October 30th, 2003
Came across this while reading the little orange book by Jeffrey Zeldman - Lynx Viewer. It’s a pretty neato Perl CGI script. Very useful for checking how your site looks to that minority of people who still use a text browser. Also very interesting to see how many sites break.
See how important it is to separate presentation from structure, and to follow accessibility guidelines? At least, as important as it is for these sites not to lose the proportion of viewers who either use text browsers or are visually-handicapped and use a screen reader.
Anyway, here’s redemption in a blog when viewed in Lynx.
October 27th, 2003
Something looks awfully familiar in these screenshots (1, 2) in the version of IE that will supposedly ship with the next Windows (codenamed “Longhorn”). This after a build of Longhorn was leaked to the public.
So it seems they finally decided to institute a popup blocker. And emulate Mozilla extensions with their IE Addons. Hmm… This is good news in the sense that Mozilla had it right all along.
Source: Longhorn PDC Build 4051 Leaked
October 27th, 2003
When I’m coding or writing reports, I often find myself going into a trance-like state where I can’t keep myself from looking away from the monitor. That is majorly bad, and I know it, but sometimes I just don’t care because things have to be done. I figured I needed something external to enforce a little discipline in me, so I’d got Break Reminder. I used it for some time. Unfortunately, I’d turned it off when I found it unbelievably annoying. Before you start rolling your eyes, let me say that I find my “unrepentant” behavior very disappointing as well.
So now having been alerted to WorkRave by Simon Willison, I’ve decided to install it and enforce breaks no matter what. It isn’t a good sign when your wrists, fingers, neck and back start to ache. I needed RSI prevention, fast.
Enter WorkRave.
WorkRave is an Open Source application that sets reminders to tell you when it is time to take a break from your work. Oh, and it’s free software. I’ve it set to micropause for 20 seconds every 8 mins, and enforce a rest break of 5 mins every 45 mins. The FAQ has some guidelines for good timer values. If you’ve ever felt any aches in your wrists or fingers, or find yourself unable to take a break from your computer even though you know you needed it, get it and try it out. There’re Windows and Linux versions - having a Linux version is great, because now I can enforce breaks when working in Linux too.
Source: Simon Willison: Avoiding RSI
October 27th, 2003
I’ve always been wanting to try out Mini-tab Shapes and finally got down to doing so. Granted, the whole thing was a no-brainer since all that had to be done was to copy the source in that page and tweak the CSS to suit the rest of the site.
Initially though, I’d wanted to put up tabs like those in the Sliding Doors of CSS article at A List Apart, but my graphic design skills weren’t up to the task - I had problems coming up with tabs that weren’t child-like doodles. So I settled for mini-tabs.
Anyway, for those of you who’ve been visiting lately, you’d probably also have noticed the new look. Hate it? Like it? Let me know!
Update: The Sun Report has Vertical Mini-tabs, inspired by Mini-tab shapes!
October 24th, 2003
This article, Internet Explorer Considered Harmful, is a good read for those of you still using IE. Granted, the rhetoric is somewhat biased against IE from the start, but those are some cold hard facts. Of course, there are more reasons to use a browser other than IE.
Also, this article entitled Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0 has been going round the blogosphere and I thought to link it for the benefit of those of you who haven’t seen it yet, and for myself for archival purposes. That’s the tyranny of tabbed browsing for you when using a browser which supports tabbed browsing. Anyway, the article is a very coherent piece on how the Mozilla project should brand (or rather, re-brand) its products and projects. I agree that the Mozilla lizard is a good identity, but I find that it lacks impact outside the developer world. Probably because of the play with the word “Godzilla” in “Mozilla” - having a lizard as an icon just doesn’t seem serious enough. Of course, geeks always have a sense of humor, but in this instance, I think it could be hurting the Mozilla project’s credibility to a certain extent among low-tech end users.
View your website in Lynx, without Lynx
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