Back in the day when Netscape ruled and IE was struggling to gain marketshare, MS decided to make IE masquerade as Netscape, hence the "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE x.x)" opening.
This set a precedent for Opera presenting itself as IE, and Apple inserting "Gecko-like" into Safari's UA string. Nothing is compatible with Mozilla 4.0 anymore, and the only browsers that present a correct UA string are the Mozilla browsers.
Add to this that it is possible for the user to change the UA string in any browser (whether via a provided UI or by manually editing files), and the UA string has become completely devoid of purpose, leaving developers with no choice but to fish for internal features using Javascript to ID the browser.
XP SP2 fixed the parsing error which was the basis for the Tantek hack (probably the most widely-used CSS hack), but few developers who use it realize this. This is just one more example of MS creating needless work for developers. Obviously Ballmer's monkey dance (Developers, Developers, Developers!) only applies to those who only work in the vacuum that Microsoft tries to create.
IE7 is purely reactionary, and hopefully they sat on their ill-gotten throne long enough to be deposed by the standards they thumb their nose at. I'll certainly continue telling everyone I know not to use any version of IE.
And would be totally unnecessary if IE was capable of applying CSS to these inputs. Put a border on either, and you get an ugly square drawn around it. Styling inputs would also be infinitely easier if IE supported attribute selectors:
First, stop catering to the lowest common denominator. While I understand that no parent wants to believe they have a dumb kid, the not-dumb kids have to suffer.
Stop repeating the previous grade as a primer to the next. Teach kids to learn instead of how to cram facts into their short term memory.
It should be obvious by now that kids don't respond well to an environment that, except for construction paper decorations, closely resembles a correctional facility, in appearance, methods, and overall environment.
Actually spend money on education. Teachers tend to stop caring after 10 years of $27k.
Make learning fun, or at least not as boring as it is.
I think what pfafrich was tring to say is that computer RPG's are severely lacking (if not missing entirely) in one crucial aspect: the ability of the player to interact naturally with the other inhabitants of the game, ie, not the other players. Few NPC's in computer games have very limited AI, and most have a pathetically small conversational ability, the upper limit of useful bits of information gained is about 10.
Then there's the absurd ratio of players to NPC's, which inevitably leads to an economy based almost entirely on the skills avalable to the players, rather than what a realistic population would be capable of. The amount of "adventurers" in a society never surpasses about 3%, except in computer games, where it's about 95%.
The parts of the game that developers have concentrated on for the past 5 years (graphics, sound) haven't really improved much that I can see. The smart ones should shift their efforts into AI to make the setting more interactive. After all, AI is the virtual GM.
Agreed, WYSIWYG is the crutch that most so-called designers rely on, and Dreamweaver is the worst offender. Even with complex tools like this, you still have to know what you're doing to use it effectively: the vast majority of people I've met who don't code by hand barely know any HTML, and understand little more than basic CSS. WYSIWYG is a tool, not a slave.
NVU has a history of (re)formatting source in crazy ways, maybe this will be fixed soon. This is the only reason why I don't use it, but I prefer a text editor anyway.
First of all, I'll be the first to say, UI design in a lot of software, free, shareware, or otherwise, is atrocious. But, comparing it to building a house... That's just stupid.
PHP and MySQL are two pillars of open source, there are a lot of resources on them. I would choose a CMS/app framework using PHP/MySQL and build the class around accomplishing tasks in that framework, where each student ends up with a complex website. The framework code can serve as a corpus of examples/best practices and illustrate app design, while the coursework focuses more on user interface, content design, and data management.
A fairly complete list of frameworks can be found at http://www.opensourcecms.com/, with reviews and user comments. My preference is Xaraya, but Xoops or Drupal would be good too. Stay away from the Nukes.
They're over, MS cheated and won. When people talk about the "new browser war" they really mean "web standards war", meaning IE vs every other browser, but goes much farther than that. MS has singlehandedly held back widespread usage of SVG and png (among others) for years.
The IE/Gecko switching is one of the absolute dumbest ideas ever. EVER. Whoever thought of that should be fired and blacklisted from IT forever, and everyone else who didn't fight it tooth and nail should all be flogged with cat5 cable.
AOL won't be happy until they have utterly destroyed Netscape.
Logitech always gets my mouse money
on
Top Mice Compared
·
· Score: 1
I'm very left handed, and it annoys me that all the high end mice are right hand only. I'm sure there are left handed gamers out there (I'm not one of them).
I used a Logitech First WheelMouse for probably 5 years. Once the Mouseware drivers allowed me to assign "copy" to clicking the wheel, I never looked back.
