Archive.
Monday, June 30, 2003 Link
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I haven't commented on the pre-release of Mac OS X 10.3 yet, primarily because I'd like to play with it in person before passing any cursory judgements. Since I wasn't fortunate enough to attend WWDC this past week, I'll have to be patient until Apple posts Panther on the Developer Connection site. In the meantime, I certainly can't be expected to keep completely quiet regarding the hubbub. Case in point... I've noticed several subtle (and pleasing) differences in comparing the menus found in Jaguar to those in the pre-release of Panther.
The first thing is the continuation of the 'flattening' the interface. This was something you could see starting to happen during the transition to Jaguar - subtler drop shadows, less bubbly buttons and so on. In Panther, you can clearly see how the striped background texture found in the both the menu bar and menus has been softened. The texture is much less obvious and doesn't imply any false item dividers. And speaking of item dividers, praise Tog and pass the guidelines, they've returned to the menus. Using only visual spacing between item groups in pre-Panther menus didn't offer quite enough differentiation between groupings, particularly when combined with the continuous horizontal noise introduced by the striped texture. We had obvious dividers between menu item groups since the very first incarnation of the Macintosh. Believe it or not, they were there for a reason.
Less noticeable than the textural changes are the slight modifications that have been applied to the various special characters used in the menu item text. Notice how much tidier (I suppose you could say less blobby...) the shift and command glyphs appear in the Panther menu. It could be my imagination, but I'm sure that the overall appearance of the regular characters in the menu and menu bar has been fine-tuned as well. The characters seem to have lost some fuzziness around the edges. This could have something to do with the font smoothing style I have selected in my System Preferences as compared to the settings of the Panther system which generated the screen shot, but confirmation of this will have to wait until I have Panther installed.
Last of all, I'm genuinely tickled to see that the file label option has finally returned as a native function of the Finder. I still think the piddly $10 I spent on Unsanity's Labels X has been worth it. The sheer amount of files I work with makes it imperative that I be able to organize by colour and category. Labelling was one of the small necessities that I missed from the moment I started using OS X. I take solace in the fact that I'll get at least few more months of use out of Labels X, since Panther won't be hitting the mainstream until fall. Oh, and did you notice that the Print menu item has come back to roost as well? Whether this is to print files or window contents or both remains to be confirmed. Now, let's see what else I can dig up.
Friday, June 27, 2003 Link
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The available domain name of the week is reternal.com
Wednesday, June 25, 2003 Link
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If you noticed the server outage this morning, please accept my apologies. If you didn't notice, just skip right over this post, thank you very much. It seems that after nearly a month of uptime, my infamously leakyWebStar server managed to use up every last bit of its memory partition. It didn't crash. It's didn't freeze. It just sat there, ignoring requests for the virtual hosts and refusing to serve any pages whatsoever. If the server had crashed or one of the applications had frozen, then the automatic monitoring system I have in place to reboot the box would have kicked in. It didn't kick in, so I called my very understanding wife. I asked Teri if she'd be so kind as to give the Mac a three finger salute for me. Stepping over our daughter's toxic gym strip beside the washing machine in the basement, she commented, "It's bad enough I have to wash your underwear, now I have to reboot your server as well?" We're in this for better or for worse, right? Thanks a heap sweetie.
Tuesday, June 24, 2003 Link
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- azer tweaks
- copy images directory
- finish updating vendor templates
- recrunch logs since january re: solus
- remove confirmation prompts
- search and destroy icon_ and ds_store from ftp
- evolution without jarring the user experience
- stream on home not centered under ie win
- externalize search specific javascript
- table assisted transitional xhtml layout
- tracking term streams to relate relationships
- import bitmaps as bitmaps
- pmp search re: smot flag
- test@test.test
Monday, June 23, 2003 Link
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Flower petals drying on a paper towel. Calgary.
