There's not a perfect rule, but the oft-repeated rul-of-thumb is that you should leave 35% spare 'space' if you write in English. The way I understand the rule is that if your text in English takes up 65% of the space that you could use for text then you probably have enough room to place the translated text in that location for any other language.
Of course this only makes sense for horizontal text and maybe even only left-to-right at that. It's also bound to be wildly off in some cases. The reasoning I heard for is was that text tends to get longer when you translate it from English.
Don't ask me what to do if English isn't the language you authour your text in.
My daughter got me into it... They were talking about expanding at E3 this year, too. They had a PS2 game (that seems to have nothing to do with the web site other than the characters) and they have something coming out so you can play on cell phones. To be honest, I actually think they have a chance to break in to the mobile market, depending on how clever they are. I don't know how the MTV acquisition will affect that.
Where does the number come from? They have to have some kind of justification for it, especially when the article ends with "lifetime to date total for Xbox consoles sales worldwide is only around 21 million after almost four years on sale."
Seriously, is there some context for this? Can we read more of what Moore said somewhere?
In the article they repeatedly mention the non-phone WiFi tablet Nokia has come out with but don't call it by name. I assume (from what I read on svg.org) that the 770 is what they're referring to?
Of course I have to use this chance to observe that this device supports SVG Tiny, as does Opera which they've embedded in other phones. Safari has no native SVG yet, but KDE/Konqueror has their implementation in KSVG. So it looks like Nokia is staying on that path.
FTA:
"It is not clear whether the implementation of Safari will become standard across Nokia handsets. It also offers the Opera browser on some models,..."
They acknowledge Opera, just this article is about a different browser;)
The PC section was relegated to a tiny hallway in the basement.
Um, no. I was at E3 and, although there were only a couple PC games that really stood out to me, there was definitely more than a tiny hallway in the basement. Booth 1068(PDF) in South Hall as well as the booth in the basement (Kentia Hall) were dedicated to "Games for Windows." That's just Microsoft's name for their group that pushes Windows games, it most definitely does not mean that those are all the Windows games. There were plenty of PCs in the ATI and Nvidia displays as well as scattered around other booths.
I'm not saying that the consoles didn't outshine the PC games at E3, this was a year of big console announcements. Last year though, I remember seeing a whole lot more MMORPGS which are almost exclusively PC based. That and the big title last year was Doom 3, which was a PC only release.
Those are just a small part of the things that people like you and I do. I mean, if games were all corporate produced and targetted for consoles, Id and the rest wouldn't have ever been started.
I'm saying is that modders, developers and other people who use 99% of what computers do only compose 1% of the audience. The overwhelming majority use 1% of what a PC does and don't know or care about the other cool stuff out there with anything more than a passing interest.
That overwhelming majority makes hardware cheap for us, but also causes the big corps to look at economies of scale and refine their products to maximize their profits.
This is definitely true, but what are the PC things that they do? Surf the web, send email, and print their resume? If a console can ever get a good portion of these tasks right, then consumers will be looking at a choice between the subsidized console that does what they want or an expensive PC that does a whole lot more that they don't expect to fully use.
I know they've tried to do television-based browsers before, but things could get better for that type of offering with HDTV resolutions.
Heck, they don't even have to get a full web browser working well: just an email reader with buttons for "forward to my whole address book" and "insert LOL".
There is still plenty to see and do at E3. People talk about it like it's all about the booth babes and the swag. If you get hung up on that and don't go any furthur then of course you're not going to get anything out of it. Should Sony run up to me and hand me a PS3 when I walk in the door? You have to work a little, man!
When I went to E3, I talked to developers that worked on Age Of Empires, Kinetic (for Sony Eyetoy), and others. I saw very informative, very accessible presentations on the Unreal 2007 engine and others. By the way, after the presentation on the Unreal engine (which will undoubtedly be used in a pile of new games), I was the only person to respond when they said 'any questions?'
That was without any real agenda, without lying to get in to any private offices.
I also got to talk to some people developing some innovative games and technology that haven't taken off, Kentia hall is full of good ideas (and some bad ones) that can't afford the space and flashing lights that Nvidia can.
I didn't get the inflatable Conan Sword and they were out of flashy Logitech things when I got there, but I did get what I went there for: information about upcoming Electronic Entertainment. You have to get out of the two-hour line ups for trailers that will be on the internet next week and go talk to some people.