A few months ago I decided my mouse was getting tired, and started looking around online. I decided to go optical, and having used a wireless optical mouse not long before, opted against that because the weight of it made the existence of batteries in it very obvious. I could probably get used to it, but the first impression wasn't good.
Since there are no left handed mice, I have to settle for a hand neutral model. I settled on the Logitech MX310: it's partly black, hand neutral, optical, and a Logitech.
As soon as I downloaded the lastest Mouseware, I restored the wheel click to "copy", and the other three extra buttons to "paste", "cut", and "undo". I find this to be incredibly efficient, as I don't have to go back and forth to the keyboard or seek for menus as often.
IE first had the XMLHTTPRequest object (even though it is implemented via activeX *shudder*), and counts as one of MS' few legitimate innovations.
Now that other browsers have implemented it, the web has the potential to do what MS may not be able to adapt to: make the OS less important. Rich web apps can't replace everything, but the more robust they get, the less software people have to install. What they do have to install will have another layer of resources available.
While MS talks about security and standards improvements, it will still be IE 5.7 with the wrong version number, still hindered by a flawed security model, and still support activeX. IE7 will only be available on SP2 and 2k3 (which is why I prefer to call it SP3), and won't be able to achieve significant marketshare when it's released a year from now. Soon after, MS will begin misdirecting everyone's attention away from all things not Longhorn.
Early on, MS preferred WebSideStory's numbers to OneStat because OneStat showed more of a decline for IE. Personally, I think OneStat has more accurate global numbers. This is a trend that MS can't ignore, and can't really do much about.
This seems like the same caliber of prediction as saying no one needs more then 640k of ram. I'm going to take this as meaning the iPod will be around forever and Windows Mobile will flop.
IE7 will only be available for XPSP2 or newer. there have been a couple stories lately about the slow uptake of SP2. IE7 likely won't be final for a year (I prefer to call it XPSP3, anyway). IIRC, XP only has about 55% usage, and SP2 has 15% of that. In a year, if SP2 penetration triples, IE7 can only achieve 25% market penetration. Gecko + Opera + KHTML combined will likely have a similar share. And once people switch away from IE for tangible features (popup blocker, tabs, etc) they won't switch back even if they use Windows Update (the people who do won't switch back to IE anyway).
Alpha support in PNG is great, it's about damn time. They fixed two specific CSS bugs? Likely with hacks specific to those bugs. When they post "we fixed the box and event models", I'll be impressed.
IE has been passively set up to fail this time. By making it available only to a narrow slice of the Windows install base, there's no way IE7 can be significant. And with Longhorn on the way soon after, MS will quickly shift focus to the new Avalon-based browser.
Hopefully Fireworks will die. It's created a generation of web designers that think png is its version of psd.
FlashMX has one of the worst user interfaces ever, IMO. Maybe Adobe will make it not a big pile of suck.
Freehand... meh.
Dreamweaver is nearly incapable of producing standards compliant pages. It is the crutch that let clueless designers continue to earn a living.
I don't know anyone that actually likes ColdFusion as a development platform, but I suspect it may be the reason for the whole deal.
Macromedia is notorious for giving lipservice to web standards and accessibility. Hopefully the people at Adobe that have a clue about these things will clean house.
Macromedia and its products, to me, have always been more style than substance. Every one of their products that I've used was very crash prone, and therefore felt like cheap knockoffs of other companies' products.
I'm not a total Adobe fan, though. If their products weren't so overpriced, Macromedia wouldn't have been able to get marketshare with Fireowrks and Freehand.
The thing that annoys me constantly about Windows is that it automatically makes a selection out of any editable text that gets clicked on. File -> Save As, click on filename (argh) click again to clear the selection, maybe click again to get the cursor in the right place so I can type just before the filename extension.
That's not just an XP thing. If I'm forced to use XP, I immediately turn off the silly Fisher Price plastic window decorations. And the mouse shadow. And the menu fading. Generally, I get rid of the eye candy, which only seves to distract the user from the flaws in the interface.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the day when Netscape ruled and IE was struggling to gain marketshare, MS decided to make IE masquerade as Netscape, hence the "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE x.x)" opening.
This set a precedent for Opera presenting itself as IE, and Apple inserting "Gecko-like" into Safari's UA string. Nothing is compatible with Mozilla 4.0 anymore, and the only browsers that present a correct UA string are the Mozilla browsers.
Add to this that it is possible for the user to change the UA string in any browser (whether via a provided UI or by manually editing files), and the UA string has become completely devoid of purpose, leaving developers with no choice but to fish for internal features using Javascript to ID the browser.
