Tag: Edge

A reason to install Microsoft Edge on your Mac: viewing cookies

As a web developer, I actually don’t use cookies that often (mainly because I’m not interested in tracking users’ behavior). But I do need to use them occasionally, such as to remember when they’ve clicked the “X” to close a modal alert, so I don’t keep showing it to them on each new page they visit.

That’s what led me to today’s surprising discovery. My cookie wasn’t working properly, so I wanted to investigate a) whether or not it was actually being saved, and b) what data it was saving.

I work on a Mac, and Safari is my primary browser. But I already knew Safari doesn’t let you inspect the contents of cookies, so I fired up Chrome, which is my go-to for testing anything that I can’t test with Safari. I know Chrome always used to let you inspect the contents of cookies, so imagine my surprise today when I discovered that, at some point fairly recently, Chrome apparently removed that capability. You can still see which sites have stored cookies, and how many, but you can’t investigate the details any further than that. Seriously??

Next I tried Firefox. Nope, same.

At this point I was highly dubious that the fourth browser in my testing queue would handle things any differently, but I had no alternative, so I reached for that rarely-clicked-upon blue-green swirl icon in my Dock, loaded my page in Microsoft Edge, and… what do you know, Edge does still let you inspect the exact contents of stored cookies.

But for how long?

Anyway… for now, I have a justification for keeping Edge installed on my Mac.

Edge of what?

Let’s talk about Internet Explorer for a minute. Approaching two decades into a career as a web developer — cripes! how is that even possible? — I have spent a big chunk of my life hating Internet Explorer.

There was a time when I didn’t hate it. For several years, Internet Explorer was the best web browser for the Mac. (Yes, really!) But right around the time Apple released Safari and Microsoft decided to pull the plug on the Mac version of IE, everything started to go sour.

In the early 2000s, when Windows XP was released, and Internet Explorer 6 along with it, Microsoft dominated the tech world. Especially the business tech world. And with the web standards movement in its infancy, Microsoft could pretty much do whatever they wanted with the browser. Internet Explorer 5, 5.5 and 6 each introduced new, Microsoft-only technologies (VBScript, ActiveX, .NET, etc.) that became deeply entrenched in the business world, where countless corporate developers created indispensable internal web applications that were not only dependent on Internet Explorer, but specifically on quirks of version 6 (or 7) of IE. It’s a big reason why there are still office computers running Windows XP and IE 6 or 7. Because even as bad as IE 8 is, it was the beginning of Microsoft’s acknowledgment of the changing times and reluctant move towards web standards.

Long story short, I don’t just hate IE because it’s from Microsoft, or because it’s fun to bash on. Contrary to the impression I sometimes give, I don’t hate Microsoft, and as much as I love to crank, I’d prefer a world where I didn’t have things to crank about. I hate Internet Explorer because it has made my job harder, for most of the time that I’ve been doing this work.

So, it probably goes without saying that I took the announcement of the death of Internet Explorer as good news. Of course, Microsoft has to make its own browser. Uh… just… ‘cuz. Of course. So with IE going away, Microsoft has announced “Edge”, their new browser.

Meet the new browser, same as the old browser

This morning Brand New posted the new logo/icon for Edge. At least, I think it’s a new logo. For a new browser.

Source: Brand New

What is this? No, seriously. What. Is. This.

This logo fails for me on several levels. First, and most obviously, it evokes Internet Explorer. Why would Microsoft want to do that? They’re killing IE for good reason. Why create an immediate association between it and their new browser?

I think this new logo fails both conceptually and in its execution. It’s just plain ugly. But more than that, the slice/swoosh thing doesn’t work. In the old logo, it was part of the “ring” around the “planet” that the perfect circle “e” represented. A bit hackneyed conceptually, but at least it was a consistent concept. But by using the “e” from Microsoft’s new humanist corporate font (I think) — which, taken on its own, is kind of an ugly shape anyway — I think, you lose the “planet” concept. And the rest of the ring outside of the “e” is gone too. So all you have left is this weird “e” with a slice missing, which makes absolutely no sense. The only explanation for the slice is as a deliberate evocation of the old Internet Explorer logo, which again it seems they should want to distance themselves from.

I like the new blue color. That’s about the only good thing it has going for it.

So far I have not tried the preview release of Microsoft Edge. Frankly, as a web developer, I am not enthusiastic about having to support another new browser, and I’m not confident that Microsoft is going to make a very good new browser, even though IE 9 through 11 were pretty decent. All I have to go by, at this point, is this logo. And what it tells me is that Edge is just a crappy knockoff of an already crappy browser. No thanks.

Postscript: I just noticed that exactly 6 years ago today I wrote a blog post that also discusses Internet Explorer. Even then — SIX YEARS AGO — IE 8 was out and I was already cranking about IE 6 as an old and outdated browser.

The humble quest for cheap furniture

Last night was not unlike so many other nights in my household, although it was imbued with a special sense of purpose. Far more than the usual preparations had taken place: I made the great trek to the basement to retrieve the tape measure and actually determine with some level of accuracy the physical dimensions of a space in our house that we envisioned filling with yet more cheaply priced, cheaply made, pressed-sawdust-and-glue-with-fake-woodgrain-laminate-surface, some-assembly-required (OK, all-assembly-required, and-with-a-tiny-awkward-metric-Allen-wrench-at-that) furniture, courtesy of IKEA.

