24 Nov 08 Skype 4.0 Beta 2 released : fixes for some annoying user interface issues
So while my current health situation recovering from my extreme varicose vein surgery goes on (and on, and on)… I’m managing to at least somewhat stay in tune with a minimal amount of news from the tech world.
I’ve been pretty ambivalent about Skype 4 which has been in beta for several months. There are some major changes in Skype 4: most notably to the UI which now is much larger and groups all chats into one monolithic window. This has been really hard to digest (for me, and many others) as it goes against pretty much all IM client interface designs be it Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ et al. where a new (compact!) window is opened for each chat session you are currently in. Now since the release of Skype 4 in beta, one has a single window for Skype which is much larger, and requires you to click on contacts on the left side in order to see a chat session. This is very annoying.
Skype seems to have listened to beta user feedback, and with Skype Beta 2 now released they are now offering a “classic” compact view that goes back to the Skype 3.8 user interface – somewhat. They’ve also improved the size of alerts (when a contact is online/offline) to make them bigger. Unfortunately, the option for alerts when a contact comes online is still off by default! (Why?) You can fix this behaviour from Tools | Options | Notifications in Skype.
Another annoyance is that the “Check for Updates” option from within Skype (from Help on the menu bar) doesn’t work at all in beta versions of Skype 4.0… I’ve gotten in the habit of checking the minor release version (from Help | About) and then going to the Skype Beta download site and scrolling to the very bottom of that page to see what the most recent release version number is. It’s a 24MB download (for Windows) so forget about doing it over dial-up connections.
Tags: Skype, Skype 4.0 Beta 2, Software
06 Oct 08 The image cannot be displayed, because it contains errors – Skype extension for Firefox causes major bugs
Well, I was baffled for a few weeks there. I had upgraded my Firefox browser to the 3.0.3 version (which is great BTW) and noticed a LOT of strange behaviour, akin to Javascript-based sites refusing to redirect correctly and getting “The image (…) cannot be displayed, because it contains errors” when trying to view images on websites within Firefox directly as the image file. The situation was turning out to be unbearable as many key sites were in essence unusable for me.
I finally got frustrated enough to begin researching the issue (hey, I wasn’t going to migrate to IE6/7/8 for my general purpose surfing needs!) and found out pretty quickly that it was most likely the Skype Extensions for Firefox based on several blog reports.
So off I went to disable the Skype extension for Firefox (v 2.2.0.94)… restarted FF and voila! All was well.
The most amazing part is that these errors were reported as far back as May of this year and even back in 2007.
In a comment about this bug over at gHacks, a user named Nick suggests getting the latest beta release of the Skype toolbar (which as of writing is 2.2.0.95) but for me, I’m not really that keen on getting it.
The Skype extension for Firefox is of limited interest to me, even if the latest beta supports skypeifying not just phone numbers, but recognizing Skype contact names on web pages and creating Skype links to them. I suspect this must add significant overhead to the browsing experience…
While I love Skype, the extension basically skypifies phone numbers on web pages to make them click directly to Skype to phone the number… cool, but far from essential.
And here I thought it was the DIGG, StumbleUpon, Google toolbars or (more likely) AdBlock Plus….
19 May 08 Skype on HTC Touch from Bell Mobility – works fine but… not for voice calls (yet!)
OK, so my super-duper HTC Touch Vogue which I have on the Bell Mobility CDMA network is still in a serious love affair with me (or vice versa)…
I did indeed manage to install Skype Mobile (Pocket PC for Windows Mobile) on the Touch and it works great for Skype instant messaging but… not so great yet for outgoing Skype voice calls. I’ll be investigating to see if this is something that Bell Mobility has perhaps locked out of their ROM version on the touch because I know other people are indeed doing Skype calls from their PocketPC touchphones…
If you’ve got similar experiences, or solutions, leave a comment please!
Tags: Bell Mobility, Hardware, HTC Touch, Skype, touchphones, VOIP, Wireless
