I'm sorry, I have to question your experience with Dreamweaver. At $400 US, Dreamweaver is intended for use by professional Web designers and by those learning the trade, and is out of reach of most hobbyists (although the educational version is much less). Obviously someone who uses a tool without understanding the underlying concepts is going to produce bad work. That's not the fault of the tool, that's due to the individual, and is also part of their learning. Dreamweaver as a tool does what it does very well, and is standard fare in many Web shops for a good reason. I use primarily the text view, but the visual view is good for tweaks and getting an overall sense of changes as they are made. The split visual/code view also works quite well as a learning mechanism for those learning HTML development. For those who say it messes up your code, that was the case many years ago, but the last three versions or so have done a much better job, and it also gives you control of what file types you really want for it to leave alone.
I don't think that the mods who marked this as flamebait have done web development. The parent is right, all of the browsers have issues of one sort or another, some more, some less. If you don't believe me, try working with JavaScript access to nested object and embed tags in a way that's both standards compliant and works with modern browsers. This is just one example, there are many more.
Heh, have fun. As a Canadian who also holds a US work visa (TN), dealing with customs officials is less than pleasant, both for getting the initial approval then to come over each time. Especially at Vancouver airport. Every time I come over for legitimate business (or even if I'm not travelling on the visa), they do some combination of intimidate, insult, threaten to revoke the visa, and in general make me feel like a criminal. I work for a big company (which generally has fewer visa issues than small ones), are undeniably covered under the terms of the visa, come only a few times a year for brief periods, and present myself in line with my role, but it still happens. It's not just me either, I know of many stories from friends and from co-workers of behaviour which can only be explained by sheer protectionism. If the country was to be judged by the behaviour of customs officials, I would want to stay away too. I have never met customs officials from any other country who are as rude and bullyish as the vast majority of airport US customs agent I have come across. Land crossing agents are usually better, but only if you are a tourist from Canada who is not dealing with any visa issues.
In any case, we're not talking about private owners here, we're talking about Native American reservations -- we're talking about sovereign States.
Nope, we're talking about Native Canadian reservations. Not that it changes the argument much, but it's good to get the country right:-)
I'm actually originally from Manitoba, currently living in British Columbia. I'm not sure how it is down south, but here Native issues are a very complex and politically charged area in both provinces. I personally have trouble trying to separate reason from emotion, and my first instinct is often to think that it's a money grab. On one hand, many reservations are in dire financial need and the money could help them. On the other hand, I'm not sure such funds always go to where they are supposed to or are used in a manner that is really helpful.
There often still seems to be the feeling within Native communities that the Natives are owed for losses of the past. While there is no arguing that those losses were major, I'm not sure that maintaining that pattern of thinking is a strategy that will win out in the long term (or even in the short term). That feeling of being owed leads to the expectation that other people will take those troubled communities and fix them, but the fixing needs to come from within for it to work. Unfortunately, I fear that this airwaves thing is another knee-jerk "you owe us" reaction rather than one aimed at helping those communities from within. Hopefully I am wrong.
Yah, I didn't want to get into that detail. The Eolas fix puts a dependency on using JavaScript to placing the content on the page, but the plug-in content does not rely on JavaScript for post start-up execution.
That whole Eolas thing was such a pain in you know where.
Java is many ways was supposed to fix this problem. A method to create interfaces that can be spread through web pages. But issues besides just speed have been a problem with Java. AWT was not great for making interfaces, and Swing isn't (IMHO) much better. I haven't tried SWT, but even Eclipse, its flagship, suffers from all types of interface issues (compare it against an IDE like XCode). I totally agree that the whole look of Java/Swing based applications is not very aesthetic, and I would say that the aesthetics and the overall issues with user experience is why applets failed: It's too hard to make a Java applet that looks sexy and too easy to make ones that look absolutely horrible. As far as the experience, I have had troubles in the past getting a Java applet to work, and that's with years of web development experience behind me. It's no wonder that Joe User stayed away in droves. Also, when you come to an applet, the Java loader lets you know full well that you are being taken to something separate from the browser environment, while with Flash, it's just part of the page.
First, why are you not already using it? Because you have chosen not to. Bit of a silly question if you ask me.
