really is obsolete. :-) Of course it's obsolete. I await your shipment of a dual Athlon to replace it :P If it's obsolete, then what is my P133 laptop, P120 backup workstation, and 486/66 router? You could, in theory I suppose, with such a setup simulate a dual 700 with your single 1400 (and without having to deal with IPI's or cache synchronization). But wouldn't you rather just have a dual 1400? -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fullermd@over-yonder.net Unix Systems Administrator | fullermd@futuresouth.com Specializing in FreeBSD | http://www.over-yonder.net/ "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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