Where's Mama?
The final beta for IE7 is now available to download. It still replaces IE6, so you’ll probably want to set this up in a virtual PC.
Information about the new features is available over at the IE Blog. Still no concrete details around release date for the final version, but it looks like the second half of the year.
Peter-Paul Koch is publishing a new book on Javascript. If you have been following the work of Jeremy Keith, chances are you’ve come across his book which is one of the best modern web development books I’ve read. This looks like it extends the same ideas, but goes into much more technical detail.
It’s not out just yet, but worth keeping an eye out for – I think the UK release is towards the end of August.
Martin has been looking into the new SDK published by Microsoft to allow automation of Robots. If you want to program automation for your lego models then might be worth taking a look.
This seems like the kind of thing that could take over your life, so I’m steering clear for the time being.
I’d heard a number of people mention various different javascript libraries recently. Seeing a discussion panel talking over the pros and cons of using libraries, and the main ones in development finally prompted me to have a nose around a couple. In particular Simon Willison was promoting the work that Yahoo have been doing recently in publishing a free, open source library that they use internally to build the various Yahoo sites and applications.
I have to say I’m seriously impressed with the work they have done. A lot of the ideas are pretty simple, but the kind of thing that you write from scratch on each project when it’s needed. However, in this case it’s had a load of development and cross browser testing effort thrown at it.
Some of the methods on their DOM object are extremely useful – things like getting the viewport dimensions, or getElementsByClassName. In addition, the library that covers event handling provides a number of very practical features that you could start using immediately.
I am naturally a little sceptical about this kind of thing – I think it’s very important to understand the core technologies that a framework is based on. However these libraries provide the kind of work that you would code yourself, but in a tidy, useable, documented package.
There will be a slight hit on bandwidth, but the library is split into different modules, so you should be able to take what you need without too much extra.
I’ll certainly consider using this on future projects.
The site has just gone up for d.Construct 2006, although registration isn’t open just yet. I went to this event in 2005, hosted in a converted church (with wifi), which was a little strange but in a good way.
Some of the speakers at the event are well worth seeing – Jeffrey Veen in particular was one of the highlights of @Media last week.
I’ll post again when registration opens.
I saw a really interesting presentation at @Media last week, where the panel included Jon Hicks. Jon was responsible for the design of the Firefox and Thunderbird logos. Unfortunately I picked that day to wear a Firefox t-shirt, so ended up feeling like a bit of a groupie, or whatever the equivalent is in geeky circles.
Although this is probably a lifelong undertaking, I’m starting to learn about typography. I find it fascinating how very subtle changes in the structure and shape of a typeface will result in a completely different message being conveyed with the design.
This was demonstrated rather nicely by Jon by putting up the original Sex Pistols poster using a different typeface. The result is very amusing, and makes it very obvious how the correct use of typography in a design will have a massive impact on the impression that people come away with.
Does anyone know about these? I ordered some shopping online – one of the great things is that you get to click on things that you’d never normally buy. Well, I’ve ended up with these amazing biscuits!
I think these are probably well known in America, but they’re new to me. They also have the tag “Chocolate Chip Graham Cookies” – I have no idea what that means, but I love these little tasty bears.
Why is it that I can’t get the hang of bing-drinking (spelling?). The party for @media is 2 roads away from my flat, but I can’t quite bring myself to go along and drink and be merry with the geeky throngs (note: not thongs, that would be wrong).
This did confirm one thing to me. One of the aims of moving to Soho was effortless socialising – being able to maintain a social life while commuting and being busy, with no effort required. I smiled when the venue was announced – Windmill street. There was a film made recently about the club on Windmill street, starring Judy Dench. I think it was one of the first strip clubs in Soho (although my history has much to be desired).
This is definately one of the streets, where you have to look straight ahead to avoid getting accosted by the loveable ladies in cowboy hats – what is that about btw? I never realised that cowgirls were meant to be sexy.
Anyhow, just back from the first day at @Media 2006. The session that really stood out for me was Jeffrey veen. This is why I decided to go to the event – to shed the layers of dirt that build up from day to day life and remember how interesting the work that we do really is. Jeffrey very eloquently discussed what Web 2.0 is really about. I think my favourite were the quotes from Venture Capitalists when asked to define the term – “Scaling up to many users” was one of the quotes. Oh how I laughed (I quite enjoy making fun of people who make money from technology, but don’t really understand).
I rarely see someone who is so natural a speaker, and I think he provided a very insightful view into the kind of impact that AJAX is having on interraction design and user experience.
Another highlight was Chris Wilson discussing features looming in IE7, and the approach they are taking to progessing the product. I think Chris and his team deserve applause – they are in a very difficult situation and seem to have a great attitude to progressing towards adoption of standards support. It looks like a lot of work has gone into the new version, and I look forward to the public release (apparantly in the second half of 2006).
I was mulling over the changes coming up in IE7 and what was the happiest new feature. I think the one that gets me bouncing up and down is the support for full alpha channel in the PNG image format.
I think that up to now the format has never caught on in a big way, as the main benefit is having full control over the alpha channel and being able to layer up semi-transparent areas, and IE6 would not natively support the opacity specified in the image.
There were a few workarounds – more can be read on AListApart. These are based around using the AlphaImageLoader proprietary filter in Internet Explorer. However doesn’t provide the kind of flexibility you can usually get when you specify CSS background properties – for example, getting to control horizontal and vertical tiling behaviour.
So with IE7, all of the major modern browsers will now support the alpha channel in PNG format (cheering from the stalls). This all sounds a bit geeky and dull so far, but this makes the life of a designer much more exciting.
We’ve been able to do a certain amount with transparency up until now, but generally by faking it, where images happen to match up perfectly to give the illusion of transparency. However, this would mean that moving things around too much would require cutting new image assets.
No longer! We can now see a point where the general browsing populous will all be rendering PNG images correctly, which means that we can do some very cool things. I’ll try to whip up some examples in the near future – feel free to add links to any showcase sites that you’ve come across.
I’ve just upgraded to the latest version of FeedDemon and just wanted to fling some joy around about this great product.
I had previously been running 1.5. In V2 there are a number of improvments which have made my life much more pleasant. My favourite feature is the integration with a Newsgator online account. This means that any actions taken on one machine will end up synchronised against any others – so reading a news item at work means that it shows up as read on your home machine.
I would say this feature alone is worth the upgrade (well… upgrading is free anyway). I previously used to use the reader on my work machine, and although installed on my other machines it would never see the light of day. It was too much hassle wading through the items I’d already seen at work.
The interface is a lot more friendly too – organising feeds into different folders allows much easier viewing than ‘Channel Groups’ in the previous version.
Go and upgrade. Or buy it. Honestly. Go on.
No public Twitter messages.
Please feel free to get in touch, I'd love to hear from you.
