...except that Internet Explorer hasn't been upgraded in 4 years so there's no point to using those features since 97% of the market can't use them.
Actually, I do like to use them, just for the sake of it. "position: fixed" aplenty and transparent PNGs. Just be sure to mention that your site is best viewed with a standars-compilant browser and make sure it works with lynx (not so hard to do with proper XHTML).
Getting a bit offtopic, but while I really liked Code Complete, one of the most enlightening programming books I've read was The Practice of Programming. Check it out if you haven't yet.
"There shall, in that time, be rumours of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things wi-- with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock."
While I do like w3schools.com, IMHO it doesn't represent the web as whole. As Gecko is one of the most stardards-compilant renderers out there, web developers who wish to adhere to standards naturally use it. But it would be more interesting to see browser stats from a non-geek site, say cnn.com for example. (google.com would be good also) I bet Gecko-based browsers still have a marginal market share.
(For those out there using Mozilla or FireFox, please, do not change the user-agent string unless absolutely needed. Want to see an increased market share for Mozilla? Not going to happen if you pose as IE)
Even those countries that have legalized drugs (and sex) have found that such a decision isn't "consequence free" for the individuals nor society.
First of all, I'm glad to live in a country that hasn't criminalized sex;-) But seriously, I knew I could debunk your claim, but I'd had to do some googling first to be beliveable.
However, my search results surprised me. The first page I managed to come up with was
this, that says: "Fact 9: Europe's more liberal drug policies are not the right model for America. The Legalization Lobby claims that the "European Model" of the drug problem is successful. However, since legalization of marijuana in Holland, heroin addiction levels have tripled. And Needle Park seems like a poor model for America."
So I refined my search terms a bit.
Here is a Dutch page about heroin use. Indeed,
the amount of heroin users grew from about 10000 in 1977 to 30000 in 1983, but has remained quite stable since and the number of users (in 1998) is estimated to be 25000.
And it struck me, ingenious propaganda that first link was. Indeed, the number of users tripled (albeit has been reducing in recent years), but it could have said as well "the amount of heroin users in the Netherlands has remained constant for 20 years". Which doesn't sound that bad does it?
It's always amazed me that people are willing to dring flavoring, coloring, carbonation, sugar, chemical additives, etc. and rot their teeth/spoil their waistline, when there's perfectly good and tasty water available. But that's just me I guess.
(Actually I don't buy bottled water myself, as amazing as it may sound there are countries where tap water is perfectly drinkable and very tasty even, and if I want to I can take the ~2km hike to the nearest spring. But I realize this is not possible in every country.)
Living in the future, are we? First of all, as you can see for yourself, Gecko's CSS2 support isn't perfect either. What's even funnier is the CSS3 link you posted - if you'd bother to read it yourself, you'd see that most of the CSS3 spec is currently a "Working draft", i.e. the spec isn't finished yet!
Having said that, I'm looking forward to CSS3 as (AFAIK) it'll offer transparency support, that feature alone makes it worthwhile to me (yeah yeah, you can get variable opacity with current browsers using proprietary CSS. I'd prefer standards.)
I don't know what kind of a cave you are living in. I'm all for Firefox, it's the only browser I use, but it's still a marginal player compared to IE. Hopefully this will change with time.
AFAIK, the latest builds of Firefox have this bug fixed (so Slashdot should render ok with 1.0 once it's out), but currently (if you want to be nicer to slash's servers) you can change the size instead of refreshing the page to get the correct layout - and if you didn't know, you can do this handily by holding down Ctrl and either pressing '+' followed by a '-', or turning the mouse wheel up and down. Voilá.
Now as to why IE renders Slashdot better, it probably has something to do with this;
IE seems to be more tolerant to bad html (whether this is a good thing is a matter of another debate).
I can verify this, I have the bugmenot-extension installed into Firefox and went through ten logins with no avail. 'tis strange, it has worked flawlessly in the past.
Re:For those of you under the age of 30...
on
Less Might Be More
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· Score: 1
Bwah. I'm 24, and recall using a VT100 some ten years ago to telnet to a server running an ancient version of RedHat (the Halloween release if I recall right). Those were the days...
Re:Teletext never really popular in the USA....
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Ceefax Turns 30
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· Score: 1
You know, we had BBSs here in Europe as well (although no flat rates)... but more to the point, they are different beasts altogether. Teletext isn't interactive in any way, it's just a handy way of retrieving small amounts of data with your remote. And for that purpose it actually works better than a terminal (accessible from your couch), and doesn't cost anything to the consumer.
IMHO Epiphany and Galeon are both just redundant. I am a Gnome user myself, and have never really seen the point in either of them. So Epiphany is supposed to be for Gnome integration? Currently for me Firefox opens new links in new tabs from any Gnome program, and clicking a mailto: link from Firefox opens it in Evolution. Do you really need more integration? I think we've seen examples of what happens when a browser is too integrated into a system;-)
You are joking of course, but I remember a while back (around y2k that is) a discussion at The gas station where a "professional audio engineer" was claiming that copying tracks from a CD-r to another introduced "digital generational loss", i.e. the copies degenerated with each reburn.
Naturally, his claims were quickly debunked, via empirical test even (comparing copied tracks byte by byte to the original). But the world of audio is full of hype and beliefs - what if some of the are true? Who knows if prime number tracks actually sound better?:-)
If you look at the current electronic music scene, you will find that it has adapted to this already. You can put "analog" filters to make the sound more seventies, you can add "vinyl crack" to improve on that. Basicly the "back to the analog naturality" movement is nothing else than a "back to the limitations of 60ies technology". Eventually it will die out when the people used to those limitations die out.
