T-Log

I always like hearing news from Google, this time is the war declared by Google on the battlefield of Internet Web Browser.

I am a Chinese, therefore I predicted that there must be some not good enough points that exist in Google Chrome. Just installed and used no longer than 10 minutes, there are good points to let me stay as well as bad points to make me withdraw from Google chrome and commented it “Not yet a time to use Google Chrome”.Sorry Google, I have to use this Blog entry to let you know my kindest feedback to your new product.I like the clear UI of Chrome, that is what Google always keep their product clean and clear. The new tab rendering more utilize the old “window topic banner” area letting more area of the web can be displayed. The fast loading time and small installation file is just a candy in add. I think there are many good points user can discover them easily therefore i just concernate onto the bad user experience I encountered.

First of all, the default setting of Chinese character is strange:

The upper one is in IE, the middle one is firefox and the lower one is Chrome. You can see the rendering of small Chinese characters is quite ugly in Chrome, this problem also exist in Firefox in previous version but it changed better now but, of course, IE still keep doing this stuffs best among them.Another thing I guess it is a bug that about ajax. I like a game in facebook call “義氣仔女online”(called ‘古惑仔online’ previously), when I play this game using Chrome, the buy item, complete task, hit other people’s function all without respond. I don’t know if it was my own computer problem. I will do more testing on my other desktop computer and notebook.

About the “favorite” feature, I guess if there is scroll bar provided, it would be better if the favorite list is very long.

But these issues arised during the first 10 minutes I use Google Chrome, therefore I just comment that : “It is not yet the time to do the move from IE to Google Chrome”.  

With a newly bought notebook with Vista from my University Notebook Sales, I tried to make my notebook as powerful and strong as it can. Therefore for the security aspect, I installed ESET Smart Security. I liked NOD32 and installed it for my home desktop, for my new notebook I tried ESS instead.

After 3/4 year after I used it, I discover there are a sever problem that raised by it, including the time that I lived in South Korea for my exchange study. Here are the problems that I experienced with ESS:

1. The internet was terminated and unable to connect again if I use some online streaming service QPlay to watch some TV programmes. For which I have to restart the system so as to connect to the network again.
2. I was unable to connect to some wireless network. I can be redirect to a login interface and login, but I am not able to access any website after login. This happened when I was in Korea Univeresity. I can access wireless in the International studies hall but not in the Studying room located in 4/F of Centennial Memorial Hall.
3. Similiar with the case above, but much worse……Whenever I turn on my notebook with wireless function on in the library of my university (CityU), the system crashes and blue screen of death appear. This time I seem to discover what make it wrong. I turn of the wireless when the system start up, and turn the firewall of ESS off, then I try to connect the wireless on, it works fine again.

These experience led me to find if there is something wrong with ESS and after a glance from Google search, it shows numerous problem about ESS……I was shocked that ESS with Vista really result in tons of problem. Maybe, just like medicine for human, the power of ESS is too strong that it cause allergy or even fatal effect to some system or situation.

Recently I found my MSN chat history does not work properly, once I click to see my chat history, it shows a blank page and a download box appear. I also encountered this problem when I worked for a company. At that time, I don’t care it as it is not my personal computer. It is different now because the problem is on my notebook.

As I know some basic knowledge like how Microsoft make use of its product among different their other products, I know the chat history browser may employed IE for rendering the chat log. I go to the chat log folder and tried to use IE to view the xml file directly, it shows the same respond: download the xml file. This shows the the problem is about the IE XML rendering~

With surfing the solution from the internet, there are no such direct solution or no one mention about this probelm, except, there is a passage from a Microsoft programmer blaming that Netscape 8 making IE’s xml not functioning well.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/25/421763.aspx

It may be one of the solution for others, but not for my case, as I didn’t install Netscape 8. I tried to download the newest MSXML parser 4.0, but it does not solve the problem. The interesting point is, I solve the problem occassionally by just installing XML parser 3.o SP5, which I has installed before.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=28494391-052b-42ff-9674-f752bdca9582&DisplayLang=en

After installing the “msxml3.msi”, the IE can display xml files, so does the MSN chat history. I know programming is a complicated issue, especially in operating system development, but this experience gives me an impression how Microsoft product be easily crashed by other software, and Microsoft will not say “I am weak” but just blaming others.

