Little UI slipup for Apple

This appears on Safari password boxes when you use HTTP authentication without HTTPS. "Your password will be sent in the clear". I mean, I know what they're trying to say, but it's hardly the most obvious message, now, is it? The phrase only appears a few hundred times on Google.

It's surprising here because Apple is famed for its dialogs, especially since the release of MacOS X. The Windows Vista usability guidelines (which even Microsoft don't seem to be to inclined to follow) even take some inspiration from them.

Today in stupid technology news

America may be getting free wireless broadband all over the place! Complete with injected ads and content filtering (billed as 'family friendly'). I'm not sure exactly what the message is, here; no porn for poor people, perhaps? Given the high quality of most content filtering systems out there (they tend to be good at blocking out revoltingly lavicious sites like Wikipedia and BBC News), I doubt it'll be all that great.

It brings up an interesting issue, though; if the readiest source of th'Internet is rendered 'family friendly' by whatever obscure metric the provider chooses to use, with FCC approval, isn't there vast potential for abuse of the censorship? CDA 2.0, anyone?

Also, the EU is planning on shoving people gently towards IPv6 by 2010. Now, we all know that that is not going to happen. IPv6 is a convenient mechanism for breaking certain types of communication on MacOS; Erlang, for instance, tends to get confused about the loopback interface. That is all. What do we want? IPv6! When do we want it? When every single operating system, router and third party software package is upgraded or retrofitted to work properly with it, and not a moment before!

I mean, imagine. Suddenly Google vanishes for users of, say, BT, because Google is saying it does IPv6 and BT's routers are saying they can do IPv6, but Windows 7 or whatever merely believes it can do IPv6.

And finally, here, allegedly, is Windows 7. Could they take up any more space with giant start menus and toolbars if they tried? Notice, also, that the evil psuedo-menus merged hideously into the title bar from IE7 look set to become standard. When CDE (ancient, hideous UNIX window management system, beloved for many years by Sun) looks like a more attractive UI experience than Microsoft's latest, maybe, just maybe, that should give them pause?

Disturbing UI message of the day

You know how Apple is famed for their wonderful UI design? Well, they don't always hit the nail on the head, it would seem. From the iPhone SDK installer:
Yargh! In fact, it really means that it is installing MacOS 10.5 development tools, but it is one scary way to put it.

In fairness, though, the new version of XCode is quite the prettiest IDE I have ever used. You should see the code completion! And as for the electric brackets... stunning, simply stunning. Brings a tear to the eye.

Sadly, I do most of my proper work in Eclipse (CUSP and ErlIDE), which isn't so pretty.

A minor Blogger oddity

I quite like Blogger, by and large. It works well, and removes the need for me to mess about hosting my own blog. However:

Now, I don't quite understand the function of the bar across the top in the first place, but one feature in particular is baffling. That 'Next Blog>>' thing. In this context, 'Next Blog' seems to mean 'any random blog, probably in Greek'. Does anyone actually use it?

If so, why?

New Firefox 3 beta 4 for MacOS; more hideous than ever!

Firefox has never really looked quite right on MacOS. Buttons weren't native, and so forth. In Firefox 3 Beta 4 this has changed... for the worse. Observe, if you will, the gorgeous toolbar:

Lovely, eh? But nothing compared to this, well, work of art:

Note the clashing interface styles.

I personally don't use Firefox on MacOS anymore; Safari is sufficient for my needs, and far faster. I must say, I pity anyone who does, and has to put up with that amazing preference box...