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"You Two! We're at the end of the universe, eh. Right at the edge of knowledge itself. And you're busy... blogging!"
— The Doctor, Utopia


Tuesday, March 04, 2008

IE8 to be standards compliant by default. w00t!

According to IEBlog:

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.

The rest of the post explains whys (duh!) and hows.

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Friday, January 25, 2008

Why I don't use HTML or CSS hacks

I've been teaching (X)HTML and CSS for over a decade now and I've never ever taught hacks. You know, those little bits of code that many designers use to make their pages look the same in multiple browsers. (Yes, IE is typically the problem in this situation.) Whenever asked I've explained that when you use a hack, at some time in the future the problem your "solving" with said hack is going to get fixed and then your hacked page is now broken. Don't believe me? Check out this article from ars technica about the forthcoming IE8. Here's just two bits:

Internet Explorer 8 is going to be the most standards-compliant IE yet, but it's going about it in a way that has some people scratching their heads. With Internet Explorer 8, you have a choice in standards compliance modes. Sound oxymoronic? Shouldn't there be one standards mode by default? Heck, shouldn't the only mode be standards mode? Ah, idealism.

...

When IE8 eventually ships, it will have three rendering modes, two of which are the already familiar "quirks mode" and "(not so) standards mode." In an IE team blog entry, IE Platform Architect Chris Wilson revealed a third mode that can be invoked by developers:

  1. "Quirks mode" remains the same, and compatible with current content.
  2. "Standards mode" remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content.
  3. If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element.

This third mode will use a <meta> tag to specify that a page should use the behavior of a specific browser version. To get IE8 really-standard-this-time-we-mean-it behavior, a page will include an element like <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />. That says that a page should use IE8's behavior—and should use it even in IE9, IE10, or any future version. The first two modes will continue to use the doctype switch to choose between them.

Clear as mud? I thought so. (Read the whole article and it'll start to make sense, I promise.) Look, just don't use markup or style hacks. If you feel you "must" in order to get your design to work, adjust your design so that you don't have to use the hack. You'll thank me in the long run.

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Sunday, April 29, 2007

And so it begins... again!

Babylon 5 - The Lost TalesNow here's an amazing yet wonderful coincidence. Over the past month I've been re-watching the whole Babylon 5 series once again. (Last night I watched the episode in which we discover who Valen really was.) Not five minutes after finishing that episode I check my feeds and the Amazon.com blog informs me that Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, the first of a new series of direct-to-DVD movies is being released at the end of July. I'm so excited! Now I've got to get through the rest of the series, the movies, and Crusade in the next three months. (And yes, I just pre-ordered my copy.)

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Thursday, February 15, 2007

Outlook Web Access

I've recently gained access to an Exchange Server-based e-mail system and was told that the Web access worked through both Firefox and IE. Well, take a look at these screenshots:

IE7
Outlook Web Access (IE 7)

Firefox 2
Outlook Web Access (Firefox 2.0)

As you can see, Firefox "works" but there's more options and a smoother interface in IE. Go figure.

(I wasn't going to blog this but someone saw the screenshots in my flickr account and sent me an e-mail regarding how they'd been using Friefox for this and never thought to consider that it might work better in IE. I figured that with one person there might be others so I've shared it with you here.)

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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

An open letter to the members and customers of the Friends of the Aurora Public Library

IE6 users, if you can't see the whole post try reading it at the alternative location or use this as a great opportunity to update to IE7.

In January 2006 I was asked by the then FAPL board president to take over as the manager of the FAPL Book Outlet. I accepted the position and in the past year many changes have been made. Many of you have liked the changes, a good number have come to accept the changes, and a few of you still do not like most or any of them. Then came the recent sale at the central library and additional complaints have been received. This letter is both an explanation and a response to the criticisms I’ve received over the past thirteen months.

