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28 Jan 2022 - Podcast #777 - (20:09)
It's Like NPR on the Web
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After experimenting with the Vivaldi browser for a few months, I wrote briefly about it in early December. Because I like the customization options, I decided to try it as my primary browser for a while. Usually I switch back to Firefox that, despite its all too common frustrations, seems to work the way I want a browser to work. Firefox may have met its match.
Vivaldi developers recently released version 5 of the browser, and that made the already impressive browser even better.
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At first glance, (1) Vivaldi looks a lot like other browsers, but I turned off the top menu and (2) and placed it under the Vivaldi icon. Anyone concerned about forgetting that's where the menu is can convert the Vivaldi icon to a standard menu icon with three horizontal lines. My configuration of Vivaldi doesn't have tabs at the top, although it can be configured that way. I prefer having (3) a list of open sites on the left side of the screen. Currently I have the Bookmark bar turned on at the top of the page, but I could turn it off because there's a (4) Bookmarks panel on the right side of the screen. That panel could also be placed on the left side, or hidden, at the user's preference. The panel on the right also has options to display a list of downloaded files, the browser's history, notes that can be added from any website page, a list of all open pages and recently closed pages, the Vivaldi translator, Vivaldi's main page, and Wikipedia. The user can add other components and remove existing items.
Vivaldi is a Chrome-based browser, so its the same underlying technology that's in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Opera Neon, Opera GX, Torch, Comodo Dragon, and maybe a dozen other browsers. Firefox is the only major browser that's not based on Chrome. If you count Apple's Safari as a major browser, we should add it to the not-Chrome list. Safari is based on WebKit.
Mac users have a choice of a WebKit-based browser, Mozilla's Quantum-based Firefox, or any of the many Chrome-based browsers. Windows users have only two options, Chrome-based browsers and Firefox.
Before getting all gushy about Vivaldi, let's establish some ground rules:
Some websites have log-in processes that run afoul of Vivaldi or, more likely, are disabled by an add-in that blocks advertisements. Opening a chat session with GoDaddy support doesn't work on Vivaldi. Chat sessions with GoDaddy support are uncommon. If they were more common, I would identify the precise cause of the problem and fix it. For sessions that occur once or twice a year, my solution is simply to use another browser.
The primary point here is to find a browser that works the way you want it to work most of the time, but not to uninstall other browsers. My primary computer has Vivaldi, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera. Besides being helpful to confirm that the TechByter website renders properly with each browser, it also means that I have access to a browser that doesn't have the same cookies as my primary browser. As far as testing a website with multiple browsers goes, that's far less important than it was in the bad old days when browser developers went out of their way to create capabilities that, when used, broke other browsers.
So this isn't an attempt to convince you to switch immediately to Vivaldi, but only to suggest that you might want to give it a try.
In fact, there's a special group of computer users who might feel the way I do about Vivaldi. This group could be known as the tinkerers, those who are never satisfied by any application's default settings. However, those who use whatever browser is present on a computer and don't want to be bothered with customizations won't find Vivaldi to be much different than other browsers.
But if you like customizations, Vivaldi is for you.
Many browsers now have the concept of a Home page, where the browser stores sites that the user visits frequently. Vivaldi gives users complete control to organize these pages into groups.
Most browsers allow users to load themes to change the overall look of the application. Maybe you consider this silly. After all, you'll be using the browser to view websites and each website has its own appearance. But look around. Did you pick a color when you bought a new car? Are the walls in your house some color other than white? Do you have any photos or other artwork on your desk? The browser's theme surrounds any website you're viewing. Vivaldi even lets users schedule themes: Maybe you want a light theme to be active during daylight hours and a dark theme to be active at night.
Apple and Android offer translation options. Vivaldi does this, too. When a website is in a language different from your browser's user interface language, Vivaldi offers to translate it for you. To translate the page to your default language, click the Translate button in the pop-up dialogue.
An important note about translations: It's essential to understand that automated translations will provide a general concept of the original text, but no automatic translation will ever match the accuracy of a human translator who is familiar with both languages. In other words, don't depend on any automatic translation in legal or diplomatic situations.
