Firefox and Epiphany. How does one choose between them? They both have features that I like. Firefox has less UI around the web page (at least the way I use it), but Epiphany quite happily uses all the Gnome stuff I’m used to, and like, such as the Save dialog.

(On a side note, I really like the new GTK Save dialog. It just feels far nicer because it is focused towards **saving** your file. I've been using Windows at work and its Save dialog is just not as good. There is no focus to it; it's not clear what is going on. It leaves me longing for a big, bright Save button that I can use, as opposed to a morass of widgets to choose between. I mean, why would I want to use a Save dialog **to copy a file**? I think the Windows Save dialog is a mess that stemmed from the "we can do this, so lets just add it" mentality. **Enough of this ranting already, Mike, get on with it**)

After a few days using them, I think I shall mainly be sticking with Epiphany. This is mainly due to it’s integration with Gnome. It Just Works, as the current buzz-phrase would have it. I don’t have to think whilst using it. It acts like the rest of my desktop. Plus there are a few very minor-looking features that I just can’t get enough of:

Yeah, so the word on the street is that Firefox 0.9 is out. So I’m downloading it. I’m still using Epiphany right now, but there’s nothing wrong with trying something different; variety being the spice of life and all.

My main desire is to see how much better this release is integrated into the Gnome desktop. This is probably the main reason that I’m using Epiphany right now: it fits my desktop like a glove.

It’s half time in England vs France and I’ve just seen perhaps the most stupid advert produced recently. It is for British Telecom and the gist of the message is:

If we make an appointment to come and service/install/whatever then we will do our best to come at that time

Well! Isn’t that what an appointment’s very raison d’etre is?! What a mind-numbingly patronising advert.

At Design by Fire — one of my recently found favourite reads — some down-to-earth thoughts about why you should really care for web standards. I’m not really going to comment, aside from the fact is has me thinking about the issues presented in a different light. Maybe I’ll write more later, but I’m not sure I’d add anything new.

In day to day use, the 2.6 kernel does seem more responsive. Applications I haven’t used in a while don’t take much time to redraw; with 2.4 they used to take a few seconds — I’d assume this was waiting for the kernel to schedule them in. 2.6 kernels have a new scheduler that gives more priority to I/O bound programs.

I/O bound programs are typically found on desktops. Most desktop programs wait for user input (via I/O). As user input comes at a far slower rate than a computer works, they typically are asleep for long periods with short bursts of reactions to user input. The kernel gives these applications high priority because they are likely to be either waiting for I/O (and so not be available to run) or they are going to do a small amount of processing before going back to sleep again. This means that giving them a higher priority than other programs is very unlikely to severly impact the system as they do not require much processor time.