Pros and Cons of Commonly Used Internet Browsers

These days there are many popular browsers to choose from: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer to name a few. Most people are running Chrome or Firefox, but there are advantages and disadvantages to each one. Here's the breakdown:

Chrome: Currently the most widely used browser, Chrome boasts fast boot-up and loading times, a massive extensions marketplace, and an easy-to-use interface. You can also go "Incognito" if you don't want to save search history or cookies. Chrome also integrates your preferences over every device on which you use Chrome, even if it's a public computer. Simply log into your Google account and all of your bookmarks, preferences, and recent history is returned to the computer.The Chrome store is also occasionally interesting (it's very small though), and the Chromebooks are a nice addition to the Chrome family.

However, Chrome isn't all cupcakes and rainbows; Chrome achieves its fast boot-up times by starting up in the background as soon as your computer turns on, though you can change this on Windows using MSConfig or Autoruns. The loading times are most likely made possible by the large memory requirements Chrome places on your computer. To see what I mean, you can open up Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del on Windows 7, or from Terminal in Mac) and go to the Processes tab. Here's mine for example. 5 of the 6 most memory-consuming processes were all Chrome-related, and I only had 2 tabs open with minimal extensions. Plus, some sites (Hopkins sites, banking sites, etc.) have an issue with working on Chrome, and some of those issues stem from the fact that it is a 32-bit browser, unlike Firefox or Safari, which are 64-bit. At the point when this happens, I just switch to using another browser.

Further, Incognito mode doesn't actually do much to protect your privacy. Google's own page states that it won't affect "Websites that collect or share information about you, ... malicious software ... [or] secret agents". And because Chrome is proprietary (not open-source), it is always possible that the browser has some hidden behaviors to collect your information. Thanks to Edward Snowden, Google's quip about secret agents just doesn't seem funny anymore.

Oh, and that new scroll bar is awful.

Firefox: Unlike Chrome, Firefox by Mozilla is entirely open-source. Like Chrome, Firefox can be set up so that you can use your settings from any device (Using Sync), but if privacy is a concern, you don't have to. One of my favorite features on Firefox is the "Master Password". Like Chrome, Firefox will ask you if you want to save a password for a site. Without Sync, Mozilla doesn't need to know your passwords; they can be stored safely on your computer. And with Master Password, you can make wildly complex passwords for all your online accounts, and only have to remember one. That being said, your Master Password should still be fairly secure in case your computer falls into the wrong hands.

I also prefer how Firefox displays their privacy options. Here is Chrome and Firefox side-by-side:
Chrome's privacy setting are actually much longer than what is shown, and all the powerful options are hidden in a non-descript button called "Content settings". Plus, there's no description as to what the settings mean. What are handlers? Which plug-ins are running without my knowledge? While Firefox may not have as many options as Chrome, Firefox is much more verbose with the options it does have.

Firefox is noticeably slower than Chrome, but also places less memory requirements (For me, only one process, and it requires about a third of the memory that Chrome collectively asks for.) Bottom line: Firefox is more trustworthy than Chrome and has more understandable options, at the cost of some speed and overall performance.

Internet Explorer: If you're running Windows, Internet Explorer comes natively on your computer, making it the ideal web browser for downloading a better web browser. As far as other real advantages, there really aren't any. It's as slow (if not slower) than Firefox, and doesn't really have any features that stick out. Its Settings page is bloated to the point that it is difficult to find the settings you want to change, the horizontal scrollbar can be unresponsive for touchpads. If you're using IE to view this blog, do yourself a favor and switch to Chrome or Firefox right now.

Safari: Safari is the Internet Explorer for Macs; it's the native web browser and comes installed on the OS without any work on your end. Unlike Internet Explorer, however, Safari is actually a decent browser (though Firefox is still #1 in my book). The current edition available for Macs is Safari 7, and there is a Windows Safari application also available (5.7.1). Because of the large population of iPhone users, Safari accounted for 62.17 percent of mobile web browsing traffic, but only 5.43 percent of desktop traffic in October 2011. Curious.

