Post Archive

› January 30, 2003

And in other web-based news,

you'll all be pleased to know that Paul @ idontsmoke.co.uk is back, powered by Mac OS X and Blosxom.

Hiveware

Dan Benjamin has just made available: Hiveware for excellent desktop, server-side, and java based applications he has built, and is kind enough to share. Find OS X desktop software such as Enkoder an application that creates (now even more secure) spam obsfucation, Url Cleaner for cleaning URLs of invalid entities, Uuid Maker for generating universally unique identifiers, and more.

BTW - In a previous life, I might have made this post by walking up to you, doing a little dance, running in a circle, then dancing again. Why? Because I might have been a bee, which I mention only because I'm proud to have produced the hiveware logo.

› January 29, 2003

MT Validation

Folks using MovableType may be interested to note that Joshua's request has been answered. Namely, a MT plugin called MTValidate that makes available the power of the w3c markup validator, as you see fit within your MT templates. Credit goes to the author Alexei Kosut, and look, he's also put together a MT spell checking plugin.
Also of note, for speedy validation I've started trying outcast-media's web validator for os 9, X and windows, it has a notably small footprint and seems to work well. Readers: please feel free to comment with your "must have" validator applications.

› January 27, 2003

CD-ROM Library

The folks at the Internet Archive (remember "The Way Back Machine") are developing an archive of CD-ROMS and Software. It seems that they've kickstarted it thanks to a donation of titles from Macromedia, through materials made under the "Made-With-Macromedia" program (I was unable to determine under what conditions Macromedia actually obtained ownership to these titles). The archive itself appears to be very beta. Discussions are taking place about the best way to create and provide this archive, and others as they are donated, and they are talking with Apple about a potential donation.

I was a little perplexed to see that the info is currently being stored in a filemaker database, but my knowledge of filemaker shortcomings are all hearsay.

The concept seems very appealing, a whole subset of (heretofore unavailable) efforts and achievements collected in a searchable and downloadable resouce, with meta data and even reader reviews and ratings. But in reality, it could end up being a highly organized collection of things better off in the dumpster. It could collapse on it's anti-darwinian efforts by eventually being ignored past the point of even non-profit funding. But I think their efforts should be encouraged, the potential value greatly outweighs any risk of wasted effort.

› January 26, 2003

scihpargbew

I'm glad to report that we elgooG own "scihpargbew". Link to google mirror found via prolps.

› January 24, 2003

MT, Safari, and bookmarklet

Antipixel requested and was answered in: Help with Bookmarklets. Specifically, help getting Safari to play nice with the MoveableType bookmarklet for making posts. This info may be helpful for other folks making MT posts with other browsers and operating systems. Does it work? Yes: this post was made thanks to it.

› January 21, 2003

I Like Syndication

Maybe it's NetNewsWire's wonderful interface, or perhaps just the efficiency of it all, it makes me very happy when websites take the leap and add syndication files of one sort or another. Even more so, when non-weblogs take the leap. Such is the case with graphics.com (not related to web-graphics.com), who now offer this graphics.com rss 0.91 newsfeed, for those interested.

› January 20, 2003

Two Handy Chimera/Safari Favelets

Antipixel.com has made available three browser toolbar favelets for use in Chimera that workaround the issues some favelets have with the browser's built-in pop-up window blocking. They include lookups for dictionary.com, thesaurus, and google. A special bonus: they also work splendidly from the toolbar in Safari, which can't be said for other favelets I've tried. Drag, drop, and go.

› January 19, 2003

Best feature of Safari

An imaginary person did not ask me: "Nathan, what is your favorite new feature of that Apple browser they call Safari?". To which, I did not answer: "The status bar. It tells me in plain english what to expect from any link in terms of it's destination (new window, new window behind current window, etc.) It's changed my enjoyment of browsing the web by a signifiant factor". To which the imaginary person said "What are you talking about? First of all, I don't exist, second...". To which I interrupted:
Safari status showing an indication of what window a link will be targeted towards

Img Rollover

Simon points us to javascript rollover code that does not invalidate markup, and without adding any extra params. The beauty is it's simplicity - you give your images a specific class (imgover), and put the rollover image version in the same dir as the non-rollover image (with a "_o" in the filename), and the script does the rest. Perhaps this is the answer to validation issues with the otherwise soopa excellent soopa rollovers from youngpup?

› January 17, 2003

Syndirella

Windows folks finally have a news aggregator that looks comparable to the goodness that is NetNewsWire (which is Mac only). The application is called Syndirella and you should download it now.

A sausage story

Note to regular readers: This is an atypical post, a story written by long time friend, and not at all related to anything normally discussed here. I'm experimenting with opening up the topics here a bit, to include generally fun reading.

The bratwursts have landed, and that most deliciously.
Thomas van Geel
After a day of aging them in the fridge to marry the flavors, Beth and I sampled our first taste of homemade sausage last night, I with grainy French mustard, Beth with smooth American ketchup. They were, without question, the best sausages we have ever tasted ? fresh, succulent and juicy, with pronounced caraway and delicate mace flavors that blended perfectly with the savory pork and veal. A triumph in the art of charcuterie they were, and surely the first of many.

view rest of article

› January 15, 2003

GIMP on OS X

For any os x users itching to try out the legendary GIMP application, install instructions are available from frownland. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), is an open source application which is often compaired to Adobe Photoshop in terms of it's feature set. Despite the comfort in knowing that an application of this magnitude is available at no cost, I think I'll skip the 13 easy steps towards installation. On the other hand, if Adobe doesn't get with the program and make ATM for os x sometime soon, I might get upset enough with the company to be tempted. Don't adjust your brains, that indeed was a very disjointed association.

