iWent shopping for a new cell phone yesterday.  My Treo 650 finally sprung a leak.  Up to now, that phone was simply the best phone I ever owned.  In spite of the numerous times I dropped it though the years, it held up solid.  The tone was always clear, and I love the Palm OS.

So, iWent to the AT&T Wireless store in Homewood, IL.  Very nice people, although iSensed the clerk who waited on me was losing patience after a while.  In general, the clerks at that store don’t have a great reputation for good customer relations.  Nevertheless, the clerk who worked with me was great.

iArrived with a printout from ConsumerReports.org of the best Smart phones.  The Samsung Blackjack II was rated the CR Best Buy. However, the iPhone 3G was in the corner by the window, all booted up and ready for play.  iAsked the clerk if iCould see one.

While waiting for her to bring out the Blackjack, iDecided to take a look at the iPhone 3G.  At $299, it was just within my budget, but not really what iWanted to spend.

iWent online with it.  Very slick interface, and an extremely quick load.  Opening the web browser, iDecided to load my most complex site, which happens to be this one, eNews Park Forest.  iOpened up the QWERTY keypad and began to enter the URL: www.enewspf.com.

That’s when the problems began.

iStabbed keys with my finger, only to see the wrong letter load in the browser’s address bar.  It took a good 3 or 4 minutes just to type in that simple URL.  Once iDid so, iWas pleased to see my page loaded — the whole page — much more quickly than iExpected.  It looked slick but tiny in that little screen.  iEventually figured out how to see larger areas of the page so iCould actually navigate.

The clerk interrupted me.  iAsked about the iPhone, and was told there would be a wait of 10 to 21 days for it to come in.  That decided the matter for me, but iStill felt drawn to that strange little tablet.  Perhaps iCould wait?

iAsked if there was a chance iCould transfer my data from my Palm Treo 650 to the iPhone.  Not a chance, the clerk said.  iWould have to enter all of my data into iTunes, and then upload it to the iPhone.

iThink not.  After more than a decade of Palm Pilots and Palm smart phones, iHave more contacts than iCan count.  iCould not see myself taking a few days out of my life adding contacts and calendar dates to a completely different system.

Battery life?  Apple may be optimistic, but friends who either took the iPlunge and bought this train wreck don’t get much out of the battery.  Having that much Internet in the palm of your hand takes a toll on the battery.

Could the iPhone be the phone of the future?  Time Magazine loved it.  iDidn’t at all.

So, enough with all this iNonense.

I ended up with a Palm Centro.  I did look at the Samsung Blackjack II, but that thing was even larger and heavier than my Treo 650, and it looked, well, ugly.  Additionally, the Blackjack does not use the Palm OS, but a Windows system, and that would involve hours of my life transferring data.

When the deal was done, I ended up with a phone smaller and lighter than the 650 I was hauling around all these years, and I like it.  I don’t want the entire Internet in the palm of my hand.  I’ve said for years that I just don’t want to be that connected.  I need some “me” time, away from these fascinating machines.  And the deal was right.  After the mail-in rebate, my total out-of-pocket is just over $80, much less than the $400 I spent on the Treo a few years back.

It took 10 minutes tops to upgrade my Palm desktop software, synch the phone, and transfer my data to the new phone.

So, it’s back to Palm.  You can have the iPhone.

Or, you might want to try the iRack:

The answers to these questions are never easy, particularly regarding some who can’t view web pages correctly, and there can be a million reasons why someone’s computer may freeze when visiting certain sites in the Internet. Sometimes we misinterpret the cause when we see something happen. “This happened when I visited the New York Times. Therefore, they’re the problem!”

Not always the case. In fact, the NYTimes is a rather solid design, and this is the case with many, many other pages online.

The problem may be your browser.

The problem almost lies with the so-called 2nd class browsers: WebTV, AOL’s proprietary browser, AT&T’s proprietary browser, Comcast’s proprietary browser, and so on. 2nd class browsers are generally those built by Internet hosting companies by teams that, while competent, are simply not as good as the teams of individuals behind the major browser companies: Firefox (for Windows and Macs), Internet Explorer 7 (The version number here is important. If you’re still using Internet Explorer 6, upgrade ASAP), and Safari for Macs.