Saturday, June 21, 2003 Link
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The display becoming the manipulation interface to the information takes another intriguing leap past the simple touch screen metaphor with Gummi, a prototype developed at the Sony Interaction Lab in Tokyo. Although the associated QuickTime movie only gives you a vague idea of how a flexible device may work to navigate and switch between modes, this artist rendering shows the potential implementation much more effectively. Credit card sized, immediate visual feedback, and none of those tiny 'Blackberry' buttons that are hit or miss. And speaking of buttons, since we're going stuck with them for a while anyway, the last bit of the article also mentions of another technology called Touch Engine, which involves the production of tactile feedback when you press on-screen buttons. Nice touch.
Friday, June 20, 2003 Link
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Thanks for the sympathetic shoulder Jeffrey, but at the root of this whole dot-conundrum is that I personally don't have a choice of development platforms. Recess has started and sides have already been picked for this game of kick ball. This is what I've got to work with. However, encouraging advice has been sliding through the mail slot even as we speak. Chris Laco writes:
"Here's what I've seen done. It sucks at first, but pays off later. Take each server control, inherit it and override it's render method(s) to output XML, and add an additional property to specify an XSL/XSLT. That way, the same control always outputs useful, consistent XML, and it can be transformed into Text, HTML3, HTML4, XHTML, PDF, etc. on the fly at the component level or the page level. That doesn't say much for out of the box usability, but it does provide a great long term solution."
And old friend Tim Au Yeung adds:
"For your application, stick with the Repeater object and create your custom control objects and you should be fine. It's a bigger hit up front to roll your own controls but once you've built up a library, the development goes by pretty quick and it's nice because you really do get a separation of code from layout, especially if you're doing it in a code behind fashion. It's a shame to give up something like the Datatable class purely from a speed of development perspective but after awhile, classes like the Datatable start to feel pretty heavy-weight and straight-jacketing anyways."
I'm not going to pretend that I understood every nuance of that last paragraph, but I get the point and it's been taken. I seem to have a bit more evangelizing to do around the developer pods. Fortunately, we're all aiming for the same target.
[ Update ] Chris also let me know that he ranted about the innane disconnects between ASP.NET, server controls, and W3C compliant pages in his weblog a few weeks ago. I like it when people tell it like it is.
Thursday, June 19, 2003 Link
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UPDATE images_aug
SET keywords = IIF(kw1,kw1 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw2,kw2 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw3,kw3 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw4,kw4 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw5,kw5 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw6,kw6 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw7,kw7 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw8,kw8 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw9,kw9 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw10,kw10 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw11,kw11 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw12,kw12 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw13,kw13 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw14,kw14 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw15,kw15 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw16,kw16 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw17,kw17 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw18,kw18 & ", ","") & IIF(kw19,kw19 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw20,kw20 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw21,kw21 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw22,kw22 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw23,kw23 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw24,kw24 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw25,kw25 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw26,kw26 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw27,kw27 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw28,kw28 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw29,kw29 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw30,kw30 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw31,kw31 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw32,kw32 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw33,kw33 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw34,kw34 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw35,kw35 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw36,kw36 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw37,kw37 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw38,kw38 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw39,kw39 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw40,kw40 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw41,kw41 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw42,kw42 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw43,kw43 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw44,kw44 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw45,kw45 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw46,kw46 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw47,kw47 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw48,kw48 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw49,kw49 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw50,kw50 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw51,kw51 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw52,kw52 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw53,kw53 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw54,kw54 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw55,kw55 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw56,kw56 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw57,kw57 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw58,kw58 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw59,kw59 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw60,kw60 & ", ", "") & IIF(kw61,kw61 & ", ", "");
Oof. Can somebody please help my friend Issa figure out how to loop through a query array in SQL? He'd be most appreciative.
If you're a regular consumer of this weblog using NetNewsWire or some other similarly fabulous RSS newsreader, you may have noticed that the article links haven't been working. In fact, I hadn't even noticed until someone sent me a message saying so. This problem is apparently related to the migration of this weblog (and most of my other ones) to the new Dano version of Blogger earlier this week. At some point along the winding trail of product improvement, the first character in my archive directory name fell into the dust. I'm sure it will turn up somewhere, but for the time being I am hand editing the XML to reattach all of the inadvertently severed characters every time I post. Naturally, a succinct and amicable problem report has been filed with Blogger Control, so the issue should be identified and resolved within the next few days or weeks or some other point along the continuum.
