Productive day for the Web

Published on 18 Oct 2006 at 11:55 pm. .
Filed under Web stuff.

Okay, so that last one might not be that important to many, but I’ve been looking forward to it. It is in my opinion that any serious JavaScript developer should give this book a read through.

Oh, I’ll be helping out on Monday for the HighEdWebDev 2006 Conference. If you work on the Web at a higher education institute, then you should be there! This year’s keynote speaker is Todd Markelz from Google!

Bad keyboard shortcuts

Published on 11 Oct 2006 at 10:23 pm. .
Filed under Uncategorized.

So here I am finishing updating my resume and I went to save the file by pressing the Ctrl+s buttons, which I’m sure most computer users know is the keyboard shortcut to save a file in most Windows applications. This time however, upon making the keystroke I heard my computer reading my resume to me! I’m thinking “WTF is going on here?” My hands still on the same keys I press down again and it stops. I then use my mouse and click the icon to save the file, and all is well.

Out of curiosity, I try and reproduce this oddity. No luck. I google for it. No dice. I then start hitting random keys, to which there was success! It seems I hit the Windows key on my keyboard, rather than the Ctrl button. Damn! That was annoying.

In case anyone was wondering how it came out, I think that the software did a pretty good job. The only time things were messed up was when it tried to pronounce “GPA”, “mRNA”, “MPI”, and “WAI WCAG” as words, rather than say each letter. It should have slowed down a little bit in between sections, but it was still understandable. I think it came out pretty good, in a nice, logical order if I do say so myself. 🙂

Browser round-up

Published on 9 Oct 2006 at 8:02 pm. .
Filed under Web stuff.

It looks like the month of October is going to be a big month in the world of Web Development. Microsoft has announced that IE7 is will be coming this month, and Firefox 2.0 has reached release candidate 2 and is rumored to have the official release this month. Microsoft has announced that IE7 will be pushed to Windows XP users via Windows Update. I gotta admit, that’s a bold move. I hate to work in a help desks right now with the flood of calls complaining that IE is “broken”.

So, what does this all mean? What’s is the point in upgrading? Glad you asked. In essence, both browsers have improved in numerous areas — improved memory management, speed, security fixes, and the addition of phishing protection.

Internet Explorer 7

IE7 is the first major upgrade to IE in a whopping five years! As a Web Developer, all I have to say is thank you. It finally adds native alpha-transparencies for PNGs, native XMLHTTPRequest objects, and most importantly to me improved CSS support. For users, IE7 finally adds tabbed browsing and RSS feeds. Tabbed browsing has been available in every other Web browser for at least three years, and is essentially the reason why there are about a billion browsers out there are essentially wrap IE into an environment with tabbed browsing support. While I find their implementation lacking, I think the push for RSS will raise awareness and thus increase support. While this comes as a result of how developers code, users should be ecstatic that Microsoft has improved the garbage collector in IE7 so that certain JavaScript closures should no longer cause memory leaks. About damn time. Also, IE7 will finally have a search box in the menu, like how every other browser has had for at least two years.

Now the developer in me is a bit annoyed because the claim for “native” PNGs seems to be a bit half-assed, not adding all PNGs features, but being able to do transparencies is good enough. In addition, the CSS improvements are definitely appreciated, but it is seriously lacking compared to that of Firefox. Support for generated content and the addition of the table-* values for the display attribute would literally revolutionize Web Design — no longer would designers have to go through unnecessary hacks to produce columns or rounded corners.

Firefox 2.0

Now on to Firefox. Big changes for Firefox involve an in-line spell checking, a session manager, improved tab browser support (adding an undo close tab, arrows for scrolling tabs, and a close button on the tabs), an improved add-on manager, JavaScript 1.7, search term suggestion in the search box and better search engine plug-in support, improved SVG support, and a new default theme. Now, the spell checker, session manager, and the tab browser changes are already possible with Firefox 1.5, but those require extensions. While I definitely find a spell checker useful (heck, I have the extension installed), I don’t see why it should be a native feature. I already use an extension that does all the changes for tabbed browsing and the session manager, so I’ll be happy to remove that extension as I definitely see those features as necessary for a great tabbed environment. That said, I do not know if they will add a “duplicate tab” feature, which is the only killer requirement to me for tabbed browsing, and I will look for an extension to add only that feature after I drop the then useless extension that I currently use that has that feature. All of that sounds good, and I’m looking forward to its release (though I will not upgrade until my mouse gesture extension gets upgraded).

