2 posts tagged “firefox”
I just installed Firefox 2.0 on my iMac G5 after reading about the new version release this week and I was having a really hard time figuring out how to enable the new Session Restore feature that was mentioned in the Release Notes. There's no documentation in the notes as to how to enable it to work like the now obsolete Session Saver add-on that I've come to love and rely on heavily in Firefox. The application Saft for Mac OS X's Safari browser has a similar tab save and restore feature but Safari 2 just doesn't cut the mustard for many of the web 2.0 application sites, including Vox. Hopefully, Safari 3.0 will fare better than 2.0 has with these new website applications.
So, I was just looking at the Firefox Add-Ons page for Session Saver and discovered that there is no new version of this software and no way to contact Rue, the creator of the Firefox Session Saver plug-in. I also searched the Firefox Help via the Help menu and there's no entry anywhere for Session Restore which is really stupid.
Luckily, someone was nice enough to mention where the feature can be selected in the Session Saver user comments on the Firefox Add-Ons site and I have the scoop for those that are having the same difficulty I was.
In Windows, go to Options > Main > When Firefox Starts and select Show my windows and tabs from last time. The default is normally Show my home page. What this does is, every time you close Firefox 2 with one or more tabs open, the same tabs are opened again the next time the application is launched. I absolutely love this feature. Your mileage may vary depending on your personal taste.
For Mac users, the instructions are just a tad bit different: Go to Firefox > Preferences > When Firefox starts and select the Show my windows and tabs from last time option from the pop-up.
With the addition of Session Restore in Firefox 2.0, there are some really nifty features that are still missing from the add-on Session Saver and the Safari-only Saft application's equivalent tab saving feature. Session Restore also restores all previously open pages or tabs after a crash of the browser which on the surface is very useful but sometimes, you need to be able to pick and choose from the list of pages that were open when the crash occurred because one of the open tabs may have caused the crash and you don't want it to be reopened and have the browser crash all over again. Only Saft for Safari provides a pick list of pages or tabs that were open prior to the crash where you can choose which pages or tabs you want it to open and remove pages that might have been the source of the browser crash.
Another feature that is missing in Firefox 2.0's new Session Restore that Session Saver .2 and Safari's Saft include is the ability to save a specific group of tabs as a set. When the tab is saved in Saft or with older versions of Session Saver, selecting the user-defined saved tab set item from the appropriate menu opens all of the tabs that were saved at the time of creation into a new browser window. I like that feature but it's not nearly as important as being able to choose which pages to restore after a crash.
I hope someone find this information helpful.
Myspace recently surpassed 100 million profiles and as a former measly black box QA engineer of the largely S.F. Bay Area alternative lifestyle-populated Tribe.net social networking site, my co-workers and I watched the meteoric Myspace rise occur as Tribe.net continued to be mostly a failure to launch outside of the Bay Area. There were many good ideas floating around at Tribe in various directions but nothing we did seemed to create that viral growth that the now Fox News-owned Myspace has been experiencing for almost two years now.
Looking back, it appears that the combination of a much younger sign up age, allowing people to hack the HTML and Javascript on their profile pages, adding a Flash-based MP3 player for song upload and playback, as well as providing a myriad of band-focused features for promoting the artist's music and shows via the Myspace events calendar and invitation system, is largely what fueled the incredible growth rate of the site. There are probably some additional unknown factors that are important to the site's growth rate as well but the feature items outlined above, especially the addition of the Flash player and band-focused features, appear to coincide with the incredible growth that started for them about two years ago.
To celebrate the Myspace 100 million user plateau, I thought it might be fun to roast the site a bit and point out some of the many reasons that it continues to underwhelm from a technology perspective. The opinions here are largely speculative as I'm not a web developer or designer and my opinions are based mostly on conversations I've had with extremely talented and capable web designers and engineers about the technologies in use and many Myspace articles I've read online about the site over the years; Some of which may be partially or completely untrue. My apologies in advance for any inaccuracies that may exist herein.
Myspace really has no web 2.0 features what-so-ever and the engine under the hood is notoriously unspectacular from what many people have said about the site's underlying core technology. Here's my best take at the list of technological shortcomings of the site and a web 2.0 feature wish list compilation that was created based upon my experiences using Myspace over the last couple of years:
AJAX [Asynchronous Javascript and XML]: The typical web 2.0 site feature set includes functionality such as widgets or fields that load data without visibly reloading the page, allows the user to freely drag elements around on the page or enter data or search criteria and instantly receive feedback from the server to the page with no visible refresh of the entire page's user interface. The data is populated in the correct location and the rest of the page remains static. There are no AJAX-fied pages, widgets of features on Myspace; It's all web 1.0, centralized portal, old school web site behavior. Every new action requires that the page is refreshed completely. This can be incredibly time consuming when the site is under a heavy load.
Folksonomies and tagging: Many of the new web 2.0 sites like Flickr.com, Technorati, Digg, del.icio.us YouTube and the new Six Apart product Vox in use for this blog provide support for user generated tags that can be associated with various data types such as photos, videos, posts, news articles, blogs, websites or any specific type of item that is featured on a given site. These tags create a user defined "hierarchy" or "taxonomy" of sorts, often called a "folksonomy" that can then be catalogued and searched by tag to view or capture tag related content.
