Aug 15
Tech Articles Apple, Microsoft, web View Comments
‘Cloud Computing’ is the next big thing that’s eminently happening on the Internet. It’s unclear who coined the term initially, but I’m sure most are aware of its meaning. While its current implementation is patchy, Microsoft is making a first leap at delivering it in an integrated form.
Mar 07
Tech Articles, Web Development & Design design, development, Firefox, IE, standards, test, W3C, web View Comments
The [recently released] Acid3 test, like its predecessor, allows for subjecting modern browsers to advanced testing of its standards compliance. Acid2, which most current browsers pass (including IE8 Beta 1), was mainly focused on CSS rendering.
Acid3 – on the other hand – doesn’t evaluate a single technology. It was designed to test the whole Web 2.0 experience (ECMAScript, W3C Document Model 2, etc.). It basically determines the level of interactivity a browser can deliver.
Firefox 3 B3
vs.
IE7 
This extremely hard test evaluates a series of 100 criteria and exposes a number of flaws in all leading browsing suites, including IE, Opera, Safari and Firefox. Upcoming versions of Safari and Firefox are to score in the 80-90 range, whereas IE8 scores in the disappointing sub-50 range.
IE7 has been reported to flunk completely with results not even peaking above the 20% mark.
Jan 24
Web Development & Design design, free, Tech, web View Comments
Web design and icons naturally go together, whether it’s to merely spruce up the scenery or to accentuate important link elements on a page, there are no two ways about it. Some glossy or matte professional looking icons can really add that extra level of finesse to any design. The word ‘professional’ doesn’t always need to imply costliness, though.
Many talented graphics artists alike are producing sleek icons without wanting a dime back for them. All you need to do is use them gracefully and give the creator some well-deserved credit.
NX06 is a slightly older set of Windows icons which could nicely do for web design as well. It’s prominently black and would perfectly fit designs that feature a lot of blacks or grays. It was inspired by Longhorn (Windows Vista’s codename) and OS X.
PNG format, size 192*192 px.
This artist has not published usage guidelines for this work. Use respectfully and give credit to the rightful owner of the work.
Jan 24
Freebies, Tech Articles development, free, Microsoft, notepad++, Programming, sourceforge, web, windows View Comments
I’ve come to appreciate Notepad++ as a full-blown source code editor, whereas in the past it used to be a second-class citizen, somewhat. I kept it around because it operates and loads blazingly fast, especially handy when you don’t have the time to start Dreamweaver. Though Notepad++ is a lot more than a quick app…
It supports everything you’d expect from a well-seasoned code editor, amongst other features:
You should see Notepad++ as an all-round replacement for Windows’ built-in Notepad and a lot more. It supports a vast array of programming languages, yet is specialized enough to be used for web authoring, too: it’ll recognize nested languages effortlessly, e.g. XHTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript in one page.
Notepad++ is completely free of charge and subject to the GPL license.
Jan 18
Uncategorized design, initialization, nullification, web, xhtml View Comments
Every browser has its own set of default styling for web pages. In case a particular website doesn’t provide enough styling for a certain element, it applies these instead. The differences between browsers can result into unforeseen results. A good example of this behavior is the difference in margins and paddings defined for lists (<ul>, <ol>, <dl>).
One technique you could use is:
RSS* {
margin: 0; padding: 0;
}
Yes, this will neutralize everything to 0 margin and padding, but it’ll also have its effects on headings, forms, blockquotes, etc. Everything will be aligned crisply to the left side of the page, while this may not entirely be your intention.
@charset "utf-8";
/*-- Initialization Stylesheet --*/
/* v2.1, by Faruk Ates - www.kurafire.net
Addendum by Robert Nyman - www.robertnyman.com */
/* Neutralize styling:
Elements we want to clean out entirely: */
html, body, form, fieldset {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
font: medium Calibri, Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
/* Neutralize styling:
Elements with a vertical margin: */
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, pre,
blockquote, ul, ol, dl, address {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
/* Apply left margin:
Only to the few elements that need it: */
li, dd, blockquote {
margin-left: 1em;
}
/* Miscellaneous conveniences: */
form label {
cursor: pointer;
}
fieldset {
border: none;
}
/* Form field text-scaling */
input, select, textarea {
font-size: 100%;
}
Oct 13
Tech Articles os, Tech, web View Comments
I believe the future is the web, even to the extent that we’ll be putting all of our data, including the OS, up in the cloud and compute from there. eyeOS is one example of a possible implementation of this concept. As much as I’m behind cloud computing, I and many others agree we’re still far off and might never reach this utopia to the full.
