I’ve had two problems with using Firefox as my primary browser on Mac OS X.  The first is speed.  The stock Firefox builds on Mac OS X are anything but fast.  The Intel- and G5-optimized builds available from a few sources are better, but they have their own issues.

The other issue I have with FF is in stock form, it’s ugly.  The form widgets and stock theme are really unattractive and don’t fit with the “look” of OS X at all.  Us Mac users (especially those with designer in us) like our stuff perty.  The form widgets in FF2, especially, are a hideous crime against humanity.

Good news… Firefox 3.0 beta 1 fixes both of these issues (especially if you install the “Proto” theme, which I’m told will be the default OS X theme upon release).   FF 3.0 is fast in beta-uno form, which is a good sign of things to come when it goes release.

I’ve been using it as my main browser for a few days now, and I’m honestly not missing Safari at all… which says a lot.  Since Firebug isn’t FF3-aware (yet), I’m still using 2.0 for development, but for day to day use I’m loving 3.0b1.

This is a micro-review because I haven’t gotten too far into Rock Band (the new mega-game from the makers of Guitar Hero I and II).  What I can say right now:

• It seems Easy and Medium are MUCH MUCH easier than Guitar Hero II or III.
• You have to be a lot more precise with your strums.
• Drums are farkin’ hard.  But I’m not even close to a good drummer.
• Vocals are fun.
• The box is HUGE.  No, really… huge.
• The songs are almost all original artists (same with GH3).
• I don’t like the feel of the Strat controller.  The fret buttons click, the strum bar doesn’t.  This is the opposite of a GH controller.
• The “effects” using the 5-way on the Strat is novel, but kind of gimmicky.
• Drums are hard.
• Overall, the whole package is very well executed.  I need to see it on my HDTV at home (I’m at my inlaws for Thanksgiving right now) to really test out the graphics.
• Rush rules, there’s a Coheed & Cambria track on there too… and of course, Enter Sandman.
• The damn guitar should be wireless.  The 360 has built in wireless, there is NO reason they couldn’t have used it on a $170 package.

Overall, I’m not saying it’s as good as GH3… yet.  The guitar part of GH3 is much more exciting (some of the guitar parts are boring in Rock Band), but the full-band thing is great fun with friends/family.  It’s a solid effort from a solid developer and I’m reserving my judgement until I get into it a bit more.

Just today, I’ve started to receive spam messages (those same “buy this stock” crap messages that come in via email too) on my iPhone through text messages from the AIM gateway.  I never signed my phone into AIM, so I’m not sure what’s going on here.  I’ll be calling AT&T and updating this post with my experiences.  Since I have a limited number of texts, this could prove to be a dealbreaker between me and AT&T unless they can get it to stop.

So, against my better judgment, I broke down and bought an iPhone.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the AT&T network where I spend most of my days, but the iPhone itself is… well, it’s pretty sweet.

The iPhone is more limited than most of the other smartphones I’ve used in the past (mainly Windows Mobile & Palm Treos), but what it does it does VERY well.  It was really telling when I was able to hop on the ‘net and get tickets to this week’s Major League Soccer All-Star Game (here in Denver) in the car on the way to Ft. Collins.  My Treo would have made that painful, if it even worked at all (”JavaScript not ready…” is seen OFTEN with Blazer).

The fact that it’s an iPod too is a bonus.  I find myself listening to music on it at times I never work have previously, simply because it’s there.  Sure the Treo could play music, but it was a pain in the ass to get songs onto it and play them.

Visual Voicemail is a treat.  Not a necessity, but it’s a “wow, that’s nice”.

Sure, there could be less clicks to get to the phone from locked… and an actual IM app would be great Apple… but for a Revision 1.0 device, it does what it does remarkably well.

I’ve had my hands on the Photoshop CS3 Beta for about 48 hours now and I have to say I’m impressed. First off, the app is VERY fast on my MacBook Pro. It’s worlds better than CS2 running Rosetta (obviously), and it’s amazing how much I adapted to the slower speed since making the Intel plunge.

The other thing I really like is the feature that will probably be having long-time Photochoppers bitching and moaning about until CS4 is the new interface. Because, Sally, it is different.

Most obvious thing… the tool palette is now one row by default. You can easily switch this back tho.

Docks are the biggest change though. All of the palettes are now held inside of Macromedia-esque docks. You can have as many of these docks as you want, but the real power of the interface is when you keep related palettes (Layers, History, etc.) in on dock. Then you can hide and show the docks easily when you need access to the items inside of them. By default, there are two docks visible in the CS3 interface, one open and one collapsed. The default-open dock holds the old defaultly-shown palettes like Layers, History, Navigator, etc. The other one is collapsed to a row of representative icons and contains Character, Brushes and a bunch of other stuff. In my short use of the beta, I’ve found this makes a MUCH cleaner use of my 17″ MacBook’s screen with less palette litter and easier access to the tools I need. And I can create a different dock layout for when I have the MacBook docked to my 30″ screen.

Like I said, some will hate it… but if you roll with the punches and actually use the new interface, I think most will find it just as much of an improvement as I did. I can’t wait for Illustrator and InDesign CS3 now.