What Vivaldi offers is the ability to make the browser yours. The top-level settings page offers an astonishing 21 tabs: General, Appearance, Themes, Start Page, Tabs, Panel, Address Bar, Bookmarks, Quick Commands, Keyboard, Mouse, Search, Privacy, Downloads, Sync, Webpages, Network, Mail, Feeds, Calendar, Display All that displays the settings from the other 20 pages. Selecting Display All may cause your brain to explode, so don't do that.
Instead, let's look at a few of the individual panels.
GENERAL-STARTUP: The Startup panel of the General settings page is where users can set Vivaldi to be the default browser and instruct it to check each time the browser is launched. The home page can be set to a specific website or to the Vivaldi Start page. When the browser starts, it can re-open all pages from the user's previous session, the Home page or Start page, or a group of specific pages. I have 16 pages that I want to see each day, so I have them open automatically.
This is also where users can enable or disable lazy loading if the browser opens multiple pages when it starts. Lazy loading is a compromise between resource usage and speed. Activating lazy loading means that Vivaldi will list all of pages, but won't actually open them until you click on a site's tab. This is the default and it reduces the browser's resource load. If you prefer faster loading, disable the lazy loading option, but the difference between the two modes seem negligible.
THEMES: Vivaldi includes 10 themes, but there are nearly 100 themes that can be downloaded, and users can create their own. This may be the least important feature for any browser, but we can think about it as selecting trim colors for an automobile. It won't affect the operation at all, but it may be more pleasing to your eye.
KEYBOARD: Keyboard shortcuts are at the other end of the usefulness spectrum. Reaching for a mouse to perform a task is always slower than using a keyboard shortcut, so Vivaldi has keyboard shortcuts for windows, views, tabs, pages, calendars, mail, and chains. Chains are essentially built-in macros, and Vivaldi can be linked to email servers and calendars. There are well over 100 keyboard shortcuts. Some have been defined by Vivaldi's developers. Users can define the ones that are blank and modify existing shortcuts so that Vivaldi works exactly the way the user wants.
Some of the existing shortcuts:
Taking a few minutes to learn keyboard shortcuts for actions that you perform frequently can be a significant timesaver.
PRIVACY: The Privacy panel's default settings are good choices and there are options that go beyond the basics. Permissions settings allow or refuse websites to have access to the computer's speakers, camera, microphone, MIDI devices, location, Bluetooth devices, and motion sensors — as well as the ability to display notifications and pop-ups — these can all be set to always allow, always block, or ask.
WEBPAGES: The Webpages panel is where users specify whether or not images are loaded, how scrolling performs on the page, and whether hardware acceleration can be used if the computer supports it.
Browsers are free with virtually no exceptions. Given that software developers need to be paid so that they can purchase trivial items such as food, housing, and clothing, we're left with the question of how the companies that create browsers monetize them. Most browser publishers receive income when their browsers are used to with search engines. Because browsers free, you can have as many as you want. Windows users will already have Edge. Mac users will already have Safari. Having immediate access to an extra browser or two (maybe even three or four) can be helpful.
When something goes wrong with Windows, one of the best ways to diagnose the problem involves booting into Safe Mode. The problem with that is the need to open MS Config when Windows is running so you can set the computer to reboot into Safe Mode. But if Windows isn't running properly ....
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Well, you see the problem here. That's why it's a good idea to prepare for a problem before you have a problem. Wouldn't it be helpful if, when Windows booted, you were offered a choice of booting to the normal operating system or Safe Mode?
It's possible to do this with just a couple of easy changes. All that's required is identifying the boot loader ID, using that ID to create a new boot loader using BCD Edit (the Boot Configuration Data editor), and then adding the new option to the boot sequence with MS Config. If that sounded like Old Church Slavonic, don't despair. It's not difficult, but the steps must be completed without error.
Start by opening the Start screen and typing cmd. You'll see Command Prompt at the top of the list. Select Run as administrator.
When the command window opens, type this command:
bcdedit /enum /v
The result will be many lines of text. The second section of the text is labeled "Windows Boot Loader". Look for the identifier line and copy the identifier, including the curly braces, by highlighting it with the mouse and then using Ctrl-C. You may want to paste this value into a plain text editor such as Notepad. It will look something like this:
{9b51d79c-10d2-11ec-8540-872751898e21} <<This is my computer's boot loader ID. Yours will be different.
