:: Personal website of a Toronto web designer
Archive, October 2003
Friday, 31. October 2003
Patent Infringement Case
[12:21 pm]
The End of Flash?Flash could disappear from online advertising. Sound ludicrous? Then you aren't aware of what has happened between Microsoft and a little-known company called Eolas. If you are aware, you probably don't know the issues this will raise for online advertising
Wednesday, 29. October 2003
Coping with browser incompatibility problems
[09:11 pm]
Peter-Paul Koch has launched QuirksMode that contains more than 150 pages with technical information about common and not so common browser incompatibility problems, both in CSS and in JavaScript. Nice job!
Tuesday, 28. October 2003
Tables vs. CSS
[09:08 pm]
Why tables for layout is stupid: problems defined, solutions offered
Nothing really new, but this entertaining presentation is worth a look.
I love this quote :-)Repent! The road to hell is paved with spacer gifs and nested tables!
Monday, 27. October 2003
CSS fun
[11:26 am]
3D Border Demo 2
You don't need concrete, nails, and steel to build a house; CSS is enough.
Just for the fun of it, I had to check it in NN4; the house magically disappeared.
Sunday, 26. October 2003
Windows Longhorn Screetshots
[05:08 am]
Windows Code-Named Longhorn 4051 has leaked onto the Internet.
• at WinBeta
at Neowin.net
Friday, 24. October 2003
Crypt
[09:55 pm]
I was trying to decrypt something in Perl and came across this lovely explanation of the crypt function irreversibility:Note that crypt is intended to be a one-way function, much like breaking eggs to make an omelette.
I gave up decrypting.
Thursday, 23. October 2003
Penis Mouse Pointer
[08:07 pm]
All of the sudden, people are searching for penis mouse pointer. I have no idea how I got listed over there, but I feel bad when users come here and leave empty handed. I'll have to design one, damn it!!
mnoGoSearch
[12:40 pm]
I've spent at least 24 hours trying to install mnoGoSearch on one of the sites I am working on. It just does not want to work properly.
No, I don't blame the software, I blame my stupidity, and the server configuration. It is so disappointing, I must tell ya.
Anybody tried it out? Is there any other open source alternative known to work well on a large scale website?
Wednesday, 22. October 2003
A List Apart redesign
[12:09 am]
It's about time!ALA 3.0 kicks off with three articles by three of our best writers. Details on our front- and backend redesign will be posted in an upcoming issue.
Tuesday, 21. October 2003
Kulic
[03:22 pm]
Am I blind or is Google going crazy?Your search - kulic - did not match any documents.
I tried to search with the Google Toolbar and without it; same results.
A shock from Vaio notebooks
[03:23 am]
Users may get a shock from Vaio notebooksSony is notifying owners of certain Vaio notebooks that their modems might not perform as well as expected.
I got an alert from VAIO Support Agent today, notifying me about the problem. I will have to contact them tomorrow, to find out if my model is affected. I actually hope it is, because in that case I would get one more year of warranty :-)
Monday, 20. October 2003
Stupid spam email
[11:42 am]
Oh, broken link!
There appears to be a problem on this page of your site.
On page www.sashadesign.com/refs/ when you click on "Google: photoshop guru breasts", the link gives the error: Domain name lookup failed (may be a transient error).
Should I forward this email to Google Support?
Sunday, 19. October 2003
Logical approach?
[08:43 pm]
I am taking a weird math course, "Introduction to Logic for Computer Science". My head hurts! Here is an example found on the first page of the textbook:Mary has twice as many apples as John. Mary throws half of her apples away, because they are rotten, and John eats one of his. Mary still has twice as many apples as John. How many apples did Mary and John have initially?
I can never solve this kind of problems using pen and paper. I think about Mary's and John's apples at the same time, and that is where the troubles really start . . . and why should I care if her apples are rotten or not?
Tickets please
[05:59 pm]
Fully occupied!
I tried to imagine myself riding this train, with no success.
Saturday, 18. October 2003
Moo-ooo!
[05:28 pm]
Moms Battle Genetic EngineeringA group of New Zealand mothers led by a former pop star have launched a provocative billboard campaign to protest their government's decision to allow agricultural genetic engineering.
The image of a women with four breasts hooked up to milking machines is really hard to miss.
A bug?
[01:26 am]
I am not quite sure why Firebird cuts off the containing layer (#bzzz). I wish it were a website bug, those are easier to fix than browser bugs, but this happens randomly and without any particular reason. Minimize-Maximize or Reload will fix the problem. It seems to me that it occurs whenever a page loads a bit slower than usual. Anybody else experienced the same problem?