Second, similarly to current Java Applets and Flash movies, it does not sit atop of JavaScript, it is side-by-side. You could turn off JavaScript, and as long as you haven't used JavaScript to dynamically embed the <object> and <embed> tags, it will work just fine. As far as JavaScript already doing something well, I would beg to disagree. One of the big advantages of both Java applets and Flash movies (as well as frameworks like Apollo) is that they inherently abstract the browser and platform differences so that application developers can focus on developing the application instead of dealing with browser bugs. Flash actually does a very good job at that abstraction, Java applets less so, but still much better than JavaScript. There is a reason why all sorts of browser abstraction frameworks are being developed for JavaScript.
Third, if you think that JavaScript code is secure, I have a bridge over the river Kawaii to sell you. While the browser sandbox does a pretty decent job of preventing access to the file system, there are lots of workarounds, and many other ways of using it for attacks other than local file access.
Re:dont bash it before you tried it
on
ASP.NET Ajax Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
I didn't say it was tied to IE, I know they are supporting other browsers, and are supporting Mac OS. If you re-read my post, I said it was tied to.NET, which is the server part of which you speak.
Heh, unlikely. First of all, it's pretty tightly coupled to.NET, designed to use the.NET data binding mechanism. While ultimately it really is just a bunch of JavaScript libraries, it's the fact that a bunch of the connector functions are generated on the fly based on.NET components that tie the libraries to the server technology.
While there is some neat stuff in there, I would rather have a choice of development technologies. That, and the fact that you are relying on the framework running bug-free under the browsers you need to support. If that's not the case, good luck fixing it.
Flash 9 provides e4x, which is basically an XPath like implementation. There are no XSLT tools available to the Flash plugin itself. If XSLT is used, the transformation is done before the data gets to the Flash app, where Flash is basically just another target for an XSLT template. We have used this to generate XML input for Flash and HTML alternate content for those who do not want to use the Flash version.
I saw that too. I have no idea how he came to that conclusion, as any amount of research (such as a Google search for "Flash XML") will show many examples of using XML with Flash.
For the record, XML has been a part of the player since version 5, as well as the XMLSocket class. It was slow at the time (it was itself written with ActionScript), but version 6 and later rewrote the class to use C code instead. Version 7 provided data components that could call SOAP or REST based web services (which of course are XML based). As you mention, Flash 9 provides e4x, which I must say is really nice and dang fast.
I'm sure I'll get plenty of eye rolling here (and buzzword bingo points), but they are not quite the same thing. While a portal is indeed an aggregation of content, a mashup is a blending of services. I would say that the main distinction is that current Portal products (with a capital P) typically do their aggregation on the server, and spit out the results client side using static HTML pages. While there may be some exceptions, the big ones all currently work in this way. In contrast, mashups work using client-side technologies (JavaScript/Flash) to allow the services to interact without calling for a new HTML page.
I would disagree. While Web 2.0 is a new buzzword, the technologies behind it are not new. CSS, XHTML, and JavaScript all need established standards and best practices to properly function across multiple browsers. Accessibility standards help both AJAX-based and Flash-based applications better cater to various categories of access limitations. Also, user interface standards help make sure that a widget created with DHTML looks and behaves like a widget created with Flash. The free-for-all kind of development mentality is not a good long-term approach to develop applications, even though it is great for initially building knowledge.
How disappointing to hear this. We area at a time right now when we need standards more than anything. Between the onslaught of AJAX apps, the preponderance of Flash web apps, and the attempt by Microsoft to convert web apps to an extension of Windows with Sparkle and Avalon, we wholeheartedly need strong standards.
Nope, serif typefaces are not more readable on screen at small sizes. One screen pixel is not close to enough to resolve the many intricacies built into the serifs that help print readability and style: instead, they look like mud on screen at anything around 9 points and less. Take a close look at the close-ups shown in the Wikipedia article you provided, or choose several serif typefaces from your word processor of choice, massively boost the text size, and take a close look at the serifs. You will see there is a lot of detail in the serifs and subtle differences between serifs from different typefaces, none of which makes it to the screen at even medium text sizes.
Does 300,000 count? In the two labs that I know about from personal experience, almost everyone has a laptop as a primary machine, and we definitely use our built-in wireless cards.
