Peter Wooley’s Blog

Microsoft recently released Internet Explorer 7, which it will be pushing to the masses come November 1st, 2006. I finally decided to install it, after listening to TWiT’s Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott (whom I no longer dislike, now that I am able to hear the man discuss and debate without reading his SuperSite for Windows).Both Leo and Paul went through the typical list of problems against and reasons for downloading IE7, such as the new difficulties with designing for IE6 and IE7 at the same time as well as the security advancements that are prevalent all over IE7. I’ve spoken with a few friends on it, and while we are unhappy with the fact that we cannot run IE6 side-by-side with IE7, I believe a (stable) standalone version of IE6 is bound to come out in the next few weeks that will allow me to design for both environments. And, I love security, so hopefully IE7 is actually safer. Of course, in a world of a 5MB Mozilla Firefox alternative, I’m not sure how safe this larger and invasive program can really be. I’ll cross my fingers.One thing I feel that I should point out is that the Installer for IE7 is simply one of the worst installer for Windows. Once you consent to the install, you are given no way to cancel, no way to pause, or anything similar. In addition, there is no progress bar, just a simple sliding bar that constantly slides through where the progress bar should be. It’s slightly prettier than other typical installers, but I’d have been much happier if it was black text on a white background, but was actually friendly to the user. Oh, and of course, you have to restart once you finish the install.I’ve just finished installing, so I’ll be restarting: I’ll pray it hasn’t destroyed anything valuable. See you on the other side!

A little earlier tonight I read over at TechCrunch, that Google has officially launched it’s Word Processor (not just Writely, which now just redirects to this new system) through a new service they’re calling “Docs & Spreadsheets.” I played around with it and found it was clearly built with the Writely technology, and still impressive. The online Collaboration tools are sure to please, as you can easily add multiple users to edit your documents. Or, you can invite people just to watch as you make changes. As Google has a history of doing, this should grow into something amazing. Currently, it’s not jaw-dropping, but it’s still a great leap forward and it certainly made it out ahead of its competition.

It’s been two days since I installed Vista, and while I have not yet spent the time with it that I would like to before writing up my full opinion, I have noticed some features that I’d like to take a moment to share.First off, the good stuff; the stuff that I feel Vista has over XP: Graphics are very nice. Granted I am running a Dual Core processor, I haven’t noticed any real slow-down in using the Aero theme in all its glory: cross-fades, 3D window tilts, glass highlights, good drop shadows, etc. While I am still not a huge fan of the Aero theme, the way it moves, focuses and highlights are all pretty spectacular. Of course, I am speaking from a Micrsoft-centric standpoint, so I’ll not compare it to OS X or Linux, at this point.Installations feel safer. They’ve definitely stepped up security and now, whenever you wish to install something, Vista darkens the screen, locks it and draws your attention to a dialog box in the middle asking you if it is should allow or disallow the installation of the program. I had thought it would be more annoying, but it’s actually quite a nice feeling. Perhaps the ‘niceness’ will wear off, but for now, it reminds me that Vista is really trying to be different. The main purpose of it seems to be when programs are installing that you may not know about. The came up only once for me, when I was opening up a website that needed Flash. It was taking a while to load, so I opened a new tab and looked at some other stuff. When the original site did load, Vista asked me if I wanted to allow or disallow the installation of Flash. Now, assuming that the website had been trying to install virus or malware of some sort, this feature would be very nice. Now, who knows if IE7 is really safe enough to catch malware, but if it is, it should make things better and safer.Now, onto the bad stuff:Internet Explorer 7 is not finished. I’ve not heard if it is in a Release Candidate stage, but I hope it still is and not in “Finished” stage. I’ll have a whole write-up for IE7 on Vista, but some of the highlights are confusing navigation, poor UI-design and more poor UI-design.Windows Media Player 11 is quite hard to use. I’ll try not to compare it with iTunes, but at some points, I ask myself why Microsoft didn’t consider using a similar style as other players. There are some positives to the Player, but they’re quickly shadowed by the negativevs.I’m using an ATi Radeon x1600XT as my graphics card. When I originally installed Vista, the defaults graphics were all right, but they weren’t great. So, I downloaded the Beta version of ATi’s Vista drivers. While I can blame most of the problems I’ve had on ATi, I feel Microsoft is somehow to blame. Now, whenever the computer goes to sleep when I’ve left it for a while (like over night), when I log back in, it resizes my desktop from 1600×1200 (where I like it) to 1280×1024 (where I don’t like it). It’s done this every single time, and it seems more of a Windows problem than a graphics driver problem. Next, none of the screen savers work anymore. They appear, but only in pieces. They’re all running nice graphic effects, so it stands to reason that Windows is using the GPU to create these effects; so it appears that it’s the new drivers fault, but it’s still annoying.Last, but not least, I can’t trust Windows Mail, the new e-mail software Microsoft built. I’m using an iMap mail box, and as far as I can tell, whenever Mail wants to update my e-mail list, it downloads every,single message. I doesn’t just grab the headers, it appears to download everything. And, it keeps failing. I’ve been forced to check my mail via WebMail just to be sure Windows Mail didn’t miss anything. I’m going to give it a little more time, but if it doesn’t shape up in the next day or two, I’m getting Thunderbird again.That’s it for now, more when I’ve spent more time and developed an even more in-depth opinion.

