Avianto's Journal

OK, it’s kinda harsh, isn’t it? But honestly, you should do that if you really want a great browsing experience and enhanced security for your computer.

Updated: It’s not over yet folks, I’ve added 2 more links to the reason why you must not use Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer was an OK browser on its famous day. But those days are over, even Microsoft itself stop supporting it since they will not enhance IE until their new operating system (Longhorn) coming out… sometime in the future.

And believe me, it’s not just me who think that using IE is harmful and give you bad browsing experience, these are some articles about that:

1. Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer – Lockergnome’s Tech News Watch

2. BW Online | June 29, 2004 | Internet Explorer Is Just Too Risky (link from Molly)

3. Internet Explorer Is Too Dangerous to Keep Using (again from Molly)

4. Pop-up Program Snatches Banking Passowords (link from A Whole Lotta Nothing

5. The Latest Update CERT recommends anything but IE | The Register

So, if not using IE what should we use? Well, there are some good browser outside if you really look around. Here are some list for you, give them a try, you will realized what you’ve been missing by still using the inferior IE.

1. Firefox, my default browser on Windows. It’s a Gecko-based browser (The same engine as its big brother Mozilla). This is one of the best browser out there. It’s free, it’s open source and it just works great. And it will run on Windows, Mac and Linux.

2. Opera, I used it a couple years ago. Also one of the best standard compliant but since it’s not an open source software I’ll stick with Firefox.

3. And of course the good old Mozilla which also included e-mail application and other internet suite.

4. If you are one of the people that own or use a Mac computer, you are definetely know Safari. It’s a default browser now. Just use it.

5. Another good browser for Mac is Camino which also a Gecko-based. Not much different with Firefox except this browser is only for Mac.

6. Linux user… Bless you for not having IE. You are the most lucky person =). You have the great Konqueror, right?

You see, there are a lot of decent browser instead IE out there. So do yourself a favor, grab one of those browser and install it on your computer (I still recommend Firefox, so far this browser is still the best). You will notice the different and you will give yourself a more secure and enjoyable browsing experience. Faster browsing, no more annoying popup, nice feature called tabbed browsing (you’ll love this feature) and other thing that you really missed if you are still using IE.

Happy downloading and believe me, you’ll notice the different.

OK, blame me for being geeky again but I really have something to say about Gmail after using it for a couple of days.

First of all, I love it. Not just because the storage is 1GB (I am still using 1% of it) but also the interface itself is quite nice. Well, it depends heavily on JavaScript (which I personally don’t like) but in Gmail’s case it make some sense to certain degree.

Gmail is made with the mailing list concept in mind, so the ‘threading’ feature is really helpful to keep track of a particular thread or ‘conversation’ (Google’s term). I really love this feature, it is simply amazing.

The ‘label’ concept as a replacement of folder is quite helpful especially to handle so-called ‘cross-posting’ because with folder sometimes it is really difficult to choose where to put the message because it was posted on a couple different mailing list that probably you also subcribe to all of them.

The search features is really good. Well, Gmail is from Google, THE search engine, so what can you expect?

All of these features are already available for public.

The bad side? Well, it’s not really fair to say something bad about “beta” version, right? Of course something is always not quite right, the address book feature compared to Yahoo! Mail is next to nothing, the attachment system is quite tiresome (can’t do multi files attachment at one time) and sometime Gmail just doesn’t work (it stuck with the word “Loading…” on the edge of the screen). Additional note: although Gmail states that Safari browser version 1.2 is supported, the truth is Safari still crash a lot if there are some JavaScript executed. So right now I am using Camino browser for my Gmail daily use.

Overall, I am quite happy with Gmail. Of course the heavy dependable on JavaScript could be a major turn off but we’ll see how this thing will goes. So far I am satisfied with the 1GB storage, nice and cool feature and good support team.

This update had been delayed for ages. Well, better late than never =). I presented you the new layout for this journal.

Some major changes including:

• Change the way to navigate, right now I have only three links (it’s expandable) to major section: journal (this main page), archives (all the links to previous entries are in this page) and colophon (it’s also known as ‘about’ section).

• Adding small icons around, I just love small icons =).

• Change the XHTML structure. Well, it’s not visible but it is more structurized, honest!

• 100% pure built with Mac, so the layout work well with Safari, Camino and Firefox on Mac OS X. It still have some nasty bugs with IE5/Mac. Any input from Windows user will be much appreciated. (I only tested this layout with IE6/Win and it looks sort of okay).

• Use some part of this trick.

• Windows XP user, hopefully you’ll turn the “Clean Type” options on. You should do it anyway for your own eyes.

I still have a couple things in my To Do list like:

• User select font family and font size button.

• Fix the color of the Google AdSense

• Other stuff that I forgot to put in my To Do list =P

Anyway, hope you like the new layout. Please give me your opinion, input and critics.

Out of boringness and depression state of mind and heart, me and a couple of friends spontaneously went to Hamburg yesterday. We went there with a car (Hamburg is less than an hour by car from Lübeck) and arrived around 8.30pm under drizzling rain.

We went to a Pakistani restaurant somewhere around Hamburg Altona and there we were joined by two other friends and together we enjoyed a very good dinner. It was an awesome dinner, well, it basically just about my taste of culinary, lots of spices and stuff.

We finished dinner around 11pm so we decided to get a taste of the urban’s night life since we’ve been living in Lübeck for a while (Well, Lübeck itself is urban but compare to Hamburg, it’s just different, big different). So we went to Reeperbahn, the place for night life in Hamburg.

» Read the rest of this entry «

It’s here in Lübeck, Germany. It’s the end of June. It’s 14°C and raining almost every day. I wonder where is summer… I am afraid that summer is getting sick so it can’t make it to its appointment with the year… sigh