‘Eye’ at the clipping from the official website:
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First off, I haven’t yet taken the time to elaborate on the full technicalities of the actual server installation of eyeOS, so I can’t pitch in on how that works out. I’ve only chiefly played with the free server, which allows you to initiate your own eyeOS account. The idea of running a OS within and OS, more concretely in your browser could be chilling for some, so you’ve been warned.
Account creation
When using the pre-configured free server over at eyeos.net getting started is a 2-step process. The only thing it requires is the desired username and password and you’re up and running. The simplicity is soothing to this point.
The UI
***
Design and user interface have been done in a simple but pleasing fashion and looks a lot like the Mac’s, which is generally a Nice Thing, yet rarely original. The sparing use of ‘eye’ candy makes the system snappy enough for real-time interaction. Windows move around swiftly, yet the system shows some inconsistencies when dealing with multiple instances.
Swift as it may be, whether this system would be eligible for use with low-speed connections is questionable.
(Any more Apple-esque design features, and I’d start to question the creativity of this project…)
Your basic toolkit
**
Booting to the ‘desktop’ (dare I say ‘webtop’?) takes less than a your average Joe can say “Holy baloney”. The blank workspace contains a shortcut to your home folder and the trashcan. Atop the screen sits a tiny launcher-like menu and contains a few commonly used applications. An enumeration of the most noteworthy ones (the synchronous naming scheme is similar to Apple’s I-syndrome — really cracks me up):
This brief list can be augmented with additional applications contributed by the community. Although many needs are met even with this small allotment of apps, functionality feels crippled somehow and road bumps make the trip a bit uneasy.
eyeFiles
The file manager has adopted the XP-styled task-based sidebar to provide you with the common file operations, since the right-click thing hasn’t made it debut yet (version 1.1 ‘Dahlia’ — hmz, flowers).
All the usual suspects are present, like creating directories, deleting, renaming and copy-paste operations. I guess you could compare this thing to an online storage solution where you provide the disk space yourself. Services like Strongspace (paid) and Windows Live SkyDrive (free but limited) provide this functionality too, save the bells and whistles of an OS.
Drag-n-drop is lacking in the iteration, though, unless dragging an icon behind another one counts for deleting.
Oct 13
Tech Articles MPAA, web View Comments
TorrentSpy is being sued again. This time because they refuse to spy on their users and break their own privacy policy in the meantime. It’s starting to look like the MPAA just needs a black sheep for more lawsuits! As Leo Laporte jokingly commented during a previous airing of one of his podcasts: “Why sell songs/anything at all? Just give it away and sue the people over them”. What a thought, it must be taking off too.
TS has been in legal entanglements with the MPAA in the past and it doesn’t seem to be seizing any time soon. Earlier this year, the MPAA went after them because they allegedly provide illegal services to people in search of malicious torrents. TorrentSpy isn’t actually hosting any illegal files, as everyone knows. In response, access from US-based users to the site was blocked.
Yet, the MPAA will try to lift the aforementioned and force TorrentSpy to ‘spy’ (good choice of words, indeed) on its users. This, to me, is utter idiocracy and above all pretty hilarious. The crew at TS must think so too, I gather.
Oct 12
Tech Articles Google, web View Comments
It’s remarkable how Google scored this low, but everyone must admit that Google turns out to be the least visual appealing. Maybe that did it.
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Oct 10
Off-Topic Humor, web View Comments
“What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages? The authors of the Systran translation software probably never intended this application of their program. As of September 2007, translation software is almost good enough to turn grammatically correct, slang-free text from one language into grammatically incorrect, barely readable approximations in another. But the software is not equipped for 10 consecutive translations of the same piece of text. The resulting half-English, half-foreign, and totally non sequitur response bears almost no resemblance to the original.”
The principle is to feed a perfectly normal English sentence into the automated translation, which in turn will process it through ten languages and every time back to English. The result roughly corresponds to the aforementioned description. Some apt examples:
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