MS Claims Fried Rubber Eggs

From the Microsoft Typography site's WEFT 3 Overview page:

Font support in Web pages

Microsoft pioneered font support in Web pages by including support for the FONT FACE tag in the very first version of Internet Explorer released in 1995.

Ha! That's hilarious.

Analogy for those non-web-developerish-minded: it's like all the dorky Microsoft kids put on their starched blue chef's caps and cooked up a big batch of rubbery fried eggs. No one will want them, but that doesn't stop the boys bouncing them around the office in delight as they gibber financial algorithms to each other wildly and plant dry, dry kisses on each other, claiming this new breed of inedible googlies are the next best things since sliced bread (and no, not just because they can be used as sliced bread) and that they, the creators, the MicroSoftMarvellous, will never be matched for originality and innovation.

Ten years on and the pile of rubber fried eggs is... well, still a pile of rubber fried eggs, rubber having particular age-resistant (and if it's MS-manufactured, use-resistant) qualities. Yet visit http://www.MS.com/rubberfriedeggs/history.aspx and you can still read up on the heady days of MS RFE's conception. See a grinning Gates shaking hands with a bespectacled, nervous-looking guy holding up a signed copy of MS RFE 3.1, circa 1884. (The caption's smudged... that may be a '9'.)

Heh. ;-)

Enough of my never-ending anti-Billy daydreams for today, much work to be done! Busy finishing off the backend to a site I'm developing for a local - sorry - THE local hotspot, thevineyard.com.au, plus Juxt have sent through some testing, five hours total for two separate projects, and my dog is clambering to be taken for a(nother) walk. (Spent an hour lying in Catani Gardens this morning, soaking up the sun and wishing that Magnus wasn't quite so ball-mad. Heavenly.)

And as per usual, I'm over-budget already on the first job above, actually halved my quote for them as (1) the owner has been a friend for about twelve years, and (2) it's a high-profile job. It's also a small job, and still a relatively good price. One can't whinge too much when one can say 'Stuff work!' and spend all day at the beach whenever one wants, can one?

Ciao for now, mon chers et ma cheries
xx

Microsoft and Sun to take on Linux?

Microsoft is paying its debts, and polishing its boots in order to take on major rival Linux. In fact, they're allying up with Sun, also Linux-phobic, and in the process saving Sun's ass from the burn of Unix.

So says C. Marc Wagner in this interesting article discussing possible tactics behind recent Redmond moves.

Busy but Hungry

So much going on at the moment... working on some new stuff, refreshing some old stuff, learning a heap of good stuff... and there is just so much more that slips right on by.

Firefox is still powering on full steam ahead, with no movement at all from Redmond in defense, making me think Gates has already given up on IE, realising that it's a dead, rotting carcas of a browser not worth anyone's time.

(Dreaming again.)

There is talk that Google are making a browser based on either Firefox and/or Gecko core code (both from Mozilla), And you see, that is one of the beautiful things about Mozilla -- it's all open-source, which fosters innovation, invention and collaboration. MS likes to pretend to be a team-player, but it's not, ohhhhhh man is it not. (Anyone remember Communicator?)

XUL is beautiful.

I had a heap to say two hours ago when I started this, but now, 3 coffees, innumerable quickly-scanned web pages and an uncomfortable backside later, I really need to get some work done...

(Has anyone invented a Time Reversal Machine yet?)