Ugh.

That’s about all I have to say about the Dojo Toolkit’s web site. What the hell is up with the whole idea that “pageless” web sites are “cool”? They suck. You can’t bookmark them and in the case of Dojo’s site, the whole goddamn thing falls apart if you hit the “back” button.

Note: This does not apply to pageless web applications. Just content sites that decide that it’s a good idea to break a UI convention/paradigm that’s been around since the beginning of the web.

Not a good sales pitch for your toolkit (which is pretty cool, BTW)…

And while I’m calling out the Dojo dudes on my completely visitor-less web page, I have to say it really sucks that most beginner-level questions posted to your mailing list (the only way you can get any help with their more-than-1000-file-and-almost-completely-undocumented Javascript library) go unanswered. I know it sucks to answer the “OMFG, Dojo is SOOO Kewl, how dO i put my widget on TeH iNTaRw3Bs?”… but ya gotta do it kids. Those people who are trying to learn are gonna be the ones to evangelize your product.

As part of my current contract position, I’m creating a custom widget inside the Dojo framework. What this widget does is basically mimic an auto-complete list box (think <select multiple=”multiple”>), but allow for icons next to some of the items.

I have to say, Dojo makes widget creation as painless as it can probably be. With nifty stuff like auto-wireup for events and built in templating, it makes creating these things awfully easy.

In any case, kudos to the Dojo team and check it out if you’re a rich internet nerd like myself.

Have you always wanted one of those spiffy-ass “heatmap” things for your web site? I know I have.

No, really… I have.

Anyway, a new Web 2.0 startup is comin’ atcha with just that… a heatmap display for the links on your web page. Two pages and up to 5,000 hits are free (as in beer)… more than that costs money. I’ve got my homepage tagged. So click on stuff, people!

I posted this as a comment on the InsureMe Affiliate Blog, but I thought I’d repost it here since… well, it’s a lot of text and I might as well get credit for it too. This is more about the In the Race With Google, It’s Consistency vs. ‘Wow’ Article (New York Times) than it is about the blog post, but both are good reads.

Anyhow, here ya go (long)…

I think flash vs. consistent execution is a good analogy about the two Internet giants (Yahoo and Google).

Google’s really been about the flashy stuff up to this point. Get as much out there as quickly as possible and see what sticks. This is fine… it’s definitely a better approach to software development than the tired “write a spec, design the system, write the code, test the code, put the code in the box and ship it to the customer” model that was warmed over from the days when that last step actually applied.

The idea that web development should be a constant process of improvement is definitely something I’m on board with. The problem I have with Google is while they’ve got the “quick win” portion of agile development methodology down (it seems)… they don’t have the constant and consistent improvement portion down. They make a big splash with “Google “… all the blogs and other Google-watchers herald it as the next coming of and people flock to try it out. Then it sits there. And sits there. And then they add another “gee whiz” feature and everyone talks about how cool it is. I used to be as guilty of this as anyone else.

Lets take Google Maps for example. It debuted at a time when MapQuest, Yahoo, etc. were all pretty static. It had a cool UI that worked more like people expected it to. It was spiffy. But the driving directions sucked and it lacked a lot of the nice stuff that other mapping software had. It was half-baked. That’s cool… as I said before… I’m on-board with releasing it and letting the public play and fall in love with it.

But Maps has been out for how long now? And guess what? It still lacks good solid driving directions (I see a LOT of invites to parties and the like that say “DO NOT FOLLOW GOOGLE MAPS DIRECTIONS”) and nice stuff like an address book for storing your friends addresses. It’s not really integrated with any of their other products… think about it… how cool would it be if your friend sent you the address of the latest rave and Google parsed the address out of the email (in Gmail of course) and put a “map it” button next to it? Infinitely useful.

But Maps has scroll wheel support! When you scroll with your mouse wheel, it zooms!

Which do you think you’re gonna use more? And I’m not against the mouse zooming… I think it’s also useful. But the difference is its exciting and Gmail integration and an address book aren’t.

Wins in user experience aren’t won just on the fancy features… they’re more often won in the rote, boring stuff that makes the product more USEFUL to the public. Fancy features get them to come, good solid user experience makes them stay. One thing I really don’t see in Google is the willingness to address the boring, mundane features that people desperately want… but don’t get 1,256 diggs on Digg.

Yahoo’s proven that they’re a little more willing to dedicate their resources to a good overall experience. Integration of your products is key… and like the article says… Google seems really behind in this area.

So, it’s Yahoo’s outmoded development practices but well-thought-out output vs. Google’s faster time to market and sometimes (often) half-baked ideas that never become fully-baked. That’s a pretty even challenge, honestly.

The exciting part will be when one (or both) of them decide to address the weak side of their match up. Sounds like they both “plan” to, but it remains to be seen if they’ll actually step up and do it.

I bet Google has the bigger uphill battle… in a company of superstars, it’s gonna be hard to find a janitor.

Lore Sjöberg at Wired News explores the possibilities if Google were to suddenly decide to be evil.

Pretty funny stuff.