New Browser Stats

The last time I posted browser stats (back in January, Browser Wars), Firefox was in the lead by a fairly healthy margin (Firefox had 57% followed by IE at 37%). New stats shows that IE has regained the lead (please remember that this is a developer blog so these numbers are not representative of the Internet as a whole).

1. Internet Explorer - 53.49%

2. Firefox - 40.37%

3. Opera - 3.54%

4. Safari - 1.35%

5. Mozilla - 0.62%

6. Mozilla Compatible Agent - 0.31%

7. Camino - 0.21%

8. Netscape - 0.10%

Browser Wars

After the surge in visitors I got from being featured on both the Firebird and IBExpert websites this week, I thought the browser metrics were pretty interesting. Apparently, the folks that use Firebird seem to have a preference for Firefox. Perhaps it's the name similarity? :)

1. Firefox - 57.14%

2. Internet Explorer - 37.03%

3. Opera - 4.37%

4. Mozilla - 0.58%

5. Safari - 0.29%

6. Mozilla Compatible Agent - 0.29%

7. Konqueror - 0.29%

Event-Based Asynchronous WebRequest

I've created my first Code Project article! I was looking for a place to upload some code so I could share it from my blog, but the only place that I could find was Code Project, of course that meant that I had to write an article too.

If you are interested in reading about using the WebRequest/WebResponse classes (including processing of the response stream) or implementing the Event-Based Asynchronous Pattern (the pattern used by the BackgroundWorker component), you can read my article at Event-Based Asynchronous WebRequest.

The article includes a project that contains a BackgroundWebRequest component that can be used to perform asynchronous web requests from a WinForm application.

IE 7

I've been using Firefox for some time now and I really like it. However, being a technology junky, I felt compelled to install IE 7 as soon as it was released (I tend to avoid betas if at all possible).

IE 7 definitely feels like a modern browser. It has tabbed navigation, redesigned and streamlined toolbars, and a built-in RSS feed reader (though I plan on continuing to use Thunderbird for the RSS feeds I subscribe to). IE 7 also has the ability to add extensions, however, I haven't found any that I want to use (where's the Bork Bork Bork! translator?) and most of them cost money.

Firefox still has some very compelling features (specifically a better selection of extensions), however, I think I will stick with IE 7 for now (at least until Firefox 2 is released :).

A Lament of Tableless HTML Layout

I haven't worked seriously with web application development for a number of years and recently decided to try my hand at it again.

On the whole, I like ASP.Net 2 and master pages. ASP.Net 2 is much more like the original ASP which allowed for rapid development of web applications. I'm not saying that ASP.Net wasn't an improvement over ASP, but they did move away from some of the core benefits of ASP (such as being able to view changes to code without recompiling).

However, in my recent exploration of web development I decided to try out tableless layout, basically using divs and CSS to create a layout instead of using tables (Why avoiding tables (for layout) is important). After playing with it for a few hours, It seems that CSS (and CSS compliance) still has a way to go before this becomes as robust as tables are. It's difficult, and sometimes impossible, to get divs to work the way I want (often things that were trivial using tables).

[Table Senryū...]

Tables are so lovely

so easy to design

now they are no more

Now you know why I'm a programmer instead of a poet :).

Favorite Blogs

I mentioned that the reason I was inspired to create a blog was because of a few other blogs that I've enjoyed reading. Some of my favorites include...

• Joel On Software - One of the best blog authors for software development on the web. Good information on software trends and the business of software.
• Eric.Weblog() - Another great blog author and funny (in a self-deprecating way). He wrote the book Eric Sink on the Business of Software (essentially a collection of essays from his blog).
• Scobleizer - Lots of posts, but the information is often interesting and timely (it's nice to know what's going on outside my little beige, padded box).
• Mini-Microsoft - An anonymous Microsoft insider rant. Lengthy and bitchy posts, but interesting in a car wreck sort of way :).
• Channel 9 - A great inside look at Microsoft's emerging technologies. It contains tons of video interviews with Microsoft employees showing off upcoming products.

Privacy on the Web

The battle is raging with no end in sight. What is going to kill the Internet, privacy violations or anonymity?

It seems like every website out there requires registration. Unfortunately, not every website respects their users privacy (not every website adheres to their privacy policy either). When these websites release their users information (either intentionally or not), their users email becomes stuffed with spam. I know that I have lost many valid emails due to the spam blockers that I have set up (I only allow people that are already in my contact book to email me).

On the flip side, anonymous users clog public sources of information (such as blogs) with spam and rude, obnoxious, and often times obscene posts making it difficult to find good posts in popular sites.

Recently I have become aware of a subversive element in the web in favor of anonymous browsing. A couple of my favorites are BugMeNot.com and spambob.com. It appears that both of these sites have been active for years, I guess I'm not as Internet savvy as I thought I was :(.

spambob is a free, anonymous, on-the-fly email service. You don't need to register to use it. When you are on a website that asks for an email address, simply type any email address you want from @spambob.com and, voila, instant email address. If you want to check your email, simply go to www.spambob.com and search for the address you used. Since there's no registration, anybody on the Internet can read the email, however, since there's no registration, the email can't be traced back to you and your inbox doesn't get stuffed with spam. Clever!

BugMeNot allows people to share registration information so that you don't have to register at all! Considering the number of news sites that force registration to read articles (usually the second page of an article ) it's nice to know that you don't have to provide all of them with your personal information. If you use Firefox as your browser, there is actually a plugin that will automatically fill in the login information for you (through the context menu) so that you don't even have to go to the BugMeNot website!

The big question is "is this ethical?" This is certainly a major topic of discussion. First let's define the argument as using anonymous information to get into free services that don't appear to have any reason to require registration in the first place. I don't condone stealing paid-for services or intellectual property.

That being said, I still can't think of any arguments for this being ethical. From a purely ethical standpoint, if you don't agree with the site's policy, boycott the site. Allow capitalism to rein. If the site believe's the policy is threatening their success, they will either change it or fail. Unfortunately business isn't always run in a rational way (at least from the consumer's perspective) and there's always enough people that are willing to provide personal information that the success of a large site is not threatened by a few people who refuse to use their site.

On the scale of 0 to 10 on the ethics meter with 0 meaning I'm going to Hell and 10 I'm going to Heaven, I would have to rate this a 4. Certainly not helping, but also not killing my chance of getting into Heaven (I just have to hold the door open for a couple of elderly ladies to make up for it :). I'll still use the boycott method most of the time, but it's nice to know there are alternatives.