Sunday, March 30, 2008

Safari 3.1: Almost there but not yet

Been a couple of weeks since Apple release its Safari 3.1 version browser for Windows. 

I got a chance today to pull it up on my laptop and play around for a couple of hours. A remarkable improvement over the previous versions, Safari is finally set to compete with the real big players in the browser wars. Itz going to be long battle but - especially with IE still hogging more than 70% of the market share in the browser wars. 

The Goods
- Most Web-Compliant browser ever: The biggest strength of Safari 3.1 is this. It is compliant with most of the browsing web-standards. The ACID test is known to be the authoratative standard when it comes to determining how compliant browsers are. Although no browser so far has passed the test (a score of 100/100), Safari 3.1 leads the pack with an impressive 75 followed by a distant 31 (by Firefox) and a meagre 12 (by IE). 
- Memory - a no-hogger: When it comes to memory usage, Safari is very competitive with other browsers like Firefox and Opera (Of-course everyone knows IE is a big big memory hogger).
- Performance: Though the start-up might not be the fastest (well, the only thing that IE can gloat of), Safari is impressive when it comes to rendering speed and overall performance of the browser. 
- The Search feature is nicey-nicey. So are the bookmarks.

The Bads
- Safari does not support some core standards like ActiveX which is increasingly used in large number of websites.
- Safari has its own font rendering (similar to Mac display) and this makes the websites to look very different sometimes (different on the bad side). I went to my own blog, only to realize how horrible it looked!!! It was just impossible to read my blog!!!
- Not much support for customizations and add-ons - but only a matter of time till it arrives.
- The Title bars and Toolbars look a bit hazy and drowsy - could have been a lil brighter.

The last word
The 3.1 version is a signification move by Apple and successfully pitches Safari as the third competitor in the browser war. Safari performs great in terms of compliance, performance and memory. However a few niggles here and there, some of which could be dealbreakers, lead to the final verdict - Almost there but not yet. 
 

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Movie Spot: Horton hears a whoooooooooo....

whooooooooooo.... nice...
Animation in movies is an art altogether. That way there are very few that really stand apart. When I see a really good animation movie which is neither Ice Age nor one from Pixar, I am really compelled to blog about it.
So here's one - my best pick for 2008 till now - an all out winner, "Horton hears a who". Built on a really crazy storyline, this movie is very well executed and keeps the audience entertained till the very end. To add to it are the amazing vocals from Jim Carrey & Steve Carell and the creative tid-bits which continued to amaze me through out the movie.
In a nutshell, the movie is all about the highly imaginative Horton - an elephant - who happens to hear noises from a tiny speck of dust floating through the air. Despite the popular belief amongst the whole community that there cannot exist a living being as tiny as dust, Horton continues his attempts to talk to the tiny speck of dust, only to realize that what exists within the speck is but a whole world by itself. What happens next is a roller-coaster ride as Horton tries not only to save the speck of dust but also to convince his whole community that a world exists within it.
Anything more I say is a spoiler, so I'll just stop here. For those who are ardent followers of animation as well as those who just want to catch a good movie, this one is a must watch.

Till Walleeee attempts to dethrone, this one remains my hot favorite animation for the year.

PS: Also got to watch the trailers of Walle (June 2008) and for the first time, Ice Age: The dawn of the dinosaurs (July 2009).