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New user? Friday, January 10, 2003
RE: OmniWebCore
Update: Looks like Dave still reads this weblog. Whaddaya know. :-) Hi Dave. Congrats on the new job!
In reaction to my link to Ken Case's message about WebCore and OmniWeb, Dave thinks Apple crushed a few small developers by releasing their own browser. That's one way to look at it, but I don't think OmniWeb's sales will be affected much by Safari... after all, there were already half a dozen other free browsers competing with it before.
Nobody is going to buy OmniWeb because of its rendering engine. It worked but only just slightly better than Netscape 4, relative to Gecko and IE, that is. Of all the 8 browsers on Mac OS X OmniWeb's rendering is probably the worst. People, like me, bought an OmniWeb license for it's user interface. The "Open link behind this window" menu item was, IMO, the killer UI feature before Mozilla got tabbed browsing. And it's got a number of other great features in its UI.
I believe Ken was being sincere when he thanked Apple for releasing WebCore. I don't think Apple's browser is going to crush OmniGroup or any other developer of browsers on the Mac. Look at it this way... the Omni folks crank out so much good software, like OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner because Apple provides them with amazing frameworks that they master and build atop of. Safari's open-source engine is just another framework for Omni to consume and master.
If Safari's rendering engine gains credibility, and I think it has (a new beta was released today), then Omni's browser would inherit that credibility. Safari's speed will be OmniWeb's speed, and it's rendering abilities will be OmniWeb's rendering abilities. That makes the product a lot easier to sell...
Omni would not be able to make as much software as they do with as little resources as they have without the high-level frameworks they base all their software on. I say embrace and extend this new framework, not fight it. I'd be absolutely shocked if they didn't use it.
OmniWebCore
OmniGroup is considering using WebCore (ie: Safari's KHTML-based rendering framework) for OmniWeb.
I think that would be a fabulous idea. One less engine to test again, one more innovative user-interface to keep people spending money on. Omni could spend a ton more time on the UI if they didn't have to worry about rendering.
Thursday, January 9, 2003
Canada tires of blame for terrorist threat to U.S.
CNN (AP): Canada tires of blame for terrorist threat to U.S.
The article fails to mention that if someone enters the U.S., regardless of which border they enter it through, they have to get through the U.S. border patrol, the U.S. Customs and Immigration, INS, whatever... it's U.S.'s security they're getting past. Don't blame another country for not having strong enough security.
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
Media for MetaWeblog API
Dave Winer: RFC: metaWeblog.newMediaObject
I hope this, or whatever this morphs into with discussion, gets implemented widely, and especially in Conversant, because it can definitely improve the potential user experience for weblogging app users.
Wickenheiser gets nod for Saturday game
TSN.ca: Wickenheiser to play Saturday
I definitely want to watch this game. Good for her!
First Nations group wants to buy Corel Centre
Ottawa Sun: First Nations group ready with assist
Under the plan, which would need the blessing of federal, provincial and local governments to be successful, Leech's group wouldn't have to pay tax for the building because of its Native status.'
I haven't mentioned it here yet, but the Ottawa Senators NHL team is in a deep financial crisis. Their refinancing plan stalled on December 31st and they're unable to pay their players right now. It's believed they'll file for bankrupcy protection as early as today.
IRC on OS X
If you use an IRC client on OS X, and you think it's good, could you please let me know which one it is? I've tried all of the ones I could find and they all seem to suck. Thanks.
I couldn't get BitchX running because it was looking for libncurses and I didn't have time to hunt that down and get it installed.
Update: My solution is X-Chat running in X11 for Mac OS X.