It is true that it is disappointed when my site was shortlisted but not granted the prize for the eXtreme Web Design Award. I admit I overlook a detail confirmation testing step. I tested the site with Webxact, it shows no error for the Accessibility test in the first page (only warning, not error), but it shows an error in the detail page…..partly being faked, partly being of my careless.

However, attending the lecture listening the sharing from students who receive the awards teach me almost nothing but many myths exist.

1) Don’t emphasize the advantage of using Google webmasters tool for allowing Google indexing the site. Google crawls the WWW occasionally but not base on how long you register the site to that tool. The tool only allow you to have more control in managing how Google crawl the site, and have a more detail look to the searching statistic.

2) Submitting allows search engine to know your site easier, the sitemap stands for a road guider where robots/ spider can go, this helps shorten the time for them to crawl the site, but it does not mean it help raising the ranking.. In fact, when more thing are disclosed to spider, they may find your site not good enough even though some part of your web is very SEO and well in content, this is so-call dilution effect.

3)Tags like “changefreq” are not useless in the sitemap structure, they in-cooperate with “lastmod” and search engine old site update record to help search engine judging whether the site update frequency is true or not.

4)When the site grows large, “priority” is useful in guiding search engine where they should visit and crawl more, which part should visit fewer. This help lowering the loading to your web server due to the crawling action.

The most naive point one of the student shared that one of the competitor site: http://cityu-web-hacker-turtle.shing.cc has high ranking because it was newly built, and he even said because of this the site should have an old cache file date as search engine will not frequently update sites that are newly registered. But the truth is that, the author of http://cityu-web-hacker-turtle.shing.cc/ built their site at the beginning of October and keep enriching the site content. That’s why search engine also keep updating their cache file towards http://cityu-web-hacker-turtle.shing.cc/. Hence when the student showed his confusion when he saw the cache file date is so recently.  But I don’t think most student realize this point.

I feel a little ridiculous as long as I listen to the students who share their SEO. Some of them can show some good points, but many of them can be seen that they won that just by luck without detail understanding of some detail parts of SEO and simply said those features are useless.

I think the PIC of this award should has the responsibility and obligation in correcting those myths instead of just let students said something partly or completely wrong to the majority.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/10/real_sharing_vs.html

“What Web 2.0 is in fact?” I think this is the question that many “web 2.0 learner” came up when they first come across with web 2.0, or have general knowledge of Web 2.0. But I agree with what Lessig suggested and Tim O’Reilly commented on what Lessig said: Some site look like or perform like Web 2.0 but they may not necessily really Web 2.0.

On the lecture, some classmate mentioned YouTube is Web 2.0 site while Lessig raise our mind that, is it really web 2.0? According the definition, Web 2.0 empharizes content sharing, but from Lessig’s point of view, the sharing provided by YouTube is not “truly sharing”. Youtube user provides space for video uploading, but user cannot retrieve their original video file. And the video shared among the public thorugh a provided embed HTML tag using table. People just able to load the video through the site but hardly to load the original file. It seems to be a “no so truly sharing” platform in stead of a truly sharing one.

O’Reilly states it is actually depend on how people look at “true sharing”:

Even “fake sharing” is better than no sharing, which is what we had before.
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/10/real_sharing_vs.html

He continues states Google Book Search as he example of how so-called Web 2.0 proider may not necessary, but onwardly he stats that people are also trying their ever hard to purpose the true sharing.

To arguing whether a site is web 2.0 or to say a site supposed to be web 2.0 not a web 2.0 one is meaning less. For sure that there are still many ways to interpret a site that is Web 2.0, by all mean to make a site to enhance end-user experience is already what Web 2.0 suppose the web to be.

I don’t know how lecturer and tutor comment on this, I wish to see anyone comment on this issue.