Statistics can show whether an effect is statistically significant or not within a stated degree of precision, but they can not actually *prove* that A causes B. Even with a well-designed study performed by a well-practiced researcher, there are always confounding factors. Over time, enough studies can be performed to test for the possible effects of those confounding factors. With a study that involves more direct measurements (eg EKG, CAT scan, etc) indeed it is easier to show causation, but with indirect measurements such as with the questionnaire used for this study, causation generally can not be proven simply through statistics. The purpose of such observational studies is more to come up with a hypothesis which can be later studied through more direct measurements rather than to prove/disprove.
Yes, they are a service provider. I don't think they reacted as a service provider, though, I think they reacted as a company who's employees were mis-using company resources. That's a whole separate issue.
I think that there is a difference in this case with regards to the common carrier status. The reason why TELUS took down the site is because the union, which is part of TELUS, posted personal information about union members who were crossing picket lines. The web site was hosted by TELUS as well, so the company took it down I'm sure because they were violating privacy laws, not to mention because of the intimidation factor. In this case, TELUS happens to be a carrier as well, but this issue was an internal matter. If it was another company that had their own web server, and it was being used for that purpose, I'm sure they would pull the plug too.
Funny, Office itself doesn't always open it's own files properly, and crashes on a regular basis for many of my co-workers when opening or printing many files. Try distributing complex documents with many tables and figures, and add revision tracking on top of that. Oi vey!
Nah, iTunes plops you into the store for a particular country based on your IP address, but you can change that once you get in, by selecting the "choose store" link from the main page. At home, it would automatically take me to the Canadian store. At work, our network is based in the US, so it puts me in the US store. I can still switch over to the Canadian store and buy without a problem.
Ansel Adams made fairly massive exposure changes in the darkroom. His prints were sometimes called "interpretations" because he played significantly with the development through print exposure time, dodging, and burning to get the look he wanted. He might have found Photoshop a much more powerful tool for this. That wouldn't have changed his zone exposure system, since the zone evaluations are independant of the tools used to make the changes required by his zone system.
That said, he was very fussy about quality. He was a part of the f64 club I believe, who believed in using very small apertures to get extremely good sharpness throughout. Current digital cameras, and in fact current film-based 35mm SLRs, don't go down to this aperture. This might change with digital backs being made available to some of the Hasselblad medium format cameras, so maybe he would have gone for a Hasselblad with a digital back.
Take a look at BrickHouse, an interface for configuring the rules for ipfw. It provides a combination of a simple interface that still provides much more flexibility than the interface that Mac OS X gives you, plus conveniently allows you to edit the rules in the configuration file manually if you wish. Yah, you could do this using $EDITOR_OF_CHOICE, but I find this more convenient.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, I have to question your experience with Dreamweaver. At $400 US, Dreamweaver is intended for use by professional Web designers and by those learning the trade, and is out of reach of most hobbyists (although the educational version is much less). Obviously someone who uses a tool without understanding the underlying concepts is going to produce bad work. That's not the fault of the tool, that's due to the individual, and is also part of their learning. Dreamweaver as a tool does what it does very well, and is standard fare in many Web shops for a good reason. I use primarily the text view, but the visual view is good for tweaks and getting an overall sense of changes as they are made. The split visual/code view also works quite well as a learning mechanism for those learning HTML development. For those who say it messes up your code, that was the case many years ago, but the last three versions or so have done a much better job, and it also gives you control of what file types you really want for it to leave alone.
I don't think that the mods who marked this as flamebait have done web development. The parent is right, all of the browsers have issues of one sort or another, some more, some less. If you don't believe me, try working with JavaScript access to nested object and embed tags in a way that's both standards compliant and works with modern browsers. This is just one example, there are many more.
Heh, have fun. As a Canadian who also holds a US work visa (TN), dealing with customs officials is less than pleasant, both for getting the initial approval then to come over each time. Especially at Vancouver airport. Every time I come over for legitimate business (or even if I'm not travelling on the visa), they do some combination of intimidate, insult, threaten to revoke the visa, and in general make me feel like a criminal. I work for a big company (which generally has fewer visa issues than small ones), are undeniably covered under the terms of the visa, come only a few times a year for brief periods, and present myself in line with my role, but it still happens. It's not just me either, I know of many stories from friends and from co-workers of behaviour which can only be explained by sheer protectionism. If the country was to be judged by the behaviour of customs officials, I would want to stay away too. I have never met customs officials from any other country who are as rude and bullyish as the vast majority of airport US customs agent I have come across. Land crossing agents are usually better, but only if you are a tourist from Canada who is not dealing with any visa issues.