Not only bitter, but totally without justification. Have a look at the archives. Specifically the post titled "(Old, Repost)E3: French Wookies 2003 Redux " from E3 in 2003. Here are a few choice excerpts:
Some people recognize the Corp web link on our press passes, but few have ever actually read the site enough to know what a monumentally thorough mistake it is to let us into anything official. Between our unquantifiable-but-legitimate press passes, and Mr. Poppinfresh's ability to ninja-speak our way into VIP demos, we drift through E3 in a strange grey no-mans-land, where we see all and are required to produce nothing of quality in return.
Okay, now why is it that they can't get media kits?
Maybe there are so many closed doors at E3 because a few years back him and his pals walked in to demos with this approach
Raph: This is the character creation screen. As you can see, there are many well-known races already...
Pop: MAKE A WOOKIE!
It's one thing to complain that you're having trouble getting newsworthy stories at a tradeshow, but this guy clearly states the reason why is that he's ruined for himself and the rest of us.
Currently, windows that have been customized, such as hiding a toolbar or making the window non-resizable, will default to opening in their own standalone frame,... The rationale for opening only customized windows in a new frame is that this seems to correlate with scenarios where showing a window on top of the current window is desirable
The interesting thing is that I read this blog post yesterday, then I also ran across something on the Firefox tips page. It basically says that by setting browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction to 2, Firefox will behave the same way. I think this is the default setting nowadays, because Fx already did this for me without my changing any prefs.
I suppose it's a logical conclusion for anyone building tabbed browsing into a web browser, but when I first read the tip I was struck by the similarity in the reasoning.
I find that most of the time that "more functionality in IE" just means an ActiveX control. That just boils down to a Windows PC application served on a web page.
I've had trouble getting XML to render right in IE as well. I think there's only a certain subset of XML files it can render right (based on DOCTYPE declaration or the namespaces it uses, not sure exactly).
I don't think there are many sites that are actively serving up their pages (to the end user) as XML (not counting XHTML, of course).
As far as "too little, too late", I read that it's actually a whole different team of developers that AOL has hired. So really it's not even the same people making the effort, just AOL making a browser and slapping a well-known brand name on it.
I got a free "fUnc Industries sUrface 1030" (their goofy capitalization - happen to have the paper next to me on the desk) from Alienware last year at E3. Maybe that's the one you mean?
I find it an improvement over my old one (though I miss looking at my old Linux on Playstation promo mousepad). The other cool thing about it (that I actually just found a little while ago) is that it has a clip to keep your mouse cord out of the way.
I'm the opposite, I have a mouse at work and a Logitech Trackman Marble at home. I've wanted to replace it just because it's the oldest part of my system (PS/2 only), but I just can't justify it. It works great, I have no problem playing FPS or RTS with it. Well, no problems that are due to the trackball:-/
I get some pain in my wrist occasionally when I use either the mouse (at work), the trackball (at home) or my notebook's touchpad (elsewhere) for too many hours straight. It doesn't last though - I think the variety helps.
What's creepy is that the game (and I'm guessing by extension the movie that goes with it) doesn't seem to have anything to do with the story in the original books.
I have piles of pictures from E3 2005. Right now you can get to them from my blog. I haven't put up the Namco ones yet, but I will soon.
I got some booth babes, not sure about Namco - I was too busy yelling for a t-shirt. Namco had some guys with pac-man heads on, looked hilarious, I got a picture of them.
Most of the pictures I took are screenshots, tho.
I think the Namco women were the same ones as last year, the leader of the pac looked familiar.
I guess I hope so, too, but mostly for nostalgic reasons. MS has won in other sectors with this strategy before - just waiting out the competition and doling out from their deep pockets until everyone accepts them.
In the case of Xbox 360 vs Revolution though, I have to say the hardware on microsoft's side looks much better. Nintendo's recourse in that regard is the price point.
I think you've got a good point about online play. It seems like it's still the area of people that are heavy into gaming. The best thing about online games is the profit margin. That makes it harder to get the wider audience in to it. As that scene grows, though, the companies playing in that field will establish a name and profit from it.
Honestly, I think Nintendo has been trying harder than anyone to innovate.