The available domain name of the week is antiquote.com
Several kind souls responded to my question asking whether a mixed marriage between .NET and everyone's favourite web standards would fly. While some of you simply wished me luck, others offered condolences at the unfortunate choice of development platform and related personal experiences of smacking heads against various walls. Still others giggled politely at my naïveté. To summarize the lot, I'm getting the distinct feeling that my quest for happy cohabitation may be in vain. Apparently, I'd have better luck getting Photoshop 1.0 to run in Classic under Jaguar. (Oh, wait a minute... that actually does work... but that's another story altogether.) Talking more specifically, Dan Meeking did offer the following glimmer of hope.
"It's been my experience that you are going to really blow standards if you are rendering "edit" controls on the page. If you are primarily worried about presenting information to users in XHTML, then I'd bet you can do it without a lot of hassle."
Unfortunately, Jeremy Harrington rammed a bulldozer into the front porch of that thought.
"I've been frustrated by the limitations that .NET web controls impose and how they can make conventional HTML & CSS design difficult. I've come up against in design after design. And the problem only gets worse when you start looking at the next release of Sharepoint. If you intend on taking advantage of the out-of-the-box .NET controls and development assistance I think you'll have to sacrifice compliant XHTML and CSS. If you don't take advantage of the controls, etc. then you start to move away from the value of the framework."
The frustrating part of this whole exercise is that .NET does generate some of the controls as seemingly compliant XML-ish code. But it's certainly not consistent and there is no obvious way of controlling any aspect of the tag or attribute formatting. This isn't exactly what I was hoping to hear, but I'm not giving up quite yet. If there's a way around these limitations and constraints, I'll find it.
Monday, June 16, 2003 Link
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Call me crazy if you must, but I need to know if anyone out there in bloggerland has worked on a .Net-based site using pure, unadulterated XHTML and CSS? Is this even within the realm of possibility or am I setting myself up for a shot at America's Funniest Home Web Development Projects? Judging by this forum thread, it doesn't appear that all of Microsoft's ducks are in a row quite yet. Regardless, I'd like to discuss any tips, gotchas, or painful repressed memories you might have kicking around the old brainpan. It never hurts to ask, right?
Depending on the event being marked, an anniversary can be a time for reflection and celebration, or a sobering reminder of the past. Sometimes anniversaries travel down both lanes with equal momentum. Today is one of those bittersweet anniversaries. It was six months ago today that my mom had her aneurysm. Obviously, a lot of things changed for our family on that day and certainly many things have changed since. Back in December we said goodbye to my mom, not once, but twice. We held our breath. We wiped our tears. We prayed our prayers. We trundled onward. And we waited. Surprising my logic and my reason - but not necessarily my faith - my mom pulled through everything fate tossed at her. My dad pulled through it all too. He'll probably be embarrassed by my mentioning it, but it was his strength through the past six months that helped everyone else understand what happened and how to cope. My mom is still getting better, slowly. This week, she's also back at home. Most importantly, it's where she wants to be, not where she has to be.
Saturday, June 14, 2003 Link
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What could some geek with a blog like me possibly have in common with bigger and shinier web types like Dave Shea of mezzoblue or the thunderously prolific Ben Hammersley? Why, a reasonably intelligent-sounding interview at zlog, of course. As always, the various opinions and insights of yours truly are guaranteed to alleviate any manner of insomnia. Word.
Thursday, June 12, 2003 Link
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The available domain name of the week is notstressed.com
Monday, June 09, 2003 Link
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I worked with someone a few years ago whose motto was along the lines of "...when something isn't working, throw some more hardware at the problem." I've been thinking about this statement during the last couple of weeks, and here's why. As wonderful as most of my experience during the transition to OS X has been, not everything has been working according to my expectations. I'm not talking about all the bitchy little inconsistencies in the interface or the previously obvious features that have been moved somewhere and now can't be found without digging blindly between the cushions on the couch. No, I mean fundamental things. Things like how fast applications launch or how quickly folders and files respond to a double-click and display their contents. The single most annoying factor about working in OS X - compared to performing the same basic tasks in OS 9 - has been the difference in the speed.
