03.07.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:01 pm by admin
I write this post in shock (and a tad of horror) from IE8. If you’ve read just about any post of mine in the past you’ll know I’m not much of an IE fan and have yet to meet any web designer who is. However I’m a curious person and so when I heard about IE8 being released as a beta I wanted to know what it looked like. After all this is the browser which (if Microsoft has it’s way) will take the world by storm. Obviously I don’t really want that to happen because I like Mozilla (Flock and Firefox depending on what I’m doing) however the sooner we tackle new browsers the better coders we become so, with a little apprehension, I downloaded and installed the brand new beta of IE8.
Remembering back to 2006 and the release of the then much awaited IE7 I had a little sense of dread when I finally completed the installation and fired it up. I doubt there is a person out there who makes sites with cross browser compatibility who wouldn’t feel the same.
At first glance IE8 is much like IE7. Not a bad download size and after some updates it insisted I get and a restart it installed and loaded without a problem. Some of the features include a ‘emulate ie7′ button (although why anyone would want to do that is beyond me) and a lovely overwrite of IE6. Other than that the interface is much like IE7 other than it comes with more toolbars than you can poke a stick at.
I am relieved to report that there is a ray of hope for developers and the rest of us crazy enough to take on this anarchic world. I was recently introduced to the Acid2 test which is a lot less dangerous than the name implies. For those of you who’ve never heard of it the Acid2 test is basically a test for browsers to see how they handle CSS and even CSS3. When looking at this page (http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html) you are supposed to see a smiley face and depending on how a browser interprets CSS then it will appear either close or way off to that. Firefox 2 comes up with a fairly good representation of a face however the now archaic IE6 honestly sent me in to fits of laughter at the result which was a yellow mess on the screen and the brand spanking new IE7 wound up with a red mess (although how it found so much red I’ll never know). All of this round-a-bout explanation comes back to IE8. Its result, I’m almost embarrassed to admit, was flawless. One perfect round CSS smiley face.
This test gives me hope at the very least. However being IE it does have flaws (and I’m quite relieved really-how could IE not have flaws?). It is currently only a beta and not a bad size for a download but it does require certain updates to your computer before it will install so if you are picky about windows updates (some can be nothing but a disaster) then that might annoy some. The main flaw I’ve noticed after only about 15 minutes of use is the amount of memory it requires to run. Firefox has never been a trim browser and if you add extensions then it can crash even the most efficient computer but Firefox looks positively tiny compares to the amount of memory my current system is using to run it. My computer is by no means a dinosaur but where Firefox, with many, many extensions installed, takes 55,000k of Memory usage (according to ctrl+alt+delete). IE8 takes about 69,000k. This text is also coming in in bursts, so it will pause as I type and then put in 10 letters in a millisecond. This pausing is particularly evident if I try to backspace.
Now I realise that compared to some bugs web designers have faced over the past few years this memory usage is probably not much however Microsoft markets itself as making software for the general public and having a browser which is too powerful for Windows XP (pro) probably isn’t the best place to start. However since it is only a Beta version I’m using I will admit that I’m impressed with it’s pass of the Acid2 test and say that I live in hope.
Click here to download IE 8 beta.
Click here to take the Acid2 Test
Permalink
02.15.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:14 pm by admin
Well I’ve done it. Recently I caved in and installed Debian on my desktop computer to go over it. A guy at work has been going on and on about it and after being shown a bit of it I caved in. Admittedly I wasn’t really using the desktop so I installed Debian and tonight I began trying it out.
I’ll say one thing for Linux. While it may be customisable it’s a looonnngg way from becoming usable for the average user. It took me two hours to install firefox (apparently called ice weasel on linux) and change the desktop background and icons.
I have one suggestion for the programmers of linux. Use more user friendly language. If the current users of Linux really like that insane language then perhaps two versions should be created. One for new users like me and one for those who for some insane reason actually like the command line.
I will try to use it but I’d love to write to whomever creates these things. If they really want to overcome the Windows monopoly then they need simpler language and easier installs. Downloading firefox was an option from mozilla.com but installing it was almost impossible. If they fix that then people will be a lot more attracted to it and therefore more likely to use it.
Permalink
12.14.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:48 pm by Aldona
Last week my computer crashed. Great huh! 14 months old and I’ve suddenly lost 2 months of work. Luckily an extended warranty was purchased along with the computer (although I would have fought them tooth and nail even if we hadn’t) but it’s made me realise that even my pretty regular backing up isn’t good enough. I just do too much work to only back up once every couple of months or so.