This could be true, the problem is that the kind of innovation they're trying is really expensive. New toys like the DS get strong love/hate reactions (currently, I'm in the latter group).
I think that's how some news sites are playing it out - Nintendo just wanted to stand alone. The thing is, the only way to stand alone is to be first. The followers will always be compared to others in the market.
The biggest problem with the strategy is that by the time their hardware gets out the door, their competitors are already in the living rooms.
Slashdot Mirror
There's not a perfect rule, but the oft-repeated rul-of-thumb is that you should leave 35% spare 'space' if you write in English. The way I understand the rule is that if your text in English takes up 65% of the space that you could use for text then you probably have enough room to place the translated text in that location for any other language.
Of course this only makes sense for horizontal text and maybe even only left-to-right at that. It's also bound to be wildly off in some cases. The reasoning I heard for is was that text tends to get longer when you translate it from English.
Don't ask me what to do if English isn't the language you authour your text in.
My daughter got me into it... They were talking about expanding at E3 this year, too. They had a PS2 game (that seems to have nothing to do with the web site other than the characters) and they have something coming out so you can play on cell phones. To be honest, I actually think they have a chance to break in to the mobile market, depending on how clever they are. I don't know how the MTV acquisition will affect that.
Where does the number come from? They have to have some kind of justification for it, especially when the article ends with "lifetime to date total for Xbox consoles sales worldwide is only around 21 million after almost four years on sale."
Seriously, is there some context for this? Can we read more of what Moore said somewhere?
In the article they repeatedly mention the non-phone WiFi tablet Nokia has come out with but don't call it by name. I assume (from what I read on svg.org) that the 770 is what they're referring to?
Of course I have to use this chance to observe that this device supports SVG Tiny, as does Opera which they've embedded in other phones. Safari has no native SVG yet, but KDE/Konqueror has their implementation in KSVG. So it looks like Nokia is staying on that path.
FTA: "It is not clear whether the implementation of Safari will become standard across Nokia handsets. It also offers the Opera browser on some models,..." They acknowledge Opera, just this article is about a different browser ;)
Can't beat Mario Twins, and it's been around for years.
The PC section was relegated to a tiny hallway in the basement.
Um, no. I was at E3 and, although there were only a couple PC games that really stood out to me, there was definitely more than a tiny hallway in the basement. Booth 1068(PDF) in South Hall as well as the booth in the basement (Kentia Hall) were dedicated to "Games for Windows." That's just Microsoft's name for their group that pushes Windows games, it most definitely does not mean that those are all the Windows games. There were plenty of PCs in the ATI and Nvidia displays as well as scattered around other booths.
I'm not saying that the consoles didn't outshine the PC games at E3, this was a year of big console announcements. Last year though, I remember seeing a whole lot more MMORPGS which are almost exclusively PC based. That and the big title last year was Doom 3, which was a PC only release.
Those are just a small part of the things that people like you and I do. I mean, if games were all corporate produced and targetted for consoles, Id and the rest wouldn't have ever been started.
I'm saying is that modders, developers and other people who use 99% of what computers do only compose 1% of the audience. The overwhelming majority use 1% of what a PC does and don't know or care about the other cool stuff out there with anything more than a passing interest.
That overwhelming majority makes hardware cheap for us, but also causes the big corps to look at economies of scale and refine their products to maximize their profits.
(statistics accurate to +/- 100%).
Like the PS2 does?
This is definitely true, but what are the PC things that they do? Surf the web, send email, and print their resume? If a console can ever get a good portion of these tasks right, then consumers will be looking at a choice between the subsidized console that does what they want or an expensive PC that does a whole lot more that they don't expect to fully use.
I know they've tried to do television-based browsers before, but things could get better for that type of offering with HDTV resolutions.
Heck, they don't even have to get a full web browser working well: just an email reader with buttons for "forward to my whole address book" and "insert LOL".
Maybe I'm biased, but I see Age of Empires 3 as nominee for Best PC Game and I can't think of any other PC games that stood out.
Okay, Quake 4.
Oh yeah, and Unreal 2007...
What other great titles are there on PC?
There is still plenty to see and do at E3. People talk about it like it's all about the booth babes and the swag. If you get hung up on that and don't go any furthur then of course you're not going to get anything out of it. Should Sony run up to me and hand me a PS3 when I walk in the door? You have to work a little, man!