The privacy settings on Safari are also pretty impressive, with third party and cookie blocking, options that will tell websites not to track you, and Private Browsing, which is more comprehensive that Chrome's Incognito mode. Safari is also very power efficient on Macs, designed to help your battery last for 1 hour longer than it would if you were using Chrome or Firefox. Both Firefox and Chrome also use about a third more memory (133%) on your hard drive than Safari will (again, on a Mac). According to the Apple page, Safari is also 6x faster than Firefox. The Safari extensions act like the Chrome additions, allowing users to choose weather apps, Facebook enhancers, and things that will help with code debugging.

Safari promises to do all this on Macs, and I know from experience on my home PC that Safari is not even close to these stats on a PC. You are much better off with Firefox or Chrome on a PC, no question. Despite all the advantages, Safari is still far behind Firefox and Chrome, even on Macs. I like how Chrome can integrate over all my computers and Chromebook, but Safari has nothing like that. It certainly helps make a decision.

We hope that this post has helped you if you ever had questions about web browsers. Thanks for reading!

Online Collaboration

As we mentioned before in Our Heads are in the Clouds, cloud storage allows multiple users to collaborate on the same projects. In this article we will discuss how to use Google Drive and JShare to gain control over the changes your fellow collaborators make to shared documents.

Using Google Drive is as simple as clicking the red "Create" button on the left sidebar, selecting the type of Google Doc, making your first edits, and clicking the blue "Share" button in the top-right of the Doc page.

When you click on "Share", a "Share Settings" dialog box opens with various options. At the bottom you can explicitly add Google users as collaborators (and individually assign permissions), but you can also change the access settings (under "Who has access") to "Anyone with the link" and then send the link to your collaborators. The second method gives all Anonymous users the same permissions to your doc, however, so I recommend giving them "Can View" access only.

With multiple users editing the same document, you may find that you need to access a previous version, before someone else changed your content. Docs allows you to do this with "See Revision History" under the File tab. If you don't see a specific change, try clicking the "Show more detailed revisions" button at the bottom. You'll notice that user edits are color-coded. Once you find the latest version with the content you want, you can click "Restore this revision" to roll back all changes after that point. Those changes are still stored in the revision history, however, in case you want to access them later.

One major drawback of Google Docs' revision system is that there is no way to 'merge branches'; that is, to combine non-conflicting content in two different versions of the same document, in order to create one new version. In addition, adding multiple users with varying levels of access isn't very user-friendly. However, if you are working with only a few people on a couple pages of work, Google Drive + Docs is the fastest and easiest tool for the job.

JShare has an uglier interface and is a bit more complicated than Google Docs, but JShare also gives you more powerful tools if you're willing to learn how to use them. Here we will give an example of JShare's usage with blog articles. First create a new folder to hold the blog articles you want others to edit:

That button will start the Folder wizard, which first asks for for a folder name. I wrote "Blog Articles" and then pressed the Next button. Then you must select the other users that are allowed access to the folder (we'll specify their permissions later). Simply start typing their email in the text box and select the right one from the drop-down list. When you have added all your users, click Next. You should now be at the "Verify Permissions" step. For each user, click the permissions you want to give them. For this application, I will be giving my only user "Contributor" access.

After clicking next again, you will be at the "Configure" step. Since we want versioning, check the first box. The other options aren't useful to me right now, but they can be helpful if you have sensitive documents or are working on a long-term project.

Finally, you can send an Email to each of your users (who have at least read-access) with a link to the folder you have just created.
This requires that your native mail client (Apple Mail for Macs and Microsoft Outlook for PCs) is set up properly. This step isn't necessary if you are sending the link to users personally via other methods. Once you are done, you should see your new folder in your home directory. If you ever want to change the permissions given to users, right-click the folder, and then select "Manage" from the drop-down menu. If you remember from the other article on JShare, the Permissions tab on the left sidebar takes you to this screen:


You'll notice that in addition to the user I added, we can also change the permissions given to Authenticated Users (Users who passed through the Hopkins Portal), as well as for the Public (Anonymous users). You can also add new users and give them their own permissions by clicking the "Add User/Group" Button. Don't forget to click "Apply" to save your changes. Note that you may have to change the permissions for files within the folder.

