The German government warned web users to find an different browser to Internet Explorer to protect security last week. This is something that should have been issued over 10 years ago when these types of things first start to escalate. But it isn’t till now and some recent attacks, that Germany thinks it’s a serious problem. Read all about the current security hole at BBC News.

The main problems that IE has had compared to other browsers over the years, is that it is a part of the Microsoft operating system. By having a higher integration with the underlying OS it has the potential to access much more critical processes for a computer system. The plus side of this is that it loads fast (because it’s already loaded with your computer) and it can do things on your system that other browsers can’t. The down side is, if a hacker finds a way to comprimise a users computer through it, they can do much more damage. Alternative browsers to IE don’t have the same privileges, they must run in the OS as citizen applications where every move the application makes is governed by the OS which protects other applications and your computer from serious harm.

If you are still using IE you don’t know what your missing:

Firefox - This has been a favorite for alternative web browsers since 2003. It has thousands of plugins so you can customize it to do anything you want. It can be a bit slow at times when you have a bunch of plugins installed and 20 tabs open but it’s still a great browser. Pretty much everyone at Sol uses Firefox as their numero uno web browser.

Chrome - This is Google’s take on a web browser. It is incredibly fast. You should try it just to see how fast it is, it’s kind of amazing. It has a very simple interface, just what you need, like most of Googles apps. It has neat architecture, It actually runs each tab as it’s own program so if one tab fails the others stay alive. Before recently Chrome was still trying to get up to speed on trying to display all web pages but I think they are pretty much there.

Opera - Opera has been an underdog alternative browser since practically the beginning of mainstream internet usage. I think it’s a beautiful browser and works quite nicely. I use it for occationally for blog browsing because things look so nice in it and it’s easy to use. This is the browser I would recommend to my mother.

Safari - Apples new version works on PC as well now. It’s pretty neat, I use it all the time on my Ipod Touch.

Here at Sol Design we have to use IE 6, 7, 8, & 9 everyday and will continue too because we know so many people in the world do. Though we hate it, it risks the security on our development machines and it takes the fun out of web development (keeping up with web standards has been another huge fault for IE). It wasn’t always like this, IE was my love in 1996 when it was the first to handle CSS and did a better job with Javscript than Netscape. If the world bands together to leave IE maybe it will inspire Microsoft will start over from scratch and build a new web browser that we all can appreciate again.

Stewdio.org is the website of Stewart Smith, a designer from NYC that has done some great work. I was particularly amused by his Browser Pong app….basically the classic computer game Pong done with browser windows. Super fun!

I use Cygwin when I need to use linux tools not available in Windows. The generic windows command line terminal cmd.exe is pretty lame. I use Putty all the time as a remote terminal for our Linux and Solaris machines, it’s wonderful. Here’s how to use Putty for Cygwin as well:
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FL909 drumcomputer - make some beats!

The first time I saw this I thought it was just a picture of the original drum machine that defined early house music. But no, it’s actually a fully functional clone of the beat machine created in flash. It even looks like it’s from 1984 with coffee stains and such (is that blood??). I was in love with Daft Punk’s album Homework which has the TR-909 all over it. Their latest effort Alive 2007, is a mashup of all their songs and it totally has me pumped about electronic music again. So if you’re like me & one of your goals for 2008 is to make more hot beats, lay down some high-hat & drop that b.a.s.s bass!

Linerider beta2 is here! If you have never played Linerider you need to. It’s not really a game but more like a sweet toy. Get creative!
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If you’re a graphic designer, you must have thousands of fonts on your computer. You probably don’t know what half of them look like, the other half you probably never use.

I have tried other font managers such as Extensis Suitcase and the built-in Mac Font Book. Both were met with limited success. Suitcase crashed often and hogged up all my resources, and Mac’s Font Book did a good job, but just wasn’t powerful enough.

Then I stumbled upon Linotype’s FontExplorer X.
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