A simple example of tagging can be seen on the site Flickr.com. On Flickr's tags page, words like "sunset" or "architecture" can be clicked on and content tagged with those words is returned in the form or data type of photos, hopefully of sunsets and architecture.
With any tag on Flickr.com, it is also possible to create an RSS feed of photos tagged with a particular word or phrase. This can be useful on another website such as Tribe.net, where a user can publish a feed into an RSS-module, or in an application or online-based RSS reader like NetNewsWire, NewsGator, My Yahoo!, or Bloglines, where the tagged photo content can be serialized or "syndicated" newest items first as images are posted to Flickr. When a new photo with the tag "sunset" is added to the site by any Flickr user, that photo is now associated with that particular tag. When the tag specific feed is retrieved by Tribe.net or Bloglines the most recent photos tagged "sunset" are collected. The tagged photo content can then be viewed by the user of the stand-alone RSS reader application or feed aggregation site [Bloglines or Tribe.net as examples] and what is returned are photos taken by Flickr.com users of sunsets.
Of course, the person that uploaded the photo needs to properly tag items and sometimes photos that are not actually sunsets or architecture-related photos might appear in a feed. Additionally, items that don't have that tag associated with them might actually be photos of a sunset or architecture but without the tag, the photo isn't included in what is retrieved as a feed from Flickr. Myspace doesn't currently provide a user interface for tagging any of its data types. More on the Myspace and the RSS issue in the next paragraph...
RSS: Myspace also doesn't currently allow users to syndicate their blogs, photos or any other Myspace data type either. What if Myspace users could syndicate or tag their blog entries, photos, videos, music or groups content on myspace.com so that people could subscribe to or utilize their tagging filters on Myspace user content elsewhere on the web to stay current with their friends or favorite bands activities? Would individual profile users and musicians find that useful? Isn't that the direction that most of these new companies are moving in? Decentralization, RSS feeds, tagging, micro-content and data silos? These kinds of fearures and many others, including desktop application-like behavior in a browser, and a robust web services API like eBay's or Flickr's are the kinds of concepts emerging from more and more web 2.0 sites and this is just the beginning of the madness.
Web services and APIs: Google Mashups are very good examples of Google's web services API [or application programming interface] in action. The Google maps API combines their in-house maps technology and externally accessible web services so that outside developers can create useful new combinations that improve the efficiency of people's daily activities such as searching housing prices in a specific area or finding a restaurant close to your house or hotel. I'm not sure that Myspace or any social networking site other than LinkedIn encourages people to be more efficient in their daily activities though; Probably just the opposite for the most part.
Notes on a couple of interesting web 2.0 applications that some people might not be aware of: Google recently purchased the collaborative, online emulation of Microsoft's Word application, Writely, and another company's spreadsheet app so that they can offer products that are similar to Microsoft's Office suite, but that are free, collaborative [I said that already] and available online so that they can be accessed from anywhere, not just from the computer where the files are saved. Yahoo! bought del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site that is barebones yet very popular among geeky types for saving bookmarks just like a bookmark in your browser but available to the rest of the world, or just to you if you choose, at any computer with a browser on the internet that you happen to be using. Social bookmarking is somewhat of a centralizing feature unlike some of the decentralizing applications I've been blathering about here but a very useful site none the less and del.icio.us supports tagging as well. Myspace has no official web services or APIs for any of it's content types and again, no content tagging functionality.
Uploading MP3 files: When I first uploaded songs to my Myspace music profile, there was no descriptive help text or examples that outlined what kinds of MP3 files or what file size limits existed prior to the upload. This was a really serious annoyance because of how long it took Myspace to report an error during the upload process. Basically, files over about 9 MB, I never figured out exactly what the limit is, are too large and the upload process has to be revisited after the file has been re-encoded via an MP3 encoding application from the original file at a lower bit rate that also reduces the file size, and along with it, the sound quality of the music that is uploaded to the site. Guh. No syndication and there's a limit of four songs total for each Myspace Music Profile as well so why would you want to syndicate that?
Search: Myspace currently has one of the worst search implementations I've ever seen. Try searching for someone on the site and it's a virtual crapshoot that you'll actually find them or anything remotely relevant to them on the site. By default it searches the web currently. There is another search field that is somewhat useful if you know who or what you're looking for but it's buried on the right side of the initial search results page, provided that you clicked "Myspace" from the default "Web" search.
Most people don't save what's commonly referred to as a "handle" or custom URL that makes it easier to find them on Myspace as well [e.g., my handle: http://www.myspace.com/beliefsystems]. With a handle I can guess what the Myspace site URL for an music artist like Wolfmother or Ladytron is because they've had chosen a handle like "myspace.com/wolfmother" or "http://myspace.com/ladytron". For people that don't have a saved handle, the user's GUID, or global user id is used and that's typically a fairly lengthy series of semi-serial, semi-randomized or encoded numbers and letters that are saved in the database that refer to a particular user. I know this because this is what Tribe.net does and I've seen this ID in Myspace URLs many times when I visit people's profiles that don't have a custom URL.
