If you're using Excel to do Data Mining, I agree, it's the wrong tool... but still ages better than Calc. I mean, come on, Calc graphs don't even have a trendline. Can you do pivot tables in Calc? Have you tried to use a solver or anything more than basic math?
Actually IE does have extensions, although not as many and not as good. You can find them here: http://www.ieaddons.com/ (there's a link from IE Tools menu)
The Developer Toolbar is quite good (I'd say better than FF), there's also an inline search, Fiddler (a headers 'spy' for developers) and others. Some of them are not free though.
I actually use OOo all the time. It's still very annoying - when I need to layout some complex documents, I waste more time trying to get it look right than I spend writing. For once, its handling of headings and numbering is very inconsistent and buggy. Trying to work with nicely formatted headings and subheadings is a headache.
Calc doesn't have many features present in Excel - analysis, graphs, etc.... I mean, how hard could it be to add an interpolation feature?
Have you ever designed something for a major company?
You can't get away with designing for standards and ignoring everything else.
Case in point, I maintain the site for a health insurance provider. One of their customer (also a major corporation) was having troubles managing their account online. They sent a screenshot. It was a javascript error; the browser was IE4 running in 16bit color. The error was due to the fact that one of the programmers had used getElementById() without checking first if it's supported; he thought since 99% use IE6 or firefox or opera, who cares about IE4?
Usually I make sure everything I do works in IE7, IE6, IE5, Firefox, Safari and Opera.
There is a Firefox extension (maybe more) called IE Tab that will allow Firefox to use IE rendering engine in one tab. Pretty cool for testing.
However, as far as I know, IE Tab and all other similar extensions, will use whatever IE engine is available on the system (mshtml.dll I think). It's precisely because of the way IE works and it's integrated in the OS that you can't have multiple versions of IE installed at once.
We provide services for a major insurance company. It would be disastrous if the Intranet and all the online software we've built for them stopped working because of a browser update. I've tried IE7 since beta1 (and believe me, they've changed the handling on CSS between beta1, beta2, rc1, etc.) and I made sure all the work we've done works correctly in IE7. Beta 1 was released in July 2005 I think. There was plenty of time to find & fix bugs, it's not like IE7 appeared just now out of nowhere.
I guess it's much easier to just sit back and do nothing but bitch and moan how evil M$ is breaking your application.
Just to make it clear, Dreamweaver produces XHTML-compliant code and I think in the latest version this is on by default. Also, it comes with ready-made templates for tableless layout for quite some time.
If we're still seeing nested tables and sloppy code, we should blame the lazy designers and developers who can't be bothered to learn something new.
Using XHTML and CSS correctly leads to sites that are more easily maintainable - errors can be found easier, the layout can be altered more quickly, and since the document is actually XML, you can write a XSLT to transform the whole site (if needed)...
Mods - this is not supposed to be insightful, but funny! Do a search on "Maginot Line" if you don't know what it is and why it's funny when related to an 'easy gate'. Hint
Just to make this clear: this only applies if you have a dual-boot scenario; however, if I remember correctly, the option to upgrade from XP to Vista is disabled in Vista installer (at least for Vista RC1 x64)
Personally, I'd rather that EVERYONE have access to the low level functions
... and then the malware will use those functions too.
Personally, I'd prefer no one to have access to low level functions, not even MS software not part of the kernel.
I was surprised a a few years back to know that you can have an app not showing up in task manager. IANAKD (I am not a kernel developer) but isn't this feature more trouble than it's worth? Keyloggers and trojans use it.I think that forcing all software play by a set of a strictly defined rules would lead to less buggy apps and less malware too.
My primary workstation at work (HP AMD Turion, 1Gb RAM) running XP is being used 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. I work with Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio, Open Office, you get the point. At any given point I have at least 10 open windows (right now it's Thunderbird, 5 Explorer windows (each in its own process), GetRight, RDP, Firefox 2 beta2, Corel Photopaint, Flash and a Trillian window, plus AVG and Tiny Firewall Pro running in background. PF usage: 675 Mb.
Last time I rebooted (and it wasn't an error) was 10 days and 6 hours ago. I usually let it on standby during the night, sometimes, when I feel like, I shut it down.
Open Source the player! If Adobe have coded the entire player in-house (which I believe they have), then why not Open Source it...it's a free download after all! Even if they've patented some methods used in the source code, they own the patents and the copyright on the source code, so that shouldn't stop them open-sourcing it surely? Just exactly what is Adobe's objection to open sourcing the player? Sheer bloody-mindedness?
The video codec VP6 is patented by On2. Maybe it's them who oppose their technology being open source.
