Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

I just preordered Microsoft Windows 7 Home on Amazon, because right now it’s over 50% off. For just $49.99 (58% savings) you will get it delivered to your door on the official release date of October 22, 2009 (if you’re a PRIME member, which I am).

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade

As fas as I can tell, the only difference between Home Premium and Professional is that you don’t get their virtualization for XP software support (which is probably like VMWare Fusion on the Mac), no automatic backup features, and it’s missing some enterprise Active Directory thing called “Domain Join” that I doubt I’d ever use. So I’m not paying any $ for that.

One advantage I’ll get out of this is the ability to (a) run DX10 for the latest games, and (b) 64bit support, so finally I can run all 4 GB of RAM properly without PAE and any other proprietary crap. Right now my 4GB only shows up as about 3.4 anyway. Also, SSD support is much better in Windows 7, from what I’ve read. So my Intel X25-M will continue to serve me well!

Update: If you missed this, but you are a student or know a student, you can get a super cheap deal ($10 cheaper!) by visiting the Windows 7 Student Discount Page. It’s $30 for Windows 7 Pro, and another $13 to get a physical DVD.

I think that I found the official wallpapers that are going to be used in Windows 7, whenever Microsoft gets around to releasing it! They’re quite pretty, and quite high-res. Take a look, and let me know what you think:

It’s almost like they took cues from Apple with these, which are smooth gradients and curves. No more boxy Windows in Windows 7! Update: I got these from somewhere else, but reader Skidzopedia has a download link.

If you’ve ever tried to get an animated .gif file to continue playing in IE after a link is clicked, javascript runs for a form submit, or the window.location is set to a new URL, then you’ve probably already gone through the phases of frustration, and come straight to Google.

Here’s the setup. You’ve got a piece of javascript redirecting the user on a click (yes, I know this is a bad idea). Hopefully you got this from a legacy app:

<script language="javascript"><!--
function go(href) {
     $('spinner').style.display = '';
     location.href = href;
}
//--></script>
<a href="defaultAction.htm" onClick="go(this.href);return false">go</a>

Internet Explorer stops animated gifs when there is a javascript event, so if you try this code, it’s going to fail dramatically. What you need (for IE6 and IE7) is a hack:

<script language="javascript"><!--
function go(href) {
     $('spinner').style.display = '';
     location.href = href;
     $('spinner').src = $('spinner').src;
}
//--></script>
<a href="defaultAction.htm" onClick="go(this.href);return false">go</a>

Yes, reassigning the src attribute of an img will cause the image to keep animating, even when in the process of loading the next page. Note–this doesn’t work as well in Firefox. For that, you should either (a) upgrade the application to load data through AJAX, not URL redirection, or (b) use an iframe pointing to the image.

PS, if you need some ajax loading indicators, there’s a bunch!