More betaware from Microsoft, and I guess this is kind of cool, but something I simply cannot foresee as having any use for me. Photography buffs may see it differently.
HD View is a new viewer developed by Microsoft Research’s Interactive Visual Media group to aid in the display and interaction with very large images.
View some panoramas. There’s even a link to stitch some of your own together (stitching is visible, more or less). Funny thing: the MS website complained about my browser (Opera) and stated categorically that the HDView plugin would NOT work with it, that it was only compatible with some less-advanced browsers like Internet Exploder and Firefox. *heh*
Wrong. Stupid browser sniffer. I just told Opera to mask itself as Firefox in the “site preferences” tab and–bingo! The plugin downloaded, installed and all was well.
Stupid browser sniffer.
Microsoft has put some really dumb browser/OS sniffer code on pages in the past. I remember having to “fix” a few of their pages that implemented a sniffer to check for Windows Vista.
The pages were supposed to only be accessible by people that had Windows Vista installed. If you had Vista installed the page worked as expected. If you did not, it would cause your browser to crash, whether it was Internet Explorer or Firefox. That wasn’t the user experience they had planned, the pages were supposed to redirect the user to a different site.
I tried Chrome, and I liked it. But, just as you don’t like Microsoft, I distrust Google. I stick with Firefox because it works and it’s open source. It’s one of the few open source products I really use a lot.
It’s not so much that I don’t LIKE Microsoft, but that I do think my use of “Me$$y$oft” is more descriptive of much of what Microsoft does. Face it, the company has become large enough that it has fallen prey to Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy to some extent. Combine that with its sometimes cluelessness about user experience in the real world and its advancing propensity to emulate the straightjacketed training wheels approach to managing (controlling) users and it’s a recipe for behavior I don’t much appreciate in any organization, whether it be civil government or a business.
I’ve found some things to like about Windows 7, but–as I half expected–I’ve also found a whole raft of things I do NOT like, including just recently the fact that managing VMs using VMWare Server is not as easy in many ways (though not all) as in Ubuntu.
But where M$ really sucks swamp water is in its crappy web stuff. Active X controls all over the place. Browser sniffing. Influencing others to use browser sniffing to shut out non-M$ products.
I was really–positively–impressed with my early experiences with Microsoft. Back in the bad old DOS days and early Windows days, calling Redmond and dealing with MS was a pleasure. Now, contact with MS is notsomuch enjoyable.
But MS cannot be allowed to fail because of the enormous impact such failure would have on computing and our economy… similarly to the idea that some large banks could not be allowed to fail. I’m very nearly on board with Pournelle’s off-the-cuff pondering that perhaps companies that are “too big to be allowed to fail” should be broken up into companies that are small enough that the failure of any one wouldn’t be all that bad. Almost.
I’m back on a native Ubuntu (not VM) boot today, and, while it’s not as easy to manage as WinXP or 2K, it’s easier to navigate and manage than Win7. MS needs to work on some of that, IMO.
Oh, and I tried Chrome and found it really shiny but not to my taste. And yeh, I distrust Google too. (Distrust Microsoft? Let’s just say that NONE of the registration info they have for me corresponds to any of my real personal data. *heh* Even email contacts: throwaway, fairly anonymous email accounts used for registering with M$. Not exactly paranoid, just don’t much think who I am is any of their business as long as I pay for the licenses I need. And no, I don’t buy them directly from M$ but from recognized M$ partners. One more layer. There are others. :-))
I do not like to use Explorer, I prefer Firefox. For me it is much easier and works much better.
This looks pretty sweet. Have you seen their PhotoSynth app? I’ve been meaning to try that… someday when I actually get a full weekend off perhaps… 2010?
Firefox, as clunky and incomplete as it is, is an order of magnitude–at least–better than IE up through v.7. IE 8 (still in beta) looks to be shaping up to be nearly as good as Firefox in some ways. Neither have as many built in features as Opera, but then most folks don’t even use a majority of the built in features of Firefox, so it’s just fine for the average user.
Woody–yes, I’ve seen PhotoSynth (despite the griping it did about my browser until I told Opera to mask itself as something the stupid browser sniffer wouldn’t get its panties in a bunch about *heh* Won’t work with my browser/OS riiiiiight… MHWA… Works just fine if I tell MS’s stupid browser sniffer “Look over there! Bright! Shiny!” Stupid browser sniffer… *grumble, grumble, gripe, complain* :-)). It’s pretty cool and would be something I’d have more interest in were I more of a shutterbug. Heck, all I have are lil 3 megapixel HP cameras. Good enough for snapshots but not anything that’d even tempt me to get serious about photography. Different strokes. Still, M$ is coming out with some nice MOR photo stuff.