I won’t even go in to the details of what I’ve lost. Online diary entries, digital photographs and video footage of my skating (and my lovely halloween pumpkin) not to mention client files, documentation and some personal work I was doing toward making my own forum.
The point is I’ve begun to take serious steps so that I NEVER lose that much ever again and to that end I’ve bought a portable hard-drive. Admitedly portable hard-drives apparently crash as often as computers however there are two reasons I reckon having one is a good idea.
- Your data is in more than one location so even though either might crash the liklihood of them crashing at the same time is unlikely (unless you have a power surge and you can even protect yourself against that)
- The portable hard-drive I bought was 250GB so now I finally have enough space to be able to put everything from my 30-50 DVD’s and CD’s of files so they can be properly sorted and then rebacked up. Increased organisation is always good.
- And finally it is a great place to store files without freaking your computer out. You can access your files without having to connect flash drives or insert CD’s and can make a lot of your programs portable for easier use (see the Portable Software post for more info on this). Seeing as I’m currently on a borrowed computer with very little memory this is a good thing.
Here is a pic of my lovely back up hard-drive. With a bit of luck and some organisation this will be the first and last time I EVER lose that much work again. (BTW did I mention that I was able to find it for only $98 and the other one I saw was only 80GB for $108?)
Personally I reckon this constant wave of new technology is ridiculous. I have no trouble with new technology in general but it never lasts. 14 months is an insanely short time and it’s crazy that we constanly have to shell out more and more money to fix something that shouldn’t have broken in the first place. We need to just slow down in the endless rush to create new things and perhaps focus on getting things to work for more than two days.
As most people would know by now I love to ice skate. It’s great exercise and it gets me away from the computer. Sometimes I feel like our never ending desire for new things would be like me forever trying to learn a new thing in skating without first learning how to do the previous move properly. And believe me when I say that although it feels slower to perfect the old stuff it’s quicker in the end.
I don’t believe humans will ever slow down. Our appetite for being faster, stronger, higher, better never ceases but I do believe that one day we will have to. We will have run out of room to expand. I just hope that we don’t destroy things in our never ending quest for more.
Permalink
11.29.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:50 pm by Aldona
Last year I bought a lovely brand new Brother printer. I was quite pleased with it. It was a sophisticated thing with scanner and copy functions and even a fax. That is I was pleased until the four cartridges began to run out of ink. See my printer has two flaws. It cleans itself constantly (at 2am) and it has a ink level detector. Now neither of these seem bad until you look beneath the surface.
The cleaning for starters. Each time it cleans itself it uses up ink. When it’s left on it cleans itself about every 12 hours. When it’s off it still cleans itself every 2 or 3 days.The ink level detector doesn’t seem bad either until you take out the supposedly empty cartridge and see ink swishing around. What you are told is empty is far from it.
This all leads to my recent internet hunt because, not having a lot of spare cash, I couldn’t replace all of the cartridges at the same time. I could only replace 2 out of 4 of them and it refused to print whilst the others were ‘empty’.
After a search today on the internet (I’ll admit I should have done this weeks ago) I found a website which had the solution. Basically it’s a ‘hack’ on your printer. By putting electrical tape over the clear end of the cartridges you fool the printer in to thinking it’s still full of ink, that way you can at least print black and white while you are waiting to get the other cartridges refilled.
Now it was a bit fiddly but after a few false tries I did it and it worked and for those of you who like to know why here is the explanation. Apparently each cartridges has a laser which beams through it. If the printer detects the laser on the opposite side then it senses it’s empty. The electrical tape (which is needed because it’s thick enough) blocks the laser and fools the printer. Problem solved!
My final question is why on earth doesn’t Brother update it’s technology. At $30 and up for a cartriage this can be a costly mistake and I’ve just saved myself about $60 so that’s not bad for an hour on the web and some tape.
Permalink
11.04.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:03 pm by Aldona
Ok. So I haven’t written a post in a while. Ugh. So many things to do. However recently I’ve come across some interesting things and I thought I’d share my thoughts about them.
_______________________________________
The first thing I found recently is when I reset my computer a couple of weeks back (something I do regularly to stem the flow of junk which piles up and forces me to do some good backing up of my files) I decided to give the Safari for Windows another try. You may remember me writing about this before and I wasn’t impressed. It crashed, fonts wouldn’t display and pages wouldn’t render properly. Well I have to say that the 3rd public beta has come a loooonnnggg way since the last version I tried and I have to say two things about it.