On one hand everybody keeps complaining that there's only Flash7 for Linux and Flash9 should be a top priority. On the other hand, Gnash "supports many SWF v7 features". Many, as in "not all of"?
So what should Adobe do in your opinion? Do nothing? Support Gnash team instead of their own player? You're trying paint Adobe as evil (or at least that's my impression). I'm no fan of Adobe, but their efforts in this area should be at least acknowledged.
Mod me down if you will, but I've tried some of these apps, and I spent quite some time with Writely and Google Spreadsheets and I haven't been impressed at all.
Writely and the other text processors are at the level of Windows Write, a way to enter text with some rich text formatting. I mean, forget Table of Contents or an Equation Editor (things I use in most documents), where are rulers, the user-defined tabs or the footnotes? How can you expect me to take these web apps seriously when I can't even set the header or footer or page size/layout?
As to Spreadsheets... I can't even customize the cell formatting to include the Euro sign (€) instead of US Dollar.
Like others have said,this is all hype. It may be cool to play with them for a while, but I don't see anyone doing anything serious with them.
Armand www.RichNetApps.com
I think the only licensing costs are for Flash Media Server (or whatever it's called now) - which can serve live / streaming Flash video. Of course, if they batch convert AVi/MOV to FLV offline, then there's no need for the server. The cost for the convertor (Flash Video Encoder or a third party tool) is trivial.
Just a little correction: parent poster meant Macrovision, not Macromedia. Macromedia (maker of Dreamweaver and Flash) was bought by Adobe - no connection between Macrovision and Macromedia.
I'm full-time designer and part-time photographer, I have tons of graphics and I still use just about 25 Gb.
Maybe it's because I backup everything and I don't keep on my computer things I'm not actively using (RAW files get archived, I keep my.mp3 collection on DVDs, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I haven't heard of them anywhere in Europe. Verizon neither.
In Europe (and I suspect Asia too) it's all about Vodafone and Orange.
If you're using Excel to do Data Mining, I agree, it's the wrong tool... but still ages better than Calc. I mean, come on, Calc graphs don't even have a trendline. Can you do pivot tables in Calc? Have you tried to use a solver or anything more than basic math?
Actually IE does have extensions, although not as many and not as good.
You can find them here: http://www.ieaddons.com/ (there's a link from IE Tools menu)
The Developer Toolbar is quite good (I'd say better than FF), there's also an inline search, Fiddler (a headers 'spy' for developers) and others. Some of them are not free though.
It seems that the web browser doesn't know Java or Flash.i mate-iphone-frequently-asked-questions/
This is from a NYT journalist:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/the-ult
I actually use OOo all the time. It's still very annoying - when I need to layout some complex documents, I waste more time trying to get it look right than I spend writing.
For once, its handling of headings and numbering is very inconsistent and buggy. Trying to work with nicely formatted headings and subheadings is a headache.
Calc doesn't have many features present in Excel - analysis, graphs, etc.... I mean, how hard could it be to add an interpolation feature?
I wish the real world was that easy.
Have you ever designed something for a major company?
You can't get away with designing for standards and ignoring everything else.
Case in point, I maintain the site for a health insurance provider. One of their customer (also a major corporation) was having troubles managing their account online. They sent a screenshot. It was a javascript error; the browser was IE4 running in 16bit color. The error was due to the fact that one of the programmers had used getElementById() without checking first if it's supported; he thought since 99% use IE6 or firefox or opera, who cares about IE4?
Usually I make sure everything I do works in IE7, IE6, IE5, Firefox, Safari and Opera.
You must be confused...
There is a Firefox extension (maybe more) called IE Tab that will allow Firefox to use IE rendering engine in one tab. Pretty cool for testing.
However, as far as I know, IE Tab and all other similar extensions, will use whatever IE engine is available on the system (mshtml.dll I think). It's precisely because of the way IE works and it's integrated in the OS that you can't have multiple versions of IE installed at once.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but all pc/winXP laptops I've worked with behave exactly the same as you described.
The problem the article author raises, is not that there anre not enough shutdown options in XP, but that there are too many to choose from!
I don't get this laziness.
We provide services for a major insurance company. It would be disastrous if the Intranet and all the online software we've built for them stopped working because of a browser update. I've tried IE7 since beta1 (and believe me, they've changed the handling on CSS between beta1, beta2, rc1, etc.) and I made sure all the work we've done works correctly in IE7. Beta 1 was released in July 2005 I think. There was plenty of time to find & fix bugs, it's not like IE7 appeared just now out of nowhere.
I guess it's much easier to just sit back and do nothing but bitch and moan how evil M$ is breaking your application.
---
My Developer's Blog
Just to make it clear, Dreamweaver produces XHTML-compliant code and I think in the latest version this is on by default. Also, it comes with ready-made templates for tableless layout for quite some time.