IKEA is a mystical place with a rabid cult-like following, and for many years SLP and I have counted ourselves among them. We pined for the big blue-and-yellow box when we left California, and we praised the heavens when we learned it would finally grace the adopted homeland of 99% of the world’s Swedish emigrants. (C’mon, what took so long?)

But I gotta say, the magic is wearing thin. Too many meals of dried-out overcooked meatballs and new potatoes for which the adjective can only be intended as irony. Too many cheap pieces that took way too long to assemble and then never quite matched anything else and eventually ended up in the basement, on the curb, or in pieces (for sport).

Alas, last night was just such a time. We were on a mission to locate and acquire at least five, perhaps more, short bookcases to line a knee wall below an angled ceiling in our upstairs. But the $20 “Kilby” (or was that “Billy”… or “Fjørnårsl” or some such nonsense) bookcases we had our eyes on happened to be 2 inches too tall. Oh well, at least we fed the entire family for under $11.

What to do… I know! Let’s try Target! 80% of the cheap, DIY furniture in our house may be from IKEA, but the other 20% is from Target, and the bookcases we already have and know will fit, which we thought we had gotten at IKEA, must’ve actually been from Target.

The problem is, Target’s gotten too big for its britches. In trying, admirably, to position itself in stark contrast to Wal-Mart, they’ve gone and done away with all of the basics, like the cheap, no-frills Sauder (slogan: “Good furniture made possible”… yes, possible!) bookcases and such that they used to carry for years and years. My wife constantly complains that Target is lacking this or that simple necessity, but for me, now, it finally hit home.

Faced with having my grand mission of obtaining approximately 25 cubic feet of book storage for less than $100 devolve into nothing more than a rambling trek along American Boulevard, with nothing to show for a wasted evening besides a mediocre meal and my son’s Blue’s Clues jigsaw puzzle (which just goes to prove Target Axiom #2*), I pulled out one last possibility.

Well… we could always try Menards.

Now you have to understand, I am deeply scarred from a lifetime of unwilling exposure to the Menards guy (yes, I was just as shocked as you are). He’s long since retired, but the mind-melting jingle (“Save big money at Menards!”) endures. I have nothing against the place, in particular; it’s just not a place I generally think to go to for… you know… anything.

But it just so happens that there was one a convenient distance from Target. On our way home, in fact. So, why not check it out? I was amazed. They had a mountain of just the cheap Sauder bookcases I was looking for… but a new model… wider… and on sale for $15.88! So we actually ended up getting more precious cubic feet and saving about $20 from what we’d expected to pay at IKEA or Target.

I was a bit disheartened, though, to notice the bookcases are apparently a part of Sauder’s “Beginnings” product line. Ten years of marriage, and we’re still stuck on “Beginnings.”

Anyway… tonight came time for assembly. Now I’ve put together enough cheap furniture (and then some) in my lifetime. I’ve seen so many of that particular sort of cam locking screw mechanisms (and the wooden support pegs that always seem to be paired with them) that I could probably put together something assembled with them without instructions… or tools… using my feet… while sleeping… in another house.

Sadly, it was not enough humiliation for them to simply call these bookcases “Beginnings.” No, no. The cam locks are gone, and in their place a new device of such cunning design, given the almost sinister appellation “hidden connector,” that I am convinced that the only reason Sauder still retains designers in its employ is to concoct ever more devious, counterintuitive, and downright impossible means of sticking two boards together. What’s so bad about, you know, a screw?

The hidden connector consists of a circular piece of brown plastic, about the size of a quarter and 1/4 inch thick, with two opposing holes on the edge and a large angled hole on one side. These are pounded with a hammer into circular holes that just slightly overlap the edge of the shelf boards. Then you insert special screws into the angled side hole and stick them through the edge hole that lines up with the place where the hole in the wood overlaps the edge (are you still with me?), although actually you should have put the screw in the plastic piece first… that’s easier.

Next, try to figure out a way to stick a screwdriver in the hole at an angle and actually make solid contact with the screw head. Good. Next, attach the shelf to the side pieces, and repeat for the other shelf… but don’t attach it too well, or you’ll never get the bottom bracing board, held in with four metal pegs, in place without having to use undue force and, in the process, scratch the hell out of the thin layer of laminated oak pattern lithographed paper that’s glued to the outer surface of the pressed-sawdust-and-glue boards that constitute this fine piece of furniture, the best you can buy for the price of a CD or an extra large supreme pizza.

OK, how long did that take, 45 minutes? Great! One down, four to go!

Ah, the things I’ll do to save a buck.

* Target axioms: 1) If you go into Target set on buying one small thing, and only that one small thing, you will still somehow end up spend at least $50 and needing one of those jumbo plastic shopping bags to hold your purchases; 2) Even if you are absolutely convinced that you will walk out of Target empty-handed, if only just this once, you’ll still end up buying at least one item.

Addendum (October 27, 2006): I’m sad to report that it appears the “Menards Guy” website is no more. As for the Menards Guy himself, I do not know…