One concern that I have about this is: How long has this book been in the works? Rails has gone through leaps and bounds and fairly huge changes( sometimes on a week-to-week basis) even in the few months I've been working with it. Will the book be up-to-date when it comes out?
I hate to take this stance, but it has to be said. This thread is probably going to get a lot of cautionary posts that ring to the effect of "you get what you pay for" and so on. And seriously -- is it that hard to find someone with the skills to do a task like this ("scripting", as you say) locally, at a reasonable price?
They'll need that head start.. Has anyone here actually tried developing for the Mozilla platform? It isn't a walk in the park. The documentation available on XULplanet, mozilla.org, etc, although improving, is rather sparse and frequently out of date. Even some books on mozilla development are out of date already - RAD in Mozilla (published this year I believe) has some wrong details about XUL tree selections, for example. One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces. This is a tremendous amount of work, but I for one would be more than willing to contribute bits and pieces as I come across them. This basic documentation step needs to be done to encourage people to develop sites and applications for the Mozilla platform -- and to a greater extent, more modern w3c standards (DOM2/3,CSS2/3,etc).
I think that what the Firefox devs have done is an absolutely amazing feat of marketing and UI-cleanup, however, there is a huge amount of legacy code in web applications and scripts and pages in general dedicated to MSIE's own proprietary DOM, ActiveX, and rendering quirks. We need to bring those people to the standards-compliant world and, to a lesser extent, to the Mozilla platform.
I just don't see that critical mass in the application side of things yet, and that will be part of winning the battle. If XAML and so-forth start to make inroads, we are in trouble.
Has anyone noticed just how bad the Windows search is, especially if you try to search for "a word or phrase in the file"? I've never got this to work, even in a directory full of files only containing the desired phrase thousands of times over. Apparently it will only search certain types of formats (I'll let you guess / tell me which ones)
Microsoft gets so many things wrong or misguided or sloppy on its own the first time they try them that I have no doubt they'll get this wrong too, unless they have, as the posters at WWDC dared them to, "started their photocopiers".
Having dealt with friends' Windows PCs lately and the sheer volume of destruction spyware, IE, and all the rest have caused, I would think that -- at this point -- tabbed browsing would be the least of anybody's worries in "library IT".
Why does tabbed browsing keep rising to such prominence as a must-have feature more than simple standards-compliance and reasonable security does?
Re:Someone please explain this to me.
on
Mozilla 1.7 Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The interesting thing is that DOM inspector and Venkman (the JS debugger in Moz) are not only excellent tools for web development *in Mozilla* but also for developing for IE, Opera, Safari and so-forth. Many common CSS mixups and accidents can easily be found by simply using the DOM inspector to check what the calculated CSS is for any given element in a rendered document -- setting aside browser quirks this is a useful to have as a web designer period, even if you are a diehard IE holdout. The same goes for the JS debugger and even Mozilla's Javascript Console -- no vague-looking error windows stealing focus away from your main browser window or any of that nonsense, either. IE simply cannot compare, and these tools only get better and better.
Re:That's a genuine problem
on
Linux Unwired
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I have the same problem mentioned in the Wired article, have seen it in numerous places and know of others who have the same problem.
At the very end of the article they state that you can bring the connection back to life by stopping and starting XP's Wireless Zero Configuration service -- I wish I had known that during some very ill-timed outages! This suggests that XP has everything to do with the problem but I'd still be careful in blaming Microsoft outright. Still, what a disaster.
I wonder now if on my centrino-based Dell laptop it is possible to simply turn off XP's zero config option if Intel's PROSet tools are running. Anybody know?
Do you have iTunes on their Windows machine
Literally millions of people use a big chunk of Safari on Windows. It's the browser built into iTunes. It works today.
So arguably the quickest, most standards compliant browser around, which by the way is based on the open source
Blah. I was following this guy's argument until I came to this part. Are there seriously "millions" of windows users really using the iTunes browser ? That number seems a bit high given how many songs Apple has sold. Also, i'd challenge that Safari is even close to being the "most standards compliant browser" around. If you're working off a W3C checklist, I'd say Mozilla has it beat by a longshot, and makes a much more meaningful dent on the web applications side of things than Safari does, which is another big battle against IE altogether. I just can't believe that anybody really thinks for a minute that the whole future of the web and the battle of winning the hearts and minds of "millions" teeters on whether or not a browser supports CSS text shadows..
