Microsoft has released a new beta of Internet Explorer 7, Beta 3, to download. There have been improvements to reliability, compatibility, user features, and security. Even though Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 was layout complete, they have made some changes based on customer feedback. The Internet Explorer Administration Kit 7 Beta 2 is also available.
Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
It would appear that Microsoft has released an evaluation to kick the tires (in keeping with the test drive theme) of the Office 2007 System Beta. Now you don’t have to spend the time waiting to download or have the it mailed. The Test Drive does require that you have a Live ID, what they are now calling Passport accounts. The Test Drive is provided through a Citrix MetaFrame session (a software solution that allows for virtual desktop sessions running on a server), and as pointed out by the article on ArsTechica is not a display of web application capabilities of Office 2007. Once you get through the registration it puts you in queue for the next available session to open. My wait was started with 80 minutes, ended up taking about 11 minutes.
The biggest change and the item that is going to have the highest learning curve will be the Ribbon Bar. The new Ribbon Bar is replacing the nearly two decade old Button Bar implementation, along with redesign of the menu system. A brief look through the applications the core applications thing do not seem to have changed on the surface for other looks, feels, and layouts.
I am currently debating going strictly beta for a few weeks, Vista, Office, etc. to really test the waters of the applications. There was an update (SmartPhone Thoughts) to the new Device Center sync tool in Vista that will allow me to sync with my Windows Mobile devices which will resolve one of the biggest issues I was having.
As a side note it also appears that a new Vista Build was released to a select number of Beta Testers that is putting rest some of the comments about the product being ready for its planned release date, and also a bit of a new question, why this latest was not the Vista Beta 2 release.
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Microsoft ships first post-Beta 2 build of Vista
Microsoft released the first post-Beta 2 version of Windows Vista last week, sans fanfare, but it does have some interesting features. For starters, it installs in 30 minutes and is more stable than Beta 2. There’s also more consistency in the interfaces, improved network detection and browsing improvements within Internet Explorer 7. Even the mouse cursor is improved, with no more rough edges. Why wasn’t this version the official Beta 2 in the first place? ÂFierce Enterprise - Newsletter June 27, 2006
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Wordpress has realeased a minor update, version 2.0.3. I plan on testing it out on my development site, and hope to be rolling it out here over the next couple of weeks. I am also looking forward to the Spell Checking feature that has been said to be in the next major release.
Well I have a had a few days now to play with the new version of Minimo and to say the least I am liking what I seen so far. Minimo is now up to version .016 and coming along quite nicely. One of the first things I have noticed is the new icons for the softkey menus. The settings and action menu has a icon of a globe, the navigation has an icon that looks to be captains wheel. The menu font has been formatted for an easier read. The address bar and softkey menus now adjust to be above the keyboard, sip, when data entry is needed. As apposed to being behind the sip making it hard to enter URLs. The size of the install has been reduced a bit to make it more convenient to install in memory, or persistence storage for Windows Mobile 5, allowing it running faster and smoother. The running memory footprint has also been reduced allowing more to be running on you Windows Mobile device, as part of that each new tab opened does not scarf down the memory like it has in past versions. This reduction in memory usage allows more applications to be running or even more tabs to be open in Minimo itself. Home Bar icons have been updated to be more visible and cleaner. Running the Minimo on my i-mate JAMin was a little slow, and took a while to load when opened the first time with version .015, with version .016 it has a much snappier response time and loads up much quicker. One thing I did find that needs to be fixed was that when setting the Home Page(s) it includes the Preferences page. Thanks Doug for the hard work you and your team are putting into this.
The newest iteration of MiniMo, Mini Mozilla, has been released. It is now up to version 0.016. MiniMo runs on Windows Mobile 4.2 and 5.0. I have been using MiniMo for a while now and over all the project is coming along nicely and the software is making great strides in it’s development. I run it both on my HP iPAQ hx4705 PDA and my i-mate JAMin PDA/Phone and am happy with it’s performance. It does run a bit slow on the JAMin, mostly when launching the application, but that has to do with the processor the JAMin has.
What is Minimo?
The Minimo has been focused on code-size and runtime footprint reduction, small screen usability, and porting to small consumer devices. We hope to make Minimo the browser of choice on small devices, or machines with limited system resources; taking advantage of Mozilla’s support for a broad and comprehensive set of standards and the variety of content on the web, proven security, international support, and cross platform capability.
I would highly recommend downloading MiniMo and giving it a try.
Well the last couple of weeks has seen some significant software releases for Beta software for Windows, even Windows itself. I downloaded the Microsoft Office System 2007 Beta 2 a couple of weeks ago and plan on giving it a look here over the next few weeks. Yesterday, it appears, Microsoft has also released the public Beta 2 of Windows Vista, which I’m hoping to have time to look at too. So you ask what is the easiest way to test these betas without corrupting my current production system? Well personally I’m running VMWare’s Server that is free. Unfortunantly VMWare does not have a OS X version at this time. This software allows for virtual computers (virtual machines - VMs) to run on one machine, make sure to verify that you computers hardware can support running VMs. Another way would be to use dedicated computer if you had one laying around.