Return to the Command Window and type the following command, placing your boot loader ID where shown. The spaces are important, and be sure to use forward slashes (/) where shown, not backslashes (\). Also, the quotation marks are essential, but what you place inside the quotation marks can be anything you want — this just needs to be something you'll recognize in the next step.
bcdedit /copy {YOUR BOOT LOADER IDENTIFIER GOES HERE} /d "Windows Safe Mode"
When you run the command, you should get a success message from Windows.
Next, open the Start screen and type msconfig. System Configuration will appear at the top of the list. Select Run as administrator and, when the applet opens, choose the Boot tab. You should see two lines of text, one that says Windows 10 (C:\WINDOWS) : Current OS; Default OS and another that has the text you used with BCD Edit. In my case that is Windows Safe Mode (C:\WINDOWS).
Select the line (1) with the name you created, not the default line, and check the (2) Safe boot checkbox. I recommend selecting the Network option at the bottom of the list so that the network will be available in safe mode.
Select (3) Make all boot settings permanent and then (4) enter a non-zero value in Timeout. This value determines how long Windows will display the boot options before booting to the default mode. If you leave this box blank or set it to zero, the Safe mode option will not be displayed at boot time.
Click (5) OK and you will be offered an opportunity to reboot the computer. Before rebooting, be sure to save all data and close all open programs. When you reboot the computer, you'll have a new option before the login screen appears. If you do nothing, the computer will boot normally. To start the computer in Safe mode, select the Safe mode option.
Inventors began working on what would become general purpose computers such as the ones we have today in the 1930s. In 1951, the US Census Bureau started using the UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I). It was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer designed for business application produced in the United States. Businesses were slow to use computers, so early users were all government agencies and universities.
Before that, the ENIAC computing system was used during World War II. Colossus was put into service at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom during the war.
The United States was generally seen as being in the lead and you might think that the first business computer was invented here. It wasn't. That happened in England when the J Lyons Company needed a device that would calculate the ingredients needed for its bakery products. Later it was used to track employee working hours and to calculate their pay.
Lyons was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate that was in business for nearly 100 years after being founded in 1884. The final restaurant closed in 1981. The computer built for the company had 5000 tubes. Put into service on 30 November 1951, this was several years before computers began being used by businesses in the United states.
A film marks the 70th anniversary of the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO), the world's first business computer. The film is 26 minutes long and includes interviews with people who worked on the device. LEO was big, taking up 2500 square feet of floor space. Two Lyons managers visited the US in 1947 to examine US business methods and returned to England with an understanding that computers were the future.
Many people who used WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS still think of it as the best word processor ever. It wasn't possible to create documents with graphics the way we can do with today's word processors, but it was fast and easy to use. It was the ideal tool for writing and editing. In 2002, some foolish pundits wrote that WordPerfect 5.1 could not be used with Windows 95. That was clearly false. I wrote:
Last week, I told you that some of the computer pundits who work for some of the big PC publications say that many DOS applications, WordPerfect 5.1 among them, will not run under Windows XP. Last week, I said they were largely wrong. I had been able to get WordPerfect 5.1 to run, but had been unable to print because I no longer had the printer disks.
This week I can tell you, thanks to Bob Jutzi and Dave Sherman, that the pundits are totally wrong. Bob Jutzi was able to send me the printer disks for version 5.1 and Dave Sherman had the full WordPerfect 5.1 Plus installation, complete with all of the extra printer disks.
The installation process started, ran, and ended normally. Because WordPerfect 5.1+ for DOS knew about the HP Laserjet 4 Postscript printer, I am able to select any of the "base fonts" that reside in the printer.
There was a momentary problem when I started WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS the first time. A Windows alert message popped up to advise me that the PIF (program information file) was attempting to access the wrong directory. XP then shut the program down. This, apparently, is as far as any of the big PC magazine pundits got with their testing.
I went a little further. I knew that I was double-clicking the WP.EXE file, not the PIF. Perhaps Windows XP is smart enough to know that it should look for a PIF even if the user double-clicks the executable for DOS applications. So I deleted the 3 generic PIFs that the setup program created in the WordPerfect directory (f:/wp51plus). Once the PIFs were no longer there, WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS ran just fine.
Other programs I've tested: WordStar 5.5 for DOS and dBASE 4 for DOS.
WordPerfect 5.1 runs on Windows 10, too. It probably can be installed on Windows 11, but I won't be trying. WordPerfect 5.1 far outlived its expected life but even those of us who thought it was the best word processor ever have finally moved on.