Actually no.. I suggest you read up on dynamics before you just knee-jerk like that.
Adding compression is along the lines of adding an effect, it has nothing to do with perceptual coding. Compression doesn't always make music sound better. It can result in a muddy mix, or, sometimes, outright destroy a mix. Sure it makes pop rock sound better, and really loud and overpowering like FM radio.. But it's a little annoying when the volume on your Mozart or selected ambient works 2 is pumping up and down with every single sound. The subtlety in the original mix is lost. Other perceptually coded formats leave this component of the audio alone, and let the original producer decide what sounds right.
I remember someone mentioning in an earier discussion that the WMA encoder fooled many people into thinking their encoded audio sounded "better" by applying a compressor/dynamics (6:1 ratio was it?), leaving the dynamic range 'squished' and making music sound louder (which isn't really "better"). Can anybody confirm this?
If an open version of a WMA encoder is released, it would be interesting to see how it would perform versus the MS encoder in this respect.
The actual report that the Yahoo article is talking about is here. Anyone else here think this is a little premature? I don't know a single person who has an LCD panel or is planning to buy one anytime soon. Everybody seems to be upgrading to nice big CRTs (now happily down in price) instead. - Maciek
Is this the end of the Ultima universe and Lord British/Blackthorne?
I own/am Lord British. A New Britannia shall rise!
The question I'd like to have answered is, does Richard also own the rights to Britannia, or does Electronic Arts ? If a "new britannia" is indeed to rise, it may have to be one that lacks Britain, Yew, Buc's Den, Moonglow and all that good stuff that makes up the Britannia we know and love. (or perhaps that's what he means by "new")
Slashdot Mirror
One concern that I have about this is: How long has this book been in the works? Rails has gone through leaps and bounds and fairly huge changes( sometimes on a week-to-week basis) even in the few months I've been working with it. Will the book be up-to-date when it comes out?
I hate to take this stance, but it has to be said. This thread is probably going to get a lot of cautionary posts that ring to the effect of "you get what you pay for" and so on. And seriously -- is it that hard to find someone with the skills to do a task like this ("scripting", as you say) locally, at a reasonable price?
They'll need that head start.. Has anyone here actually tried developing for the Mozilla platform? It isn't a walk in the park. The documentation available on XULplanet, mozilla.org, etc, although improving, is rather sparse and frequently out of date. Even some books on mozilla development are out of date already - RAD in Mozilla (published this year I believe) has some wrong details about XUL tree selections, for example. One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces. This is a tremendous amount of work, but I for one would be more than willing to contribute bits and pieces as I come across them. This basic documentation step needs to be done to encourage people to develop sites and applications for the Mozilla platform -- and to a greater extent, more modern w3c standards (DOM2/3,CSS2/3,etc).
I think that what the Firefox devs have done is an absolutely amazing feat of marketing and UI-cleanup, however, there is a huge amount of legacy code in web applications and scripts and pages in general dedicated to MSIE's own proprietary DOM, ActiveX, and rendering quirks. We need to bring those people to the standards-compliant world and, to a lesser extent, to the Mozilla platform.
I just don't see that critical mass in the application side of things yet, and that will be part of winning the battle. If XAML and so-forth start to make inroads, we are in trouble.
When did you stop trusting sponsored 'research'?"
Who says we ever started ?
Has anyone noticed just how bad the Windows search is, especially if you try to search for "a word or phrase in the file"? I've never got this to work, even in a directory full of files only containing the desired phrase thousands of times over. Apparently it will only search certain types of formats (I'll let you guess / tell me which ones)
Microsoft gets so many things wrong or misguided or sloppy on its own the first time they try them that I have no doubt they'll get this wrong too, unless they have, as the posters at WWDC dared them to, "started their photocopiers".
