Mad Web Skills

In browser news, we’ve recently seen the release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, as well as the surprising (for me anyway) Google Chrome.

First, IE8B2. I’ve been playing with the new beta on and off over the last couple of days, and I can honestly say it’s actually pretty good. I would say that this release has more right to call itself a beta than its predecessor. I’d always felt that Beta 1 was of “Alpha” quality at best, if not “Technology Preview” standards. There’s still a-ways to go, and I won’t be changing my default browser to IE any time soon, but I believe that IE8 can only do good in this world. (Please don’t prove me wrong, Microsoft!)

Now, the infamous GBrowser has been predicted for years, but finally, and without warning, it’s here. Google Chrome for Windows (with the Mac version on the way) was announced via Scott McCloud comic yesterday. I downloaded it this morning, had a bit of a play and found it to be pretty damn good for a first release. It reacts very swiftly, although Firefox is also pretty quick in vanilla, no-addons mode. The interface is nice and simple, certainly better than IE7+, although it could do with a Firefox-like extensions/add-ons API. In fact, that’s about all that’s stopping me from switching right now. There are just too many awesome add-ons for Firefox that I can not do without. The Webkit rendering engine, which admittedly I’m not too familiar with, is quite good although I’ve come across the odd weird CSS glitch when viewing some my sites, but I think it’s more due to my inexperience with Webkit’s intricacies.

In a world… ah, who am I kidding. Nobody can do Don LaFontaine quite like Don LaFontaine, who sadly died on Monday at the age of 68. Movie trailers will never be the same again. The Washington Post has a touching tribute.

After spotting the Google Street View car in Shepparton about 7 months ago, the surprisingly-complete photos of our local streets are now online.

I’m not quite sure when this happened. Australia may have been all switched on at the same time to coincide with Google Maps UI’s recent redesign or it may have been a gradual thing implemented over the past few months, but I think it’s all kinds of cool.

Privacy issues aside, I think this is a great tool as well as an awesome toy. I wonder how often Google plan on updating the street photography.

Not only does this article have one of the greatest main-stream-media headlines I’ve ever seen, but the actual article (and accompanying YouTube video) is just as funny.

Michael Bay’s proposed script for The Dark Knight is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while.