Swift

Surprisingly I never wrote about this new Web browser. Why would I do that you ask? Because it intended to give Windows users a Web browser that used the WebKit rendering engine — the same rendering engine that Apple’s Safari Web browser uses. No longer would Windows users have to switch to a Mac to test their pages … or so we thought. The browser only reached a 0.1 release when it hit the blogosphere. Unfortunately, this achieved more success than the sole developer hoped, and resulted in him spending $350 to keep his site running for the two-three months that it was open, and he only took in like $140. He said he was going to have the site up for a little bit and just give up after he released version 0.2, but as you can see by his Web site being down, I don’t think we’ll ever see his next iteration. Kind sad, because I know there are thousands of Web Developers that would like to have seen this take off. Personally, I wish that it got further, as version 0.1 hadn’t implemented enough features, and crashed whenever I went to my Web site. 🙁

ECW on Sci-Fi is a success

Published on 31 Aug 2006 at 8:59 pm. .
Filed under Wrestling.

I recently talked about my thoughts of having ECW on Sci-Fi. Since that time ECW has surpassed Sci-Fi’s expectations. ECW was expected to do a 1.4 in the ratings, and has averaged 2.3. Not too bad I’d say.

Now I can’t speak for others, but I have begun watching Sci-Fi now that I’ve started watching it for ECW. Of course, I love Who Wants to be a Superhero? (with my favorite moment on the show being Stan Lee ranting about how Spider-Man would never take of his mask. This episode appeared just weeks after Spider-Man unmasked himself in a press release during Marvel’s ongoing Civil War). In addition to that, I just learned that Dead Like Me airs on Sci-Fi. I loved that show when I actually caught it on Showtime, and will be watching it Sci-Fi from now on.

Now, someone tell me whenever Firefly and Babylon 5 finally start airing episodes from the beginning and I’ll watch them. I only hope Firefly isn’t as overrated as Astonishing X-Men has been (it’s a good read, but nothing breathtaking).

Thesis is done, learning is not

Published on 31 Aug 2006 at 8:38 pm. .
Filed under Life,Web stuff.

So last Friday I defended my thesis on the “Development of Computational Tools to determine the effects of minimum free energy on mRNA translation” to complete my masters degree in Computational Science. I must say, it feels very weird to be done with school. I am officially no longer a student!

Now that I am done, I have begun collaborating with a friend of a friend. This person is having me learn ASP.NET to develop a Web site running on IIS. I haven’t gone through many of the tutorials yet, but from what I’ve seen so far it doesn’t look as advanced as many people make it out to be. I have yet to see how it really solves the “spaghetti code” aspect of Web Development like so many people claim. Only programming a page within a FORM tag seems a bit too restrictive. I’m sure my feelings will change once I do more, but right now it seems like the biggest novel that ASP.NET developers get worked up for is really having an IDE to program in. They’re amazed at having Visual Studio, not ASP.NET (I guess they’ve never heard of the Zend Studio for PHP). Oh well. There seem to be more jobs here in Rochester for .NET developers, so resume building is go!

Playing catch-up

Published on 12 Aug 2006 at 12:34 am. 3 Comments.
Filed under Life.

Sorry about not posting more. Since last I’ve posted there have been quite a few things going on in my life.

First of which is that my grandfather lost his last sister. 🙁 This has really been hard on him since he just lost his wife recently. I have been trying to spend more time with him to cheer him up and keep him from being so lonely. Recently, my grandmother’s stone was finally put up. This made him feel a bit better as she has a very nice stone.

The conference whose Web site I have been working on for the last several months has finally come and gone. I assisted the conference all day on Monday and Wednesday, and part of Tuesday. While normally I work on Tuesday, I asked for time off to go listen to Dr. Aktas give a speech on work that happened at my internship last year. It was based off of Stefan’s work, but it was still nice to see him and hear how things have advanced. He said he would send me some biological background stuff to help me beef up/correct my thesis. Overall I’d say the conference went pretty well.