Nope, we're talking about Native Canadian reservations. Not that it changes the argument much, but it's good to get the country right
I'm actually originally from Manitoba, currently living in British Columbia. I'm not sure how it is down south, but here Native issues are a very complex and politically charged area in both provinces. I personally have trouble trying to separate reason from emotion, and my first instinct is often to think that it's a money grab. On one hand, many reservations are in dire financial need and the money could help them. On the other hand, I'm not sure such funds always go to where they are supposed to or are used in a manner that is really helpful.
There often still seems to be the feeling within Native communities that the Natives are owed for losses of the past. While there is no arguing that those losses were major, I'm not sure that maintaining that pattern of thinking is a strategy that will win out in the long term (or even in the short term). That feeling of being owed leads to the expectation that other people will take those troubled communities and fix them, but the fixing needs to come from within for it to work. Unfortunately, I fear that this airwaves thing is another knee-jerk "you owe us" reaction rather than one aimed at helping those communities from within. Hopefully I am wrong.
Yah, I didn't want to get into that detail. The Eolas fix puts a dependency on using JavaScript to placing the content on the page, but the plug-in content does not rely on JavaScript for post start-up execution.
That whole Eolas thing was such a pain in you know where.
I'll bite.
First, why are you not already using it? Because you have chosen not to. Bit of a silly question if you ask me.
Second, similarly to current Java Applets and Flash movies, it does not sit atop of JavaScript, it is side-by-side. You could turn off JavaScript, and as long as you haven't used JavaScript to dynamically embed the <object> and <embed> tags, it will work just fine. As far as JavaScript already doing something well, I would beg to disagree. One of the big advantages of both Java applets and Flash movies (as well as frameworks like Apollo) is that they inherently abstract the browser and platform differences so that application developers can focus on developing the application instead of dealing with browser bugs. Flash actually does a very good job at that abstraction, Java applets less so, but still much better than JavaScript. There is a reason why all sorts of browser abstraction frameworks are being developed for JavaScript.
Third, if you think that JavaScript code is secure, I have a bridge over the river Kawaii to sell you. While the browser sandbox does a pretty decent job of preventing access to the file system, there are lots of workarounds, and many other ways of using it for attacks other than local file access.
I didn't say it was tied to IE, I know they are supporting other browsers, and are supporting Mac OS. If you re-read my post, I said it was tied to .NET, which is the server part of which you speak.
Heh, unlikely. First of all, it's pretty tightly coupled to .NET, designed to use the .NET data binding mechanism. While ultimately it really is just a bunch of JavaScript libraries, it's the fact that a bunch of the connector functions are generated on the fly based on .NET components that tie the libraries to the server technology.
While there is some neat stuff in there, I would rather have a choice of development technologies. That, and the fact that you are relying on the framework running bug-free under the browsers you need to support. If that's not the case, good luck fixing it.
Oh, and I have tried it.
Flash 9 provides e4x, which is basically an XPath like implementation. There are no XSLT tools available to the Flash plugin itself. If XSLT is used, the transformation is done before the data gets to the Flash app, where Flash is basically just another target for an XSLT template. We have used this to generate XML input for Flash and HTML alternate content for those who do not want to use the Flash version.
I saw that too. I have no idea how he came to that conclusion, as any amount of research (such as a Google search for "Flash XML") will show many examples of using XML with Flash.
For the record, XML has been a part of the player since version 5, as well as the XMLSocket class. It was slow at the time (it was itself written with ActionScript), but version 6 and later rewrote the class to use C code instead. Version 7 provided data components that could call SOAP or REST based web services (which of course are XML based). As you mention, Flash 9 provides e4x, which I must say is really nice and dang fast.
I'm sure I'll get plenty of eye rolling here (and buzzword bingo points), but they are not quite the same thing. While a portal is indeed an aggregation of content, a mashup is a blending of services. I would say that the main distinction is that current Portal products (with a capital P) typically do their aggregation on the server, and spit out the results client side using static HTML pages. While there may be some exceptions, the big ones all currently work in this way. In contrast, mashups work using client-side technologies (JavaScript/Flash) to allow the services to interact without calling for a new HTML page.
