Update: OpenOffice.org Docs in FX

Jason recently commented on the OpenOffice.org Docs In Fx Part 2 entry:

Thanks for the great article! Very useful.I wonder if it is possible to open a word .doc within Firefox using OpenOffice and this method?

Excellent question! Never really thought about it but figured it should work if I could get Firefox to associate Word Documents with Open Office. As it turns out yes you can.  Further, you don’t need to do anything else other than to activate the Mozilla Plug-in from within OpenOffice.org via the Tools Menu, Options…, Internet and then under Mozilla Plug-in check the enabled box. It will work if you have already associated Microsoft Office documents with OpenOffice. This is done when you installed OpenOffice (see below).

AT&T Pogo Browser

AT&T is trying to get in the to the web browser market now with their own browser called Pogo. Before you run out and download this keep in mind, it is still in development and in limited private beta. You can sign up to be notified when the public beta will be opened. Further, unless you have a really powerful machine don’t even bother as the performance would stink. I am sure you are thinking “It is a web browser, how powerful of a machine would I need?”

Well, the minimum requirements are 1.6GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a video card with at least 256MB of VRAM. But, Ars Technica did try the browser on a more powerful machine running dual-processor, dual-core AMD Opteron 2210 with 1.80GHz CPUs, 2GB of RAM, and a NVIDIA Quadro FX 560 video card with 128MB of VRAM running Windows XP. The results were less than stellar

On this machine, the remainder of Pogo’s features actually displayed, but did not do much else. We found that with even minor use, the browser slowed to a crawl, animations built into the UI were laggy, and at some times, unusable. Performance was extremely poor when even trying to perform basic functions like clicking UI elements.

Pogo is suppose to be a Mozilla based browser, so why is it so power hungry? This is because it has this massive 3D interface for navigating through the browser’s history as well as bookmarks. These screenshots (courtesy of CyberNet News) show the history (top) and bookmarks (bottom). Here are some of other browsers Windows system requirements for comparison:

• Firefox 2/3 & SeaMonkey
  

  • Processor: Pentium 233 MHz (Recommended: Pentium 500MHz or greater)
  • Memory: 64 MB (Recommended: 128 MB or greater)
  • Video: not listed

• IE 6

  • Processor: 486/66-megahertz (MHz) processor or higher (Pentium processor recommended)
  • Memory: 16 to 32 MB
  • Video: Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor with 256 colors

• IE7

  • Processor: Pentium 233MHz processor or higher
  • Memory: 87 to 218 MB
  • Video: Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor with 256 colors

• IE8 Beta 1

  • Processor: Pentium 233MHz processor or higher
  • Memory: 64 to 512 MB
  • Video: Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor with 256 colors

• Opera

  • Processor: Pentium II
  • Memory: 64 MB
  • Video: not listed

• Safari

  • Processor: 500 MHz Intel Pentium
  • Memory: 256 MB
  • Video: not listed

It is doubtful I am going to even try Pogo as I don’t see any real benefit, just a lot of bling. Sorta like Windows Vista Aero Interface. I am looking for functionality, speed along with a nice UI (that doesn’t make me feel like I am running a 386 with a dial-up connection).

Source: CyberNet News