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iCab 3 beta : Impressive

For a long time, I was using iCab as my web browser. This was at a time where Internet Explorer et Netscape were fighting for functionalities while giving poor stability. But I switched from iCab when Mac OS X came using OmniWeb as the web browser. CSS-based web pages were beginning to appear and iCab had poor support for them.

Today, I downloaded iCab 3 beta and got surprised by how well it support CSS 2, which seems to be as good as its rivals. Since this is the only browser still updated on the Mac OS Classic platform, I’m happy to see that my website and many others are rendered beautifully. This is a big change from iCab 2.

Congratulation to the iCab team.

Who benefits?

This is a followup to Aaron Swart’s weblog entry The Intentionality of Evil where he start about heros and vilains in comic books and end saying we are all good from our own point of view. I have to say I agree with him.

And people really grow up thinking things work this way: evil people intentionally do evil things. But this just doesn’t happen. Nobody thinks they’re doing evil — maybe because it’s just impossible to be intentionally evil, maybe because it’s easier and more effective to convince yourself you’re good — but every major villain had some justification to explain why what they were doing was good. Everybody thinks they’re good.

Very true. Each person has its own set of values for what is good and bad.

So the next time you mention one to someone and they reply “yes, but we did with a good intent” explain to them that’s no defense; the only people who don’t are characters in comic books.

Again, the “good” intent is good according to a certain set of values. Everybody may not see your intent as good.

For some people, personal gain is a highly praised value that can be more important than social and humanitarian ones (equity, loyalty, justice, etc.). If some people suffer from their action, they see it as a necessary evil since they value personal gains first.

But to be accepted in public, the personal gain — when it conflicts with other values — must hide behind a more “noble” intent. When something bad happens, ask you this: “Did everyone did it with a good intent? Who did it with personal interests as their priority?” Looking at the result (which means who benefits) usually gives a pretty good answer to that question. According to myself, people with real “noble” intents would refuse any gain coming from other’s misery.

So when something goes wrong somewhere, ask yourself: “Who benefits?”

News from 2056

To read on june 22, 2056 edition of The Onion, an american satire magazine:

Democratic Middle Eastern Union Votes To Invade U.S.

[…]

Mexico, Canada, and Quebec have stated they are sympathetic to the MEU’s goals but must remain neutral for the protection of their own people. It is likely, however, that they will host many refugees, should the U.S. turn against its people.

Notice that Québec is placed in the list next to Canada and Mexico. Does that means The Onion predicts Québec independency before 2056? Ah!

Mac Sub-Menus

If you used sub-menu on the Mac and did the same thing on Windows, you probably have noticed they behave somewhat differently between these platforms.

In both cases, there is a delay before the sub-menu opens. This is useful because it prevents sub-menus from opening when you move your cursor to the bottom of the parent menu. But the longer the delay, the longer you have to wait hover the parent menu item before the sub-menu opens. This delay is shorter on the Mac.

In both case there is also a delay before the sub-menu closes. This delay is counted from when the pointer exit sub-menu title’s in the parent menu to go on one of it’s neighbors items. Both platforms use a delay of about one second, but there are exceptions that can cause the sub-menu to close before the end of the delay. On Windows, it’s a click on another element of the parent menu. On the Mac, it’s a little more complex than that…

The arrows on the above picture show different pointer movements. If you do on the Mac the move from one of the yellow arrow, the sub-menu will stay on-screen — as long as you reach the sub-menu within the one-second delay. On the other hand, if you move your mouse according to one of the red arrows, the sub-menu will close immediately when the pointer exit the “Find” item from the parent menu.

Another difference from the Windows menu behaviour is that no other item from the parent menu get highlighted when the sub-menu is open. When the pointer follows the path of one of the yellow arrow, the “Special characters…” item never highlight, even if the pointer moves over it, as long as the sub-menu stays open. This may seems strange at first, but things could get confusing for a moment otherwise. Imagine that “Special characters…” contains also a sub-menu, how can you know which one of the sub-menus is displayed at a given time? You have to wait one second to be sure that the displayed sub-menu match with the displayed one.

How does it work? It’s simple: as soon as the pointer leaves the parent element in the menu, a triangular region between the current pointer position and the sub-menu bottom corner is defined. If the pointer leaves this region, sub-menu closes immediately. If not, the user has about 1 second to move the pointer inside the triangle, after that, if the cursor is still not in the sub-menu, the sub-menu closes.

This approach has some drawbacks. First, it is impossible to move to the sub-menu using a curve like shown by the red arrow on the previous image, because this means the pointer has to leave the “safe” triangle.

Also, if we move the pointer so that it stays in the region, but stop in the middle to select the next element in the parent menu, we must wait the end of the one second delay before it becomes highlighted. This is particularly annoying when a sub-menu is very long, making the triangular region bigger.