Daily Archives: September 13, 2011

Crabcake Confidential: Never Mind The Bullets

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Windows Internet Explorer 9 — which all the cool kids call IE9 — debuted April of this year triumphantly with exciting previews and press releases and parades and a strong undercurrent that, yes, everything had finally changed!

OK, not really.

I have a hard time remembering when Internet Explorer was still relevant. The IE/Netscape Wars of the late 90′s, maybe? That was a war that Microsoft won. By bundling Explorer for free with Windows while Navigator was still something you had to buy at the local CompUSA, IE jumped to something like 90% of the browser market. It was David vs. Goliath, and Goliath not only beat David, he put on a fancy hat and coat and did a little jig on David’s dead body.

In recent years, though, IE’s been slipping due to increased competition from Mozilla, Google, Apple, and other smaller players. At the time IE9 debuted, it had slipped drastically to 46%. IE9 was designed in part to reverse the trend with exciting new features like … I don’t know … pinned sites? Whatever that is?

Perhaps I’m being blase because IE9 is only available for Windows Vista and Windows 7. All my computers at home are Macs. Thus, I pretty much run all web applications on either Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. No IE9 for me, though not by choice.

To show off the capabilities of IE9, Microsoft produced a webcomic in collaboration with Parisian studio Steaw Web Design. The comic was a short Wild West vignette called Never Mind the Bullets. It was directed by François Le Pichon and Jeremy Thomas, illustrated by Kevin Hamon, coded in HTML5 by Sebastien Doncker, and written by Antoine Laroche.

Again, there’s no way I can view this using the clearly mind-blowing capabilities of IE9, so I’m going to use Google Chrome instead. The comic worked for the most part, but I am going to point out some areas where, I imagine, IE9 was supposed to excel. Let’s take a look, shall we?

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Webcomic goes Facebook

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Robot 6 reports that Ricardo Proven’s webcomic, cheerfully entitled Donnie Goth, claims to be the first webcomic entirely distributed via Facebook app! Brigid Alverson, though, has her reservations:

…putting all your eggs in the Facebook basket seems to limit the potential audience somewhat. Aside from that handful of folks who aren’t on Facebook, many users (myself included) shy away from apps because they require you to turn over personal information. When I clicked on the Donnie Goth app, Facebook requested permission to share my “basic information,” which includes my name, gender, user ID, list of friends and “any other information I’ve shared with everyone.” Admittedly, all of that is already out there on my Facebook page, but the idea of handing it over in a neat package to an outside entity give me a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. On the other hand, if I could simply click over to the page, I’d do it — and maybe even “like” it.

I guess I can understand the appeal of distributing solely on Facebook. My brother-in-law is a Mary Kay consultant who (at the urging of the parent company) uses Facebook as his prime website. Still, Ms. Alverson’s criticisms are very valid. I’m something of a Facebook luddite myself (I signed up some years back, but haven’t gone back since), so the thrilling adventures of Donnie Goth will be lost on me.

Also, I’m not sure if I want to give Donnie my A/S/L. Dude looks like the sort of guy who can mess you up with some tragic poetry, know what I’m sayin’?