Click-and-hold activates contextual menus in many cases - it began in Netscape many years ago, and the OSX Dock does it as well.
The difference between a click-and-hold for a contextual menu and a click-and-hold for dragging something is, when you're dragging something, you move the mouse (farther than a threshold like 4px) within a certain amount of time (say, 500ms or so) after clicking. This means there's a delay before a contextual menu will appear, so it does slow you down a bit - and, if you mean to drag but don't move soon enough after clicking, you'll get a contextual menu instead (this can frustrate newbies but once you get used to it it's not a major problem).
This is one of the reasons my mom loves only having a single button. The button can be pressed by multiple fingers at once, or you can change fingers, or change hands (without changing software settings or getting confused about which button is which) if one position starts to bother you.
Users have been having those exact same problems for years with traditional mice. I don't think the Apple Pro mice make it much worse. When I first got mine, I was amazed at how natural it felt, to someone already accustomed to a normal mouse with a button and a ball.
If your newbies are having trouble with mice, you may want to consider buying trackballs. It never really occurred to me that the problems you mentioned are the reason so many kiosks use them; I just figured trackballs are more durable (they're often built into a desk surface, with a big video-arcade-style push button.
I realize buying new hardware costs money which you may not have, but it's an idea.
I wonder what would be involved in desiigning the mouse to gnerate power similar to the way the never dying flashlight at thinkgeek does.
I wouldn't want to try something like that with the mouse, but what about generating energy from your keystrokes? I think I remember hearing a rumor that Apple was looking into this for PowerBooks some time ago, although I can't seem to find any info at the moment.
I really think a dock for the mouse is the way to go. It's not big, and untethered it could be easy to lose. Also, I'm sure people will forget to turn it off, and replacing batteries every few months is no fun. A recharging dock could help solve all of these problems.
which debuted first on the Macintosh, who purchased ClarisWorks only to produce AppleWorks and later created Mac OS X
It should be noted that Claris always was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple. Apple did buy ClarisWorks from Claris and rename it to AppleWorks (which is also the name of a word processor Apple created back in the Apple II era), and Claris renamed itself to Filemaker, Inc. which is still an Apple subsidiary.
Claris the company is not to be confused with Clarus the dogcow.
That's *International* Talk Like A Pirate Day, please. Those of us who don't live in the USA have just as much right to make idiots of ourselves as you.;-)
Ah, my mistake - I believe it was "national" originally, but apparently it's been expanded! Of course you're more than welcome to participate.:-)
If Blair, Blunkett and the rest of them were _forced_ to reveal both their email and snail mail to the public and there was no way round it like national security and the rest of the crap they will sell....
I hate when misinformation gets modded "Informative." Yes, I'm using IE. But IE does let you change the font size. At least is does for 90% of the websites I visit.
Sorry if I wasn't clear - IE for Windows does have an option to change the font size, but that option does not work where the size is specified using pixels (which is what this site uses), instead of points or inches or something. Every other browser I tried, including IE for Mac, does not have this limitation, and will let you change the font size on Zeldman's site.
This Zeldman guy doesn't seem like much of a usability/accessibility guru if his web site refuses to let me enlarge the font to something legible, not to mention improve the contrast.
You must be using Internet Explorer for Windows - the only browser I can find that doesn't allow you to change the text size. Not his fault your browser sucks.
As for the contrast, in Mozilla, go to View/Use Style/highcontrast - Mr. Zeldman has created alternate stylesheets for you, if you don't like his default. Most browsers don't support this feature yet, but it's there.
They can't be doing a very good job since Microsoft has just decided to block all non-MS clients to their MSN network. To me, that classifies as interoperability.
If you're referring to the MSN Messenger issue, Microsoft is well within their rights there. The new version of the protocol will require SSL encryption for logins - from a company with such a shoddy reputation for security, it sounds like they're actually trying to do something right. Are you suggesting they shouldn't be allowed to switch to a more secure version of the protocol?
How about this: Mozilla can do something MS can never do--escape the US.
How many Mozilla developers live in the US? Are you suggesting that all of them (and their families) should sell their homes and move away from their friends, at their own expense, just because of a legal issue with plugins? They are real people with real lives, ya know. I'm sure most of them would rather drop plugin support - it's just not worth bothering with.
Why do you think Microsoft couldn't relocate? All it would take is money, and it's not like they haven't got more of that than they need. Key employees would be paid to relocate, others would be laid off and replaced.