Once you have some content in your folder that has been overwritten, you can start accessing previous versions of them by selecting the file you want to revert, going to Manage/Versioning/ as before, and clicking on the Version Number. This will open a dialog box where you can choose where to save the version so you can edit it locally. Be sure to name the file after its original name (JShare does not do this automatically).

It's also a good idea to check out the file any time you are working on it. This prevents anyone else from editing the file until you check it in again. If you don't check out the file, someone could try editing it while you are working on it, only to have your version overwrite all their (potentially helpful) changes when you upload it. The button "Checkout File" is located near the top of the Versioning window.

When you are ready to check in your files again, upload your version to where the previous version is located on JShare (Using the "Upload" button in the blue "Files" menu), and be sure to click "Overwrite file if it already exists" before beginning the upload. Then right-click the file in JShare and select "Checkin" from the drop-down menu. Now any other contributor is free to check out the file and make their own changes.

As you can see, JShare is a bit more difficult to work with than Google Drive. However, for projects where changes are made in large packets, or where permissions and version control need to be explicitly stated, JShare is the better tool to use.

If you want to learn more about version control systems that include merging and other helpful development tools, keep an eye out for an upcoming article on using Git and SourceTree. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Thinking outside the 2D Box

It is no secret that Johns Hopkins is ranked #1 on the list of universities that spend the most money on research (and if you don't believe me, check out this press release). While part of the research budget is going to the Applied Physics Laboratory, which supports thousands of full time researchers, staff, and maintenance members, a good chunk goes to the famous medical school as well. And let's not forget our fellow brilliant students, who are making huge leaps forward in the myriad fields studied at Johns Hopkins. 

One of these labs in particular is challenging the way scientists study cancer and the way it spreads throughout a body. The Wirtz Lab in the Physical Sciences-Oncology Center has been focusing on studying the spread of cancerous cells, but in three dimensions.

If this doesn't sound revolutionary, consider the fact that most labs study cancerous cells that are contained to a Petri dish, a two dimensional surface on which cancer cells have a known motility (movement). But in 2010 Stephanie Fraley, a then-doctoral student in the Wirtz Lab, thought outside convention and wondered what would happen if a cancer cell was introduced to a cylindrical arrangement of a gel based on collagen I, the most common type of connective tissue in the human body. The results were enough to knock Denis Wirtz, the lab's director, off his feet and onto the 3D path.

While cells in a 2D environment would move slowly, adhering firmly to stiff surfaces within the Petri dish, the 3D cells appeared to move as though propelled by springs, and actively sought out softer parts of the gel-collagen. For decades scientists wondered why cancer cells remained around stiff, mutated flesh in the lab, but actively metastasized within a human body. The discovery of the Wirtz lab resolves this paradox. 

This discovery also raises questions about the efficacy of pharmaceuticals in the fight against cancer, and how tumors can be studied in 3D at all. The former has implications for drugs and chemotherapy; what if there is a drug that would be successful in the human body, but because it was tested in 2D (where cancer cells behave in a drastically different manner), it failed? Should all drugs be retested? How can we use current technology to study tumors in 3D? We need to design a new lens for SEMs to reach this information. Who will design that, and is there funding for it?

Like all good research, this discovery simply raises more questions to pursue. Wirtz, who received his training in physics, not biology, is adamant that the discoveries of his labs will pave the way for new, groundbreaking studies. This would not have been possible if not for the hard work of all who participate in supporting his research, not only financially. Donald E. Ingber of Harvard and Kenneth Yamada, NIH investigator and second most cited researcher in biology according to Google Scholar, both think 3D cancer research is the "missing link" between the 2D lab and a live human or animal model. 

Armed with this research, Wirtz intends to finally beat cancer once and for all, and he is only one of hundreds of hard working researchers at Hopkins. Truly, we earned the status as #1. Let's go Blue Jays!