OT: Firefox - 2 questions?

"1. Has anyone gotten 3D Content Central to work with FireFox or Mozilla?" Nope

"2. How many people have upgraded their FireFox to 1.0.7? How many have tried the beta? Nope

Devon

3DContent Central was obviously built using Micro$oft NON-standards-compliant authoring software, as is the rest of SolidWorks' site. Micro$oft's NON-standard version of Javascript doesn't work with other browsers which read STANDARD Javascript. This is Micro$oft's way of continuing the same kinds of practices for which they were sued by the Justice Department, but since Dubya's Republican administration came to power Mr. Bill knows he has nothing to fear from the Justice Department. Therefore 3DContent Central and eDrawings and many other applications and Web sites will not work properly with any other browsers than Micro$oft's own Internet Explorer. And they won't, until Micro$oft gets sued again, and this time nailed to the wall by an administration which has the best interests of consumers in mind.

I'm using 1.0. Works great . . . except with the problems created by Micro$oft (and Dubya).

'Sporky'

or until until customers demand otherwise. I'm sure if enough people requested FireFox support it would be offered. It's a great browser (much safer than IE) and except for issues like this, the better one to use imho.

Paul,

Using 1.07. I can log on to 3D central, externally from SW, but that's about it.

When you access it from the task pane it launches IE. Don't use it very often, but when I do I have to run Adaware and Spybot immediatly afterwards.

8 of 10 times they will find spyware.

Mark

It's nice to think that might be the case, but I don't believe it for a minute. Micro$oft is making a product available with bells and whistles in their authoring software that SolidWorks and many other companies like to leverage. SolidWorks sure isn't going to change (Micro$oft is SolidWorks Corp's economic partner), and Micro$oft has no economic incentive to do differently than effectively making their competitors' browsers useless on sites built with their software. The Justice Department already tried and failed to force them to stop their anti-competitive practices, despite the "victory" in the lawsuit (made toothless after the change of administration). Bill Gates is just like that. A widely distributed story of his youth goes that his mother took him to family counseling to see if they could find some resolution to all the bullheaded arguing and rebellion. The counselor (whether psychiatrist or psychologist, I don't know) eventually told Bill's mother that if she persisted on trying to force her will on young Bill she was ultimately going to lose. The Justice Department didn't necessarily have to lose, but they did just the same through lack of political backing.

'Sporky'

I guess I'd consider it demanded. From what I can see about 30% of SW users are running FireFox or similar Mozilla derivatives. I wonder what Dassault stockholders think about missing 1/3 of a market. And it isn't just the percentage but the rate at which FireFox is drawing down IExplorer.

But doesn't SolidWorks Corp also make a Linux version of Solidworks? If so, that's not being very MS friendly.

I personally think MS is on the start of long, slow decline. Open source software really seems to be taking hold, and especially as it continues to get better, easier to install, easier to use, less virus/spyware prone, and best of all free, its going to be a much harder sell for MS. I think it's just a matter of time.

It will also be interesting to see what happens next year when Apple starts coming out with Intel based computers. If applications like WINE allow near native execution of Windows software (without needing Windows XP, which is my understanding) that may prompt a lot of people to switch (I for one).

Pat

Well maybe somebody with active maintenance could email Tech Support and ask when they plan to support it. Perhaps it's in the works. If not, then ask why not. It's hard to imagine that if enough people wanted it they would not support it.

Linux version of SW? Where? I don't think so.

That's been on a LOT of people's wish list for a long time now -- ain't happening.

I wish I could agree with you . . . I think it's wishful thinking on both our parts.

Wishful thinking again. From all we hear the WINE emulator is a good emulator, but when you're talking about something as OS intensive as SolidWorks being used, you might as well try winching a car with fishing tackle. And Apple can port their OS to Wintel computers if they like with no better results in sales . . . it's the APPLICATIONS that have to be compatible with the OS, and neither SolidWorks nor any of the other mainstream or high end parametric CAD software companies are going to be likely to spend the money to port to Apple's OS. Why would they want do that? Where would be the economic benefit that would justify that kind of enormous expenditure, not to mention the continuing need to upgrade software for multiple operationg systems?

pro-e is at least available for linux.

-john

Pro/E is a bit of an exception because it was originally written for Unix and ported to Windows. They've somewhat maintained parallel tracks since then. Basically OLE took the place of how files were linked naturally in Unix. Porting either way is not easy, but PTC had much to gain from porting to Windows when they did and not so much trouble falling back to a Unix/Linux way of doing things. SolidWorks may have SOME to gain from porting to Linux, but not nearly so much as to justify the expenditure and the trouble (in the future) of maintaining versions on both platforms. The upper management of SolidWorks Corp has been asked on several occasions by user delegations (and at SW World) about porting to Linux and their answers have always been that they have no plans to do such in the forseeable future. My strong suspicion is that it's going to take a major rebellion against Micro$oft and Windows to furnish enough justification. Although I'd LOVE to see THAT happen, I don't for a minute think it actually will. Only time will tell, however.

Mark 'Sporky' Stapleton

Oddly enough, I get farther using konqueror than I do using Firefox. Konq actually lets me get to the "create" screen. With firefox I can't get past the first page.

Currently using 1.0.7. Haven't tried 1.5RC yet, but Flock is pretty cool.

-john