Nothing to see here.. Yet.
Having dealt with friends' Windows PCs lately and the sheer volume of destruction spyware, IE, and all the rest have caused, I would think that -- at this point -- tabbed browsing would be the least of anybody's worries in "library IT".
Why does tabbed browsing keep rising to such prominence as a must-have feature more than simple standards-compliance and reasonable security does?
The interesting thing is that DOM inspector and Venkman (the JS debugger in Moz) are not only excellent tools for web development *in Mozilla* but also for developing for IE, Opera, Safari and so-forth. Many common CSS mixups and accidents can easily be found by simply using the DOM inspector to check what the calculated CSS is for any given element in a rendered document -- setting aside browser quirks this is a useful to have as a web designer period, even if you are a diehard IE holdout. The same goes for the JS debugger and even Mozilla's Javascript Console -- no vague-looking error windows stealing focus away from your main browser window or any of that nonsense, either. IE simply cannot compare, and these tools only get better and better.
I have the same problem mentioned in the Wired article, have seen it in numerous places and know of others who have the same problem.
At the very end of the article they state that you can bring the connection back to life by stopping and starting XP's Wireless Zero Configuration service -- I wish I had known that during some very ill-timed outages! This suggests that XP has everything to do with the problem but I'd still be careful in blaming Microsoft outright. Still, what a disaster.
I wonder now if on my centrino-based Dell laptop it is possible to simply turn off XP's zero config option if Intel's PROSet tools are running. Anybody know?
- Do you have iTunes on their Windows machine
Literally millions of people use a big chunk of Safari on Windows. It's the browser built into iTunes. It works today.
So arguably the quickest, most standards compliant browser around, which by the way is based on the open source
Blah. I was following this guy's argument until I came to this part. Are there seriously "millions" of windows users really using the iTunes browser ? That number seems a bit high given how many songs Apple has sold. Also, i'd challenge that Safari is even close to being the "most standards compliant browser" around. If you're working off a W3C checklist, I'd say Mozilla has it beat by a longshot, and makes a much more meaningful dent on the web applications side of things than Safari does, which is another big battle against IE altogether. I just can't believe that anybody really thinks for a minute that the whole future of the web and the battle of winning the hearts and minds of "millions" teeters on whether or not a browser supports CSS text shadows..Actually no.. I suggest you read up on dynamics before you just knee-jerk like that.
Adding compression is along the lines of adding an effect, it has nothing to do with perceptual coding. Compression doesn't always make music sound better. It can result in a muddy mix, or, sometimes, outright destroy a mix. Sure it makes pop rock sound better, and really loud and overpowering like FM radio.. But it's a little annoying when the volume on your Mozart or selected ambient works 2 is pumping up and down with every single sound. The subtlety in the original mix is lost. Other perceptually coded formats leave this component of the audio alone, and let the original producer decide what sounds right.
--
Maciek
I remember someone mentioning in an earier discussion that the WMA encoder fooled many people into thinking their encoded audio sounded "better" by applying a compressor/dynamics (6:1 ratio was it?), leaving the dynamic range 'squished' and making music sound louder (which isn't really "better"). Can anybody confirm this?
If an open version of a WMA encoder is released, it would be interesting to see how it would perform versus the MS encoder in this respect.
--
Maciek
The actual report that the Yahoo article is talking about is here. Anyone else here think this is a little premature? I don't know a single person who has an LCD panel or is planning to buy one anytime soon. Everybody seems to be upgrading to nice big CRTs (now happily down in price) instead.
-
Maciek
Is this the end of the Ultima universe and Lord British/Blackthorne?
I own/am Lord British. A New Britannia shall rise!
The question I'd like to have answered is, does Richard also own the rights to Britannia, or does Electronic Arts ? If a "new britannia" is indeed to rise, it may have to be one that lacks Britain, Yew, Buc's Den, Moonglow and all that good stuff that makes up the Britannia we know and love. (or perhaps that's what he means by "new")
I see no mention of any "other greenhouse gases" in the article. The article states that the cyanobacteria feasts solely on carbon dioxide.