From IE 1 to EI 9

From the same creator of from DOS 5.0 to Windows 7 this time we can see all the IE versions since version 1 which came up on 1995.

He installed all the versions and also run the acid tests on every single version.



A couple of things that surprised me are:

• IE 5 was the first version that could be installed in most OS and that is true I remember that you could use some hacks to install it even in Mac's, Linux, and almost all Windows versions.
• The first IE version able to pass Acid Test 1 was version 6 (it took MS 6 versions!).
• Acid Test 2 was passed in version 8.
• IE 9 still is not able to pass Acid Test 3 ( scores 95 over 100)  and finally has HTML 5 support. Just to compare FireFox 4 scores 97 and Chrome dev 12 scores 100.

Because of these reasons and a lot more is that I love Chrome and FireFox.

Enjoy the video.

From DOS 5.0 to Windows 7 in 10 minutes!

I found this video showing an experiment. This guy started with DOS 5.0, a clean and empty VMWare instance and spent a whole day installing every single MS operating system until Windows 7!

Something impressive is that the games installed in DOS still worked! ( they broke in windows 2000, but got back in XP) that is almost 25 years of compatibility! pretty impressive MS really! while watching the video I remembered all those days when loading DOS from a 5 1/4 disks was a real pain!



It is a nice video if you want to remember those days. I wonder if some did something similar with any Linux distribution.

FireFox 4 is here baby!!

Finally today, Mozilla has made it official. You can download FireFox 4 now.  I like the new UI it is more minimalistic and clean. Some things I like are:

Panoramic View

• Finally you can drag and drop tabs from windows to windows like in Chrome.
• Talking about tabs one feature I really like it is the group tabs. you can group them in a different way, it is really cool.
• You can pin tabs.
• It is 6 times faster than the old version according the release notes.
• You can now sync Firefox so you can access your data from any where.
• If you want, you can hide the menu bar and it looks cleaner and it is replaced with just one button, the same way the new MS office does.
• The add-ons manager now opens in a tab and has completely changed.

New tool bar

In general they made it more minimalistic the same way Chrome does and looks great!!! it feels faster definitely a good improvement. Some of my extensions did not work but I am sure it is just a matter of time and they will be back again with a new version compatible with this one.

Add-ons Manager

IE 9 just got out and there is already charts comparing all major browsers and still Chrome, Firefox and Opera are leading them :)

You can check more details and watch a video here.

Happy browsing :)

Letter Sweep

I saw this on Tim Bray's blog basically you type any letter  in your chrome omni box bar and see what the browser will assume you tried to write.

So here are my A-B-C guesses, They say a lot about me and as I always say, the browser you use tells a lot about you ;)

What are yours???

[A]bout:flags Well I am using Chrome OS i go a lot there to check, enable or disable new things they delivered frequently

[B]ankofamerica.com My bank account, nothing great here.

[C]ode.google.com Google code repository I visit it every day to check libraries and documentation.

[D]ropbox.com so far the best I found to share files in the cloud. I like it!

[E]bay.com Well I guess I go there from time to time looking for gadgets ;)

[F]acebook.com no way to avoid it ;)

[G]roups.google.com I was surprised about this. I thought it was going to be Google but makes sense since I do all my searches from the omni box and well i visit Google groups most of the the time to respond Android and Chrome OS questions.

[H]otmail.com The second email i check the most.

[I]kea.com best store if you want to look for good furniture.

[J]etblue.com I was looking for cheap tickets to go to Google IO :)

[K]irk vs. Picard the most geeky question of all times :)

[L]inkedIn.com Best professional social network.

[M]int.com Good to manage your financials, bank accounts, credit cards, 401K, etc etc

[N]etflix.com I have not decided yet if I am to subscribe to it, it is very good though.

[O]scar.com Well the Oscars were couple of weeks ago so I had to watch it :)

[P]icasaweb.google.com I use it basically for all my blog posts and personal pics :)

[Q]wop it triggered a search query for qwop =/

[R]edbox.com I just started renting movies :)

[S]untrust.com Work bank account.

[T]urboTax.com I finally sent my taxes. Man, I took a lot!, at the end i go my check though :) :)

[V]oice.google.com I just love Google voice :)

[W]ebsms.nuevatel.com/websms3.php  I use this page to send SMS's to my wife to remind her how much i love her :)

[Y]ouTube.com You gotta distract and rest your mind from time to time ;)

[Z]appos.com Well I do not shoes but i had to buy a present for my friend's father.

IE 9 has arrived

I barely use IE not even for work well maybe for testing and things like but to be honest I do not use it very often, and if it were up to me, I would stop using it forever, but sometimes you are still stuck with web sites that only work with IE. Anyways yesterday its new version came alive, IE 9.

So I took one laptop from work because mine has windows XP and IE 9 only supports windows vista and 7, yeah we started with wrong foot here. So I took the laptop and downloaded it and here I am writing this post on IE 9.

The first thing I noticed is the tool bar, It looks like Chrome, with just some icons on the right side to access tools, go Home and bookmark web pages. One interesting thing is that only has one omnibox so it does not matter how many tabs you have all will share the same omnibox  which by the has a compatibility option when you go a web site that is designed to display better in older versions.

New Tab

The second thing I noticed is when you open a new tab it shows you your most visited pages, with colors indicating how often you visit those pages. You can remove them, you can't re-order them though. It also has options to turn related sites, Private browsing, re-open closed tabs and sessions. You pin sites and it has a built in SmartScreen Filter in case you visit a dangerous web site.

Compatibility View

Related Sites

This particular version is supposed to work with HTML 5 and it seems it does. I tested with a couple of sites and it was fast and smooth, the only site I had problems was Picasa, I couldn't upload pictures the uplowder wouldn't even show. YouTube had no problems playing videos in HD and by the way if you want WebM support you can download the plugin from here. You can visit the official site and see all the new highligths IE 9 has.

WebM plugin

If you ask me, it has nothing I have not seen before in browsers like FireFox and Chrome as usual it is trying to catch up with other browsers. Anyways, I like testing news versions that way I can give my personal opinion about them. IE is better than older versions that is for sure, does it have something new we have not seen before? not really.

Pwn2Own

From March 9th to March 11th, Vancouver Canada was the host for this years Pwn2Own. Basically Pwn2Own is a computer hacking contest. The contestants try to hack by any methods specific software most of the cases web browsers by exploiting their vulnerabilities .  All the environments are previously set up with the latest version of the stable browser installed in the OS it behaves better, Safari in Mac OS, IE in windows, well you get the idea.

This year Safari and IE were hacked in the first day, Safari was defeated in 5 seconds!!! really not an improvement from last year which took 15 seconds. They two iPhone 4 and Blackberry Torch 9800 were successfully exploited. It was not a good year for Apple both desktop and mobile browsers were hacked this year.

Google even offered a price if someone was able to hack Chrome but no one was able to do it. With this this is the 3rd year in a row that Chrome walks out victorious from the Pwn2Own. Last year Chrome was the only one not hacked.

This year the winners are Chrome, FireFox, Android and Windows Phone 7.