Help Support The Asian Earthquake and Tsunami Appeal.
You can help the victims of this terrible natural disaster by pledging the proceeds of any advertising or affiliate schemes you have on your site for the month of January to your country's Tsunami Earthquake appeal.
I don't know about you, but I a feel a bit helpless right now. However, there is something we can do....
Australian Foundation for Asia and Pacific - http://www.afap.org
CARE Australia - http://www.careaustralia.org.au
The Australian Red Cross - http://www.redcross.org.au
Oxfam - http://www.oxfam.org.au
World Vision - http://www.worldvision.com.au
UNICEF - http://www.unicef.org.au.
Keith Robinson has also posted other international aid organisations.
UPDATE: Aid Srilanka - http://www.aidsrilanka.com
Is this a world first? Westciv's Complete CSS Guide is now available as a free "CSS podGuide" for the iPod.
An interesting article by Richard Czeiger on Printing HREFs on Links.
MSIE doesn't support the ":after" pseudo-element, so Richard has created some code that replicates that functionality for all browsers.
Two days ago, ICANN has approved two new sponsored top-level domains (sTLD): .travel.jobs and, more importantly, .mobi. I won't comment on the .travel.jobs sTLD; about .mobi, ITWorld says the following:
.Mobi is sponsored by Microsoft Corp., Nokia Corp., and Vodafone Group Services Ltd., which hope to target the domain specifically at mobile content and service providers as well as mobile device manufacturers, vendors and individual companies.
In a domain proposal submitted to ICANN, the sponsors predicted a boom in mobile devices by 2006, requiring a host of new Internet services and content tailored to their use.
Yes, you read that correctly: ICANN (together with Microsoft, Nokia and Vodafone) expects web developers to start differentiating between "mainstream" and mobile browsing devices in a DNS-related way, that is, by means of the .mobi sTLD, thereby completely ignoring the concept of device independence and technologies such as CC/PP.
In a device independent architecture, content is dynamically adapted to the client device making the request; this adaptation can occur anywhere in the path from server back to client, thereby taking into account the device's delivery context or CC/PP profile. Stripping out high-res images before sending content to a mobile device is an example of server side adaptation, the application of only handheld CSS rules an example of content adaptation on the client side. Note that this model makes a clear distinction between the content itself and its possible adaptations, meaning that content can be located by means of a single URI. Introducing a .mobi domain for pointing to "mobile resources" thus completely corrupts this logic and means a step back for mobile web development, if massively deployed.
In July 2004, the W3C protested against the announced introduction of a .mobi domain, but apparently was not heard. Furthermore, if you take into account the recent announcement of a formal relationship between the W3C and the Open Mobile Alliance, of which Microsoft, Nokia and Vodafone are members, the whole .mobi thing is even harder to understand.
Wow, check out the 2005 SXSW speaker list.
It seems my quick and dirty remote control example was not well received. In fact, the best comment I have seen so far was "a sad fruit list control panel with four buttons".
So, how about a remote control device with multiple rows of buttons?
Do I like the final solution? Not really. There are many ways a remote control list could be built. This particular example uses absolute positioning, but it could have just as easily been done using other positioning methods.
Does it showcase any groundbreaking new CSS technique? Definitely not
Would I ever use something like this on as real site? Probably not. Ask me if I get a client obsessed with TV remote controls.
So why bother? My concern was that some developers may decide that Flash is the only option simply because they were not aware of the flexibility of CSS. The reality is that CSS is as flexible as we want it to be.
Bottom line? The final choice of whether to use flash or CSS comes down to the developer, the client, the site and most importantly, the needs of the target audiences for that site.
Well, it seems like Netscape DevEdge is back. Thanks for that, AOL. Also, with a certain recent browser release out of the way, Mitchell will return to working on getting the DevEdge material and rights moved over to Mozilla Foundation.
In other news, Opera released the fourth preview release of Opera 7.60 yesterday. Mac is still missing, but both Linux and Windows versions are available. The browser is really shaping up, and I wouldn't be surprised if the final release for those platforms turns up shortly. Mac, on the other hand, seems to be quite another story. To quote Opera developer Eirik Stavem: ... and the showstopper list for Mac release is just growing.
On Windows, this newest release uses a new installer that they are having some trouble with. Read more on that on the Opera Beta Testing forum.
I received an interesting anonymous comment via Listamatic the other day:
A little sceptical about the list as menu argument. Especially the part where you argue that it doesnt limit the designer. Of course it does. If you have anything different than a 'list'; it simply wont do. Say you have a TV Remote control that you want to make it your navigation bar. Do THAT with CSS. In some cases you just can't go without Flash or Javascript.
As there was no way to answer the person, I wrote a quick article - Remote control CSS - with a rough and ready TV remote control example.