I would disagree. While Web 2.0 is a new buzzword, the technologies behind it are not new. CSS, XHTML, and JavaScript all need established standards and best practices to properly function across multiple browsers. Accessibility standards help both AJAX-based and Flash-based applications better cater to various categories of access limitations. Also, user interface standards help make sure that a widget created with DHTML looks and behaves like a widget created with Flash. The free-for-all kind of development mentality is not a good long-term approach to develop applications, even though it is great for initially building knowledge.
How disappointing to hear this. We area at a time right now when we need standards more than anything. Between the onslaught of AJAX apps, the preponderance of Flash web apps, and the attempt by Microsoft to convert web apps to an extension of Windows with Sparkle and Avalon, we wholeheartedly need strong standards.
Nope, serif typefaces are not more readable on screen at small sizes. One screen pixel is not close to enough to resolve the many intricacies built into the serifs that help print readability and style: instead, they look like mud on screen at anything around 9 points and less. Take a close look at the close-ups shown in the Wikipedia article you provided, or choose several serif typefaces from your word processor of choice, massively boost the text size, and take a close look at the serifs. You will see there is a lot of detail in the serifs and subtle differences between serifs from different typefaces, none of which makes it to the screen at even medium text sizes.
Does 300,000 count? In the two labs that I know about from personal experience, almost everyone has a laptop as a primary machine, and we definitely use our built-in wireless cards.
Statistics can show whether an effect is statistically significant or not within a stated degree of precision, but they can not actually *prove* that A causes B. Even with a well-designed study performed by a well-practiced researcher, there are always confounding factors. Over time, enough studies can be performed to test for the possible effects of those confounding factors. With a study that involves more direct measurements (eg EKG, CAT scan, etc) indeed it is easier to show causation, but with indirect measurements such as with the questionnaire used for this study, causation generally can not be proven simply through statistics. The purpose of such observational studies is more to come up with a hypothesis which can be later studied through more direct measurements rather than to prove/disprove.
Yes, they are a service provider. I don't think they reacted as a service provider, though, I think they reacted as a company who's employees were mis-using company resources. That's a whole separate issue.
I think that there is a difference in this case with regards to the common carrier status. The reason why TELUS took down the site is because the union, which is part of TELUS, posted personal information about union members who were crossing picket lines. The web site was hosted by TELUS as well, so the company took it down I'm sure because they were violating privacy laws, not to mention because of the intimidation factor. In this case, TELUS happens to be a carrier as well, but this issue was an internal matter. If it was another company that had their own web server, and it was being used for that purpose, I'm sure they would pull the plug too.
The link to the original article seems to have changed. The new link is here
Funny, Office itself doesn't always open it's own files properly, and crashes on a regular basis for many of my co-workers when opening or printing many files. Try distributing complex documents with many tables and figures, and add revision tracking on top of that. Oi vey!
Nah, iTunes plops you into the store for a particular country based on your IP address, but you can change that once you get in, by selecting the "choose store" link from the main page. At home, it would automatically take me to the Canadian store. At work, our network is based in the US, so it puts me in the US store. I can still switch over to the Canadian store and buy without a problem.
Ansel Adams made fairly massive exposure changes in the darkroom. His prints were sometimes called "interpretations" because he played significantly with the development through print exposure time, dodging, and burning to get the look he wanted. He might have found Photoshop a much more powerful tool for this. That wouldn't have changed his zone exposure system, since the zone evaluations are independant of the tools used to make the changes required by his zone system.
That said, he was very fussy about quality. He was a part of the f64 club I believe, who believed in using very small apertures to get extremely good sharpness throughout. Current digital cameras, and in fact current film-based 35mm SLRs, don't go down to this aperture. This might change with digital backs being made available to some of the Hasselblad medium format cameras, so maybe he would have gone for a Hasselblad with a digital back.
For the record, North Vancouver has no farming industry, so I think the green colour can only be attributed to bad taste.
...
And about the "Canda" stereotypes:
So what does a Canadian cabinet maker who's a closet techie do during those long winter months?
Umm, golfing, biking, volleyball, diving,
He lives in Vancouver, after all. It's not called Lotus Land for nothing!
We Canadians can get a bit touchy about these things.
Take a look at BrickHouse, an interface for configuring the rules for ipfw. It provides a combination of a simple interface that still provides much more flexibility than the interface that Mac OS X gives you, plus conveniently allows you to edit the rules in the configuration file manually if you wish. Yah, you could do this using $EDITOR_OF_CHOICE, but I find this more convenient.