On the search front, I did read an article today about a Google/Myspace deal that said Myspace will hand off its search functionality to Google, and Google in turn will pay Myspace's parent company Fox Interactive Media $900 million over the next three years for the privilege of being Myspace and Fox Interactive Media's default search engine. $900 million over three years ain't too shabby for a service that cost Fox News' Fox Interactive Media unit about $580 million dollars to purchase from failed band member and myspace.com co-founder Tom Anderson and his investors. We'll see how well the search integration turns out between the two companies very soon I guess.
Okay, so, I listed a number of reasons why myspace.com sucks and here's the second to last one...
Social distance and reputation: One of the more useful and important concepts of social networking is the concept of social reputation. If you create a social reputation system for users of a site or service for items that were previously bought and sold as anonymous transactions you create a sense of trust between the buyer and seller. Social reputation [hopefully] creates a network of trust that provides a path back to someone you know in your inner circle or "network" so that there's some accountability, depending on how far away from the first ring of friends you go.
This is similar to what we see on auction site eBay with their positive feedback percentage or Slashdot's user score rating system but with social degrees for accountability and reputation as opposed to user feedback. eBay users with very high user feedback are likely to be more trustworthy and Slashdot users with higher scores are likely to be more informative or relevant than some of the more fringe users of the site. The basic idea is to provide a traceable reputation so that the kinds of Myspace news stories we're seeing on the 5 O'Clock news every night related to pedofiles and sexual predators wouldn't occur as often as they do.
Myspace is extremely one dimensional. Everyone that creates an account on the site is by default friends with Tom and there's no concept of social degree or distance. While everyone being friends with Tom makes it very easy for people like me to know the total number of Myspace profiles that exist in the system, it also flattens out the usefulness of social reputation so that you can't see how someone is related to you and decide based upon that additional information whether or not it's a good idea to add them as a friend, meet them in a park for coffee or work with them as a fashion model, etc.
The very last item on the list is simply the technology behind the site.
Usability and load issues: Most everyone I know has commented on how slow or non-functional the site seems to be; probably related to the sheer volume of teenagers, musicians and groupies on at any given time, myself included [a musician not a groupie]. Not to mention all the video pop-ups, pimped out profiles with tiled, sparkling background photos, user customizations and Flash-based plug-ins typically implemented by hacking the HTML of a page to bend it to your will while wreaking havoc on your browser and computer memory. The main reason for many of their failures though is the craptacular technology. Mention Cold Fusion to a web developer or designer and watch him shiver at the thought of actually having to work with it. Cold Fusion... very cold!
Myspace is a great resource for bands and there have been a couple of success stories [the Arctic Monkeys for instance] and it really fluffs the ego getting all kinds of friend requests from people that dig my stuff or event invitations to events that aren't even in my region but one of the most exciting things it's given me is the ability to connect with some of my techno heroes from back in "the good ol days" or bands I was into in the 80s, being a product of that decade unlike so many of the sites users. So, there is some positive feedback on the Myspace experience.
And here some positives: I've found many interesting and compelling new bands that liked my songs or my profile and asked to be friends. I've had people from all over the world send me comments, personal messages or Thanks for the Add photos and text. The mobile SMS notification feature is also something that we discussed implementing at Tribe.net a few times and Myspace has gotten that particular feature right. I should also mention though that after the power outage in L.A. due to the early summer heat wave, Myspace stopped sending me any SMS messages about new personal messages, friend requests or event invitations for a couple of weeks. That feature seems to be working a lot better lately however.
So, I hope Myspace gets on the technology ball, slowly migrates to a more robust technology platform and maybe someday adds a few new web 2.0 features but right now, it doesn't look like any of that is necessary. The sheep are following the herd and the herd seems to be tearing off to Planet Myspace at an astronomical rate and shows no signs of slowing down to close the gate.
Before myspace gets around to it, there might still a market out there for a website that is similar to myspace.com but that does what they do a lot better with robust web 2.0 features like RSS, AJAX, XHTML, a feature rich API, tagging and all of the other Semantic web buzzwords and new web design technologies us geeks are so fond of. And while we're at it, a site that can handle such incredible growth and still keep it together functionally with very little down time, minimal database corruption or loss of user data. Myspace has done pretty well with the database corruption and loss of user data items but downtime's another story...
I remember when myspace's "down page" used to have a PacMan game on it and I sometimes wished that the site would stay down a little longer so that I could play a little more. Too bad it didn't stay down longer. I might still have a job if it did.
The internet 100+ million list [from what I could find with a quick Google search]:
1. Chinese internet users
2. Skype registered users
3. MSN Hotmail users
4. PayPal users
5. YouTube videos served
6. Huawei mobile softswitch users [what the?]
7. HP Laser Jet printers shipped since 1984
8. Indian cell phone users
9. Number of Firefox downloads
10. US broadband users
And of course, Myspace profiles