Update: a larger picture of the screen shot.
Thursday, 16. October 2003
IntelliTXT
[11:47 pm]
Double-underlined links advertising (see example) has started to show up on many websites. I find that they interrupt the flow of reading more than GIF or Flash banners . The idea reminds me so much of Microsoft's Smart Tags, which fortunately are abandoned, at least for the time being. This advertising method apparently "only" works in Win/IE, which is not good news for the majority of Internet users out there. One more reason to switch to Mozilla/Firebird? I first noticed these double-underlined links on Dev Shed articles. OSnews does the same, but they also provide us with a very useful explanation regarding the issue. The ads are being served by Vibrant Media and they can easily be blocked via Hosts file:
127.0.0.1 itxt.vibrantmedia.com
Wednesday, 15. October 2003
Hey Mozilla lovers
[02:37 pm]
New Mozilla 1.5, Firebird 0.7 and Thunderbird 0.3 released.
Mozilla.org will get a new look mastered by Dave Shea. The design is now available in public beta. More info at Mezzoblue.
H4x0r
[11:54 am]
Some of the recent H4x0r translations :-)
- you wish but i'll take you out anytime, anywhere sucka
- lol what now bitch
- I will own your ass from now until the end of time
- im confuzed
- you suck
- Nothing you can do will stop me from kicking your ass
- i own joo
- my name is techno and you will all obey me
- kelly lets go fucken have sex
Tuesday, 14. October 2003
CSS Floats
[01:31 pm]
Floatutorial, simple tutorials on CSS floats Floatutorial takes you through the basics of floating elements such as images, drop caps, next and back buttons, image galleries, inline lists and multi-column layouts.
Containing Floats, by Eric A. Meyer As powerful and useful as they are, floats can make for tricky layout tools.
Monday, 13. October 2003
Site Tweakings
[12:46 am]
Hard to notice, but some new things have been added to the site. After a few days of work, we got more structural markup, cleaner style sheets and more flexible PHP code. Special thanks goes to Kasko for Mac testings. As far as I can tell, everything seems to be fine. Some CSS skins we had before are still missing, but they will be added very soon. I just couldn't wait anymore.
Anything falling apart?
Thursday, 09. October 2003
Photoshop or Genetic Engineering?
[11:23 pm]
Would you cuddle this puppy?
[via YayHooray!]
Wednesday, 08. October 2003
Eolas vs. Microsoft linkdump
[11:45 pm]
- Patent Nr. 5,838,906
- The 521-million-dollar man
- Eolas Technologies
- Information for Developers about Changes to Internet Explorer
- Internet Explorer Changes
- Creating the Best User Experience for Active Web Content
- Active Content Developer Center
- Microsoft Confirms IE Changes in Wake of Lawsuit
- The Eolas matter
- public-web-plugins@w3.org
Monday, 06. October 2003
Search by Location
[11:14 pm]
A few days ago, Google introduced Search by Location service. As mentioned on FAQ page, sometimes you want to search the whole worldwide web; sometimes you just want to find a pizza place close to home. We will probably see more innovative ideas in this field very soon. Why? Well, simply because the other giant, Overture, is experimenting with geo-targeting as well. Competition is good.
GeoURL mania
[11:00 pm]
It is probably not supposed to be as sophisticated as Google's Search by Location, but it is fun. With so many websites using the GeoURL links now, I decided to join the community. All it takes is a few simple steps. GeoURL's idea of mapping documents in cyberspace to real-world locations has been mentioned at Slashdot and WebMonkey. I had some troubles finding the exact longitude and latitude coordinates of my location; most online mapping services that do the job are USA based.
Sunday, 05. October 2003
WebmasterWorld
[11:58 pm]
Am I the only one who gets 403 Forbidden when trying to access WebmasterWorld.com?
Saturday, 04. October 2003
Versign vs. Users 1:1
[10:45 pm]
VeriSign shuts down Web site finderWeb address provider VeriSign Inc. said on Friday it would suspend a controversial new service that steers mistaken Web searches to its own page after the organization that oversees Internet policies demanded it do so.
It didn't last too long.
RSS feeds
[02:48 pm]
I added RSS feeds from the sites I like, visit, and learn from frequently. You can access them using the drop down menu underneath "News". This looks like a slightly more sophisticated version of Exit section.
I plan to add my own RSS feed very soon.
Thursday, 02. October 2003
Exploring the Limits of CSS Layout
[12:48 pm]
In this month's edition of WPDFD, Joe Gillespie put a batch of browsers through some gruelling tests to see how well they coped with Cascading Style Sheets layouts. He came up with interesting results.
