Tag: chrome

Mistakes I Made When Setting Up My WinXP/OSX Intel-Based Mac

I really like my little Intel-based (Core 2 Duo) Mac Mini. It has a small footprint, low power draw, and it has wifi (so I don’t need a Cat 5 cable snaking through my apartment). Surprisingly, after comparing it to other small-footprint systems with comparable specs, the Mac was about the same price and came with the added option of running OSX. I set it up as a dual-boot WinXP and OSX system so that I can continue to run all my Windows software, as well as checking out some of the nifty Mac software (like the night we sat around making humorous commercials for the Chevy Volt using Garage Band and iMovie).

Aside from just using Apple’s Boot Camp to select which OS I wanted to use the next time I started the computer, I also installed rEFIt, a boot-loader that will let me select which OS I want as I start the system, and VMWare Fusion, so that I can run WinXP from within OSX.

From my experience with with a dual-boot WinXP and Ubuntu Linux laptop, I wasn’t looking forward to sharing files between the 2 systems by setting up an antediluvian FAT32 partition. However, one of my friends recommended MacDrive, a program that allows Windows to read from and write to an HFS+ volume. Magic, right?

Everything was looking rosy, until I decided to be stingy and give Windows XP a 10 GB partition.
Continue reading Mistakes I Made When Setting Up My WinXP/OSX Intel-Based Mac

University of Michigan jobs site has major browser compatibility issues

At the risk of sounding like a one-note, I would like to again talk about browser compatibility issues. These compatibility issues affect an organization’s bottom line, and should not be ignored. In this particular case, The University of Michigan’s (U-M) job web site is unusable to about 10-15% of visitors, by my estimates (they are using Google Analytics on the page, so they should have that data). To me, this says that U-M may be missing out on some of the most qualified candidates for their position openings, undeniably at great cost to the organization. [I am particularly concerned in this case because U-M is my alma mater.]

In particular, the browsers that are not compatible with the U-M jobs site are Safari, Chrome, and Opera — browsers typically used by more tech-savvy users — so U-M may be missing out on the very candidates best-suited for work in today’s web-based world.
Continue reading University of Michigan jobs site has major browser compatibility issues

T-Mobile Website Unfriendly to Chrome, Safari

Early this morning, Nicola was bugging me to add a data plan to her phone account in anticipation of receiving her shiny new MyTouch. We logged on to the site using our favored browser, Google’s Chrome. Here’s what we found:

T-Mobile\'s default page in Chrome, post login
T-Mobile's default page in Chrome, post login

After several unsuccessful attempts to view info for her line from several different screens, we called T-Mobile’s customer support. The service rep walked through the same steps and said, “OK, now you should see tabs on the left with your names, phone numbers, and ‘Add A Line’.”

That’s when it hit me. I should try a different browser.
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Create an XSL stylesheet for your RSS or Atom feeds

Internet Explorer 6 and, curiously enough, Google’s Chrome browser, don’t display RSS or Atom feeds in a particularly helpful manner. IE6 displays neatly-formatted XML, with color-coding and indentation, whereas Chrome displays the text node of all the XML tags without so much as a linebreak:

Slashdot's RSS feed in IE6 and Chrome, respectively
Slashdot's RSS feed in IE6 and Chrome, respectively

Either way is completely intimidating to an RSS novice. Fortunately, we can change that.
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