Yes, it’s true. The new Hybrid website, with a completely revamped design is now under construction. A fairly major problem with the website management system has been fixed, and now it is only a short wait before the new Hybrid site will be released in all its glory (possibly even on a different server).
Stay tuned…
(Cross-post at the Hybrid site)
I’ve already done a major post at Gizbuzz about this story, so here I’ll reflect on my thoughts about it.
First of all, how can they remove Outlook from Home & Student Edition??! I think that is probably the application out of my copy of Office 2003 Student & Teacher Edition that I use the most, it’s set up for my primary email account. Does mean I’m locked to Windows to check my mail though.
Most of the editions I mentioned on the post are OEM or Volume Licence jobs, so they’re not the shrink-wrapped boxes that you’ll see in your local PC World.
I don’t like the fact that the UI is only being redone for some of the apps (I think it’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access). It seems a bit weird to me to have major inconsistencies in the UI across the Office suite. Yes, I appreciate how big a task it is to completely overhaul Microsoft Office’s UI, but you get the point, hopefully.
Whew. Just managed to get the index, news and products pages of the latest Project Krystal build (version 0.9 RC1) to validate under the XHTML 1.0 Transitional standard. I think it’s a very good idea to validate, as it helps to ensure that your site works on as many platforms, browsers and operating systems as possible. I like, use and try to spread Firefox, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to lock IE users out of my site or irritate them with a browser-specific popup or something. If they want to use a browser with more holes in it than Swiss cheese, then that’s their choice.
This has been cross-posted at the Hybrid site.
How long did it take?
The IE7 Beta’s new feature Quick Tabs (see left) has already been done as a Firefox extension. Now that was a lot quicker than I had expected. Granted that it is done by a keyboard shortcut (F12, if you’re interested) and not an icon, but it just goes to show how quickly that Internet Explorer’s innovative features are taken up by the open source community. And if you dare try and patent it, Microsoft…
The download for Firefox Showcase is here.
It looks like Google are taking more fire on the privacy front with the new search across computers feature in Google Desktop 3 Beta. See here and here. A bit of a more in-depth post about this will appear on another blog I’m contributing to, Gizbuzz, shortly. I don’t know the link yet and it may not even be online yet UPDATE: The permalink is here.
But now more about my experiences with the free VMware Server product. I think it’s brilliant. Having now tested both the Windows and Linux versions and I conclude that the Linux server is faster, but slows down your desktop a bit more. That’s probably due to the fact that Linux is a more server-oriented system and to really prove this I’d need to conduct studies with different hardware and settings.
Also, Project Krystal has made it to a release candidate now (see story), but unfortunately, as yet, WorldPay integration is not completely finished. Don’t ask about my weird versioning either.
School is out for a week. So whoo! Brilliant, super duper.
What is slightly more interesting is this story. What this means for us die hard PC gamers is that, yes, we do get Halo 2. But it also looks like we will have to upgrade to Windows Vista. Now this doesn’t really affect me, because I plan to upgrade anyway, but for some people… well, we’ll see.
Oh and check out the new version of Google Desktop, it’s got some cool new features.
Can’t wait to play Halo 2 without buying an Xbox. Sorry, but I don’t do consoles.
Whoo! I’m actually very happy because I’ve just got my sweaty palms on a copy of the new free beta of VMware Server. This could be certainly useful for someone like me who can’t afford loads of hardware to run different OSs on (well, who can?) I’ve grabbed both the Windows and Linux servers and from my tests on both Win and Lin, the Linux server version seems to be a lot faster when installing and running operating systems. So this is basically my chance to play with a hell of a load of different Linux distros, not to mention the Windows Server 2003 trial.
Looking forward also to getting some dedicated hardware anyway though, because it means I will be able to run a semi-permanent Linux web server to get some hosting going on.
So, who’s for VMware?
And as for XEN (built-in open source virtualisation for Linux), well, I’m on the side of VMware, considering how easy it was to install.
Anyway…
In the world of PK (Project Krystal) development, we’ve had some new features. Namely these include various bugfixes for the product basket system (yes, some very important ones) and lots of other stuff too. The main things feature-wise are:
Well, let’s hope I can meet the supposed deadline of this Sunday, although considering the stability and potential for bugs in these new features, I doubt it will be 100% stable by then, even if the features are in there.
This has been cross-posted at the Hybrid site.
Sorry! I haven’t posted for ages, and I apologise.
What has been happening is a lot. Project Krystal, my main development arm at the moment is being set up for its first roll-out on the website of a garden machinery company, and that is taking up all my development time. We are currently working in version 0.8, but this branch of Project Krystal is codenamed Freestyle, as it has additional features:
Due to reasons of the development still being in progress, there is no rolling test version that you can view, or screenies available. But rest assured, there will be soon.
You can also check the Project Krystal target schedule here.
Also, if anyone is reading this at all, visit Linux-noob.com. I’ve posted about them before, but they are a really good forum for people new to Linux. Everyone is friendly and doesn’t mind answering the odd RTFM-type question. So, join up and tell them Hybrid sent you.
Anyway, I hope to post again soon with less of a delay between posts. See you all later. And post a comment if you like reading this, I don’t seem to get any.
First, I have at least two apologies to make.
1) I haven’t posted in absolutely ages, partly due to a Hybrid contract meaning I can’t talk too much about what is going on while things are provisional.
2) The joke in this post title is actually quite shocking.
But anyway, aside from the potential contract that I can’t talk about, a few things have happened. I have been given an invite to the Windows Live Messenger Beta (yes, a screeny). At the moment, I have four invites left, and it’s first come first served (Blogger users can leave a comment). It’s quite cool to get on a beta (finally) and the new interface is quite cool too. Big up to the guy at the Gizbuzz blog for kitting me out with an invite. Incidentally, I’ve also got a Windows Live Mail account, but in its current state of (IE only, grrr…) development, it’s not too impressive. When it does go live (no pun intended), it may well rival Gmail, I would vouch.
So what else do I say, really? I can’t talk too much, so I won’t. Let’s hope my next post will have less of a gap between it and this one.
Keep it real.
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