Microsoft Office 2007 SP2: So Much for ODF Compatibility

Rob Weir did some tests of the new Microsoft Office 2007 SP2, which is supposed to provide support for the Open Document Format, ODF, out of the box. From his tests of an ODF spreadsheet, ODF files created by Office 2007 SP2 can be interpreted only by Office 2007 SP2 and no other application that supports ODF. And Office 2007 SP2 cannot read/interpret ODF files created by any other application. And we’re talking about a large number of applications here: OpenOffice, Google Docs, KSpread, IBM Symphony, Sun’s ODF Plugin, and the CleverAge ODF plugin.

Interestingly, all the other applications are able to create ODF spreadsheets that are readable by each other, except in the case of the old version of KSpread, which the reviewer used for reasons given in the article. So it’s not the case that the ODF format does not give enough details for spreadsheet formulas to be properly interpreted. Everybody else managed to implement it correctly.

Is this a case of Microsoft paying lip service to standards, so that they can gain inroads into governments’ procurement systems that demand open standard document support? If so, it means that they think all government officials are suckers and idiots.

If that’s not the case, then you’ll have to blame the Microsoft developers: are they so imcompetent that they cannot implement an open standard when everyone else and their grandmother has implemented it correctly? And it’s not as though they cannot see how the others have implemented it: OpenOffice is open source after all. Perhaps they will say ODF is not clear where spreadsheet formulas are concerned. Then how is it every other application is able to implement it correctly?

Filed in Outraged, Opinon, News, Software, Windows.

Microsoft.com is Not Compatible with IE8 Standards View

I got a good kick over this: Microsoft.com is on the list of sites that is incompatible with IE8’s standards view. As mentioned there, the list can be obtained by typing res://iecompat.dll/iecompatdata.xml in IE8’s address bar.

Filed in Browsers, Web Design, Software.

The Return of the Crash-Prone Opera: 9.6

Opera 9.6 is even more crash prone as its previous version 9.52, if that’s possible. It even twice froze my machine solid. I had to power down to solve it.

I wish the Opera developers will fix their unstable browser. I was on the verge of switching to Firefox back when I was using 9.50 and 9.51. I hope that I won’t have to spend half my surfing time in Firefox again.

Hmm… I wonder if there’s a Firefox add-on so that I can configure the keyboard in Firefox.

Filed in Software, Browsers.

Opera 9.6 released

Opera 9.6 has been released. Hopefully it’s more stable than the crash-prone 9.52. It’s a recommended upgrade, because it contains security fixes.

Filed in Browsers, News, Software.

Security and Administrative Problems with Google Chrome

My Review of Google Chrome

As implied in my previous post, I was going to try Chrome when it was released. Well I just did.

Impressions

1. As a browser, it’s okay. I didn’t try many sites, but those I did rendered okay. I didn’t try to log into my account at Gmail or other AJAX intensive sites, but I guess Gmail should work fine, since it comes from the same company. But its JavaScript execution is supposed to be faster than the other browsers.

2. There’s nothing ground-breaking about Chrome. Its features have been in Opera for a long time, so I guess I don’t have much to say about it. It doesn’t seem as configurable as Opera. Its options dialog box are sort of limited. And some options are scattered all over the place. For example, the only way you can configure the search engine list is to right click the address bar. You can’t find it in the Options dialog. Not very organized.

3. I couldn’t test out the search box addition thing, mentioned in the Chrome tips for webmasters, on my blog, because (*sob*) I don’t have a search box on my blog. Now that I know about that, I’ll add the search widget to my blog when I have more time although I don’t even know if Chrome is going to be popular enough to warrant the effort.

Problems

1. What I find interesting is that Gmail installs into “c:\Documents and Settings\YOUR-USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data”. Yeah. The program, data, and everything. Look into “Program Files” and you’ll see nothing. Weirdest place for the installation of a program I ever saw. I’m sure Windows administrators will have something to grumble about. Imagine a shared office machine with 100 users. You’ll have to install 100 copies of Chrome just for each of them to use. Not to mention that installing in that directory circumvents the “Deny write” policies that administrators have for the “Program Files” directory, to protect the machine and users from themselves.