While I do agree that "vinyl crack", or what you want to call it, is among the worst innovations among modern fx processing and should be banned by law, real analog filters (real analog synths for that matter) are used en masse in contemporary electronic music. Now I won't go into a debate about which is better, real circuits vs. emulation, but there is a certain difference between a MiniMoog lowpass filter and an emulated one. Heck, between almost any analog filter and a DSP-based one (and I'm not even going to oscillators here).
The point is, it's not about "back to the limitations of the 60's technology", it's about wanting a certain sound and getting it. A bit more on to the topic at hand, it's the same deal with tubes - yes, they do colorize the sound, adding even harmonics, which most people find to sound pleasing. So they don't get a "clean" signal. So what? If it sounds "better" (and remember, better is a very subjective term), by all means go for it.
(having said that, I'm perfectly happy to use "el cheapo" cables with a not-so-decent transistor amp and a nice pair of Tannoy Reveals. Hell, I even like the sound of FM synthesis! But different strokes, different folks, etc...)
Slashdot Mirror
Getting a bit offtopic, but while I really liked Code Complete, one of the most enlightening programming books I've read was The Practice of Programming. Check it out if you haven't yet.
"There shall, in that time, be rumours of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things wi-- with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock."
While I do like w3schools.com, IMHO it doesn't represent the web as whole. As Gecko is one of the most stardards-compilant renderers out there, web developers who wish to adhere to standards naturally use it. But it would be more interesting to see browser stats from a non-geek site, say cnn.com for example. (google.com would be good also) I bet Gecko-based browsers still have a marginal market share. (For those out there using Mozilla or FireFox, please, do not change the user-agent string unless absolutely needed. Want to see an increased market share for Mozilla? Not going to happen if you pose as IE)
is more people running this script on their pages.
However, my search results surprised me. The first page I managed to come up with was this, that says: "Fact 9: Europe's more liberal drug policies are not the right model for America. The Legalization Lobby claims that the "European Model" of the drug problem is successful. However, since legalization of marijuana in Holland, heroin addiction levels have tripled. And Needle Park seems like a poor model for America."
So I refined my search terms a bit. Here is a Dutch page about heroin use. Indeed, the amount of heroin users grew from about 10000 in 1977 to 30000 in 1983, but has remained quite stable since and the number of users (in 1998) is estimated to be 25000.
And it struck me, ingenious propaganda that first link was. Indeed, the number of users tripled (albeit has been reducing in recent years), but it could have said as well "the amount of heroin users in the Netherlands has remained constant for 20 years". Which doesn't sound that bad does it?
(Actually I don't buy bottled water myself, as amazing as it may sound there are countries where tap water is perfectly drinkable and very tasty even, and if I want to I can take the ~2km hike to the nearest spring. But I realize this is not possible in every country.)
Yeah, you have to make some crappy movies to become the president ;-)
Having said that, I'm looking forward to CSS3 as (AFAIK) it'll offer transparency support, that feature alone makes it worthwhile to me (yeah yeah, you can get variable opacity with current browsers using proprietary CSS. I'd prefer standards.)
I don't know what kind of a cave you are living in. I'm all for Firefox, it's the only browser I use, but it's still a marginal player compared to IE. Hopefully this will change with time.
AFAIK, the latest builds of Firefox have this bug fixed (so Slashdot should render ok with 1.0 once it's out), but currently (if you want to be nicer to slash's servers) you can change the size instead of refreshing the page to get the correct layout - and if you didn't know, you can do this handily by holding down Ctrl and either pressing '+' followed by a '-', or turning the mouse wheel up and down. Voilá.
Now as to why IE renders Slashdot better, it probably has something to do with this; IE seems to be more tolerant to bad html (whether this is a good thing is a matter of another debate).
I can verify this, I have the bugmenot-extension installed into Firefox and went through ten logins with no avail. 'tis strange, it has worked flawlessly in the past.
Bwah. I'm 24, and recall using a VT100 some ten years ago to telnet to a server running an ancient version of RedHat (the Halloween release if I recall right). Those were the days...
You know, we had BBSs here in Europe as well (although no flat rates)... but more to the point, they are different beasts altogether. Teletext isn't interactive in any way, it's just a handy way of retrieving small amounts of data with your remote. And for that purpose it actually works better than a terminal (accessible from your couch), and doesn't cost anything to the consumer.
> So it's kind of like Emacs?
As that list doesn't include a proper text editor, yes ;-)
Which was what happened, an example can be found here, along with the authors explanation for creating the application in the first place.
IMHO Epiphany and Galeon are both just redundant. I am a Gnome user myself, and have never really seen the point in either of them. So Epiphany is supposed to be for Gnome integration? Currently for me Firefox opens new links in new tabs from any Gnome program, and clicking a mailto: link from Firefox opens it in Evolution. Do you really need more integration? I think we've seen examples of what happens when a browser is too integrated into a system ;-)
Given how GWB has managed to turn a decent budget surplus into a record-breaking deficit in just four years, I'd say he knows how to spend as well.
Naturally, his claims were quickly debunked, via empirical test even (comparing copied tracks byte by byte to the original). But the world of audio is full of hype and beliefs - what if some of the are true? Who knows if prime number tracks actually sound better? :-)
The point is, it's not about "back to the limitations of the 60's technology", it's about wanting a certain sound and getting it. A bit more on to the topic at hand, it's the same deal with tubes - yes, they do colorize the sound, adding even harmonics, which most people find to sound pleasing. So they don't get a "clean" signal. So what? If it sounds "better" (and remember, better is a very subjective term), by all means go for it.
(having said that, I'm perfectly happy to use "el cheapo" cables with a not-so-decent transistor amp and a nice pair of Tannoy Reveals. Hell, I even like the sound of FM synthesis! But different strokes, different folks, etc...)