First, just a little about my background to help you in understanding where I’m coming from. I currently hold a masters degree in library science and teach computers and the Internet to librarians across an eleven-state region. I have also been a member of the board of trustees of the Aurora Public Library for the past four years. Prior to my present career, I was a bookseller (from clerk to management) for more than ten years (in both independent and chain bookstores), and have been a book collector for more than 25 years. I am by no means an expert in books but I feel that my knowledge of the trade is well above that of the typical book buyer.

When I was brought in as the new manager the store had recently moved to its current location at nearly triple the space of the previous location and at more than double the rent. (Even this amount is at a significant discount as we’re sub-leasing from the city and they’re giving us a great deal.) Our books were shelved by price, not by category, placing books of the same genre/ topic in as many as five different locations in the store. Some of the books were priced using stickers while others were priced by drawing stripes or other symbols on the bottom of the books with permanent markers. (Both of these methods reduced the book’s value significantly.) Ultimately, sales at the store had stagnated.

Before deciding how to address these issues I had to clarify the mission of the Friends. That mission is to, at its essence, make money to support the Aurora Public Library. With sales at a stand still, increased costs, and the difficulties customers (and staff) were having finding what they wanted, I set about making some significant changes in how the store was run and organized.

The two areas that customers noticed the most were the reorganizing of the books out on the floor and the way books were priced. In the first case, over a two-day period several volunteers moved nearly every single book in the store so that books of the same genre/topic were shelved together. Paperbacks and hard covers were still shelved separately, but no longer were there paperback romances in four locations in the store. The result was not perfect on the first try and as recently as four months ago we were still moving some sections around to shelve in a way that works best for both the customers and the staff.

The second change, pricing, was more difficult for many, staff included, to accept. About a dozen volunteers spent three days, writing a price, category, and date into every book in the store. The category and date make both shelving new and removing old stock easier on the staff. Having the price in virtually the same location in every book makes things much easier for the customers than the old system of different locations and/or markings on the books. This is a standard practice in the used book trade as it does not reduce the value of the book.

The actual prices of the book is where the largest number of complaints have come from and in many cases those that have not liked the new pricing fall into one of three camps: those that don’t like increases in prices in general, those that want the store to be something it no longer is, and used book dealers. Let me respond to each one of these in turn.

Even I fall into the first category: those that don’t like price increases in general. When people started noticing that we increased our prices they commented on it to me and the staff. Once we explained that our rent had more than doubled most people understood and didn’t comment further.

Those that want the store to be what it no longer is, is a harder category. There are generally three types of used book stores: exchanges, used, and rare/antiquarian. Stores run by Friends groups tend to be in the first category; the store has stock that it’s trying to sell of cheap and fast, usually having some sort of flat-rate pricing scheme. That is what the Book Outlet was but I felt we could be more than that. Used book stores have cheap books, mid-priced books, and expensive books with more varied pricing. Rare/antiquarian book stores specialize in the obscure and the expensive. What I’ve attempted to do is to move the Book Outlet away from the exchange model to the used model. Folks in this category loved the cheap prices of the old model and don’t appreciate the slightly higher prices of the current model.

The reason for moving to the used model takes me back to the mission of the Friends: to make money to support the Aurora Public Library. With this new model both sales and income have increased despite the additional costs of the new location, and because of this we were able to totally fund the 2006 summer reading program to the tune of $27,000 in addition to funding other programs and library remodeling efforts. I understand the folks who liked the old exchange model, but continuing to use that model would just not allow us to support the library as much as we would like.

As for dealers; for years we have been selling books to area dealers and have enjoyed doing so. We also look forward to continuing to do so in the future. However, in the past we were not exactly smart about doing so. Frequently we would hear stories of dealers buying books from us for less than a dollar and reselling it in their store for $20, $50, or sometimes more than $100. (Once or twice a dealer would come back to the store and give us additional money from part of the profit he’d made off the resale of one of our books.) To make myself clear, we don’t mind dealers buying from us and reselling in their stores. However, selling to them a book for $2.00 and having them make a $98 profit, does a serious disservice to our mission when instead we could sell it for $25 and have them make a $75 profit. This way, we’re a little happier and the dealers are only a little less happy.

