Of all the hits I get on this server, about 55% is from a IE browser, with Firefox being second (37%). Zooming in on Internet Explorer 7% is already using IE7. Which is -considering the fact that is has only been out for a couple of days- really really a lot! I downloaded IE7 myself and indeed coming from a 6 year old crappy browser, it is a great step forward. Still, it is like Firefox 2 years ago. So, Windows user, please download IE7 so we can at least bring the web a bit more forward but if you want to get out of the past, get in to the future. And download Firefox, within a couple of days there will be a 2.0 version. And if you like this site, download it here and I will make a dollar as well. Up till now Firefox was mainly used on the consumer market, not by business. But even those are shifting towards a better safer and more standard complaint browser.

Still 7% of all IE browsers being IE7 within 4 days without marking it as a critical download (which Microsoft //will// do) is great for Microsoft.

On BoxesAndArrows (a usability site) a good article on Icon Analysis, The design behind the design

Searching by some distinguishing feature like color is called (not surprisingly) a feature-based search. Feature-based searches are limited in a few ways: their effectiveness drops if we apply a unique color to all icons in the image set and distinguishing by color only employs purposeful differences in only one of the two visual pathways (the P pathway). Additionally, icons tend to be small in a UI, thereby restricting differences in shape to “detailed shape” information—also encoded in the P pathway. Ideally, we would like to design icons that purposefully differ along channels in both M and P pathways.

Boot Microsoft Windows XP in your browser. Even works in Firefox. Just ... wait...

Hey, I only said "boot", I didnt say "use".

Microsoft tries to be friendly to opensource software in its Embrace, extend and extinguish program. In particular, it tries to be nice to the best browser out there, firefox.

Google Groups: mozilla.dev.planning

As part of my mission as an advocate for open source applications on
Windows, I've gotten spaces set aside at the Windows Vista Readiness
ISV Lab.  In the past the company has only invited commercial software
developers to these labs.  I'm committed to evolving our thinking
beyond commercial companies to include open source projects, so I went
to the non-trivial effort of getting slots for non-commercial open
source projects.

Sad to see that "even" the Director of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft doesnt know that OpenSource Software is not the opposit of Commercial Software and can be in fact commercial software as dozens of companies have been showing since decades(!).