2. Others have been saying that Chrome lends itself to the same carpet bombing security hole that plagues Safari. I’ve not tested it myself, but the basic idea is that websites can code their websites so as to make Chrome download any executable they want onto your system. Since the default download directory is the desktop, if they name an executable “My Computer” with the explorer icon, unsuspecting users may double-click it and install the virus on their system.

3. Do you know that the installer sets up a Windows schedule so that Google Updater runs every 10 minutes? It runs whether or not Chrome is running. Every 10 minutes! Don’t believe me? Check your Windows scheduler.

4. When I got tired of playing, I tried uninstalling it. Well, guess what. The Google Updater cannot be uninstalled. Or maybe it just got overlooked by the uninstaller. So even when Chrome is gone, the Updater still runs every 10 minutes.

Verdict

Chrome is good if all you’ve ever experienced is Internet Explorer and the default Firefox install. It probably won’t convert anyone using a Firefox with lots of extensions installed, or anyone using Opera. Those people are probably hard-core browser users with lots of customizations and depend heavily on the features of those browsers.

Chrome also has its flaws, but I guess Google is still new to the desktop application business, so I suppose the kinks will be worked out eventually.

Filed in Browsers, Software, Opinion.

Google to Launch Own Browser on Sep 3: Google Chrome

Everybody’s talking about it. Google is about to launch their new open source web browser, called Google Chrome. The link doesn’t work yet, but it will when the browser is launched.

Since it hasn’t been launched, there isn’t very much information about it yet. There’s supposed to be a comic on it, but the server hosting it is down. All I know is that the browser will open a separate process for every tab, so that if a particular site crashes the browser, only that tab will close. And when the user closes the tab, the process will terminate and all the resources consumed by the browser for the site will be released. Apart from that, I don’t know anything.

Stay tuned.

Filed in News, Browsers, Software, Web Design.

Microsoft: Genuine Windows Can Revert to Become a Fake Copy Behind Your Back

Microsoft has apparently released a new version of their “Windows Genuine Advantage Notification Tool”, a tool that runs continuously in the background to check that your Windows is genuine. It’s interesting that it has to run all the time, and not just once, to check that your windows is a legit copy.

By releasing such a tool, Microsoft implies a few things:

1. Microsoft believes you are an idiot. After forking out hundreds of dollars for Windows, you somehow still don’t know if your Windows copy is genuine. Not only that, their belief in your stupidity is such that they actually think you’ll believe their spin about the usefulness of having the notification tool installed.

2. A genuine copy of Windows that you paid for, can unexpectedly revert to being a pirated copy behind your back. There would be no need for repeated checks otherwise. Neither would there be a need for people who have paid for a genuine copy to install it.

   One can also infer from the fact that they placed the notification tool in the Critical Updates that the moment you buy Windows, it is in imminent danger of reverting to a pirated copy. It can happen any time, that’s why you need to monitor it all the time. When it happens, the hundreds of dollars you paid will go down the drain, and you’ll have to pay again.

It’s times like these that make one think that the gradual move of PCs, starting with the ultra portables like Eee PC, to Linux is a good thing.

Filed in Outraged, Opinion, Software, Windows.

Opera 9.52 is Still Crash-Prone

In the last 5 minutes, Opera has crashed 4 times. And this was just normal surfing. It’s really very irritating. It often occurs while I’m either typing, or Alt+Tabbing to/away from the browser, Ctrl+Tabbing within the browser or otherwise using the keyboard. I notice that this was the case in the previous x.0 and x.01 releases of Opera as well. Are they doing something weird with their keyboard handler?

And now the Opera team are working on a 9.60 development version instead of fixing the unstable 9.52.

I have blogged about Opera 9.52’s crashes before, as well as its other shortcomings.

If not for the fact that Firefox is slow and lacks the many useful features of Opera, I would have migrated to it long ago, after facing 9.50 and 9.51’s bugs for so long. As it stands, I still need to find a lot of plugins for Firefox before it is even remotely comparable to Opera. And some of the things I need just don’t exist. But quite frankly, the temptation to switch is very strong, and I’ve been playing around with Firefox a lot more.

Filed in Opinion, Software, Browsers.

Missing Features in Opera: Lessons From My Brief Sojourn with Firefox

As mentioned before, Opera is my primary browser. However, since 9.50 and 9.51 had been so buggy, I used Firefox for a lot of my surfing. As a result, I had to get a number of extensions or plugins to give it some of the functionality that Opera has. One of these plugins was FlashBlock. And now I’m spoilt.