When I went to E3, I talked to developers that worked on Age Of Empires, Kinetic (for Sony Eyetoy), and others. I saw very informative, very accessible presentations on the Unreal 2007 engine and others. By the way, after the presentation on the Unreal engine (which will undoubtedly be used in a pile of new games), I was the only person to respond when they said 'any questions?'
That was without any real agenda, without lying to get in to any private offices.
I also got to talk to some people developing some innovative games and technology that haven't taken off, Kentia hall is full of good ideas (and some bad ones) that can't afford the space and flashing lights that Nvidia can.
I didn't get the inflatable Conan Sword and they were out of flashy Logitech things when I got there, but I did get what I went there for: information about upcoming Electronic Entertainment. You have to get out of the two-hour line ups for trailers that will be on the internet next week and go talk to some people.
I suppose it's a logical conclusion for anyone building tabbed browsing into a web browser, but when I first read the tip I was struck by the similarity in the reasoning.
I find that most of the time that "more functionality in IE" just means an ActiveX control. That just boils down to a Windows PC application served on a web page.
I've had trouble getting XML to render right in IE as well. I think there's only a certain subset of XML files it can render right (based on DOCTYPE declaration or the namespaces it uses, not sure exactly).
I don't think there are many sites that are actively serving up their pages (to the end user) as XML (not counting XHTML, of course).
Correct me if you've got different info.
As far as "too little, too late", I read that it's actually a whole different team of developers that AOL has hired. So really it's not even the same people making the effort, just AOL making a browser and slapping a well-known brand name on it.
Just what I heard, that's all...
I got a free "fUnc Industries sUrface 1030" (their goofy capitalization - happen to have the paper next to me on the desk) from Alienware last year at E3.
Maybe that's the one you mean?
I find it an improvement over my old one (though I miss looking at my old Linux on Playstation promo mousepad). The other cool thing about it (that I actually just found a little while ago) is that it has a clip to keep your mouse cord out of the way.
Their website is http://www.func.net/ for the interested.
I'm the opposite, I have a mouse at work and a Logitech Trackman Marble at home. I've wanted to replace it just because it's the oldest part of my system (PS/2 only), but I just can't justify it. It works great, I have no problem playing FPS or RTS with it. Well, no problems that are due to the trackball :-/
I get some pain in my wrist occasionally when I use either the mouse (at work), the trackball (at home) or my notebook's touchpad (elsewhere) for too many hours straight. It doesn't last though - I think the variety helps.
What's creepy is that the game (and I'm guessing by extension the movie that goes with it) doesn't seem to have anything to do with the story in the original books.
I have piles of pictures from E3 2005. Right now you can get to them from my blog. I haven't put up the Namco ones yet, but I will soon.
I got some booth babes, not sure about Namco - I was too busy yelling for a t-shirt. Namco had some guys with pac-man heads on, looked hilarious, I got a picture of them.
Most of the pictures I took are screenshots, tho.
I think the Namco women were the same ones as last year, the leader of the pac looked familiar.
I just left E3 (litterally on wifi 5 blocks away) with 1200 pictures and not one of the Phantom Console. I saw it last year.
Maybe it'll show up mysteriously when I get the pictures developed...
Can I still do that with digital?
I guess I hope so, too, but mostly for nostalgic reasons. MS has won in other sectors with this strategy before - just waiting out the competition and doling out from their deep pockets until everyone accepts them.
In the case of Xbox 360 vs Revolution though, I have to say the hardware on microsoft's side looks much better. Nintendo's recourse in that regard is the price point.
I think you've got a good point about online play. It seems like it's still the area of people that are heavy into gaming. The best thing about online games is the profit margin. That makes it harder to get the wider audience in to it. As that scene grows, though, the companies playing in that field will establish a name and profit from it.
Honestly, I think Nintendo has been trying harder than anyone to innovate.
This could be true, the problem is that the kind of innovation they're trying is really expensive. New toys like the DS get strong love/hate reactions (currently, I'm in the latter group).
I think that's how some news sites are playing it out - Nintendo just wanted to stand alone. The thing is, the only way to stand alone is to be first. The followers will always be compared to others in the market.
The biggest problem with the strategy is that by the time their hardware gets out the door, their competitors are already in the living rooms.