GNU/linux is the only smart choice to be made. A more involved awareness of your computer and OS and infinitely greater computer freedom. And it can run fast on most anything.

I doubt google pushed the windows release first in order to make more $$$$ than the thing deserves, I think it was rather fear of having a dramatical $$$$ and image loss.

Of course, when developing AJAX dynamic pages (as I do), less complex is sometimes not an option. But the worse thing I think any developer can do is revert to Flash or Java because they cannot work how to do it JavaScript/PHP/MySQL. (or equivlent).

Yes, I agree that the problem is big corperations, and education insitutions, invest to much money into Microsoft based systems and then cannot afford to migrate. One of things i wish to do is provide progressive migration tools. Some technologies from Microsoft are bother interpolable and actually well thought out, such as Microsoft Exchange Servers. Sure, it’s not the most effiecent, and probably not most secure or cheapest system on the market, but it works, and it can be used by a lot of technologies. Including Snow Leopard, the iPhone, etc.

Mac’s tend to be easier to maintain than PCs, and easier for the power user (standard UNIX based VTs), and using servers with FreeBSD which is renound for it’s stablity are also valid options.

It is my opionion that when developing an IT infrastructive it is nieve to think that you can stick to one system. Different applications require different enviroments. For this reason, Windows in Corperations will never go away completely, but I do like to think that one day we can see a viable competitor.

Then again, I may be dreaming. Just like that dream I had last night of all IT profesisonals declaring that they will update to IE7 and make my life easier.

Grow up.

Pere: I stand by my statement that IE = Hacked POS!

Jeff: After looking at Google Chrome, I would have to agree that Safari 4 has all the features that Google Chrome has and had them before Google Chrome. Safari 4 also does look a bit cleaner. I guess Apple is doing what they have done forever in trying not to release there software until it is ready.

Maybe it is an even more involved scheme by Apple to repackage Safari behind another company that Windows users trust more. After all, most Windows users are corporations that have trapped themselves in the Windows platform by always buying the cheapest thing and not being brave enough to look at the long term cost and moral savings of switching to a better platform. I digress, Windows users or corporations trust big rich companies such as Google.

Please, for the love of all that is just and true, surf over the W3C and read some of the /agreed web standards/ that /all browsers/, excluding /Microsoft Internet Explorer/ (with the expection of IE8b, which still has woeful support compared to it’s compeitors) that you, as a web developer, should be coding to.

If you page does not render correctly in Safari 3, you must not be adhereing to the web standards. Yes, I’ll admit, there are some bugs in Safari 3 when it comes to standards. Noticably the lack of advanced CSS3 support, but that is both to be expected and almost a given. Hence Safari 4′s woeful implementation of SVG animation in the developer preview in order to pass acid3 test. (to which chrome, sadly, being webkit based, will suffer the same fate until further notice).

However, the amount of standard lax in WebKit is nothing compared to the amount of standards lax in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. Want proof? A standards based browser should at least pass the acid2 test by now, which FF3, Safari 3, Opera 9.5 and I’ll asume (being webkit based) Chrome do. However, IE7 does not. Check it out: acid2.acidtests.org

I do not understand why web developers believe that if a page renders in IE, it must be right. Have you even considered it might be your code that is the problem? No of course not. You would never consider that.

However, to prove the point, please submit your pages to one of the many W3C complaint valdiators, I would love to see how many errors you produce.

To prove my point, when I develop a website (with the exception of my blog, which I have just thrown out on the web using iWeb because I have more important things to do with my time [read, I'm lazy and do not feel like developing a blog and podcast interface]) I do it in the following order:

Develop valid w3c code.

Preview it in Opera. Look for any problems (the developer preview of Opera is the most standards complaint browser out there, so there tends to be very little). If it works in Opera, it tends to be standards complaint. Of course, Presto isn’t perfect. So if something doesn’t work right, I just remove that function and add a nice rewrite so that’ll play nice.

Now then, the work arounds part. Spend 5 minutes working on some of the undeveloped features for the public release of Opera. Spend 5 minutes working on the same thign for Safari 4. Spend 10 minutes working on Safari 3. Spend 10 minutes working on the iPhone version of Safari. Spend 10 minutes working on Firefox 3.

And by working on, I mean looking for parts of the code that do not render correctly, and some kind of condition, usually a php() useragent tester, to rewrite the revelevent pieces of the code.

Generally speaking, I’m not too ambitous, and I do not require a full rewrite of the stylesheet/page in order to compenstate for the above browsers shortcomings. And by doing this, I can usally quite easily isolate the problem with other, even more minor, browsers such as Konq.

And then finally, I will spend approximately 2 weeks attempting to get the page working on IE7. Most of that is writing functions to prerender SVG images. (SVG images are a godsent if you know how to use them! Ever thought about a dynamic map of the EvE galaxy? No problem! (Provided you have a decent understanding of vector manuplation, which I do. ).

And then, I release the website to the public, and get numours complaints about how it doesn’t look right on IE6. So, in order to be nice to that wee browser, I simply put another PHP rule in front of it that spits out a nice message saying that Internet Explorer 6 is not supported, please upgrade your browser. If you would still like to continue…

Oh yes, and the biggest problem with this is making all these fixes, and whatnot, and still remaining true to standards. It causes a real headache where you have completely stripped down a section of code that works PERFECTLY in every single browser, but no matter how hard you try, you cannot make it work without doing and IE hax, which would invalidate your code and prevent you from placing that nice “W3C valid code” sticker on your page.

The problems generally occur when a browser does not handle a markup tag correctly, or in the case of IE7, at all.

I believe your problem is that you are developing for Internet Explorer first and foremost, working to bug which, Firefox, being a major compeditor to Internet Explorer and presistantly trying to “win users over” will emulate.

Safari does not emulate these bugs. It assumes that developers will actually follow W3C standards.

Opera, even more so than Safari.

In fact, if web standards were adhered to by Internet Explorer, we wouldn’t be stuck in a rutt when it comes to web technologies. Tell me, what major development have you seen recently, and actually been able to USE? SVG? Nope. IE7 does not support (ignore the fact you can get a third party plugin) CSS2.1? Nope, IE7 does not support properly. Flash? Hmm… bloated, over complicated, and almost every application I have seen can be done better in AJAX, with the exceptions of flash movies, also, it is 3rd party.

IE might be de facto, but it certeinaly isn’t a good standard.

I look forward to Chrome wiping the floor with IE’s market share, cause then FINALLY, I will be able to be confident that most of my users can actually frelling view my page correctly.

Until then, I am tempted to completely ignore IE and refuse to support it at all.

Google is putting out a Linux distro in a month or so. The people here complaining about lack of Linux support are nuts. There will be Chrome for Linux, sooner rather than later. In the meantime, what’s wrong with Firefox?

As for Macs, really, I could care less.