One: It does actually work now which is good at least.
Two: It looks like just another browser. To me at least browsers are all starting to look the same. IE renders the worst which is why I hate it and firefox has some useful features which is why I like it however aside from that they all look the same. The makers need something special about them. Something really useful that other browsers don’t have to make them stand out but to me now, at the moment at least, they’re all running in to each other to become one big blur.
_______________________________________
The other thing I found recently was a post about firefox. It was a post entitled ‘Why I don’t recommend firefox‘ and I have to admit that although I LOVE the features of firefox (the web developer toolbar and firebug for one) some of the points made are good. If firefox wants to wrestle the market share from IE then they need to become a much more user friendly browser rather than the developer browser they’ve marketed themselves to be. Personally I think Flock is a great compromise. It’s waaayyy better than IE but is much more user friendly for the average person who doesn’t know what a browser is.
_______________________________________
Next I found this. http://site.gravatar.com/ I’m sure I’m not the only one who is not only sick of having to sign up for everything (I have so many passwords I’m drowning in them) but tired of having to change all those avatars everywhere I go. This site seems solve at least one of those problems and although I haven’t tried it yet I’ll keep you updated on how it goes.
_______________________________________
The next thing I found was a website I got sent a link for. http://browsershots.org/. A website where you enter a website address and it will send you back screenshots of your website in different browsers with variations of screen sizes and javascript status etc. Because of a very dodgy internet connection recently I haven’t had a chance to use it but I will soon and again I will keep you updated on how it goes. It definately seems better than the version where you get 24 hours to have a look and after that you have to pay obscene amounts of money to continue using the service. This one is free because users install software which takes the screenshots so if you want to donate your compuer then have a look at the download link on the website.
_______________________________________
Finally my last comment is a word of warning. If you know me then you’ll know I like anything free (who doesn’t) and anything Google. However I have had huge amounts of trouble with the Google Web Accelerator especially when it comes to blogs. It seems to block certain commands and also wreaks havoc with validating a local page with the web developer toolbar.
So be careful with this one. It can be more of a hinder than a help and I spend more time with it stopped then started so I suspect that by the time I post next time it will have been uninstalled completely.
Permalink
10.27.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:31 pm by admin
Well after some bugs and problems combining google web accelerator and word press this blog is up and running. It’s taken a while but everything is up and we are ready to roll.
The Pink Webs blog will let you know about updates to the site, new things happening and major web news. Our favourite links will be included and any humour we find will be included in a humour page so stay tuned.
Permalink
08.02.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:13 am by Aldona
Recently I’ve been in a rutt. I’ve been wanting to create a new site for myself, something with a theme which I can hold on to for a while. Something that eventually I can copy the design off and make in to business cards and pamphlets if I ever get that sophisticated. (I have to admit that would be cool).
Anyway. The point is I’ve been trying to make a logo for myself. I had a flash of inspiration recently which made me decide on ‘Pink Webs’ for a name but the logo has been an interesting project.
I’ve come up with three so far. The first came as a flash of inspiration from something I enjoy doing almost more than web design (the two switch for first place depending on what I’ve managed to do) and that is Ice Skating.
Logo 1: I love this and that was the reaction from most people I showed it to but there was always a ‘but’. Most people felt the same way as me. It’s smart but something doesn’t work. For the record I have another project where this fits perfectly so I wasn’t too worried but instead came up with logo number 2.
Logo 2: This one was too boring. I tend to make everything symetrical and this was discarded for that reason and one other. I hate spiders! I didn’t want to look at this all day.
Then I tried taking part of logo 2 and refining it.
Logo 3: Again too boring although I was getting quite proud of my photoshop skills after this one and people I showed it to thought it was quite funny. Again I came up against the web thing with the spider idea.
Finally I sat down just the other night and thought about the whole idea and someone said to me why not refine the first one. It was always liked but I think part of the problem was it was too complicated. So I did and I came up with option 4.
Logo 4: I personally like this one the best. I loved the first but it was too complicated. This has what I liked about the first logo but it is simpler. I haven’t decided to run with this but when I do choose I will post about it, who knows I might have come up with another by then.
What has been really interesting about this whole process is how much I’ve learned about photoshop. I’ve learned about layers and effects and when I was making the web I went looking for a tutorial and found a great one. It’s been fun and has definitely made me want to learn more about photoshop but I have to say I’ve already gotten better. The skater took me hours to make. The butterfly took me one night and that was even working from a sketch done by ‘galleryB’ (link to come later) which saved time.