Of course, the whole issue is completly irrelevant anyway - the patents would still apply to anyone in the US who actually wanted to use either of those browsers. Do you think either MS or Mozilla developers would want to stop making their browser available in the US?
He didn't say they could. He said they were buying dark fiber - the billions of dollars to lay the fiber had already been spent by someone else, but it wasn't being used, so they would buy it from them cheaply.
Or are the US steel tariff's magicly OK because, while the WTO has ruled against them, the US (a member of the organization) is free to ignore them at its liesure without fear of recrimination?
Caching webpages in a proxy is something all ISPs do.
Wrong. Most of the larger residential ISPs probably do, but mine certainly doesn't, and of the last four ISPs I worked for, only two did any caching at all, and one of those only did caching in certain limited situations.
The downside is that whenever I've used an ISPs squid proxy, it slowed things down! Turning proxies off almost invariably helps speeds, in stead of hurting them.
Hogwash. I've been using a caching proxy server on my LAN for the past several years, precisely because it increases download speed. Now that I'm using broadband the speed increase isn't noticeable, but on dialup it was - somehow Squid is actually more efficient than Netscape or IE at downloading pages. Of course, with multiple computers you get the caching benefits on top of that.
If your downloads go slower through the proxy, it's because the proxy server is overloaded and your ISP needs to upgrade it - not because proxy servers inherently slow things down.
Plus, if the proxy goes down, you can still use the web.
Of course routing web traffic through a proxy server adds an additional single point of failure, in addition to the other points of failure already in place.
Compression.. Now there's something! I have in the past used an ssh tunnel (with compression switched on) to my university's web proxy, and that sped up things quite a bit! Why isn't this switched on by default on my PPPoA connection? Doesn't apache handle gzip'ing these days? Doesn't seem to be used much, though..
Compression is the main thing these "web accelerators" do. Your ISP runs the server and you run the client, and data exchanged between the two is compressed.
To compress your PPPoA connection would require the router where your connection terminates to compress and decompress ATM cells as they're tunneled inside a PPP link. That's not necessarily very efficient. It would require extra processing at both ends, and may not result in that significant a speed improvement. You probably want higher level compression - fitting more data into a packet, instead of making the packets smaller.
And yes, mod_gzip is available for Apache. Slashdot is using it, didn't you notice? No? Then quit complaining about how little it's used.
a far more pressing issue for me is why doesn't google remove links for "kiddie porn" or "illegal porn" or "rape pics" or something?
Perhaps because any automated way to do this is absolutely guaranteed to generate false positives, resulting in legitimate sites getting their links removed for no valid reason, which Google considers unacceptable, which means the only way to do it is to verify each site manually, which means Google staff would be surfing for child pornography, which most of us would consider unacceptable. I certainly wouldn't want that job, would you?
Metallica is boycotting the iTunes Music Store; their music isn't available for sale there. More info here (the linked Reuters article is a 404; perhaps someone can find a copy of it elsewhere?).
In response to another post (could you call it a nephew post? that sounds kinda wrong), this has nothing to do with what Mac users want, and everything to do with what Metallica wants.
I have. Distributed power supplies means than one failure does not bring down the entire computer.
I thought of this, but I assume it should be possible to have a few redundant power supplies all feeding into a common pool - obviously this is completely outside my field of expertise and my terminology is all wrong, but hopefully this makes sense. So, somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about, would this be feasible?
I completely agree about some machines always being down, and eliminating single points of failure is obviously important for something like this.
Apple provides no stated way of transferring the rights to a particular song from one account to another, but wouldn't it be great if they'd add this capability? People could buy you music as a gift, or whatever. It'll be interesting to see whether they'll allow a transfer if he calls them to request it.
The other possibility he's considering is transferring the entire account, including the rights to this song, which strikes me as being a rather different proposition. Does anyone know whether the EULA prohibits this? I can't seem to find it.
Slashdot Mirror
Click-and-hold activates contextual menus in many cases - it began in Netscape many years ago, and the OSX Dock does it as well.
The difference between a click-and-hold for a contextual menu and a click-and-hold for dragging something is, when you're dragging something, you move the mouse (farther than a threshold like 4px) within a certain amount of time (say, 500ms or so) after clicking. This means there's a delay before a contextual menu will appear, so it does slow you down a bit - and, if you mean to drag but don't move soon enough after clicking, you'll get a contextual menu instead (this can frustrate newbies but once you get used to it it's not a major problem).