I thought that maybe because I was constantly running a few Classic applications - most notably, my email client - that this may have had some impact of the performance of the system. But if there was any difference in the speed or response of native applications when the Classic environment was out of the picture, I couldn't tell. Sure, some of the third-party utilities I've installed to add back some lost OS 9 functionality have probably contributed a bit of extra gunk around the edges, but not so much as to have to continually wait for windows to refresh or applications to switch to the front. And so, I decided to throw some more hardware at the problem. Hardware in the form of a couple of chunks of memory. To be precise, I added another gig worth to the apparently measly 512MB that shipped with my box. The cost was low enough to be ridiculously affordable and the gain in performance has been nothing short of amazing to the point of being obnoxious. Applications that used to take 3 or 4 dock bounces to launch, are now ready to roll in a single jump of the icon. I knew that OS X loves memory, but I never expected anything this dramatic. Colour me pleased. Colour me efficient. Colour me almost completely happy - except for those bitchy little inconsistencies in the interface. I'll just have to cover those another time.
Saturday, June 07, 2003 Link
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Seedling between concrete and asphalt. 5th Avenue Southwest, Calgary.
Thanks to a pleasant enough email from one Jason Miles Vanderhill, I've just found out that the old spiral logo critique is still getting way more mileage than it probably ever deserved. The page was apparently referenced in the latest issue of Emigre magazine. Yes, that Emigre magazine. In an article written by Shawn Wolfe of Beatkit fame, no less. Crap, if I'd known that the designoscenti were stopping by, I would've have tidied up the place. And I wish I knew the context of the reference. I've only just ordered a copy of the issue and know nothing about the article other than its author and its title... What's My Motivation? I guess I'll have to be a patient little consumer and wait the 2 to 5 weeks for Emigre's horse-driven 'economy shipping to Canada' courierfolk to arrive at the door and hand me that plain brown paper-wrapped tome.
Beautifully simple things that make your Macintosh computing experience better can found over at Everyday Software, a site that I found - somewhat strangely enough - via Dan Cederholm's SimpleBits. Simple. Everyday. What more could you possibly want? Well, maybe a supa kewl picture of Yoda.
Friday, June 06, 2003 Link
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Actually, no. I didn't mean any of those things, but thanks for asking. Search results messaging takes a random stab at being sort of helpful on the Chapters Indigo site. Presumptive clarifications aside, they did have the book.
Thursday, June 05, 2003 Link
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Just like me, you were right ripped that Apple's 'improvements' to iTunes disabled internet music sharing. Part of the wonderfulness of music sharing was being able to listen to your home-based library at work, and now that flexibility was gone. Well, it really didn't take very long for James Speth (of iCommune fame) to slap together a little hack to get around this minor technical annoyance. Enter the beautiful simplicity of 401(ok), which redirects connections to the iTunes music sharing server over to a different port, thus getting around the local network limitation. Maybe the best thing about this hack is that it utilizes code from Apple's own mDNSResponder project to accomplish this feat. And just to be safe, I'd go grab a copy of it now before Apple gets all pissy on James again. Link via John Gruber at Daring Fireball
Tuesday, June 03, 2003 Link
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This is obviously a week for monumental internet-related anniversaries. Not only did Herr Zeldman kick off his ninth year online, but another humble slice of the ether turns a precocious one year old today. The singularly wonderful veer.com was launched on June 3rd, 2002 amid the usual excited scramble of file transfers, code tweaks and last minute server hiccups, but you'd never know it from the look of our first home page. Gosh, were we sedate or what?
Monday, June 02, 2003 Link
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Submitted by Ira Cary Blanco, an obviously avid splorp aficionado, the latest available domain name of the week is slightlytidy.com. Does this sound like it could describe a familiar state of your domicile? Ira was kind enough to relate his inspiration for the domain this way:
“I was cleaning up around the office this morning and after just barely passing the ‘Ok, I guess I wouldn’t be too embarrassed to show people around the place now’ point, I said out loud ‘It’s slightly tidy in here’.”
And that is how domain names are born, kiddies.
Furthermore.
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