If we're still seeing nested tables and sloppy code, we should blame the lazy designers and developers who can't be bothered to learn something new.
Using XHTML and CSS correctly leads to sites that are more easily maintainable - errors can be found easier, the layout can be altered more quickly, and since the document is actually XML, you can write a XSLT to transform the whole site (if needed)...
----
Developers' Blog
Mods - this is not supposed to be insightful, but funny!
Do a search on "Maginot Line" if you don't know what it is and why it's funny when related to an 'easy gate'. Hint
Just to make this clear: this only applies if you have a dual-boot scenario; however, if I remember correctly, the option to upgrade from XP to Vista is disabled in Vista installer (at least for Vista RC1 x64)
... actually, you can, I just did that yesterday:
/nt52 all /force
on the Vista DVD, there's a folder called "boot".
Boot in XP, and from that "boot" folder, run
bootsect
The only possible problem is that if you have Vista x64, you need to obtain the 32bit version of the boot utility to run it from XP.
Personally, I'd prefer no one to have access to low level functions, not even MS software not part of the kernel.
I was surprised a a few years back to know that you can have an app not showing up in task manager. IANAKD (I am not a kernel developer) but isn't this feature more trouble than it's worth? Keyloggers and trojans use it.I think that forcing all software play by a set of a strictly defined rules would lead to less buggy apps and less malware too.
My primary workstation at work (HP AMD Turion, 1Gb RAM) running XP is being used 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. I work with Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio, Open Office, you get the point. At any given point I have at least 10 open windows (right now it's Thunderbird, 5 Explorer windows (each in its own process), GetRight, RDP, Firefox 2 beta2, Corel Photopaint, Flash and a Trillian window, plus AVG and Tiny Firewall Pro running in background. PF usage: 675 Mb.
Last time I rebooted (and it wasn't an error) was 10 days and 6 hours ago. I usually let it on standby during the night, sometimes, when I feel like, I shut it down.
Why?
Do you honestly think that Flash is evil because marketoids and spammers are using it?
By that definition email is evil too.
Oh wait, this is Slashdot. Nevermind.
The video codec VP6 is patented by On2. Maybe it's them who oppose their technology being open source.
Armand (Flash fan)
Your arguments don't make much sense.
On one hand everybody keeps complaining that there's only Flash7 for Linux and Flash9 should be a top priority. On the other hand, Gnash "supports many SWF v7 features". Many, as in "not all of"?
So what should Adobe do in your opinion? Do nothing? Support Gnash team instead of their own player?
You're trying paint Adobe as evil (or at least that's my impression). I'm no fan of Adobe, but their efforts in this area should be at least acknowledged.
Armand (Flash fan)
Mod me down if you will, but I've tried some of these apps, and I spent quite some time with Writely and Google Spreadsheets and I haven't been impressed at all.
Writely and the other text processors are at the level of Windows Write, a way to enter text with some rich text formatting. I mean, forget Table of Contents or an Equation Editor (things I use in most documents), where are rulers, the user-defined tabs or the footnotes? How can you expect me to take these web apps seriously when I can't even set the header or footer or page size/layout?
As to Spreadsheets... I can't even customize the cell formatting to include the Euro sign (€) instead of US Dollar.
Like others have said,this is all hype. It may be cool to play with them for a while, but I don't see anyone doing anything serious with them.
Armand
www.RichNetApps.com
I think the only licensing costs are for Flash Media Server (or whatever it's called now) - which can serve live / streaming Flash video. Of course, if they batch convert AVi/MOV to FLV offline, then there's no need for the server. The cost for the convertor (Flash Video Encoder or a third party tool) is trivial.
I can't think of any other licensing costs.
Just a little correction: parent poster meant Macrovision, not Macromedia. Macromedia (maker of Dreamweaver and Flash) was bought by Adobe - no connection between Macrovision and Macromedia.
I can't fill up my 80Gb hard drive...
.mp3 collection on DVDs, etc).
I'm full-time designer and part-time photographer, I have tons of graphics and I still use just about 25 Gb.
Maybe it's because I backup everything and I don't keep on my computer things I'm not actively using (RAW files get archived, I keep my
That's EXACTLY what I've been thinking of while reading his little rant on celebrities.
I loved Shark Tale, but it was clear to me that Oscar and Lola were modeled after Will Smith and Ms. Jolie.
Absolutely. No kidding, I was shocked when I saw it.
Regardless of OO.o features (which are so and so) at least the ad promoting it should be on par with MS Office or Wordperfect Suite.
For better or for worse, most top-level business decisions do not factor for the technical aspects you mentioned.
Remember how MS bought Hotmail and how they've tried to rewrite everything.