July 2008
So Cuil, another new search engine has entered the market, claiming to be a Google killer with more advanced indexing algorithms. With the search engines founders coming from within the Google and IBM ranks you’d expect they would have a better chance that most, it’s a pity that with the current system it’s little more than a pipe dream.
Sure I’m basing this solely on my own opinion but I do have some reasons to back up my claim:
Currently I run Firefox 2.0.0.16 as my primary browser at work. The reason for this is that it provides me with a balance of all the things I need as a web developer. These include code inspectors such as Firebug, add-on’s such as twitterfox and the web developer toolbar, as well as being a fairly standards compliant browser and occupying suitable share of the browser market.
Recently I have started to do more extensive browser testing, beyond just Internet Explorer and Firefox. Today this led me to a positioning problem in Safari, where by floated elements within a floated containing div would not appear on one single line, the containing div would not widen to accommodate all the child elements. This error only existed in Safari and after a few attempts at fixing it I gave up on the problem as it only occurred in Safari and did not destroy the usability of the website overall.
Upon viewing the website at home, where I use Firefox 3, the same positioning problem has occurred. Unfortunately making this a more significant issue and one I now need to fix. However more worrying is that my coding must be against the standards to break in both Safari and the new version of Firefox. A simple solution is to specify the width of the containing div, however that is not an option in this case. I’m usually an advocate of standards compliant coding, but this is one time where I really cannot understand why what I’ve coded is against the standards.
So now a day on Last.fm’s new design is up and running and more stable than it was 24 hrs ago at on launch day. Having had a bit of time to look around the design I’m a little concerned about what’s changed.
After blogging about the last.fm redesign over a month ago I thought I would follow it up now that the new design is live. However either my Internet connection at both work and home is playing up a little or the guys at Last.fm have been having some teething problems going live. Hopefully when I can have a good look around the site I’ll blog about the new design and probably lace the review with a bit helping of my own opinion.
What I will say for the new design is that i’m glad the pinks still there.