This leads me to the next issue: our use of the Internet to price some of our stock. Yes, I will admit that when we find a book that we feel might be worth more than a few dollars we use the site bookfinder.com to guide us to an appropriate sale price. Whenever we do this we take into consideration many things including, but not limited to: the condition of our copy, the condition of copies for sale online, the number of copies for sale online, and the asking prices of the online copies. In most cases we end up pricing the book using our normal pricing guidelines. If we do end up marking up the price based on what we found online, we ultimately keep this fact in mind: all of our books are donations and therefore whatever we get for the book we can consider “profit”. In other words, unlike other book dealers we don’t have to make back what we paid for the book in the first place since we didn’t pay anything for it. So, with that in mind, we generally price the book lower than what is being asked for online.

Even then, the vast majority of our books in the store are not priced this way. Those in the locked cabinet and some of the books on the bookshelves at the front of the store are the result of Internet-based pricing, but that is a small minority compared to the rest of the books in the store.

***

Now, as for this past weekend’s sale at the central library, there were two complaints that were heard by both me and the other volunteers: the sale “wasn’t what I expected” and the books were “overpriced”. Again, please allow me to respond.

I believe that both of these complaints are connected as the second is a result of the first. What most people expect when they see that a friends group is holding a book sale is the traditional annual book sale with lots of cheap books that the friends are trying to sell off quickly. (We have the Book Outlet so we don’t do that sort of sale.) However, what we advertised was a sale of “rare, collectible, and used” books also stating a price range of “40 cents to several hundred dollars.” We did our best to make sure that this was stated in all the advertising we did. Unfortunately, despite these statements, some still expected the more traditional friends book sale with a majority of cheap books.

More than 75% of the books at the sale were from a single donated collection of mostly history and cookbooks. Some of these books were not worth as much as others but many were worth more than the usual $1-4 prices we charge in the store. A group of about a dozen volunteers spent more than six months valuing and pricing the books using the previously mentioned Internet-based method. We all did our best to keep the prices reasonable based on the research we performed. Remember, our mission is to make money to support the library, not sell off a valuable collection of books for pennies on the dollar.

In one case a customer came up to one of the volunteers and asked if the $2 price we had on the book was correct since the book was worth $500. In another, a dealer, toward the end of the sale pulled out a single book from his $375 purchase and pointed out that the $100 we were asking for the book was what he could get for it in his store and could he have it for a little less. We talked and I lowered the price of the book for him. In the first case a customer got a great deal, in the second a professional dealer validated the price we had set on the book. These two situations show me that we priced most of our books correctly, just not at the level that people expected.

Additionally some read the e-mail about extending the hours of the sale through Monday morning and offering most of the books at 50% discount as a sign that this was more of a traditional sale at which we were trying to “dump what was left”. This is incorrect. The extension of the sale and the discount was not planned. It was a decision I made on the spot based on a number of factors including the fact that we could have the library’s room an extra day and the poor weather on Sunday. Had either of those not have happened the Monday extension and discount may not have occurred.

In the end the sale made just short of $6000 which will all go to benefit the library. The books that are left over from the sale will not be disposed of, they will be dealt with as any other book we have in one of several ways. Many will end up being offered for sale in the store, some of the prices will be reduced, while others will be offered for sale online. Others, the lower priced ones, will be sold off to designers for use in show homes.

Overall, everyone involved in the planning, organization, and implementation of the sale believes it was a success.

***

The February FAPL board meeting will be my last. At that meeting I will be ending my tenure as the Book Outlet manager as I am moving to Lincoln, NE for a new job. I have enjoyed this position and I’m honored to have been able to support my library in this way. The reigns will be handed over to someone else who I hope will continue taking the store into the future and continue to fulfill the store’s mission. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to indulge me and if you wish to leave any comments please feel free to do so via the comments link at the end of this post.