This is one of the reasons my mom loves only having a single button. The button can be pressed by multiple fingers at once, or you can change fingers, or change hands (without changing software settings or getting confused about which button is which) if one position starts to bother you.
Users have been having those exact same problems for years with traditional mice. I don't think the Apple Pro mice make it much worse. When I first got mine, I was amazed at how natural it felt, to someone already accustomed to a normal mouse with a button and a ball.
If your newbies are having trouble with mice, you may want to consider buying trackballs. It never really occurred to me that the problems you mentioned are the reason so many kiosks use them; I just figured trackballs are more durable (they're often built into a desk surface, with a big video-arcade-style push button.
I realize buying new hardware costs money which you may not have, but it's an idea.
I wonder what would be involved in desiigning the mouse to gnerate power similar to the way the never dying flashlight at thinkgeek does.
I wouldn't want to try something like that with the mouse, but what about generating energy from your keystrokes? I think I remember hearing a rumor that Apple was looking into this for PowerBooks some time ago, although I can't seem to find any info at the moment.
I really think a dock for the mouse is the way to go. It's not big, and untethered it could be easy to lose. Also, I'm sure people will forget to turn it off, and replacing batteries every few months is no fun. A recharging dock could help solve all of these problems.
which debuted first on the Macintosh, who purchased ClarisWorks only to produce AppleWorks and later created Mac OS X
It should be noted that Claris always was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple. Apple did buy ClarisWorks from Claris and rename it to AppleWorks (which is also the name of a word processor Apple created back in the Apple II era), and Claris renamed itself to Filemaker, Inc. which is still an Apple subsidiary.
Claris the company is not to be confused with Clarus the dogcow.
That's *International* Talk Like A Pirate Day, please. Those of us who don't live in the USA have just as much right to make idiots of ourselves as you. ;-)
:-)
Ah, my mistake - I believe it was "national" originally, but apparently it's been expanded! Of course you're more than welcome to participate.
If Blair, Blunkett and the rest of them were _forced_ to reveal both their email and snail mail to the public and there was no way round it like national security and the rest of the crap they will sell....
Sort of like this maybe?
In his defence he could claim that they weren't intended for him.
Even if the senders insist that they were?
Don't forget this Friday is National Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day!
...that isn't mass marketed at every mall this side of the Mississippi.
Funny how that expression seems to work no matter where in the US you live...
I hate when misinformation gets modded "Informative." Yes, I'm using IE. But IE does let you change the font size. At least is does for 90% of the websites I visit.
Sorry if I wasn't clear - IE for Windows does have an option to change the font size, but that option does not work where the size is specified using pixels (which is what this site uses), instead of points or inches or something. Every other browser I tried, including IE for Mac, does not have this limitation, and will let you change the font size on Zeldman's site.
This Zeldman guy doesn't seem like much of a usability/accessibility guru if his web site refuses to let me enlarge the font to something legible, not to mention improve the contrast.
You must be using Internet Explorer for Windows - the only browser I can find that doesn't allow you to change the text size. Not his fault your browser sucks.
As for the contrast, in Mozilla, go to View/Use Style/highcontrast - Mr. Zeldman has created alternate stylesheets for you, if you don't like his default. Most browsers don't support this feature yet, but it's there.
They can't be doing a very good job since Microsoft has just decided to block all non-MS clients to their MSN network. To me, that classifies as interoperability.
If you're referring to the MSN Messenger issue, Microsoft is well within their rights there. The new version of the protocol will require SSL encryption for logins - from a company with such a shoddy reputation for security, it sounds like they're actually trying to do something right. Are you suggesting they shouldn't be allowed to switch to a more secure version of the protocol?
How about this: Mozilla can do something MS can never do--escape the US.
How many Mozilla developers live in the US? Are you suggesting that all of them (and their families) should sell their homes and move away from their friends, at their own expense, just because of a legal issue with plugins? They are real people with real lives, ya know. I'm sure most of them would rather drop plugin support - it's just not worth bothering with.
Why do you think Microsoft couldn't relocate? All it would take is money, and it's not like they haven't got more of that than they need. Key employees would be paid to relocate, others would be laid off and replaced.
