Let's get to it: I have one Web site that I work on infrequently that requires Internet Explorer, but since I barely have to do anything on it, I am free to use IE, or not.

And I waited at least a year to "upgrade" my IE6 to IE7 on the XP box at work. Yeah, it's an upgrade because now IE has tabbed browsing -- a feature Firefox has had for years, and which IE probably would've never added had FF not had it first.

I like IE6 because it was a fast program -- it opened fast and did the rest of its thing fast. And I could use it as an FTP client.

Now that I have IE7, sure there is tabbed browsing, and it looks a little better, but it's way slower than Firefox, and I pretty much only fire up IE for ONE Web site because it's at the top of my IE favorites and the bottom of my FF favorites.

IE loads more slowly, the favorites come up slower -- basically it gets beat by FF in performance by every measure. (I'm running a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM.)

And I can run Firefox in Windows, Linux, BSD and Mac OS X ... and I do (though I'm partial to the Mozilla-derived Epiphany in the GNOME desktop, as well as the Seamonkey browser/e-mail client/HTML editor suite -- also based on Mozilla).

Truth be told, if it really bothered me, I'd try to roll the box back to IE6, if that indeed can be done. Since IE7 installs over your IE6, I think it might be a problem to "go back."

Note: While I can't get the same FTP functionality out of IE7, I have a Windows workaround: Open up My Computer from the Start menu, and type your FTP address in the search bar. The window functions pretty much like IE6 -- it's the same "Explorer"-like interface Windows uses to let you examine your own files, and it does FTP just like IE6. Thanks, Microsoft!

I used to think IE was the best browser for OS X, too -- that final version of IE5 for the Mac was a masterful, innovative application, and I'm sorry Microsoft abandoned it. Safari doesn't have enough critical mass to cut it -- many Web sites don't look so hot in it -- so Firefox is pretty much the browser of record for the Mac, too.

And Mozilla is making hand-over-fist money by getting a cut of the Google searches made through the browser. All it means is more money that Microsoft isn't making.

Hope you're happy, Microsoft!

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy install on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) performed admirably for its first few months, but after a couple weeks of inactivity I had trouble during a software update. Everything slowed to a crawl. Apt and Aptitude worked, but any other kind of package management (Add/Del Programs, Synaptic) slowed the system to point that the only way to regain control was a hard reset.

So I reinstalled Gutsy from scratch. Gone was the Feisty-era kernel that expertly managed the $0 Laptop's CPU fan, and this install started exhibiting the same sludgy symptoms almost immediately.

Did a recent update break Gutsy?

I found no evidence to support this from the Ubuntu forums, nor anywhere else.

But I wanted to install wine and Internet Explorer the easy way, and even that wasn't working in Gutsy.

Then I broke my vow to stop dual- and triple-booting and put Slackware 12 in my last available partition. I purposefully installed LILO, and could boot Slackware from the $0 Laptop for the first time. And while I got X working with the frame-buffer version of xorg.conf, resolution was way less than optimal. It was probably running at 16 colors. Still, Slackware -- even in KDE -- was very, very fast. Had I been able to get X right, I would've been tempted to turn the entire laptop over to Slackware.

I tried every xorg.conf that Slackware had in /etc/X11. I tried both the whole file plus the monitor portions of xorg.conf files from Ubuntu 7.10, Debian 4.0 and Puppy 3.00. Nope.

Then it was time to reinstall Ubuntu. I did the only reasonable thing. I put Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty in the No. 1 slot. That brought back GRUB, and I was able to boot Ubuntu -- running fine now -- and Debian. But the GRUB entries for Slackware? None of them work. Kernel panic on all. Then I replaced references to sda with hda. Two got farther than that, but I was left with blank screens and no login prompt. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to set GRUB to successfully boot Slackware 12.

Here's what I had:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-generic-2.6.21.5 root=/dev/hda5
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-generic-smp-2.6.21.5-smp root=/dev/hda5
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-huge-2.6.21.5 root=/dev/hda5 ro vga=791
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.21.5-smp root=/dev/hda5
savedefault
boot

Next thing I'll try: adding initrd lines to see if that gets it going.

I'm not ready to give up on Slackware via GRUB yet, but does it have to be so damn hard?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's the deal. We've got a Mac at home ... and my two Linux-equipped laptops. This Old PC in the Back Room has no Internet connectivity at present. And the university where Ilene teaches changed their online administrative portal from one that works in Firefox to one that ... does not. It requires Internet Explorer, version 5.5 or greater. That even leaves out the last version of IE that Microsoft deigned to produce for Mac's OS X.