Download of the Day

Megan Morrone describes the email address encoder
Screen showing the tagline with Dans name

Dan P. Benjamin has been awareded free advertising on TechTV's show "The Screen Savers" by the pure merit of his email address encoder. The encoder was featured yesterday as the "Download of the Day", and mentioned several times during the show. Congratulations Dan.

› January 13, 2003

Mark Pilgrim on semantic obsolescence

Mark Pilgrim is very upset about the new XHTML 2.0 working draft, specifically the lack of the cite tag, which makes his posts by citations semantically obsolete.

“Which means that, after keeping up with all the latest standards, painstakingly marking up all my content, and validating every last page on my site, I'm still stuck in a dead end.”

Mark has every right to be angry because he's followed all the recommendations and invested a lot of time into showing others how to do it. I know I'd be upset if the same thing happened to my site.
UPDATE (Jan. 14): Masayasu Ishikawa of the W3C notes that cite will be put back in the next draft.

› January 11, 2003

Will this be the last post?

newspaper headline: Terrorist Plot to Blow Up Internet on 1-11!I've been holding on to this jem gem since last november. For those not living in the US, the answer is yes, we are insane.

› January 10, 2003

Don't let it bug you

Are you concerned that your powerbook/ibook keyboard will become a moth museum? Perhaps iSkin will help?
Link via KungFu Master.

Abridged CSS2 Support Guide, and PermaCommentLinks

There is a new abridged version of the MacEdition Guide to CSS2 support, CodeBitch was nice enough to let us know about it.
As a sidetrack - I've added permalinks for each comment (which can be retrieved from the @ sign in each comment title). So now it's a snap to point right to the comment I just mentioned.

› January 9, 2003

Unique to Safari CSS filter?

In "should safari be intentionally buggy" Mark ponders what a Safari specific hack should look like. Perhaps: media="safari_all" and media="safari_print"? Just a thought.
[1 min later]
Oh wait, Aaron Swartz already thought of that.

!usedcolors - a new bookmarklet

Milo was kind enough to share a new bookmarklet with us. Called "!usedcolors", it figures out what colors are being used on a page and displays them as little swatches and hex code in a popup window list. He's got it working with some fancy regex for IE and another version for Moz. I noticed it almost working for Safari, and so, with a small tweak - here's: !usedcolors_safari. But be sure to read about the details on Milo's page, there are some limitations being worked out.

Safari browser improvements, in real time

Dave Hyatt is directly responding to issues with the Safari browser (he is a key member of the Safari dev team) on his weblog Surfin' Safari. Link via Splorp.

MT-RefSearch 0.7 - The "Wonderwhammy" release

The Moveable Type plugin that detects folks visiting from Google and serves up a special menu of things related to the search terms they used, AKA MT-RefSearch, has been updated.
There are a lot of new features and enhancements so if you are using this plugin, or it interests you, I recommend you check out the MT-RefSearch Page right away.
Thanks eliot, for letting us know.

Safari link border

I don't think this "feature" is limited to Safari, but it may be worth noting that Safari creates a dashed border around text links in what would seem to be equivalent to the :active pseudo selector in CSS. I tried overwriting this default behavior by specifying 0 or none or "1px solid #fff", but none of these made it go away. I changed the a:active to 1px solid #ff0, and sure enough, the dashed border is actually outside the yellow line I specified. If that's not descriptive enough, and if you have the quicktime player, you can check out this short demo movie (105k)
UPDATE: This can be changed with CSS! It's the outline property, not border... read the comments for more info.

› January 7, 2003

Safari CSS2 Support

CodeBitch was kind enough to let us know in a comment that the MacEdition Guide to CSS2 support in Mac-only browsers has been updated for Safari.

oh no safari

Well, the browser is only minutes old, so this report is a little early, but Yikes this site doesn't look right in safari... But it's readable - which is what counts in a pinch.
Update: Mark Pilgrim has already put together a significant post on the subject, and this: Safari information for web designers.

› January 5, 2003

Killer Movable Type Feature on the Horizon

Simple and Powerful Text Formatting, a new feature of the beloved weblog tool MovableType is going to make the typhographically inclined happy, as well as the lazy (me).

Allowing authors to use simple text shortcuts to apply formating in several differernt styles such as Wiki as well as smart quotes ala SmartyPants.

Now's a good time to add your thoughts to the discussion.

› January 2, 2003

NetNewsWire Pro

So if you download the beta of NetNewsWire Pro, you can add and edit posts to your weblog. I'm doing that here, and I'm enjoying the spell checking feature immensely. Oops, another reason to use a web browser less. The whole efficiency of syndication readers is so appealing to me as a reader of weblogs, it seems like browser makers are missing the boat by not having a syndication tab for the various side panels. On the other hand, browsers are bloated enough. Would it be silly to have a browser that was dumb enough not to display ridiculously invalid code? There's a part of me that strongly defends the subjective content value of aesthetics, and another part that wonders if we wouldn't be better off if the web was one giant, quick reference outline. Have you guessed it? Yes, there will be more rambling in 2003.