Unfortunately it is really not, I have a friend who is just transitioning from junior to senior level and he is kind of coming to the realization that the majority of developers are really that bad. I usually look at elitist statements with a bit of septicemic because generally it is an average person trying to make themselves feel better, but in the case of the development world, it really is that bad. It is the reason that we have the 10x'ers.
For example a good developer should be able to solve this problem even if he has never used the technologies involved. It is that simple of a problem. I have never developed in Ruby in my life, 10 minutes on Google gave me all the Ruby API's I needed to complete the challenge. You see a good developer sees the solution and then figures out the API to do what they need it to do. Mastery of the technology is not what makes a good developer, seeing the solutions is where the value of a developer should be measured.
flashblock is not good at blocking flash from a security standpoint. with it enabled, visit http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/html5object/ and you'll probably see at least one flash animation start.
Thanks for the link to that demonstration. Hadn't seen anything bypass flashblock before. Switched to NoScript and confirmed that it actually blocks all of the test cases.
The thing I like about NoScript is that you can set it to block everything, even on trusted sites. You have to click the placeholder to make it load, or if there isn't a placeholder (web fonts, hidden flash embeds) you have to look at the Blocked menu.
I disagree heavily. Treating more and more people like they are idiots in all areas of life is the reason we've become a lethargic, consume-drunken shade of society. This needs to stop. We need to force people to think. Think for themselves. Teach a man to fish and all that.
fun fact: In Germany it's exactly the other way round at least for 99% of the banks. You will get a free debit card at every bank but you have to put down a considerable amount of money as prepayment for a credit card additionally to the yearly fees. If you want a Deutsche Bank credit card they will lock 1000 EUR before they issue it to you and you will pay around 60-100 EUR yearly.
I think this holds for significant parts of the non-US world. In the Netherlands (and for that matter any European country I've visited) credit cards seem extremely uncommon. I am one of two people in my circle of acquaintances who owns a credit card and I only use it for buying stuff on-line (when no other option is available).
As I understand it you can also only get money from an ATM associated with your bank, making picking a bank an availability issue too. Here you can get money from an ATM not associated with your bank once every 24 hours, making ATM availability pretty much a non-issue.
After Firefox 4 came out I had to install so many extensions to make it feel like 3.6 that it became unstable and incredibly slow. Because Firefox apparently tries to be more like Chrome I decided to switch to the original and I haven't looked back yet. I only fire up Firefox when Chromes built-in developer tools lack functionality compared to Firebug, which is rarely the case. The way Firefox decided to take makes me really sad, as I was a big Firefox supporter, until they screwed me over with the new UI. I hope this is not too off topic, but I never got the chance to comment on the changes.
Huh? The only way it's like Chrome is how you can move the tabs above the other controls on top. 3.6 feels very slow now, I can't use it and have never felt that I wanted to.
I actually still run 3.6 since I like the UI on it better. The speed of the browser means very little to me, I'd rather have the familiar UI. If you liked FF 3.6, why not stick with it?
And FF 7 (which I've been using for about 5 months now) is not even noticeably faster than 3.6 on my usage pattern. In fact it seems to spend more time with an unresponsive UI than 3.6.
What fundamental new is for new UI comparing with 3.6? I use Firefox for some way, only for firebug mostly. I think its just evolution of person, now I use what is most serves my needs.
Tab Groups are cool, but I don't think anyone uses them. If you're on Windows 7 it hides the menu bar for more vertical space. It has support for lightweight extensions (called "JetPacks" internally) which don't require a restart to install or uninstall. There's no statusbar, like Chrome, URLs pop up when you hover over a hyperlink.
The main advantage over Chrome is that it doesn't freeze up when it's loading a new tab.
I use Tab Groups mainly for task related stuff, as well as using a tab group to allow for a read later style of interface. But no, it's not a major thing for me, I've used Chrome for the past few months and not missed Tab groups.
Tab groups would've been much better if they showed all the tabs across all windows (like Expose on Mac does for windows). Unfortunately it's just a gimmick in its current implementation.
Firefox also hides the menubar on linux, although it can also be disabled. It is also posiblse to enable an 'extension bar', which takes the place of the status bar for extension icons.
Arguably, having the menu visible is not the default setup, is it? The default fold-out "Firefox" menu simply doesn't have that issue and is not transparent.
I agree it's a problem in Thunderbird, which has a menu by default.
I think that if you try to tweak Firefox 4+ to look like 3.6 you're going to run into suboptimalities. It evolved. I think that if you get used to the changes, they're actually changes for the better (new menu giving more vertical room, tabs-on-top, etc).