XP SP2 fixed the parsing error which was the basis for the Tantek hack (probably the most widely-used CSS hack), but few developers who use it realize this. This is just one more example of MS creating needless work for developers. Obviously Ballmer's monkey dance (Developers, Developers, Developers!) only applies to those who only work in the vacuum that Microsoft tries to create.
IE7 is purely reactionary, and hopefully they sat on their ill-gotten throne long enough to be deposed by the standards they thumb their nose at. I'll certainly continue telling everyone I know not to use any version of IE.
And would be totally unnecessary if IE was capable of applying CSS to these inputs. Put a border on either, and you get an ugly square drawn around it. Styling inputs would also be infinitely easier if IE supported attribute selectors:
input[type=radio] {height: 1em;
width: 1em;
background-image: url(gray_star.png);
border: 0;
}
input[type=radio][checked] {
height: 1em;
width: 1em;
background-image: url(yellow_star.png);
border: 0;
}
No javascript, no accessibility issues, just the user's annoyance at having to recognize these inputs.
Viva la browsers that don't suck!
Well, almost.
First, stop catering to the lowest common denominator. While I understand that no parent wants to believe they have a dumb kid, the not-dumb kids have to suffer.
Stop repeating the previous grade as a primer to the next. Teach kids to learn instead of how to cram facts into their short term memory.
It should be obvious by now that kids don't respond well to an environment that, except for construction paper decorations, closely resembles a correctional facility, in appearance, methods, and overall environment.
Actually spend money on education. Teachers tend to stop caring after 10 years of $27k.
Make learning fun, or at least not as boring as it is.
I think what pfafrich was tring to say is that computer RPG's are severely lacking (if not missing entirely) in one crucial aspect: the ability of the player to interact naturally with the other inhabitants of the game, ie, not the other players. Few NPC's in computer games have very limited AI, and most have a pathetically small conversational ability, the upper limit of useful bits of information gained is about 10.
Then there's the absurd ratio of players to NPC's, which inevitably leads to an economy based almost entirely on the skills avalable to the players, rather than what a realistic population would be capable of. The amount of "adventurers" in a society never surpasses about 3%, except in computer games, where it's about 95%.
The parts of the game that developers have concentrated on for the past 5 years (graphics, sound) haven't really improved much that I can see. The smart ones should shift their efforts into AI to make the setting more interactive. After all, AI is the virtual GM.
Cufflinks... CueCats
And trademarking 800 year old words is totally moronic.
And when the Anal Probe crashes and displays its BSOD (blue sphincter of death), it really hurts to reboot it.
Agreed, WYSIWYG is the crutch that most so-called designers rely on, and Dreamweaver is the worst offender. Even with complex tools like this, you still have to know what you're doing to use it effectively: the vast majority of people I've met who don't code by hand barely know any HTML, and understand little more than basic CSS. WYSIWYG is a tool, not a slave.
NVU has a history of (re)formatting source in crazy ways, maybe this will be fixed soon. This is the only reason why I don't use it, but I prefer a text editor anyway.
And considering their framework will likely only work in IE in conjunction with IIS, what's the point?
They could also do everyone a favor by rewriting XMLHTTPRequest as something else than an activeX object.
P.S., AJAX is a really dumb acronym.
Are all the Opera execs on crack?
How the hell can link prefetching inflate usage numbers? A prefetched page gets logged more than once?
If they want to get credited with accurate usage, their product needs to stop identifying itself as IE.
He mentions in the article that some people don't like the ads, which is true. They could also improve Opera's bizarre (imo) interface.
How is it any more stupid than comparing operating systems to airlines?
Science applies to Star Wars less than acting, directing, or writing.
PHP and MySQL are two pillars of open source, there are a lot of resources on them. I would choose a CMS/app framework using PHP/MySQL and build the class around accomplishing tasks in that framework, where each student ends up with a complex website. The framework code can serve as a corpus of examples/best practices and illustrate app design, while the coursework focuses more on user interface, content design, and data management.
A fairly complete list of frameworks can be found at http://www.opensourcecms.com/, with reviews and user comments. My preference is Xaraya, but Xoops or Drupal would be good too. Stay away from the Nukes.
They're over, MS cheated and won. When people talk about the "new browser war" they really mean "web standards war", meaning IE vs every other browser, but goes much farther than that. MS has singlehandedly held back widespread usage of SVG and png (among others) for years.
The IE/Gecko switching is one of the absolute dumbest ideas ever. EVER. Whoever thought of that should be fired and blacklisted from IT forever, and everyone else who didn't fight it tooth and nail should all be flogged with cat5 cable.
