radiac.net

I have only swapped one of my machines to Firefox 3 because I rely on the net tab of Firebug for quite a bit of my work, and I've noticed problems with it in Firefox 3: downloads of files that were included on the page weren't showing up. It only seemed to happen when frames were involved, but as I do quite a bit of work with frames, that's a big deal for me. So I've been waiting patiently for the Firebug team to fix it, while I do my testing on my Firefox 2 machine.

Only now Rick Strahl says it looks like Firefox 3 ignores file caching rules, which totally explains why I'm missing the files from the net tab.

I'm pretty much speechless. We slam Microsoft on security and for ignoring standards, but when Firefox blocks any site that uses a self-signed or expired SSL cert, while their security team leaves gaping wide security holes in the quest for a better user experience, let alone when they go ahead and break one of the crucial underlying features of HTTP, we just sit back and say "oh, but it's open source, it's Mozilla - they know what they're doing, we can trust them." Why?

Ironic they've gone and broken one of my only two reasons for sticking with Firefox. How's Opera looking these days?

I'm going to be controversial and go ahead and say I'm not at all impressed by Google's new browser.

Yes yes, I know, I'm sure that the dev team are sobbing as they read this. But they should have tried harder, even if this is a beta. Take their security model, for example. I'm very wary about installing firefox add-ons - it's potentially worse than installing a keylogger, or having my router compromised. What I want to see in my browser is a better security model for third party add-ons, and a proper sandbox that blocks plugins from getting through to my desktop and affecting anything on my system outside the browser. It's absurd that while the biggest risk these days are browser and plugin exploits, nobody is really doing anything about it; I'm at the point where I'm almost scared to browse on the same machine I do my online banking. Chrome's sandboxing is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't go nearly far enough - or even seem to work.

There are few interesting features, and most of those are borrowed from other projects; its sandboxing security model is flawed; I wrote a solution to persist cookies across its privacy mode in less than 10 minutes; even its fancy new javascript engine is outperformed by the new firefox engine, at least under certain conditions. And what is up with it thrashing my cpu and hard drive for several minutes after starting up? Right now, it's just not a particularly good browser.

Bottom line is it's too inconvenient for people to switch to from IE, it lacks the features that people are used to in Firefox, so in its current state it'll struggle against Opera and Safari. And yet we'll have to support it. Curse you, Google - the last thing we need is yet another browser to test in and develop for. It's all very well saying standards-based sites will be fine, but it still does things differently.

Beta or not, this had the potential to be better, and it's a shame it hasn't been realised.

Today, our glorious leader Mr Brown announced measures to help people on low incomes who are struggling to pay their energy bills, and discounted insulation for the rest. That's nice.

However, I bring you an exclusive - my source inside the government has passed me this discarded early draft of his statement:

The taxpayer will pay for energy for the poor! What, you have a job? Already have insulation? Struggling to pay your rising mortgage, food bills and your own energy bills? Don't care - sell your house, downsize and give us the profit! You what, it's a market in freefall and you're in negative equity? Chuck the job, declare bankrupcy, sign on and qualify for your energy discount! Sorted! Who's going to pay for the energy when nobody's working? Not my problem - by then we'll have been voted out, and I'll be rolling in so much money from the lecture circuit that I won't care. Later, suckers - I'm off for a pint! Vote Labour!

Our economy is based almost entirely on services and cheap imports, with very little primary or secondary industry - and even those depend on fuel imports. This country has no inherent value. Our only exports are our sense of humour and David Beckham, and the international markets are just figuring that out. We're not the only country in this situation, but thanks to the short-sighted fiscal policies of our Labour overlords, we have no reserves to fall back on in our time of need. Citizens and government alike, it's less money in, more money out, and nothing left in the piggy bank.

Financially, it's the perfect storm. And the government's solution is to give us 50% off loft fluff.

Stupid and/or selfish politicians hunting for headlines got us into this mess, and they sure as hell aren't going to get us out. Enough is enough - we need to change the political system in this country to reward long-term decisions that are good for the country, rather than for the career options of MPs after they're forced from office.

And crap, now I'm on a watch list.