I returned to the easiest way to get Internet Explorer (and the Wine tools required to run it and many other Windows apps). That would be IEs4Linux.

By following the Ubuntu-specific instructions, I was able to get wine, cabextract and all the relevant files to install IE 5.5 and IE 6 on my Gutsy setup. Yep, Gusty is still giving me trouble with any package-management program that isn't apt or Aptitude, but since I have those two at my disposal still, I'm sticking with this install for awhile.

Anyway, even though the process involves changing the repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list, then downloading, unpacking and installing from a tarball, it's all laid out. My advice: go to the page and use copy and past to get the exact code into your terminal window.

There are also distro-specific instructions for: Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Suse, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS.

In short, if you need IE, this works. And you now have Wine, with which you can experiment with other Windows apps on your Linux box. It's trial and error (mostly error) in my limited experience; for heavy duty use of Wine, I recommend Code Weavers, which costs money but is probably well worth it.

As I've previously written, my first "experiment" will be getting IrfanView running under Linux. Sadly, there is nothing -- NOTHING -- on Linux to equal IrfanView when it comes to image editing -- or at least the kind of image editing I do.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(Note: the "f" word was removed -- by the author -- several times from this post. If you wish, please think of it where appropriate.)

If Steve Ballmer appeared before me right this minute, I'd punch him in the stomach. Hard. More than once.

That's for screwing up the brilliantly simple FTP functionality in Internet Explorer 6 by pretty much gutting it in Internet Explorer 7.

Between home and work, I use Linux, Mac OS X and Windows -- bet you can guess what my "official" work box is running. Yes, I finally decided to upgrade from IE6 to IE7 on my company's Dell Optiplex GX520. I try to never upgrade anything when I don't have to, but I figured that it's been OVER A YEAR since IE7 made its debut. Surely they've "improved" whatever they screwed up in the upgrade. I've been using Firefox (on Windows, Mac and Linux) a lot because of tabbed browsing, and I'd like to have the same feature in IE.

I use IE as my FTP client because it's so easy and intuitive. You open an FTP site and get a bunch of folders, just like in your own directories. You can click them open, create new folders, drop stuff in them, delete stuff out of them.

So I install IE7 and go about my day.

When I have to do some FTP work, I open IE7. It looks different. I have a list of files. I can open them, but I can't create new folders or upload new files.

What the hell? Ballmer -- you and your ilk are IDIOTS. Your browser has an advantage over Firefox, and you have to ruin it?

Turns out you can use IE7 for FTP. Here's the "official" way:

Here's a shortcut for getting an FTP directory listing within IE7:

Open Internet Explorer 7

In the address bar, type the following command:

ftp://username:password@domain

IE 7 will display a list of files and folders from the FTP domain

To quickly save a file locally, right-click the file and select "Save Target As..."

To manage the remote and locals files more completely, click the 'Page' menu button on the right-hand side of the IE 7 browser window and select the option, "Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer"

you can now drag-n-drop the files from remote FTP server to local file system easily

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 has some great enhancements over IE 6; however, with these enhancements comes a loss of some basic and useful functionality. I don't expect Microsoft to rest too long before they update IE 7 with an easier way to FTP - but - for now you have a hack. Enjoy.

This "worked" for me on one FTP site, but it DIDN'T WORK on another -- meaning the one I use most of the time.

So here's a WAY BETTER SOLUTION:

I wanted to use FTP to help someone out with transfering files and rather than worry about using a proper FTP client, a web browser can usually do the business, I tested to make sure it would work.

For Internet Explorer you have to do surprising things to log in to a password protected FTP server. Like this in the address bar

ftp://myname:address.hidden.to@non.subscribers.com

And off you go.

This NO LONGER works with Internet Explorer 7, is ok for 6 and below.

Turns out there is a crazy solution, good to know tip. (yeah you all knew!)

Open a normal file browser/explorer as you would for the local file system, yes that one, not Internet Explorer.

Type in the FTP address in the location bar ftp://anftp.site.com

And off you go. It prompts for the login details. You can use drag and drop etc.

Should work for web site uploads to your web server too.

I'm glad the solution is so easy. I use FTP clients in Linux, and I even downloaded and installed FireFTP for Firefox, but it's not as good, easy and fast as the IE (and now just "Windows") solution.

At this point, I'd prefer to "go back" to IE6, but what are the chances of that working -- and of keeping my nearly 1,000 bookmarks in the process?

Hey Ballmer, can you maybe try some things that won't drive people away from your products? Why don't you stop threatening to sue the makers and users of Linux and other open-source software over shadowy intellectual-property violations and JUST MAKE STUFF THAT'S BETTER?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)