Linux, DreamWeaver and Apple Win Love/Hate War

We all know that there are millions of people who would happily spend an evening declaring their love for anything that is manufactured by Apple with a passion that has not been seen since the end of the cold war. And similarly Microsoft can cause passions to arise that are not normally found in Seattle. The problem is: how do you measure these emotions?

In the noughties, the answer has to come from Google. To test the amount of love and hate for a subject, I ran a Google search as follows:

love Linux:8,900,000

hate Linux:1,900,000

Ratio=4.7:1

love Dreamweaver:533,000

hate Dreamweaver:119,000

Ratio=4.5:1

love Apple:12,700,000

hate Apple:3,030,000

Ratio=4.2:1

love FrontPage:1,160,000

hate FrontPage:276,000

Ratio=4.2:1

love Windows:14,400,000

hate Windows:3,450,000

Ratio=4.1:1

love Microsoft:9,150,000

hate Microsoft:2,500,000

Ratio=3.7:1

love Photoshop:3,190,000

hate Photoshop:1,240,000

Ratio=2.6:1

Whilst many would be astonished at 9,150,000 hits for "love Microsoft", it should be pointed out that the first hit was actually refering to the "Love Bug" virus!

And the results show that Linux is the winner of the "love/hate" battle, followed by Dreamweaver and Apple.

So, having chosen Linux for our hosting and DreamWeaver and Apple for web design, we appear to be on the right side. While Photoshop is an excellent tool, its initial learning curve is likely to have pushed it down the table.

CSS or tables: best layout technique for web design?

We all agree that CSS should be used for layout of pages. If only the browsers could agree.

With the growing importance, quite rightly, of producing accessible web sites, we all want to use CSS. If only the browsers could agree.

While there are designers who have happily used CSS for years, most will admit that support can be, well, cranky with IE5-6 being the worst. However, there are 2 things that could lead to all that changing: the first is IE 7 coming out later this year. The other is the amount of publicity that Firefox is getting.

So, hopefully we'll soon be able to do what most of us have been wanting to do for ages and make the move to using CSS for layout. All of which will simplify the process of meeting my web design goals.