boogdesign links

Following up on the increased storage (now over 4Gb) and the improved support for mobile phones, this week Google rolled out IMAP support for Gmail. I access all my other mail accounts through IMAP, so I don't need to be convinced of the benefits - mostly (for me) a consistent view of your entire inbox (including sent items) across all the mail clients on all the different PCs I use to read my email (currently six, and now my mobile phone). If you're not so sure, try reading "Why IMAP is better than POP" or "POP vs IMAP for Inboxes."

Also related to my little signage project in the last post, one problem I encountered was the IE would insist on displaying a vertical scrollbar even though it wasn't required - and since I knew the exact pixel dimensions of the display I knew I didn't need one. It turns out there are many solutions to this on the internet, it's a common complaint when IE is rendering in standards compliant mode, and the solution is easy enough, just put:

html {
overflow: auto;
}

in your CSS file.

Today I've been working on electronic signage, to display meeting details on small screen outside of meeting rooms. The details themselves come from the booking system sold by my employers and the data is sucked out from the back end database by a fairly simple ASP page. The sign is really a Windows CE device embedded in a box with 640x480px display, which is configured to launch PocketIE in kiosk mode, pointing at my ASP web page when it starts up.

Nothing too complicated. However, to confirm with the client that I've developed what they actually want I need to send them screenshots. There's no facility for screenshots on the device itself, but it displays almost identically on desktop IE - from which I can easily produce screenshots. The problem is I wanted the dimensions of the displayed page in desktop IE to exactly match the dimensions of the device screen, but desktop IE has a whole load of window chrome (borders, toolbars etc.) which don't show on the device. I could have messed around trying to get the correct size manually, but I thought there had to be a way I could achieve with code.

The solution was a little harder to find than I expected, most browser resizing solutions concentrate on changing the entire window rather than the visible part, but I found a good solution at the above link. I also turned the code into a bookmarklet so I could add it to my favourites in IE by hardcoding some of the values, it should be easy enough to change if you need a different resolution.

An interesting article from David Airey, and I'm always a sucker for this sort of thing I'm sure I've made far more than just seven mistakes, but I'll stick to his ones:

• Mistake #1 - not using a self-hosted blog - never been a problem for me, since half the point of it has always been to mess around with the blogging software.
• Mistake #2 - expecting people to visit - well I've never really expected people to visit this little blog, but the wider point here is that you've got to drive traffic to your blog by interacting with other bloggers as well as the readers of your blog - good advice.
• Mistake #3 - not writing as if I’m talking - I think what he meant to say here was 'not writing as if I'm conversing', the point being that your blog posts should invite people to respond rather than attempt to intimidate them with your superior knowledge. At this juncture I think I ought to point out, if ever you read anything on this blog where it sounds like I'm trying to initimidate you with my knowledge, rest assured I'm almost certainly bluffing
• Mistake #4 - changing the location of my blog - I think this isn't an issue so long as you've avoided mistake #1 and are able to deal with sitemaps and either mod_alias (redirect specific URLs with RedirectPermanent directives in your .htaccess, eg. from /blog/ to /) or mod_rewrite (use a regular expression to redirect with a bit more intelligence).
• Mistake #5 - neglecting my article headlines - David's been reading the same blog writing blogs I have. This is still a trap I fall into - I have to fight my tendencies towards whimsical and abstract headlines. Witness the difference in views of Rob discovers his Javascript inadequacies, chapter 442 (88 views at time of writing) and Unobtrusive Javascript, Opera, <body onload= and window.onload (608 views) - both are short posts describing a javascript 'gotcha', but one has an abstract title while the other describes a specific problem.
• Mistake # 6 - not linking to others as I’d like them to link to me - I would like to think I've always been a good netizen in this respect, but probably I'm guilty of the odd slip up. 'Do unto others' is always a good bit of advice in my opinion.
• Mistake #7 - underestimating the time commitment - this is a funny one for me, because I think I'm fully aware of the time commitment required, which is one of the reasons why this blog went three weeks without an update this month - other things to do! (And more on those other things in later posts, I hope!)

Neat trick (so long as whatever you're using to view this supports Unicode, and your font has full support for all the possible characters) - a little utility which translates each character of the input text, using a symbol lookup table, to a character somewhere in the Unicode character set which looks like that letter upside down.

