:: Personal website of a Toronto web designer
Archive, September 2003
Tuesday, 30. September 2003
Show source at PHP.net
[11:49 pm]
In case you haven't noticed, at PHP.net, you can view the source of every page on the site. Simply follow the link "show source" at the bottom of each page. It is a great opportunity to learn from looking at the well commented source code.
Monday, 29. September 2003
User CSS
[11:21 pm]
As you might already know, you can use your own style sheet to format all Web pages when they are displayed. In your style sheet you can specify the default font style, size, colors, and background for text and headings on all the pages you are visiting.
IE: Format Web Pages Using a Custom Style Sheet
Mozilla: User CSS (changing fonts, colors and other style)
Apart from a great accessibility value, this feature will also allow you to play jokes with your coworkers. An example of a nasty user style sheet:
body
{
background: purple !important;
}
Using a custom CSS topic leads to an another question; Can I override the styles for a specific website or domain? Yes you can, but only if the website uses "CSS Signature", a practice explained by Eric Mayer and Craig Saila. I am adding id="www-sashadesign-com" to my body tag, which will allow you to go ahead and style this site as you wish.
On the other note:
Mozilla.org's article mentioned above really impressed me. Mozilla's capability of controlling the UI chrome via userChrome.css is amazing! Using CSS, you can even remove the throbber and its annoying movement!
Saturday, 27. September 2003
browsercheck.exe
[05:23 pm]
Today, I had more then 300 Google referrals from people searching for "browsercheck.exe"?! I reported about Heise Security's browsercheck.exe a while ago, but this seems to be something different. IRC worm or something?
Thursday, 25. September 2003
Untitled Document
[11:42 pm]
Google search: Untitled Document (5,330,000 results)
What a mess!
Wednesday, 24. September 2003
PHP Cruise
[10:18 pm]
If you think that PHP and cruising have nothing in common, think again. php|cruise is a five-day cruise (March 1st through March 5th, 2004) packed with over 50 hours of PHP training for beginners and professionals.
[via php.net]
Who said PHP is no fun?
We even upgraded to 4.3.3. Our host is being diligent.
Tuesday, 23. September 2003
Magic Quotes
[04:09 pm]
What is Magic Quotes GPC in PHP and the php.ini?
A useful tutorial explaining what Magic Quotes are, why to use them and how to turn them on or off. In my opinion, Magic Quotes are bad and a cause of headaches when a site is moved to a host with a different configuration. If you are not careful, you either end up with broken INSERT statements or too many backward slashes. I am not the only one, some even proclaim war on Magic Quotes.
Monday, 22. September 2003
DNS Wildcards Concerns
[10:46 pm]
IAB Commentary: Architectural Concerns on the use of DNS WildcardsThis document contains a number of observations on the implications of the use of wildcards in DNS zones, and makes some recommendations concerning their use.
Friday, 19. September 2003
Know your competition
[11:16 pm]
Resources for Competing with Linux Get everything you need to convince business and technical decision makers to build their systems on the Microsoft® Windows® platform instead of Linux.
By the way, I finally got my Linux box up and running the way I want, but I still consider myself a Linux dummy.
Thursday, 18. September 2003
Internet Explorer security flaw
[10:40 pm]
An Internet Explorer security flaw discovered by eEye Digital Security is a pretty scary story for IE/Win users and one more reason for me to consider using Mozilla as my default browser.This is a flaw in Microsoft's primary contribution to HTML, the Object tag, which is used to embed basically all ActiveX into HTML pages. The parameter that specifies the remote location of data for objects is not checked to validate the nature of the file being loaded, and therefore trojan executables may be run from within a webpage as silently and as easily as Internet Explorer parses image files or any other "safe" HTML content.
Heise security has put up a demo page (it is harmless, but don't blame me if you clicked), which checks your IE browser for this vulnerability. The demo page is on German, which you might not understand, but all that matters is a red pop-up that says, "Sie sind verwundbar". If you get one of those, well, then "You are vulnerable". In that case, you will also find a program called "browsercheck.exe" on your C: drive executed without your interaction. As said, the demo page and browsercheck.exe are harmless, but visiting a malicious website could be very risky. I must admit, my browser didn't pass the test, despite my recent windows updates.
