Microsoft and the EU agree on Internet Browser solution

In a surprise announcement on Friday, it seems there has finally been a resolution to the years long battle to get Internet Browser and Windows separate, and to offer Windows users a choice in the browser they wish to use.  I am not yet quite sure of the technicalities (a web page will offer you this choice?), but am confident that a reasonable option may finally be in the offing for users of Windows who prefer to use their own choice of browser brand in Europe.

In terms of users selecting this from a web page as is hinted to in the announcement, I am quite convinced that this will simply lead to a dual browser setup, i.o.w. you select your browser of choice for your personal use, whilst the operating system (Windows) will keep using Internet Explorer in the background for its use.  Not quite a win for the EU then, but I am not sure we can expect any better from Microsoft.

Why do I propogate a complete replacement as opposed to dual use?  Because it will prove once and for all that Microsoft has opened the Windows platform to all brands of browser.  If Microsoft can use your choice of browser, like Firefox or other, as THEIR way to maintain their OS and applications, then we will know for a fact that Microsoft is finally fully accessible to all.  I have a dream…

Microsoft Office 2010 with Firefox 3.5?

Ok, that won’t happen out of the box of course, but thanks to cnet.com we have several screenshots to see showing Microsoft’s new and soon to be launched Office 2010.  Office 2010 has just gone into technical preview with some ways to go before its launch early in 2010.  However, with the screenshots cnet.com showed us the new wonderful features such as the Ribbon being available across all applications, keeping your email threads in Conversation View, the Typography toolset, the much needed paste preview feature (to ensure what you paste is done in the correct format for example), the Image edit functionality that has been improved (by the way you will be able to edit video within the Office document now), and finally they show us the Backstage view, a new ‘starting point’ for your projects.

Where does Firefox 3.5 come into the whole story?  Hehehe, cnet.com inadvertently showed the Conversation feature for Outlook with the “FireFox 3.5 is Out” announcement as the subject of the email used to indicate the way the thread view now works.  If these screenshots are official releases from Microsoft, then oops, but chances are cnet.com made them during their testing of the technical preview release.  Still this is quite comical 🙂

Some source, some fruit and lots of spirit!

Since setting out in 2003/4 to find myself some alternatives to the rubbish that was being shipped with the notebooks I was buying for my business, I have come to appreciate that special breed of person who works damn hard to deliver a top notch product with like-minded people and then gives it away.  Though different licenses exist for free software products, and even more for open source products.

So since then I have used OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, the amazing Paint.net and Gimp, the fantastic Blender, Wings3D, and many more.  What I really love about these packages is the community support that exists.  I truly love the way the big brands try and convince consumers that open source is so bad for them because the support sucks.  Well, I have tried many paid product support services with varying degrees of frustrated responses, and can state emphatically that in 5 years of use, I have never missed the paid product support.  I have always found almost immediate assistance from forums online, or from actual support offered by the open source vendors themselves.  It has been a fantastic and solid experience in terms of satisfaction and reliability.

Now I have discovered much more in the open source and free software communities.  Software like digium’s brilliant Asterisk telephony platform (asterisk.org), Jason Cleeland and Carsten Schmitz’s highly regarded Limesurvey, OpenX’s market leading digital advertising platform, Joomla / Drupal / Vanilla and whatnot all CMS’s of excellent quality, Liferay the leading portal creation and management tool, OrangeHRM, the very well designed human resource management tool, and the CRM’s like Sugar and many others all set the trend for me for this new year, with a definite decision to focus all our efforts at New Ideas and my other projects to use open source, open source, open source.  Now take all this and base it on the premise that you have a near perfect platform onto which to roll out any of the above software, and you have the seeds of success for me right there.

The platform I am referring to is Ubuntu of course, and the greater Linux distro community too.  I realize there are still some small issues that requires modifications, mainly around drivers really, but for me the price comparison for the man in the street ($$$ vs zero) between Windows and Ubuntu just outweighs any such issues, especially after the sweetly designed 8.10 was released earlier this year.  What a magnificent platform!  So for me, the recipe is just perfect for success. You may find the experience the same. If not just add some fruit (limes and oranges work well), some source (open of course) and lots of community spirit (ubuntu)!