IBM Websphere Advert

[usil]

Was just wondering if its just me, or are IBM trying to be clever (annoying) when you pass the mouse over their advert. The mouse can't get to certain parts of the advert and the mouse will jump up or down.

[maxximilian]

Took awhile for to get that ad and remember this thread....I usually get HP ads....

My cursor will flicker slightly on that ad when the little guy starts moving...but that's about it. Happens on other flash ads at other sites for me....so I never paid it much attention. Figured it was just a matter of my processor choking briefly on the Flash code.

Besides....I don't click on ads, so if my cursor goes berserk on them...I don't mind.

[jmtjet]

When I'm using my Ubuntu Linux box some of the flash ads on this site causes Firefox to crash and close without warning. I don't seem to have that problem on other sites or when I'm using Opera. I think the advertisers would be better off if they posted simpler ads that are not "in your face". An annoyed surfer is not going to click on an intrusive ad.

[JPnyc]

Just curious, but at what point does it become a firefox problem, since it seems to only affect that browser? Where is FF's error handling? A HUGE part of good programming is trapping errors before they ever get to the operating system, and cause things like crashes and freeze ups.

[ProfessorU]

I have to agree and say that I hope the Mozilla team starts taking browser crashes more seriously. There's more improperly coded pages than proper ones out there, and the developers need to recognize that.

[JPnyc]

Precisely, prof. As a developer yourself, you know that it's MUCH easier to code a program that ONLY functions when fed letter perfect code to interpret, than to code one that has potential website faux pas provided for and dealt with. Glad someone else sees this. The trident and presto engines are far hardier when it comes to bumps in the road. Gecko crawls into a little ball and dies.

[Nix]

Precisely, prof. As a developer yourself, you know that it's MUCH easier to code a program that ONLY functions when fed letter perfect code to interpret, than to code one that has potential website faux pas provided for and dealt with.

So by saying that are you implying that either VDr or the Webspehere ads are not using letter perfect code - otherwise Fx would handle them ok.

People shouldn't write dodgy code in the hope that there laziness will get picked up via a catch all in someone elses code.

You want Fx code to be made good so it can pick up on other code that is bad. Seems like an oxymoron to me.

Hate to think what would happen if that was the case in Defence systems or Aeroplane naviagation \ auto pilot software.

I guess rushing out dodgy code is why Windows always ends up wth so many patches etc.

[JPnyc]

No, patches exist because it's not possible to foresee every single vulnerability in something as complex as an OS. The ONLY way you find those out is to have 300 million hackers all trying to find them. There IS no other way. That's why we don't know for sure if Linux is secure, or if Mac OSX is. You don't have the same knowledge base out there trying to crack them.

I'm saying that no matter what errors it encounters, there should be error handling. It should never reach the OS to cause a crash.

I know FF is the darling of the web, but the truth is, mozilla programs are NOT well coded. The engine, which isn't mozilla's, might be better at supporting w3c standards, but the fact is the browser is buggy, crashes left and right, is an absolute memory pig, and uses profiles that corrupt with a good hard sneeze.

It's popularity is due to fantastic marketing, because it's just not that well coded a program.

Now Opera, which isn't marketed NEARLY as well, is a much better overall example of programming. For one thing, they wrote their own engine (presto), which can take what you might throw at it, like IE's trident can, without choking, but unLIKE IE's trident, is standards compliant. That, to me, is an impressive piece of work.

What good would a fantastic, fast, and shiny car be if every time it hit a bump or pothole it had to go to the repair shop? That's the equivalent of what FF does with any issues it finds in a webpage.

[usil]

I don't know much about programming and I am not a FF spokesman, but I can't remember last time my FF crashed. Yes, sometimes the extensions have crashed, but that has nothing to do with FF itself. Its a good stable browser which brings good features. I wouldn't say its popularity came because of good marketing. It was all about good timing, good features, fast and above all a good browser.

[JPnyc]

What features? Tabs? What other features does it have, right out of the box? You may not have crashes but the list of FF users from our 30 forums that have had issues is ponderously long. I rarely ever hear from Opera or IE users.

I wrote a program for in house use on the job I had before this one. A fairly simple one, mostly to make my job easier, but they still use it there now that I'm gone. I built in error handling in the unlikely event that there was an issue with a record returned from the database.

Unfortunatley, the one potential error i DIDN'T handle was, what if the connection to the database failed. See, I didn't know they were going to change the path to the server housing the database, but still I should've provided for that possibility that the connection would fail. I didn't do such a great job on it.

That's a simple example of what I'm talking about. Most every aspect of page rendering and code interpretation should be in try/catch blocks,and trap errors.

[usil]

Amongst other things, it has RSS feeds and extension & theme capabilities.

I'd guess that you don't hear about Opera crashing because no one uses it. Kind of like why you (almost) don't have spyware and viruses for Linux and Mac.

[JPnyc]

So it had tabs, and RSS feeds. The extensions most newer browsers are capable of. But see, here's the problem: you have, by today's standards, a bare bones browser, in terms of features. Without extensions, you have No mouse gestures, limited ability to move tabs around, can't save open tabs for next session. These are basic features for the new tabbed browser world. Opera has them, Avant, Maxthon, all have them.

So now someone comes along and writes an extension. In addition to increasing resource use to get features that others have already native to them, you have the issue of compatability. See these extension writers don't know each other. They don't test each extension with every other possible combination of extensions that exist.

So you have a recipe for problems there alone. Now add to that there is no quality control over the coding in these extensions. Everyone and their brother is writing them.

I tried 2 mozilla programs for a good while. Didn't take me more than a yr to ditch em both. But before I did I joined their support forum, and I found out that issues with things like corrupt profiles were absolutely RAMPANT. Well, that's what happened to me too, twice.

[SpywareDr]

With a purported 50-million lines of code, and 5+years in the making, Windows Vista is the largest, and longest concerted software project in human history.

The average software developer in the US produces around 6,200 lines of code a year. 50-million lines of code divided by 6,200 lines of code per year equals 8,065+ years worth of coding.

[JPnyc]

Yep, it's no easy feat, to code an OS. No easy feat to code a browser, even. That's why vulnerabilities exist in all of em.

[usil]

The whole idea of FF is that it IS a barebones browser which allows you to add what you want to it. It is a lightweight browser which doesn't come bundled with all sorts of thing that you might not need. Thats what makes it faster than other browsers. And you can hardly compare it to Maxthon and Avant which themselves are add-ons to IE.

There are many extensions and themes for FF. Some are officially sanctioned by Mozilla, some are not. The officially sanctioned ones can be downloaded from the Mozilla web site, and the pass Mozillas quality control before they are added to the site. The others are not officially sanctioned and have not been tested by Mozilla. The responsibility to use tested extensions rests on the user, not Mozilla. They are hardly to blame for users using bad and buggy extensions.