Archive for March 21st, 2006
Google Finance
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
I have to say I’m surprised they used Flash for their graphs, which look nice. I set up a portfolio, but was disappointed when I couldn’t figure out a way to get the portfolio to display on the main finance page with the headlines. I also can’t enter upper and lower limits on individual stocks and I can’t group stocks. Overall, nice interface and layout, but the one key feature to any financial site, the portfolio is seriously lacking. I’ll stick with Yahoo and revisit Google Finance later if they get the features I need and improve the main financial page. Yet another Google disappointment. Is this site of the same caliber as GMail? I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s not.
Probably the best thing about Google Finance? It’s going to force Yahoo! to do some work on Yahoo Finance. 
So I might not have to switch at all. I also wonder how long this system will stay live. If Google was serving up the number of pages Yahoo! Finance is today, they probably wouldn’t be able to keep the spiffy flash graphs, arguably the only interesting thing about the site.
Daisy
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
One of the great things about working on a reader is that you get to read web logs while you debug. Tonight I did some work on the browser user interface, adding a links dock while also cleaning things up a bit. I still have some work to do but that that can wait for a bit until I have more time. Honesty, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. I sat down and started itemizing features I wanted Sunday night, which took me into the “wouldn’t it be cool if” realm. Next weekend I’m going to backup, prioritize things and push the “wibc” list down the stack for a bit. I need to keep centered on implementing a good reader, after which I can work on the fun stuff.
Here’s the new browser interface:
I’ve borrowed elements from different browsers. I have screenshots of Opera, IE 6, IE 7, and Safari on my desktop for reference. I’ll be honest, most of the link dock changes came from Safari, I like the way Apple did their links band. There are no favorite icons on my dock, I’ve decided against it. Fave icons work in the feed tree but they just suck up space here and cause attention problems for the user. Kudos to Apple design.
Hey, and guess what, my tabs “elegantly resize themselves” too.
I still have work to do though, especially on tabs, Quick Tabs functionality, and the search button which at this point is just a filler graphic from IE 7.0. Also there are the issues surrounding communicating secure vs. non-secure sites, and SSL certificate information. All in due time. One nice thing though about Internet Explorer, after setting a few flags on the mshtml object, I’ve got built in pop-up blocking, and built in security enhancements, no coding required. When it comes to building re-usable components for developers, Microsoft is king.
Waking a Giant
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
Comparing Firefox 1.5 and IE 7.0 Beta is pretty easy – core feature for core feature, they’re equal. IMHO IE 7.0 manages to pull ahead through a slicker UI. Of course FireFox 2.0 is in the works, however looking over the spec sheet it looks to be a pretty lean release feature wise. Redmond is of course, hot on their tail.
“Gates said that Microsoft is already working on the next two versions after Internet Explorer 7, which is due later this year with Windows Vista, a long anticipated update to Windows XP.”
If Firefox expects to take a large chunk of the browser market share, they’ll have to figure out how to innovate both when the giant is sleeping, and when the giant is awake.