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Monday, January 15, 2007

"The Move" updates

I'm back from a weekend trip to Lincoln to find a place to live and it was, I must say, an unqualified success. Not only did I find a place to live but I'm getting a house, not an apartment. The price was amazing, it's enough space, and it's only 3.1 miles from my new office at the Nebraska Library Commission.

Today I'm home most of the day to deal with canceling services here at the old house (Internet, cable, tv, water/sewer, and trash) and waiting for the buyer's mortgage broker's appraiser to make an appearance. (Though it looks like I won't be home for that but that's not a problem.) It does turn out that I need to replace the roof and the 30 year-old furnace for the buyer so I'll just need to grin and bear it when it comes to that expense.

So, assuming nothing goes wrong here's what's coming up:

  • January 26: Close on the selling of the old house and have the movers pack my fragile items. (I'm packing the rest. NO ONE packs my books but me.)
  • January 27: Movers pack all my stuff (with a few exceptions) into a semi and drive off.
  • January 29: Close on the house in Lincoln. (I'm hoping I don't actually have to be there for that.)
  • Feburary 3: Stuff arrives in Lincoln. I will need to be there to receive it.
  • February 15: Last day at BCR
  • February 16: Drive out to Lincoln. (I think buying a seat on a plane for my car might cost a little more than I can afford.)
  • March 1: Start at NLC

Updates as warranted of course...

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Monday, December 18, 2006

Amazon.com does wikis

Amazon.com now has product wikis allowing customers to contribute content about the products they've purchased.

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Sunday, December 10, 2006

Wiccanomics


Wiccanomics
Originally uploaded by travelinlibrarian.
On the flight home from Cedar Rapids the other day I was deep into Wikinomics when the woman sitting next to me, looked up from her bible study book, looked at the cover of the book I was reading and asked "What's wikinomics?" pronouncing the "i" in wiki as an "a". Not knowing how much she knew about the Internet I stated my explaination with "It's about how new Internet technologies are effecting businesses and the economy..." At this point a relieve expression came over her face, she smiled, and said "Oh, I thought it was about witchcraft."

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Tuesday, November 07, 2006

New J.R.R. Tolkien book coming in the spring!

Yes, The Children of Hurin, originally started by Mr. Tolkien in 1918 and recently finished by his son Christopher, will be released on April 17, 2007.

"The first complete book by J.R.R. Tolkien in three decades—since the publication of The Silmarillion in 1977—The Children of Húrin reunites fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, dragons and Dwarves, Eagles and Orcs. Presented for the first time as a complete, standalone story, this stirring narrative will appeal to casual fans and expert readers alike, returning them to the rich landscape and characters unique to Tolkien."

A $100 Deluxe Edition is also available for pre-ordering.

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Thursday, October 19, 2006

Internet Explorer 7 released

For those that don't want to wait for IE7 to show up via Windows Update, you can now download it directly from the Microsoft site. (You've been warned in the past but now it's cofirmed: It won't work on anything less than XPsp2.)

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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide (Order your copy today!)

Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's GuideFor those of you not coming to IL2006 the book is now available for ordering from both Informatin Today, Inc. and Amazon.com. (Buy it through Amazon and I get an extra cut as an associate.) Heck, at only $29.50, buy two and give one to a co-worker.

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Sunday, September 10, 2006

Downloadable Doctor Who

I havn't blogges about Amazon.com's downloadable video service Unbox yet and I wasn't planning to until I say that they are offering a limited number of Doctor Who episodes (the original 1963-1989 series). I ove the fact that they're doing this but if you look at the details, the downloads (good for 30 days worth of viewing) are $1.99 each. That's $1.99 per 25 minute episode of which 4-6 episodes typically formed a complete story. So, at a minimum, you're looking at $8-12 for a 1:30-2:15 show. That's a bit high in my opinion.