In Opera, I used to disable all plugins when surfing. It’s really easy to do this in Opera, just hit F12 and uncheck “Enable plugins”. For the sites that I want plugins enabled, like youtube.com, I add youtube.com to my site preferences in Opera, and allow plugins for that site. I can thus whitelist on a site-by-site basis, not just for Flash, but JavaScript, cookies, and so on.

FlashBlock on the other hand blocks all Flash from playing. If you click a button, the flash will run. It’s also possible to add a site like YouTube to the whitelist. If a site is not in the whitelist, you can still play a flash object by clicking the button.

I miss this facility of being able to click a button to play a specific flash object in sites that are not whitelisted. I wish Opera will add this to their feature list. The third party FlashBlock for Opera just doesn’t cut it. It works for some sites, but for others, clicking the button doesn’t work. Very irritating.

Filed in Software, Opinion, Browsers.

Opera 9.52 Released: Slightly More Usable than 9.51

Opera has never been good with major new versions of its browsers. All the x.0 releases are bug-ridden. x.01 aren’t much better. It takes numerous versions before it is stable and usable.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m an Opera user. I’ve used it since 5.0. Hell, I even paid for the software back when you could buy it.

I thought when 9.5 was released, what could go wrong? After all, it’s not a x.0 release, but a x.5. WRONG. It was buggy as hell. Secure sites could not be opened. Opera crashed frequently.

With 9.52, some of the bigger bugs have been crushed. I can now surf to the secure sites that previously hung in Opera. But the browser is still not very stable. In fact, it crashed on me while I was making this post and googling in another tab.

I should never have upgraded from 9.27, but wait till 9.53 or 9.54. Oh well.

Filed in Software, Browsers.

Drupal 6.4 and 5.10: Another Security and Bug Fix Release

What’s going on with Drupal these days? Are they trying to compete with WordPress for the greatest number of new releases within a short period award? Actually WordPress seems to have slowed down a bit lately, which is good, because I’m tired of having to update my other blog which uses my own WordPress install.

Anyway, Drupal 6.4 and 5.10 have been released. The announcement says that upgrading is strongly recommended, and that it fixes several critical security vulnerabilities as well as other bugs.

Those running 6.3 or 5.9 can just patch their installs with the 6.4 patch and the 5.9 patch. But the patch leaves your install in an unversioned state, a matter that I complained about before.

Filed in Web Design, Software, Security.

WordPress 2.6 is out!

Whoa, after a long silence, which is unusual for it, WordPress version 2.6 has been released. It doesn’t really look like there’s any real compelling new features. Just some bunch of user interface improvements that make things easier especially for newbies.

Oh yes, there’s also a version control system built into this version as well.

Filed in WordPress, Software.

Wine 1.0 Released: Run Windows programs on Linux without Windows

Wow, this is really a month of big releases! First there were the new browser versions, and now Wine 1.0 has been released too. Finally.

With Wine, it’s possible to run many Windows program on Linux without buying a copy of Windows. Yup, you can be completely freed of Windows, including the fiasco known as Vista.

Filed in Windows, Software.

New Versions: Opera 9.50 and Firefox 3

This is a month for new browser versions: Opera released version 9.50 last week and Firefox released its version 3 today.

Although a bit late for the party, IE 8 Beta 2 will be out in August.

Filed in Software, News, Web Design.

Apple: Carpet Bombing Bug in Safari is not a Security Hazard

Apple has declared that the carpet bombing bug in Safari is not a security hazard. If you use Safari, anyone can create a website that will automatically download programs or anything at all onto your computer. If you use Windows, the programs and whatever will be placed on your desktop, giving you hundreds or maybe thousands of icons on your desktop. If you use a Mac, the downloads will be placed in your Downloads folder. Whether you suddenly get hundreds or thousands of such downloads on your system, without your doing even a single thing, depends on how malicious that website is.

You don’t have to do anything for this to take place. You won’t even be notified when it happens. It just works.

I guess Apple doesn’t think this carpet-bombing-automatic-downloads is a problem, since they themselves automatically download Safari onto your system when you update Itunes. It will be too hypocritical, I imagine, to say that other websites doing the same thing are wrong when they do it themselves.

Filed in Software, Outraged, Security, Browsers.