I have been installing Windows Vista into a VM as I have been writing this post. The process has been quite simple so far and did not take that long at all. The install process now has a GUI interface and launches right into setting up a user and basic settings. I am currently getting the VMWare Tools package installed so that devices, like the Network Card, Audio, and USB, can be loaded and allow the system to run smoother.
I’ll post more later, and by that I am talking about sooner.
Get Vista Beta 2
Get Office 2007 Beta 2
Get VMWare Server
That wasn’t to hard, importing the posts were quite easy. All I had to do was save the posts to a RSS 2.0 XML file and then import the files. And so know I am officially supporting http://andernaut.com as my primary site. Now I just need to look into what I can do for redirection option from the andernaut.wordpress.com site. I did run into one little snag, there was not a RSS entry for my first blog entry, and had to create a file by had to import.
Can’t wait to here about the feed back. Â
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After having upgrading my iPAQ hx4705 to Windows Mobile 5 (WM5), Yes I did end up upgrading, I just could not resist. I thought I would have to give up my True VGA I had under PocketPC 2003SE with SE_VGA. I had searched high and low for several days for another utility besides SE_VGA, which would not even run under WM5. I had tried Oz_VGA, but when I had to soft reset my iPAQ the Keyboard SIP was not displayed correctly, well actually basically not at all. So I had to give it the ol' hard reset. OUCH! That really bit me hard I had moved over quite a few files and, well mostly programs, that I don't think I'll be getting back. At this point I am contemplating very hard about rolling back to PocketPC 2003 SE. I can not get true VGA working, love my screen realestate, which makes it so much more usable. I decided to tough it out and see if I could get it working or at least deal with it.
I was experencing some seriouse lag a good prtion of the time. Scouring for a reason for this lag I found some great information over at AximSite Forums about issues about devices that were upgraded from PocketPC 2003SE to Windows Mobile 5 about a little known issue with the 'Compaction Thread' (MS Blog). This can be saved for another post, another time.
Anyway back to the story, the hard reset is alright because it forced me to clear out all the old programs and re-verify the ones I could remember did work with WM5. I run quite a bit of SPB Software, WebIS Software, and PHM Software which I have found mostly to work or updated to work with Windows Mobile 5. So continuing on with my quest of being able to get True VGA working on my iPAQ I stumbled accross this great artical on 4WinMobile about a update to oZ_VGA that works with WM5. I would highly recommend this if you want more screen realistate for you VGA WM5 devices. As I did not do, make sure to turn off the Startup Password just in case the settings do not take the first time, or you will be doing a hard reset and rebuilding you device like I did.
I opened a new browser window this evening and got a glimpse of a new look for MSN. Now I'm pretty sure that I have not seen this over the past couple of days, but then again I haven't been doing much searching that I can remember. At the top they have the MSN Search bar with the going options right above the text box. Then it has a bar saying welcome, and restore defaults on the left and on the left there is a SIGNIN/SIGNOUT with five colored boxes allowing you to change the color scheme to the web site, Blue, White, Green, Orange, and red. I personally like the orange. Below that there is a box with several columns, 6 to be exact. The first one contains Hotmail, Messenger and My MSN in bold blue letters and there respective icons, the other five colums contain a listing, or directory of other content subjects from MSN. The rest of the page is a two column format normal information displayed on MSN's home page. News and information on the right and entertainment and editorials on the left. Make sure to leave me a comment if I'm just seeing things or actually not seeing things if this might be the case. I just can't remember if I've seen the MSN home page lately.
UPDATE (05/06/2006 05:47):At first the new MSN would only load every other time. So I decided to try another computer and that one continued to load the old site. The new site can be viewed at beta.msn.com. In my searching I have also stumbled across the much updated MSN Search page, where you can actually tweak your search results, just click Search Builder and then Results Ranking, come on give it a try.
As I have blogged about before I was looking at possibly getting a hosting provider and actually installing and setting up WordPress. The install and setup went well and was able to make my first post. I also installed several widgets, including the Side Bar widget. I still need to work on the Permilinks, but I basically knew that would happen with my hosting provider. Also, I am looking into getting a new theme and tweaking it. Well that is it for now.
I have been making a concerted effort and find more things to blog about, and hope to post more often. Visit The AnderNaut Dev site, which is where the new home of the AnderNaut will be. I have also linked to it from the BlogCall over in the side bar.
As always thank you for visiting and for you patronage, and many happy returns.
TTFN
Nitestrike