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Screencast #1: BlogThis!

As I promised the folks in my Blogging workshop last week, here's the screencast of how to install and use the BlogThis! bookmarklet. (It's in .swf format so you'll need to be sure you've got the latest Flash Player installed in order to view it.)

On a more technical note, I used CamStudio to create the video and convert to flash. It also wrote an HTML page for me that embedded the video, instead of linking to it like I've done here. That code looks correct and is correct based on every bit of reading I've done on the subject. However, it completely works only in IE. In Firefox I get audio but no video. Take a look at the page if you'd like to help. If anyone has any suggestions or pointers please let me know.

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Thursday, August 24, 2006

Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate Now Available

IE7RC1The IEBlog page gives most of the details. The biggest thing I noticed is about the install program. This one will automatically remove previous beta installations. You will not need to go through the add/remove programs-based uninstall this time around. (Assuming you've previously installed beta 3.)

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Monday, July 03, 2006

Followup: Uninstalling IE7 Beta Releases

If my instructions for uninstalling IE7 betas don't work for you, take a look at these instructions from the IEBlog.

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Friday, June 30, 2006

A problem with numbered lists in IE

Lists in Firefox
Lists in IE
I'm getting some odd results in IE right now (both in IE6 and IE7beta3) that I just can't explain. Here's what I'm talking about:
  • unordered list
  • unordered list
  • unordered list
  • unordered list
  1. ordered list
  2. ordered list
  3. ordered list
  4. ordered list

The first list is coded with <ul> and displays the bullets as expected. The second list is coded with <ol> and displays the nubmers one through four as expected, but only in Firefox. IE is not displaying the nubmers. The really odd part is that it only seems to be happening in my Blogger posts, but not with test files sitting on my hard drive. I've repeated this on multiple computers and would appreciate someone confirming this problem. If you have a solution and/or explaination I'd love to hear it.

UPDATE: As you can see, the CSS edit suggested by Steve in the comments fixed the problem. Thanks Steve!

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Installing IE7beta3

IE7b3 about screen I've now downloaded and installed IE7beta3 on two computers without too much trouble. As I've mentioned previously I'm saving a full review of the process and the program itself until the final release but for now you can view the slideshow of the 84 screenshots I took during the installation and first run. If you are going to install it here are a few pointers from my experiences.

  • Installing any IE7 beta will replace IE6. You can get IE6 back by uninstalling the beta, but you can not run both at the same time.
  • You will be asked to verify that your version of Windows is legit. To do this you may need to download and install the Windows Genuine Advantage Plug-in in order to do this. The slideshow shows this process since I was using Firefox to download the beta. If you're using IE6, this process will be slightly different.
  • Before installing beta3 you will need to uninstall any previous betas that are on your computer. The message says to do this by using Windows' Add/Remove Programs feature. However, previous betas are not listed here unless you select "Show Updates". Once you've done that, you will find previous betas listed under "Windows XP - Software Updates".
  • After uninstalling a previous beta you must reboot your computer before installing beta3. Failing to do so will seem to work but it won't.
  • The installation on my office laptop failed the first time. Instructions for fixing the problem were provided and involved editing the registry. Once I did this, the second attempt worked without any additional problems.

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Thursday, June 29, 2006

Watch this space

IE7 beta 3 is now available for downloading. I've installed it on one machine already and will be installing it on my office laptop tomorrow. At that point I'll screenshot the installation process and give you a few pointers. (I'm saving a full review for the final release.)

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Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Internet Explorer 7

Microsoft released an updated version of Internet Explorer 7: Beta 2 yesterday. It's stable enough to use but it will replace your copy of IE6 and some sites that do browser sniffing will not recognize it as a "supported" browser.