AOL won't be happy until they have utterly destroyed Netscape.
I'm very left handed, and it annoys me that all the high end mice are right hand only. I'm sure there are left handed gamers out there (I'm not one of them).
I used a Logitech First WheelMouse for probably 5 years. Once the Mouseware drivers allowed me to assign "copy" to clicking the wheel, I never looked back.
A few months ago I decided my mouse was getting tired, and started looking around online. I decided to go optical, and having used a wireless optical mouse not long before, opted against that because the weight of it made the existence of batteries in it very obvious. I could probably get used to it, but the first impression wasn't good.
Since there are no left handed mice, I have to settle for a hand neutral model. I settled on the Logitech MX310: it's partly black, hand neutral, optical, and a Logitech.
As soon as I downloaded the lastest Mouseware, I restored the wheel click to "copy", and the other three extra buttons to "paste", "cut", and "undo". I find this to be incredibly efficient, as I don't have to go back and forth to the keyboard or seek for menus as often.
Too bad I can't use it like that through my KVM.
IE first had the XMLHTTPRequest object (even though it is implemented via activeX *shudder*), and counts as one of MS' few legitimate innovations.
Now that other browsers have implemented it, the web has the potential to do what MS may not be able to adapt to: make the OS less important. Rich web apps can't replace everything, but the more robust they get, the less software people have to install. What they do have to install will have another layer of resources available.
The IE rendering engine is *a* module, used by everything. The engine itself is not modular.
One word: Irrelevant.
While MS talks about security and standards improvements, it will still be IE 5.7 with the wrong version number, still hindered by a flawed security model, and still support activeX. IE7 will only be available on SP2 and 2k3 (which is why I prefer to call it SP3), and won't be able to achieve significant marketshare when it's released a year from now. Soon after, MS will begin misdirecting everyone's attention away from all things not Longhorn.
Early on, MS preferred WebSideStory's numbers to OneStat because OneStat showed more of a decline for IE. Personally, I think OneStat has more accurate global numbers. This is a trend that MS can't ignore, and can't really do much about.
This seems like the same caliber of prediction as saying no one needs more then 640k of ram. I'm going to take this as meaning the iPod will be around forever and Windows Mobile will flop.
IE7 will only be available for XPSP2 or newer. there have been a couple stories lately about the slow uptake of SP2. IE7 likely won't be final for a year (I prefer to call it XPSP3, anyway). IIRC, XP only has about 55% usage, and SP2 has 15% of that. In a year, if SP2 penetration triples, IE7 can only achieve 25% market penetration. Gecko + Opera + KHTML combined will likely have a similar share. And once people switch away from IE for tangible features (popup blocker, tabs, etc) they won't switch back even if they use Windows Update (the people who do won't switch back to IE anyway).
Alpha support in PNG is great, it's about damn time. They fixed two specific CSS bugs? Likely with hacks specific to those bugs. When they post "we fixed the box and event models", I'll be impressed.
IE has been passively set up to fail this time. By making it available only to a narrow slice of the Windows install base, there's no way IE7 can be significant. And with Longhorn on the way soon after, MS will quickly shift focus to the new Avalon-based browser.
Slashdot effect reaches into meatspace, heh.
Hopefully Fireworks will die. It's created a generation of web designers that think png is its version of psd.
FlashMX has one of the worst user interfaces ever, IMO. Maybe Adobe will make it not a big pile of suck.
Freehand... meh.
Dreamweaver is nearly incapable of producing standards compliant pages. It is the crutch that let clueless designers continue to earn a living.
I don't know anyone that actually likes ColdFusion as a development platform, but I suspect it may be the reason for the whole deal.
Macromedia is notorious for giving lipservice to web standards and accessibility. Hopefully the people at Adobe that have a clue about these things will clean house.
Macromedia and its products, to me, have always been more style than substance. Every one of their products that I've used was very crash prone, and therefore felt like cheap knockoffs of other companies' products.
I'm not a total Adobe fan, though. If their products weren't so overpriced, Macromedia wouldn't have been able to get marketshare with Fireowrks and Freehand.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The thing that annoys me constantly about Windows is that it automatically makes a selection out of any editable text that gets clicked on. File -> Save As, click on filename (argh) click again to clear the selection, maybe click again to get the cursor in the right place so I can type just before the filename extension.
That's not just an XP thing. If I'm forced to use XP, I immediately turn off the silly Fisher Price plastic window decorations. And the mouse shadow. And the menu fading. Generally, I get rid of the eye candy, which only seves to distract the user from the flaws in the interface.