Seems like everybody is upgrading right now. First off is netscape.com - you can see the new version currently at beta.netscape.com. What's notable is article voting and avatars. Gee, where have I seen those before? One big issue I've found is that when you load an article from the original article site, it's displayed with a sidebar - and the sidebar messes up the formatting of the original page in a big way. Oh well, it's on somebody's bug list. Not mine. 

Then I see a newsflash that the Opera web browser is still alive - and just released version 9. I had a look - and by golly, it's a real web browser, unlike some of the older Opera incarnations. It does most of the stuff that IE and Firefox do, and in some cases a little bit more. Sigh - what it means for web developers is that they'll have to test with yet another browser to make sure everything works. On the bright side, it looks like my websites render just fine. I haven't yet verified that my AJAX stuff works on Opera - that's where things are most likely to get sticky.

I also notice that they do transparent PNG's - which means I can enable image drop shadows on Opera, but I'm in a quandary there. The load time for the drop shadow images is starting to bug me. Barksdale Rule #2 is "don't play with dead snakes" and this one is long deceased, but playing with it isn't what I had in mind. I'm thinking it needs killing all over again. 

While I'm looking at web browsers, I decide to have a look at the (yawn) documentation for Internet Explorer 7. An integrated search bar, tabs, RSS feeds. Put me to sleep already! But I have to laugh at the section entitled 'Security'...

Peace of Mind
And while you browse the web, Internet Explorer 7 automatically monitors your computer to protect you from unwanted and malicious programs that can be installed on your system as a result of surfing the web.

Uhm, pardon me... but...

Why can unwanted and malicious programs be installed on my computer as a result of surfing the web? Instead of protecting me from these evil programs that have been installed on my computer, why not fix the bugs that allow this to happen?