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Friday, February 10, 2006

IE7b2


IE7b2 Home Page
Originally uploaded by travelinlibrarian.
The first public beta of Internet Explorer 7 has been released for downloading and installation. I've installed it and posted screenshots of the process and the results in my flickr account.

One word of warning. This does overwrite any existing vesion of IE already on your computer so please only install if you're comfortable with beta software.

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Monday, December 12, 2005

Microsoft Certificate Error


Microsoft Certificate Error
Originally uploaded by travelinlibrarian.
Will someone please explain to me why the IE Blog ( http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/Rss.aspx) even needs a certificate? (Never mind the fact that it's been certified by an "unknown authority".)

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Monday, November 14, 2005

Another Sony Update

They're released another update (service pack 2a) which will allow you to remove the DRM completely along with a "we're not evil" statement. This version does not require ActiveX and therefore is easily downloadable by non-IE users.

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Sunday, November 13, 2005

Sorry 'bout that

It seems that my idea to create my conference posts using OpenOffice in Linux (booting to Linux uses less battery power than booting to Windows) and then post them to blogger as MSWord files didn't work out at well as I'd hoped. Those of you using Firefox saw basically when I wanted. Those of you using IE saw some very funky code. Well, I've cleaned it all up and added the photos I had so everything should be hunky dorry now.

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Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Sony's rootkit "solution"

I've not posted anything regarding the recent discovery of Sony using RootKit technology to hide its DRM on some music CDs since it's a little out of my usual scope. However, this article from BetaNews talks about how Sony has released an "update" to the DRM software that "unhides" but doesn't remove the DRM for your computer. I followed the link to the Sony site with the update to find some more information and when I clicked on the link to the update itself I got this:

Well, it seems that only IE users have the ability to get the "solution" to a piece of software that was installed on their computer without their permission. Way to go Sony.

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Friday, October 21, 2005

JibJab

JibJab takes on Wal-Mart. (Only works in IE. What's up with that!?)
Thanks Stephanie

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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Phishing Philter

Microsoft released its Phishing Filter Add-In Beta today. To you it you must be an IE user, install the MSN Search Toolbar, and then install the Phishing Filter. My first tests (although I use Firefox for all my usual searching) did have it working as advertised and allowed you to submit sites that it missed.

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Friday, October 14, 2005

Death to CSS Hacks

I've never used a CSS hack and I've never taught a CSS hack. If the design I wanted reuqired a hack, I changed my design. Why? Well, this post from the IEBLog titled Call to action: The demise of CSS hacks and broken pages is what I've been warning people would happen for a few years now...

"We’re starting to see the first round of sites and pages breaking due to the CSS fixes we have made. We would like to ask your help in cleaning up existing CSS hacks in your pages for IE7. It is has been our policy since IE6 that under quirks doctype we will not make any behavioral changes so that existing pages will continue to render unmodified, but under the strict doctype we want to change behavior to be as compliant as possible with the web standards. For IE7, we introduced new CSS functionality (see Chris’ blog post for the full list) and cleaned up our parser bugs. This leads now to several CSS hacks failing. If you are using IE7 (you are MSDN subscriber or received a copy at the PDC) you may notice major sites breaking due to the use of CSS hacks and the strict doctype. "

I that didn't make much sense here's the point: If you're using certain CSS hacks (as discussed in detail in the article,) you site will break in IE7 unless you add yet more code. Here's a more simple solution: quick using hacks!

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Friday, September 16, 2005

IE7 fixes one XHTML problem

It seems that IE7 will properly handle the XML Prolog but not the “application/xml+xhtml” MIME type. Details at IEBlog

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Thursday, September 08, 2005

Turn Firefox into IE

Yes, you too can use Firefox and still keep the look and feel of IE.

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Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Apple Announcements

Today Steve Jobs announced that iTunes 5 is available. According to iTunes 4.9, it's not so you can only get it by going to the Apple - iTunes - Download iTunes page.

However, I couldn't download it using Firefox.

Switching over to IE, it seems the page is busted.

