Sometimes. Sometimes I read something that means I just have to have a little rant. Quite often they’re replies in forums (and possibly, because I’ve gone off-topic, it will end up being removed).

I’ve just been reading a discussion about the new Beta of IE8. Someone ended up recommending that because it was a Beta release, then nobody should try it.

Now, hold on. The idea of a Beta release is to get people “in the real world” (i.e. not just techies who work closely with the company involved) to try out their product. Or, as Wikipedia puts it…

A beta version is the first version released outside the organization or community that develops the software, for the purpose of evaluation or real-world… testing

If we all follow this advice, we’d probably end up with far worse software as a result (and we complain enough about bugs as it is).

It’s like those who use ad-blocking software on their browser (which I’ve covered before) – they get all their favourite sites, probably email and a whole fist of Google-owned facilities, for free because it’s paid for by these adverts.

But then, I’ve just seen a useful piece of UK software being given up by its author because, although free, he asked for donations. He got next to none. The UK relevance is important though because we in this country are the worse for donating for freely given away software.

We’d all like to block adverts, pay for nothing and not get involved in any software the least bit risky – but it’s leading us to a different future for the internet.

Now, I might be a touch influenced by the fact that I work for the company, but the new Boots.com website, launched today, is so, so much better.

The previous version was poor in every respect – it rated badly for accessibility, it’s images were of a low quality, it was incredibly slow and just… well… bad. In fact it was so damn shoddy I can’t even find an old, working version at archive.org to show you.

The new one, created by Salmon, is superior in every respect. It even validates really well (with the exception of a rogue ampersand which creates loads of errors) – very rare in the current world of Amazon and even the rather plain Google.

Ahhh, another chance to try out the new Showcase De Lux. This time I was more sensible and went in the evening when the parking is just £1.50!

It was a different screen this time and it was huge (the auditorium rather than the screen). As before – comfy, clean, got picture and sound. Nice.

Ok, the film. Well, I saw the first Hellboy when it originally came out and I’m a proud owner of it on DVD. The follow-up film was straight into it, was just a cursory explanation of who/what he is at the beginning. The story was a bit over-the-place and the bad guy, in the end, was reasonably easily defeated. But that’s all the bad stuff out of the way – this was, however minutes long it was, of high quality action with a bit of comedy thrown in.

Most films have quiet sections where the fidgety would begin to get a little bored, but this had nothing like this – it really was wall-to-wall.

Summary of Hellboy 2

All-in-all, fantastic entertainment and well worth seeing. I’ll be adding to my DVD collection in a few months…

Reviewed by David Artiss on 24th August 2008.