Netscape recently released Netscape 6.2.1 which, apparently, is more bloated and resource-intensive than 6.0. I still use the old Communicator 4.76 for web work, as I'm waiting for a worthwhile version of Netscape to upgrade to. I've tried all three of the major browsers (NS, IE, and Opera), and I've become most comfortable with Netscape, but I bet by this point, Internet Explorer has evolved into a much better browser. I'm still loathe to make the switch, just because IE has a much larger footprint than Netscape. Good ole' Netscape. Nothing beats Netscape.

You could always tell that Finale was written by programmers for programmers, but it becomes even more obvious when you start reading the manual. Many of the tools bear the stamp of a computer science major who was so excited about his way of solving the problem, that he never quite considered the end user, who probably isn't a computer person. A case in point would be the method of creating crescendos or accelerandos. In Finale, you design a graphical line with a scale like 2 eighth notes to a pixel, with the slope of the line equal to the change in dynamic or tempo. After the shape is created, the effect is modified by scaling the slope of the line by a variety of multipliers.

Wouldn't it have been easier and more intuitive to have a dialog box such as "Change tempo from        bpm to        bpm over        beats"? Of course this wouldn't cover slopes with curvature, but it would cover the vast majority of day-to-day changes with more ease.

"I don't like my music, but what is my opinion against that of millions of others?" - Frederick Loewe