Apple have released an updated version of the Safari for Windows beta, fixing three security holes announced within hours of the launch earlier this week.

Apparently the Apple Software Update service will do everything automatically, but I downloaded the update manually and installed it over the top of my existing install, which also seems to have worked. Unfortunately it overwrote my Fonts.plist file so I was back to the font problem from before, but at least I knew what to do this time...

The Safari 3 Public Beta has launched and now there's a Windows version! Of course I immediately downloaded it but I found it something of a disappointment - when I ran it there was no text getting displayed anywhere at all (the title was blank, the menus were blank and no text on the page - I couldn't even type into the address bar). I tried re-installing, and I tried using Apple's newly provided update utility, which for some reason kept demanding to install iTunes, but no luck.

The solution was in Apple's support forums, delete the fonts from the Safari.resources folder. This at least got me a usable browser, but there are still some issues with fonts. The browser chrome is now rendering in Times Roman, which I'm sure is not the look Apple is going for, and it seems anything which is using particular font (like, for instance, whatever font is used by the admin theme on this blog, and whatever WebSense is using to tell me I'm wasting time at work) doesn't render. Although others have issues with Apple's font rendering, it seems to be only a few people having issues which are not cosmetic.

Even with the font issues it still looks quite pretty, but the other vices of Apple software are still present. Aside from a mindless insistence to install iTunes, updating Quicktime installed a quick launch shortcut without asking, added new links to my start menu without asking me where I wanted to put them and re-activated the status bar icon I have to turn off after every update. Similarly Safari inserts itself into the root of the 'All Programs' list without asking if I might have a better idea. All in all I think I might wait until the final release before attempting any serious use.

Update: Found a better solution to the Safari font issues - I replaced my Fonts.plist file with one from a colleague's working install, put the Lucida font files back, and now my chrome is rendering properly. Still missing fonts on a few web pages though.

I spent today as a guest of Google, and I can highly recommend the experience - if nothing else it's worth it for the free lunch I'll do a more 'complete' post with reviews of all the talks I attended at the weekend, but for now I'll present some highlights:

• "What's good for web developers is good for Google!"
• Google Gears - enable your web apps for offline use in an incremental way
• Google Maps Street View - photos integrated with maps, I'm sure I've seen this sort of thing before, but the real-time 3D-style interaction was very neat
• Mapplets - presented as a 'meta mashup' technology, allowing you to mashup mashups, overlaying the results of several different mashups on the same map control

I also attended a session on the GData APIs and a very informative talk on developing web content for mobiles. I'm going to check out the video of the KML talk when I get the chance as, from what I heard about it in asides during other sessions, it seems like it could be really useful. Anyway, check out the videos for yourself, and I'll be back with further comment later...

I was saddened to hear today that Fred Fish died at home last week. I'd never met him, but his 'Fish Disks' were a big part of my Amiga infatuation, and my introduction to shareware and open source in general. The internet is very convenient, but getting the latest software by swapping 3.5" floppies at my local ICPUG meeting was more fun in some ways.

Discovered this nice pair of posts (here's the follow up) via a question on LinkedIn. Since I'm four months off my fourth anniversary I felt like this is an opportune moment for some self assessment. I thought I'd have a look at each of his 18 lessons in turn (you're going to have to read Joshua's posts to get the full description), see how I measure up, and then decide whether or not I care Besides, numbered lists are all the rage in blog posts these days...

1) It’s only an initial fear
This probably relates to my last post - you're not going to be a great and famous blogger unless you're willing to take a leap into the unknown. All right, it's unlikely you'll be a great and famous blogger anyway, but you've got to try. Of course, there are levels of leaping, but it's true enough that my last 44 months of blog posts have been largely uncontroversial. This is an area where I should improve, I think.

2) You have something valuable to say
Hmm, it's true that by the time I've got around to commenting on anything there's already plenty of other folk who both know much more about it than I do and have said it at least as eloquently as I ever could, but I think in sheer quantity of verbiage I'm measuring up OK.

3) When in doubt, post.
I don't think I've got any problems in this category either, though maybe I should have a little backlog of half finished articles to which I could refer for inspiration.