Of course, the whole issue is completly irrelevant anyway - the patents would still apply to anyone in the US who actually wanted to use either of those browsers. Do you think either MS or Mozilla developers would want to stop making their browser available in the US?
You couldn't even lay the fiber for 250 million.
He didn't say they could. He said they were buying dark fiber - the billions of dollars to lay the fiber had already been spent by someone else, but it wasn't being used, so they would buy it from them cheaply.
I'm not disagreeing that it's BS; I don't know.
You'll find that Linux is used in more servers that are much more worthwhile targets (ie credit card transaction processing) than Windows.
I think you'd be very surprised. A lot of credit card transaction software is only available for Windows.
Or are the US steel tariff's magicly OK because, while the WTO has ruled against them, the US (a member of the organization) is free to ignore them at its liesure without fear of recrimination?
Yeah, pretty much.
Caching webpages in a proxy is something all ISPs do.
Wrong. Most of the larger residential ISPs probably do, but mine certainly doesn't, and of the last four ISPs I worked for, only two did any caching at all, and one of those only did caching in certain limited situations.
The downside is that whenever I've used an ISPs squid proxy, it slowed things down! Turning proxies off almost invariably helps speeds, in stead of hurting them.
Hogwash. I've been using a caching proxy server on my LAN for the past several years, precisely because it increases download speed. Now that I'm using broadband the speed increase isn't noticeable, but on dialup it was - somehow Squid is actually more efficient than Netscape or IE at downloading pages. Of course, with multiple computers you get the caching benefits on top of that.
If your downloads go slower through the proxy, it's because the proxy server is overloaded and your ISP needs to upgrade it - not because proxy servers inherently slow things down.
Plus, if the proxy goes down, you can still use the web.
Of course routing web traffic through a proxy server adds an additional single point of failure, in addition to the other points of failure already in place.
Compression.. Now there's something! I have in the past used an ssh tunnel (with compression switched on) to my university's web proxy, and that sped up things quite a bit! Why isn't this switched on by default on my PPPoA connection? Doesn't apache handle gzip'ing these days? Doesn't seem to be used much, though..
Compression is the main thing these "web accelerators" do. Your ISP runs the server and you run the client, and data exchanged between the two is compressed.
To compress your PPPoA connection would require the router where your connection terminates to compress and decompress ATM cells as they're tunneled inside a PPP link. That's not necessarily very efficient. It would require extra processing at both ends, and may not result in that significant a speed improvement. You probably want higher level compression - fitting more data into a packet, instead of making the packets smaller.
And yes, mod_gzip is available for Apache. Slashdot is using it, didn't you notice? No? Then quit complaining about how little it's used.
a far more pressing issue for me is why doesn't google remove links for "kiddie porn" or "illegal porn" or "rape pics" or something?
Perhaps because any automated way to do this is absolutely guaranteed to generate false positives, resulting in legitimate sites getting their links removed for no valid reason, which Google considers unacceptable, which means the only way to do it is to verify each site manually, which means Google staff would be surfing for child pornography, which most of us would consider unacceptable. I certainly wouldn't want that job, would you?
This is why matinee tickets are cheaper.
eBay policy
Metallica is boycotting the iTunes Music Store; their music isn't available for sale there. More info here (the linked Reuters article is a 404; perhaps someone can find a copy of it elsewhere?).
In response to another post (could you call it a nephew post? that sounds kinda wrong), this has nothing to do with what Mac users want, and everything to do with what Metallica wants.
I have. Distributed power supplies means than one failure does not bring down the entire computer.
I thought of this, but I assume it should be possible to have a few redundant power supplies all feeding into a common pool - obviously this is completely outside my field of expertise and my terminology is all wrong, but hopefully this makes sense. So, somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about, would this be feasible?
I completely agree about some machines always being down, and eliminating single points of failure is obviously important for something like this.
Apple provides no stated way of transferring the rights to a particular song from one account to another, but wouldn't it be great if they'd add this capability? People could buy you music as a gift, or whatever. It'll be interesting to see whether they'll allow a transfer if he calls them to request it.
The other possibility he's considering is transferring the entire account, including the rights to this song, which strikes me as being a rather different proposition. Does anyone know whether the EULA prohibits this? I can't seem to find it.
G5: Deliverable today
Well, deliverable this weekend if you order 1,100 of them at a time; everybody else has to wait... but yeah.