If you are using WebTV, you may be stuck. The prognosis is not good. The reality is there may be many web pages you cannot load properly. Yes, web designers should be more understanding and design for WebTV’s browser, but most do not even consider doing so.

If you are using AT&T, Comcast, or AOL, you’re in luck. You don’t have to use their browser!!! That’s right. All you have to do is establish your Internet connection, and then you can surf with any browser you wish. My personal preference for Windows or Mac is Firefox, however, you can use Internet Explorer 7 if you must, or Safari. But the point is, you are not bound to the corporate, 2nd class browser. You have a choice.

Just some simple things to consider. Why not use the best?

But Microsoft does not pass muster with IE7.

Notice the text overflow onto the background, and the expanded size of the images.

Essentially, Microsoft blew it.

The CTRL-+ invokes a zoom command, expanding images, layout, as well as text.  The entire web page explodes.  This is a nice feature, but useless for CSS layouts that set a background image using CSS.  Essentially, Microsoft gave IE7 the capability to expand all content, zoom in on everything except background images.  Why would they stop there?  And why link a zoom command to the CTRL-+ and CTRL– shortcut key commands?  Most people are accustomed to those shortcuts being used to expand text size, not expand the entire page.

The IE team apparently has a sense of humor.  On 10/24/06, the day Firefox 2 was released, the staff at Mozilla headquarters in Mountain View, CA, received a cake:

That’s funny.  But what really takes the cake is that IE still doesn’t measure up to Firefox.

I’ll be honest.  I jumped into the computer world on OS/2, a super OS for its day.  IBM dropped the ball, several times.  Windows 3.1 was good for one thing: Solitaire, and then only if no other applications were running.  Windows XP, however, is much more solid.  I hardly remember the Blue Screen of Death (knock on silicon).  And I’ll give a generous nod to Microsoft Office 2003.  But MS should really stick to perfecting the operating system.  Leave browsers for those who know how to build them.

Like the people at Firefox.

Last week, we saw the arrival of Internet Explorer 7.0, a welcome, but long overdue upgrade. IE7 has received positive, but essentially lukewarm reviews. IE7 still does not measure up to Firefox, though its support for CSS specifications is vastly improved.

Today, Firefox strikes back. Version 2.0 promises built in Phishing protection, enhanced search capabilities, improved tabbed browsing, and inline spell checking. The release also includes Session Restore:

Losing your place while you’re doing things on the Web is a pain. Now, with Session Restore, if Firefox has to restart or closes when it comes back you’ll pick up exactly where you left off. The windows and tabs you were using, the text you typed into forms, and the in-progress downloads you had running will all be restored. You can even set Firefox 2 to always restore your previous session instead of loading a home page, so you’ll never lose your place again.

It didn’t take long. The new release blows IE7 out of the water. Installation is quick and painless.  Extensions automatically upgrade, if necessary, after a query.  Yet another reason to download Firefox.

Internet Explorer 7 was officially released by Microsoft yesterday. Expectations are that within a month it will begin arriving on your desktop PC through the regular Windows Update. The much lauded update from Microsoft is expected to have much greater support for CSS. Already, however, reports are coming in that IE7 is breaking existing web page layouts. Some also reported problems with 3rd party software not working with the beta — specifically HP Director for HP Scanners. No word on whether these problems have been fixed.

However, Secunia reports on a major security issue with IE7 that also affects IE6. Specifically, failing the test means that your online financial information may be harvested by unscrupulous individuals. Here is the failure message I received using IE6:

Your browser is vulnerable! The test retrieved content from news.google.com in the context of your browser.

This actually means that if you were logged into your bank account, any web site you are visiting would be able to retrieve confidential data from your bank. This could also be used to retrieve personal settings entered on sites like eBay or Paypal.

The solution for both IE6 and IE7 is to disable active scripting support. This, of course, means less browser functionality.
Firefox passed the test with flying colors. Have you tried Firefox yet?

So we could be looking at another series of conditional CSS pages, some of IE5, some for IE6, and some for IE7.  The Star-HTML hack is out the window, and with it goes the Holly Hack.

One can only wonder what will happen to the CSS Zen Garden.

More on this at Position Is Everything.

One of the challenges of web design is working to ensure that web sites look the same or close to the same in all browsers.  The biggest challenge has been IE6.  Let’s hope the much heralded release of IE7 is worth the wait.