Jobs also announced the new iPod phone.

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Tuesday, August 30, 2005

IE7 fixes

It seems that the Microsoft are actually dealing with problems in IE. According to this post to IEBlog IE7 will correctly support the <base> element. Their stated reason:

"[IE's] behavior isn't per the specification even as far back as HTML 3.2 which specifies there should only be one BASE tag per document and that the BASE tag should appear in the HEAD element."

In case you don't know, HTML 3.2 became a W3C recommendation in January 1994. How's that for fixing problems in a timely manner?

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Monday, August 01, 2005

Sunday smackdown

C|Net's presents Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Beta vs. Mozilla Firefox. I do wonder, however, whether it's fair since IE7 is in beta and even Microsoft admits that it's not standards compliant yet.

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Monday, June 27, 2005

Longhorn loves RSS!

It has been announced that Longhorn (the next version of Windows, due in fall 2006) will contain native RSS support. If you're into pictures, here's a few of how RSS implementation looks in IE7 from Friday's Gnomedex conference in Seattle.

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Monday, May 09, 2005

Nobody's perfect

As I mentioned in my presentation, Firefox is more secure than IE, but nothing is 100% secure. Here's the latest Firefox vulnerability.

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Saturday, April 23, 2005

IE7

Here's a few details regarding the forthcoming beta of IE7.

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Thursday, April 07, 2005

Portable Firefox

Yes, you can take Firefox with you! Now, when you're at a computer that only has IE, you can just plug in your jumpdrive and run Portable Firefox thanks to John Haller. I've tried it and it works. Just be sure to follow the directions on the site. They're not difficult, just important.

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Thursday, March 10, 2005

IE and Standards

Chris Wilson (of Microsoft, not Good Charlotte) speaks on IE and Standards. I'm not sure my opinion has changed due to this but it doesn't hurt their side either.

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Tuesday, February 15, 2005

IE7

Yes, it's coming. Like I really care..

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Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Security problem found in all browsers but IE. Go figure.

This report from Habanero Networks explains the problem. For the non-techies in the audience it means that the borwser can say you're on one site while you're actually on a completely different site. There is a fix a the end of the article for those using Mozilla or Firefox. If that's you, do this now.

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Tuesday, January 25, 2005

When gas pumps run IE

There's nothing like a gas pump that can't find its Web server.

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Monday, December 13, 2004

University to IE: Go take a long walk off a short pier

It seems that Penn States has told 80,000 students to chuck IE. See, I'm not the only one.
Infomration Week

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Monday, September 20, 2004

Still using IE?

Well, then stop already! According to Symantec "the number of new viruses and worms aimed at Microsoft Corp.'s ubiquitous Windows operating system rose 400 percent between January and June from the same year-earlier period."

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Monday, August 16, 2004

The big g is not always right

While working shift #3 at the reference desk today Ander and I discovered that maybe Google isn't as good as a spell-checker as we previously thought. For example, search on the misspelled "fushia" and is asks "Did you mean: fuschia". Trouble is, the correct spelling is "fuchsia".

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Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Bush vs. a real journalist

Seems that the White House screwed up and allowd Dubbyah to be interviewed by a journalist from Ireland. He didn't do very well. Here's a review of the interveiw from Stupid Evil Bastard and the video of the interview itself. One question that a US journalist would never ask: "Do you think the hand of God is guiding you in this war?"

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Sunday, February 29, 2004

#1 in google

It seems that a search for library card in Google will bring my library card collection up as the first result, even ahead of ALA.

On related notes here's a search for Parker Co TX library which not only brings up my site near the bottom of the first page but the person who did the search actually was interested enough to click on my link. Go figure.

An the realy odd one is someone who did a search in Mamma for how do i know what is on my library card. This is what keeps me employed. This is a completely useless search since they've not specified which library they have a card for. What should Mamma do? Guess? (Oh, and they clicked through to my site too.)

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