Esoteric Browsers Part II, Kindle Touch

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Chad

I recently got a Kindle Touch. Why not the Kindle Fire? Well, my wife pointed out that if I got that and then later wanted a more high-end tablet that she was going to be hard to convince. Plus the idea of battery life measured in weeks rather than hours appealed to me.

So I got the Kindle Touch 3G on the theory that I hate running out of books to read on the train. So now I can buy a book on the train, and have more waiting besides.

Getting to the browser part, while you wouldn’t want to do a lot of web browsing on it, the Kindle Touch browser does do Wikipedia, not to mention this web log, thanks to the highly-recommended WP Touch plugin.

Playstation 3 Gets a Real Browser

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Chad

A huge upgrade from worthless Netfront browser to a Webkit-based browser hit with the latest PS3 update to version 4.10. In fact this was posted from it. Typing slower than on my Droid 3 though.

Netflix: The Download Progress Bar is a Lie

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Chad

Earlier this evening, I attempted to watch instant Netflix on my PS3. They been having problems lately, and on trying to watch a show, it got stuck in the middle of the download phase, clearly showing a download progress bar. I said, whatever, I’ll try back later when it’s less busy.

So here I am trying again, nearly 10:30PM local time, and it still doesn’t work. I notice that when I log in, I receive an annoying message saying I must go log in somewhere else, but logging in here seems to work. I’ve seen this before but ignored it.

I still can’t watch a show. It still gets stuck show the download progress bar. So finally I go out to the PS3 itself and re-re-login. Upon doing that it then informs me that I have to accept new Terms of Service. This is for the Playstation Network, not for Netflix. I do so, and guess what – it works fine, instantly even.

I don’t know if this is Netflix fault or Sony’s fault, but either way this is horrible usability: making it look like it’s working, showing me a download progress bar, producing a vague error message that sounds like it’s telling me to do what I just did (sign in), and making me accept Terms of Service for the second time in the last month or so.

Yes, that’s right, this happened before, just long enough for me to forget what the actual problem was. Horrible use of system status, unclear error messages, lack of memorability, they are really pulling out all the stops to violate as many usability heuristics as possible.

While I’m ranting, let me just mention that the newish PS3 Netflix client is a major downgrade. There are too many columns jammed in side by side, making it difficult to read the text. It also makes searching for a title very difficult: not all of the alphabet entry area is visible. If I had to hazard a guess as to why it’s built like that, I think they are assuming you’re on an HDTV. I’d like a downgrade to the old version, please.

Update: With the downing of the Playstation Network, I thought I’d completely lost the ability to use instant Netflix on the PS3. However, the same proceedure that failed before (trying to log in, then hitting the back button, doing this several times) works – for a while. Then you have to do it again.

Mutant Firefox 4/3.6 Hybrid Seen in the Wild

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Chad

I wanted to be able to run both Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4. Why? Because I’m a web developer, that’s why.

In doing so, I have managed to create a mutant, Frankensteined Firefox 4/Firefox 3.6 hybrid. (See screenshot.) It has the new tab style, the larger back button, but is missing the big orange button and is showing the old-fashioned File, Edit, etc menu across the top. It also does the new Firefox 4 CSS3 stuff like transitions.

The obvious solution (uninstall both 3.6 and 4, reinstall 4) did not work, possibly because I did not check the “Remove my Firefox personal data and customizations” on the uninstall for 3.6. All it did was get rid of Firefox 3.6.

So far Googling has not produced much in the way of help, but I’m going to keep banging on this and see if I can get it sorted. Because I’m on Windows, I suspect registry editing and profile deletion with extreme prejudice may be involved. It could get ugly.

Update: No luck on getting an orange button (which I had as recently as Firefox 4 RC2), even after scrubbing the profile and Program Files directories, searching the registry for any odd information, and removing and reinstalling Firefox 4 again, As a guess, it’s a Windows XP issue, or is possibly related to my use of Songbird, which uses the Gecko rendering engine.

Update2: Problem solved! I had to figure out that the “big orange button” is called the Application Menu, or AppMenu. In brief, right click on the offending “File/Edit…” menu and uncheck Menu bar. This is probably also a good tip for those who hate the big orange Firefox button: you can also right-click on the tab bar to turn this setting back to the old-school menu.