Yesterday morning when I went to let my dogs out I noticed that one of them did not come in, yet I did not see where she was. A bit groggy, I did not remember her even going outside. I scoured the yard looking for her and then tore through the house. Could not find her. Now, I was extensively tired the night before from having worked on the conference all day, so it is possible that I didn’t remember to let her back in the night prior (she takes a while to come in when I let the dogs out), but that is quite unlike me, and she has historically been one to be afraid to leave the yard. When she is all that is left outside, I have always felt confident in darting in and out of the house, knowing that she’ll be in the yard or at the door when I get back. If I locked her out too long, she would make some noise that would set off all the other dogs and thus alert me to go get her, but this didn’t happen. Now, she is 13-14 years old, and is not in perfect shape — she has glaucoma and needs medication for her eyes every 12 hours or they will begin to get cloudy, and she needed surgery to repair her hip a few years ago. Yes, I know that means that she may have snuck off somewhere to die 🙁 … but I would still like to find out what happened to her. She was always one of my favorites, and I’ve taken extra special care for her over the years. She has always been a meek dog … I sincerely doubt she could fend for herself this long … I only hope that if she was found by some nice individual, that they can take care of her.

Update: My mother had put an ad for her in the paper in case anyone found her to let her know that she needs medication. Someone called this morning saying that they found my dog! At 6:30 a.m. on Thursday they had found her across the river! This seems like she DID in fact go outside when I let the dogs out in the morning, and then somehow snuck off, walked a block, crossed the bridge and then got lost. The person that found her saw her and tried to pick her up, she got scared and jumped in the river. He went after her and saved her! He brought her to a relative or someone’s house where they took care of her since. When we got there, her eyes didn’t seem so great, but within minutes of giving her her meds she seems fine. We’re going to be doing something for everyone involved for helping find her. I honestly cannot believe that we have her back. 🙂

Comic Book Characters in Other Mediums

Published on 7 Jul 2006 at 2:21 pm. .
Filed under Comics.

Because A couple of people I talk to have been confused, and because I was bored, I have compiled a list of many comic book characters that have made their way onto television or the movies. I have also tried to give some basic background information on either the character or the medium they were created it where appropriate. This list only contains movies/television shows where the original medium was a comic book, and does not cover works that have crossed over into comic books (e.g., Aliens, Star Wars, CSI, Nightmare on Elm Street, Buffy).

Update: That table is way too big to much information for people whose screen resolution is small, so I’ve made it it’s own section. Comic Book Movies.

Updates for this Web site

Published on 6 Jul 2006 at 12:25 am. .
Filed under Web stuff.

Sorry for not posting lately, but I have been backed up by working on things in my free time and have been catching up on my reading/watching things (e.g., the Fantastic Four movie). That said, since my last post, I have updated the Web site a little bit. They are:

  1. New look — I decided it was long past time that I modified the design of the site enough that I was really not using the Nepture theme for WordPress. This new design uses less HTML markup and less CSS code, in addition to using no longer using images for background colors and such, all causing a small download size for users.
  2. Faster loading scripts — thanks to Dean Edward my scripts should now load when the DOM is loaded, but before all content (i.e., images) is done downloading. This should work in browsers that use the Trident, Gecko, KHTML/WebKit, and the newest Presto layout engines, or in other words Internet Explorer/Maxathon, Firefox/SeaMonkey/Mozilla/Netscape, Konqueror/Safari, and Opera 9. Users of Opera before 9 and for really old browsers are stuck waiting for the browser to finish loading. Sorry.
  3. Improved site security — this one I’m a little unsure of. I can’t find the link I had discussing this, but it made it sound like one could inject additional header information to turn my Contact link into a spammer’s heaven. I now strip out “\r\n” from all fields to correct this. I think this will secure things better. That said, if anyone knows more on this please comment!
  4. Bug fixing — Fixed a bug in my To DOM script over in my Work section. It wasn’t a bug in previous versions, but somehow editing stuff introduced a bug. In fixing it, the script now takes two parameters (the string and the object that has nodes added to) instead of one. While working on this post it just occurred to me make one simple change that made the code slightly less ugly, and eliminated a recursive call. Yaaa.
  5. True XHTML — Moved the site to true XHTML for Firefox at least. I’ll test it tomorrow in Opera 9 (I don’t have it installed on this machine and don’t feel logging in as an Administrator to test it). I’d like to hear from someone to let me know about Safari/Konqueror. You’ll know if you’re getting your page in true XHTML and you see <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> as the first line in the source. Of course, since Internet Explorer does not support XHTML served with the correct MIME type (and because the XML decleration sends Internet Explorer into quirks mode), I serve the page in good ole text/html.

Please, let me know your thoughts. I’m particularly interested in the last point.

Update: Tested it in Opera 9, and it seems that it gets the correct MIME type too. Still would like to hear from people for Safari/Konqueror folks.

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