As I’ve been testing all of Microsoft’s latest software (Vista, IE7, WMP11), I figured I’d go see how Microsoft Office 2007 Beta works on Vista.I had heard from TWiT that the Beta had cost some small portion of money. I, unintelligently, figured this would have changed. However, when I found the Office beta site, I read this:We are thrilled with the incredible excitement around the upcoming 2007 Microsoft Office system as evident by nearly 3 million people using the Beta 2 since its release two months ago. Having exceeded our Beta 2 technical participation goals we are now offering this on a cost recovery basis for future downloads of Beta 2.Again, I thought to myself, this “cost recovery” cannot possibly effect me! So, I went through the entire sign-up process, just to run into the final page, which asked for $1.50. I decided it wasn’t worth it. However, I would love to know how much money Microsoft lost by allowing 3 million copies of their product to be downloaded (ranging from 75MB

As some may have read, Microsoft just recently released Windows Vista RC 2. I’ve been wanting to spend some time in Vista to really generate an opinion, and considering this release is slated to be the last release before you have to buy it, it seemed like it was finally time.I installed Vista, which took about an hour. The hour seemed to crawl by, but what was nice was that I didn’t need to interact with the machine at all, it asks you for the product key at the start of the install and then starts copying and installing. It’s not until the end, when Vista is ready to go, that you set up Users, backgrounds, etc. And, when you’ve set them up, you get loaded right into Vista. It’s a much, much better experience than XP could have ever been.Once I was in, I took a moment to look around and see if anything major had changed. I’d used Vista Beta 2 and Vista RC 1, so I was fairly use to the new look and feel, but they keep making upgrades, including subtle ones, that are making it a much be

My first day back in class had it’s advantages. For one, I was able to see a lot of friends whose faces I’d nearly forgotten. Secondly, I was able to spread the news about NetVibes, which I haven’t posted on yet, but will in the near future.Lastly, I was forced to get a server set up with at least PHP 5 enabled. It was also suggested I use Apache. And while I haven’t done so seriously in the past, I figured it wouldn’t hurt and may just broaden my horizons from IIS. Going one step further, I went ahead and installed MySQL 5. It took a bit of setup and some debugging, but I’ve finally created a WAMP Server: Windows as the operating system, Apache as the web server, MySQL as the database system and PHP as the scripting language. Very soon, I will be able to join the ‘rest of the crowd’ and have a LAMP Server (Linux as the operating system), but my only Linux box is sitting quietly in a corner now. Considering my little experience with Unix, getting it set up may prove a little bit more d

My two week, class-free break is over. Tomorrow, I will board the Number 4 and start another term of college at my favorite Portland Institute. I’ve spent the better part of tonight getting ready for the next eleven weeks. I’ve cleaned off my computer desktop to give me room to breathe. I had 3 columns of folders, shortcuts and extraneous files and was able to remove all but two of them, and one is the Recycle Bin! I was also able to go through my back-pack and clean out the pee-chees for each class. And, of course, I made sure I had all the essentials: 20 ft. Cat 5 Cable, in case someone needs to connect to any network; headphones and 3-way splitter, in case I need to listen to what someone else is listening to (and a friend wants to as well); and a CompactFlash/SecureDigital USB card reader, because, you never know!Tomorrow, I only have one class, but I’m a little nervous about it. It’s “Advanced Scripting Language Topics,” which essentially means it’s a PHP class. I believe we may i