Wednesday, 17. September 2003
Fcuk the splelchekcer
[03:55 pm]
Can You Raed Tihs?Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are; the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Of course, geeks write scripts for this kind of stuff. The scrmable perl script written by Jamie Zawinski is excellent, even the variable names are scrambled.
Bitdamaged wrote a PHP equivalent, which can also be tested.
Isabel
[11:24 am]
Hurricane Isabel seen from Space Station.
Very impressive.
Tuesday, 16. September 2003
sitefinder.verisign.com
[05:33 pm]
All your Web typos are belong to usNetwork administrators are fuming about changes made by domain registrar Verisign to the DNS system yesterday amid concern that the alterations could make it difficult for mail servers to reject mail from invalid domains.
Resolving Everything: VeriSign Adds WildcardsAs of a little while ago, VeriSign added a wildcard A record to the .COM and .NET TLD DNS zones. The IP address returned is 64.94.110.11, which reverses to sitefinder.verisign.com. What that means in plain English is that most mis-typed domain names that would formerly have resulted in a helpful error message now results in a VeriSign advertising opportunity.
In another words, Verisign diverts the traffic from the DNS errors to their own use. For example, broken links checker like Xenu won't see broken links anymore. Try a few non-existent domains, such as these bellow, and you will end up at sitefinder.verisign.com:
· www.afsdaafsdaafsda.com
· www.verisignreallysucks.com
· www.foofoofoo.com
As a quick fix I added two new entries to my hosts file:
127.0.0.1 64.94.110.11
127.0.0.1 sitefinder.verisign.com
And yes, any mail that comes from 64.94.110.11 is most likely spam.
News.com launches CSS-based layout
[04:47 pm]
News.com has launched a new, CSS-based layout to celebrate its seventh birthday. Although the new design does not validate, mostly because of the incorrect URIs, it does seem to to be semantically organized.
Monday, 15. September 2003
Back
[04:09 pm]
We are back. And Miško is back too. We enjoyed our stay in Montreal to the point that we would even consider moving there some time in the future. Who knows.
Friday, 12. September 2003
New pics
[11:34 pm]
Phone Booths
Dog
Montreal Street
A Window with Flowers
Red and Blue
Thursday, 11. September 2003
We like the city of Montreal
[10:49 pm]
We are still not getting bored of this city!
Walking around the Old Port of Montreal is an unforgettable experience.
How do you like my temporary office?
Wednesday, 10. September 2003
Mosaicultures Montreal 2003
[08:03 pm]
We visited International Mosaicultures Montreal 2003 and took a few pics.
Tuesday, 09. September 2003
Schwartz's
[09:39 pm]
The person visiting Montreal must have a smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz's. Even Jean Chretien and Celine Dion dined there! Due to the fact that I became vegetarian two years ago, I joined Sofia eating french fries instead. Admittedly, we didn't know about the place before and became attracted by a huge lineup of people inside the deli.
Monday, 08. September 2003
Montreal Panorama
[11:55 pm]
Panoramic view of Montreal (290 KB), created out of 5 pictures taken from Mount Royal. I hope it can give you some feeling.
Sunday, 07. September 2003
In the ViaRail train
[03:34 pm]
We are in Montreal!
We got a few pictures taken in the train.
Friday, 05. September 2003
Blog Tool Feature Comparison Table
[05:29 pm]
Blog Tool Feature Comparison Table is a useful place for people who consider to use one of the available blog publishing tools as opposed to coding it themselves.
Wednesday, 03. September 2003
Kazaa Lite and Google
[06:07 am]
If you search at Google for kazaa lite you will get a few thousand results as usual. However, at the bottom of the page there is a notice, that makes the things slightly different:
In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 11 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results.
This is the first time I see Google result page filtered.
Is this a good or bad thing?
Monday, 01. September 2003
Going Wireless
[09:13 pm]
What else do I need here?
Beer, maybe?
One of the reasons I rushed to get a laptop is because we go for a one week vacation to Montreal. Most will argue, but I think it is nice to stay connected while on vacation.
It is lovely to be wireless, but as it looks like there are a few security issues connected to it. Dispite the fact that some of my neighbours within range are very skilled, I am more interested than worried. While looking for answers, I stumbled across an insightful article, Securing SOHO Wireless Residential LANS.