4) Use the comments for refining your point
Since I've commented on my own posts about ten times as much as anyone else (though several hundred times fewer than the spammers) I think I'm doing OK in this category too.

5) Everything is beta
Lol! My whole website is beta, generally I re-design it before I've even got around to doing templates for most of it. To address the main gist of his comments under this item though, it's very true that striving for something big can actually lead to inaction. For most of this month I've been piling up screens of references and quotes in Google Notebook for a couple of large, related posts I want to write. The more time I spent researching, the longer the posts got in my imagination, and the less inclined I was to start writing. I think now I'll try and cover the general issues in four or five posts, this might also help me with lesson 3.

6) Have a schtick
This is a blog about Web Development and Web Design and Linux, which I suppose is pretty broad, and I also have urges to veer off into general development from time to time - enough that I considered starting a separate blog about it - but then I wouldn't have time to do any of the actual stuff I'm blogging about. I think that, yes, this blog could definitely do with a bit more focus, but I'll see how my plans for lesson 5 turn out before making up my mind.

7) Correct English be-damned
Pet peeve time - people do care when you don't use correct English and complete sentences, and I think Joshua even admits this indirectly when he says to make sure that every word is understandable and your ideas are clear. One of the key ways that you make sure your writing is understandable is to use correct English. It doesn't have to be formal English, but mistakes in grammar and spelling tend to lead to ambiguous sentences. From a personal point of view, if you don't know the difference between "there", "they're" and "their" (among others) I'm probably going to devote as much brain time to being annoyed about your English as I am to taking in whatever you may be writing about. And I have a sore point with "soar points", but I like to know whether there's going to be weather. But that could just be me If you'd like to care about this sort of thing (homonyms), here's a great resource, see also Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb. So I'm purposely failing this one, though I may be achieving success accidentally from time to time.

8) Show your greatest hits
Good idea. Don't do it, will try to.

9) People are listening
According to MyBlogLog I had 16 readers on 29th March. I suspect that three of them were me on different PCs, but I'm in double figures!

10) Write Follow-up Posts
I've managed to do this from time to time. I think in part this relates back to lesson 5 - if you're always trying to produce 'complete' posts then there's not going to be so much obvious opportunity to follow up. A bit more of the posting fast and loose, perhaps?

11) When you screw up, say so immediately
Of course I've never screwed up. Apart from that one time. And the time before that. A short review of posts on this blog will demonstrate that I have quite a lot of experience with admitting to idiocy. It's good for you, you know.

12) Know when to take it offline
I've never had a problem in this regard as generally I've been the most abusive commenter on my posts (see lesson 4).

13) Link back to your good stuff
I think lessons 13, 14 and 15 are quite strongly linked, and perhaps are the result of a bit of padding out to make the second post have nine lessons in it. Certainly I'd have a hard time discerning between my past posts which are good and those which are just popular. Probably what I need to do is...

14) Reread to yourself
...read through my old posts from time to time. Certainly then I'd be in a...

15) Treat every post as a possible later reference
...better position to refer to them more regularly. See what I mean? Just because it's three points doesn't mean it's not good advice, though. Usually when I read old posts of mine the things that really stand out are the spelling mistakes I'm going to start looking at them with a view to providing starting points for future posts (which will help with lesson 10).

16) Keep updating your best posts
This is something I'm really loath to do - I frequently correct spelling and grammatical mistakes when I see them in old posts, but I rarely add additional commentary or ideas. After I've got into lessons 13, 14 and 15 I will consider this more.

17) Name things (e.g. The Del.icio.us Lesson, The Chanel No. 5 Lesson)
This is something I could do a better job with, I've been reading things like "10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work" and "Do You Digg This Headline?", but I tend to pull back at the last minute. I'm not sure why, perhaps secretly I'm just a little uncomfortable with the whole brazen self promotion thing. I do notice that one way to get lots of hits from Google is to put an error message as the post title (I'm assuming the post will discuss solving the error, of course). One of my most popular posts of all time is "MySQL 4: Specified key was too long; max key length is 1000 bytes", which will be obvious when I get around to implementing lesson 8, but see how I'm already implementing lesson 13

18) Link to the quiet, unknown ones
That's me! I'm a quiet, unknown one. Improve your karma by linking to me now!

