10February
A couple of articles from earlier this week deserve a follow-up.
On Monday, Jouez et Gagnez (3) discussed the expected value of the Euro Squillions draw last night. Ticket sales were 81,618,597. The rational sale we computed for Europe as a whole was 74,360,499. The UK-only top-up was 16.04 new pence, making the rational sale for UK players 82,312,115. Immediately prior to the draw, the expected net value of a ticket bought in the UK was 0.85 new pence; the expected net value of a ticket bought elsewhere in Europe was minus 8.9 cents. The smart move was not to play.
Firefox News
Earlier in the week, I asked what the improvement was for Firefox II.
Matgb wrote, the auto discover for feeds is significantly improved. Again, I can't see this as a great shake, as RSS feeds go straight to Sage, while Firefox seems to want to use online aggregators. Not a road down which I wish to travel.
Minimum width for tabs, a close button on each tab, scrolling for tabs if you're over the width of the screen, etc. Again, nothing I've not got, and nothing I would expect to use. Indeed, restricting the width of tabs goes against the user interface of Windows.
The search engines system is better managed, you can highlight/right click/search using ANY of the engines you've got installed, and it'll search with whatever you're currently using. Has its uses, if you're searching for phrases that someone has written. And you want to give up a tab. Personally, I have no compunction with Ctrl+T for a new tab, Ctrl+E to the search box (default to Scroogle, natch), and typing in the actual question I want answered.
Readwriteweb says that everything is more shinny, which is rather worrying, more playful, which would turn some of us serious-minded people off. Arstechnica says that it's wasting of space, and viewing the screenshots, I'm inclined to agree.
Something about a search completion mechanism? Don't like the sound of that; I'll release my searches to my engine of choice and no-one else, thank you veh much. Ah, only works with three of the more rubbish engines.
Session restore, again, something I've got through existing extensions. Javascript 1.7 is of utterly no interest; if something doesn't work without Javascript, it is broken. AJAX is a Dutch football team, and a cleaning powder, and that's all. Inbuilt spell checking is going to be far more pain than it's worth - all spell-checkers have gaps in their vocabulary, and I find those gaps are bigger than the net they provide.
Microsummaries sound mildly promising, but I really can't see the point. Besides, my bookmarks are a list of places to visit daily / weekly / monthly, and I don't really see that I'd use a changing title.
Ultimately, the reasons why I might eventually move from 1.5 are performance. Does the new version handle memory better, particularly the rendering of big graphics? Does it display transparent PNG files properly - am I going to be able to use the Times Digital Archive properly? Have they messed about with Quick Find again; when I type something into a webpage, I want to find it there and then, not curse because I've not prefixed it with the magic command Ctrl+Shift+' Does it have a button to make a nice hot cup of tea? This is the stuff I would hope to see fixed - not the show-stoppers, but the little things.