I say if you want to learn about photoshop start using it. It’s been a lot of fun coming up with these.
Permalink
06.14.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:27 pm by Aldona
August Note: Flock has more to it every time I use it. One feature recently discovered is an automatic log on to your blog, and you can write new posts from the window without having to go to the site. It is a great social browser!
Recently I came across some information about a version of Safari for Windows. In the spirit of that I thought I’d write a review about the different browsers I have.
Safari - The version out at the moment is a public beta but it looks more like an alpha. On my computer there is no text, pages don’t render properly. Supposedly the button with the picture of a bug is the bug report button but when I clicked on it it almost crashed my computer. I think they still have a bit of work to do.
IE 7 - The bane of my existance at the moment (see previous post). None of my lists work and where people have had time to fix the bigs with IE we are now faced with an entirely new set of bugs which no one knows how to fix. At the moment I have a standalone version of this because there is no way I will dump IE6 for a crappy browser like this one.
SeaMonkey - This browser has an interface which looks like netscape. Not Mozilla’s best work but definately than the Safari Beta or IE7.
Avant - An interesting browser. A cross between the interface of IE7 and firefox. Still does wierd things with horizontal lists when they are zoomed but not as badly as IE7 does.
Opera - This one I’m fairly indifferent to. I don’t tend to like or hate this browser and it seems to act pretty much the same way firefox does except without the useful tools.
Flock - I really like this browser and I think it needs more credit. The interface is similar to that of Safari (when it’s working) and is clean and simple. Doesn’t do strange things with lists and has a few extra features with blogs and stuff. I reckon this browser should be used more often. It’s the nicest of the extra ones I have and I will probably use it a lot more now that I’ve had a good look.
IE6 - What can I say? It’s better to stick with the devil you know rather than the devil you don’t. People had figured out ways around IE6 and now suddenly there is a new mess to sort out. IE6 definately wasn’t perfect but it’s sure easier to work things out with this as opposed to it’s brother.
Firefox - I had to leave this one until last to have something to look forward to. What can I put which most of you don’t already know. Render’s things properly, zooms properly and I can’t live without firebug and the web developer toolbar extensions. I reckon everyone should just use this (and wish they would) because then life would be a lot simpler. Firefox has a nice interface, doesn’t do strange things and as far as I’ve heard it’s secure and stable. I have versions 1.5 and 2 because of the standalone versions available and see no huge difference between the two.
Well there you have it. The reviews of the 8 browsers I have on my computer (although Safari can wait until it actually works). Not many surprises and if I end up with any more I’ll add them to this review but in the meantime give Flock a bit more credit. It’s a surprisingly nice browser.
One question remains…why do we have so many and how can we possibly be expected to cater to all of them?
Permalink
06.12.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:09 pm by Aldona
Another day of coding, another day of ridiculous IE7 annoyences. This time it is the humble style of the horizontal, unordered list which bears the brunt of IE7 quirks. Quirks which no longer seem funny.
I am trying to figure out what has gone wrong in my simple list and so I start from scratch. Works perfectly until I add a paragraph and then everything goes to s***t. Excuse my language but I am ready to throw IE7 in the garbage.
If you increase the text size with IE7 the list freaks out and acts like a drunk drive with the text of the list item in one spot and the link and hover text of the list item in another location. In my case as soon as I take the paragraph out it goes back to normal and I can zoom as large or as small as I like.
So we are left with the ultimate choice: An unordered horizontal list which looks nice or text on our page?
I say we throw in the towel and boycott IE7 all together, design for Firefox and put a note on every site we make saying ‘IE7 will not work with this site. Use firefox’ If no one can read anything they’ll have to switch eventually.
We could always boycott for a day, then Microsoft might take notice and FIX the darn thing. But until then keep saying: Nothing is impossible, the impossible just takes longer.
Permalink
04.19.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:24 pm by Aldona
A while back I wrote a post about having mutiple versions of IE and firefox installed. Firefox was done by having the secondary (or even tertiary) version installed as a portable software package.
Well I just discovered more to that site which is interesting. Not only can you get portable versions of firefox but also Filezilla, open office, thunderbird, sunbird, audacity and more. All portable so you can have your favourite programs on a flash drive to take with you anywhere.
The site is Portable Apps: http://portableapps.com/ and looks like its got quite a range of options. With flash drives getting cheaper and getting more memory every week it seems we can take most of our stuff with us around our neck and that is something which may make life easier.
Permalink
« Previous entries