The Prime Minister (or at least, his staff) has responded to the accessibility petition I mentioned a few posts ago. It sounds a bit like empty rhetoric:

The Government is committed to ensuring that all government websites are accessible and easy to use for people with disabilities.

If the government were actually demonstrating this commitment, there wouldn't have been a petition in the first place. The response concludes with:

This strategy is to be implemented by DTI with support from OGC and eGU (now the Cabinet Office Delivery and Transformation Group). A cross-government review of the Digital Strategy is currently under way under the supervision of the DTI).

Since the DTI couldn't even commission their own website to meet the Government's accessibility standards, does it seem likely they'll be able to present a strategy for the rest of our government to do so? Conversely, maybe they now have more experience than any other government department...

In a follow on from his earlier post (5 HTML elements you probably never use), Matthew Inman at SEOmoz has posted '15 CSS Properties You Probably Never Use'. Possibly not as practically useful as the earlier post, but an opportunity to broaden your CSS horizons.

The most complete technical description I've read so far about why 'left: -9999px' is usually better for screen readers than 'display: none' in IE. It's always better to understand why you're doing what you're doing...

Some nice examples of what can be done with those HTML elements you never use. The main thing I wasn't aware of was the cite attribute on the blockquote tag, I'll be updating some of my pages with that in the near future.

Some alternative opinions on WebDD, from people who went to at least some of the same talks I did, culled from the excellent Backnetwork site for the event:

• Shaun Hare
• David Cumps
• Andrew Westgarth
• Simon Harriyott
• Ross Dargan

I sometimes feel like I'm developing a deep understanding of CSS, and then I read an article like Christian's and realize how much there still is to learn. A collection of great tips.

While the user has the ability to turn off Public Profile publishing altogether, only a small percentage have chosen to do so and with just the information listed [in the Basic View profile], the minimum requirement for hResume is met. In essence, we just launched ~9 million hResumes.

Pretty cool! Get yourself the Operator extension and go have a look at my resume

Started up Firefox just now and the automatic updater told me that Firebug 1.0 is now available. Of course, I immediately upgraded. The visual look has definitely seen some work and there are a number of new features - see the screenshot to see a loading time breakdown of all the elements of this page.

This, coupled with the 1.1 release of the Web Developer Toolbar (my favourite new feature - it is now possible to validate local pages) and the release of Prototype 1.5 (now with documentation!) last week, makes it an exciting couple of weeks for web developers everywhere.

Blog posts are a bit like buses, wait for ages for one to turn up then two come along at once! Anyway, Robert X. Cringely has been one of my favourite columnists for a long time and this article is a very interesting analysis of what Google's long term plans might be.

Of course, in true internet tradition, when I say 'world' it means 'the US' If you want a bit of perspective after reading that then let Eric Sink explain to you why that isn't as important as you think it is.

I was surprised today to notice I'd not made a blog post for two weeks, so that's me blowing guideline seven (again). Perhaps if I stopped procrastinating and got stuff done? So here's some anti-procrastination tips from GTD Wannabe that have got to be worth a try:

• Turn off the TV
• Techno Kicks It
• Keep Track of Time
• Start Strong
• Plan Ahead
• Do It Tomorrow
• Your Computer is a Distraction
• Your Desk Can Be A Distraction
• Pretend You Don't Have Wireless

I'm not going to get very far with 'Your Computer is a Distraction', but I can definitely make inroads with 'Start Strong' - I've spent a significant number of mornings doing nothing but reading through articles on reddit...

I came across the Google Co-Op search today and decided to set up a 'search engine' of my own. It allows you to add a list of your favourite web sites (relating to a particular topic) and then either get search results exclusively from those sites or prioritize those sites over the 'standard' Google search results. I've got mine setup in the latter mode at present, because I know I've forgotten some sites. It also wraps up the whole thing into a nice ajaxy interface to embed on your own website - check out the boogdesign Web Technology Search.

Shane Sherman has had an excellent idea:

...this led me to thinking about a way to allow everyone to pick their top 5 programming books they think every programmer should read, and aggregate the results and make some sort of master list of the best books. That's how this site came to be.

Get on over there and add your favourite books!