This is a really great site from a quick review of it. It offers a number of design tips and techniques and actually provides open source web designs that you can obtain and use, as well as encouraging you to share yours with others. I will have to return when I have some more time.

It has been an interesting night as I surf around tonight while in discussions with Reese of Reese Designs. She and I often collaborate on work.

Last month I posted a short rant entitled Unusual CSS Reference after noticing that a W3C page called Learning CSS reported CSS and HTML errors when I attempted to validate it. The page’s hover effects also looked better in IE6 than in Firefox and Opera.

This drew comment from W3C representative Bert Bos, who wrote to me. His message reads:

(more…)

I was working away on a new web page tonight, checking that my CSS mark-up was valid. Once I got the good news I became distracted and started following links on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) site. I stumbled across a reference guide to Learning CSS.

I was quite surprised by the ugly hover effect assigned to links on the page; gray with a heavy red border. I was then further surprised to discover just how differently this page acts between Firefox / Opera and Internet Explorer 6. The page appears to have been written to look appealing in IE6, and appalling in FF and Opera! I would have expected the W3C to set a good example by presenting its own CSS pages using CSS code that works well in both of these browsers.

But the fun doesn’t stop there! I tried to validate the CSS on this CSS resource only to discover that the W3C’s own validator detected 3 errors and 90 warnings in the code! Furthermore, the HTML on the page suffers from 5 mark-up errors and no Doctype!

Who would have thought that the body responsible for the promotion of compliant CSS and HTML code would set such a poor example???

Apparently some people are getting a computer with Vista loaded to get exposure among the influential. And I didn’t get one? Either they figure I already have used Vista enough or they think that I might not like it? Are they only giving it to their huge fans? I use Windows — heck I have an install of 98, 2000, NT, XP (and we don’t run it often but we even still have 95 on a machine) … and there is a Vista in my house. I don’t use Vista yet, despite having edited two books on Vista so far for Wiley Publishing, because it is on a desktop and I am usually on a laptop. Oh well I guess I won’t be one of the influencers.

On other software I have recently given a test run. LeadTools Eprint 5 was given to me for a test run. It sounds fantastic. It promises to essentially let you hit print and output to many formats, most significant to me being pdf (Adobe Portable Document Format). I often take a Window’s Office document (based on this template) and open it in Open Office (oOo 2.0) for the simple purpose of outputing it in pdf format. Unfortunately in my limited testing, it only works so, so. The first document I tested it on converted just fine. But then I did my Christmas Newsletter (more on Christmas Newsletters in a moment in another post) it butchered it. It turned the solid backgrounds in text boxes into plaid colored backgrounds making the overlying text impossible to read. In turn it flipped several of the little eye candy images like the reindeer upside down. To put is simply, it didn’t work on this document so I opened Open Office and it converted it near flawlessly (it also had one glitch … the connected text boxes didn’t connect completely so I had to make a little edit, the first time I might add when oOo has failed me even a little in the conversion process). My wish for the new year — a pdf output program that works 100 percent.

Maybe I’ll go get Open Office 2.1 that was recently released and see if it does any better. As an interesting aside, Google still talks about downloading oOo 2.0. I wonder if Open Office has missed a step in updating that is causing Google not to react? They have the 2.1.0 in most of the bottom links, but the first link on the page in navigation doesn’t reflect the change. Perhaps it should?

Open Office, the no cost competitor to Microsoft Office software released 2.1 this week. John over at Meahl Dubh raises some interesting issues on why the open source industry is free to roll out updates more readily than proprietary software. I guess the ability to react is one of the big plusses in open source and I appreciate that.

Earlier this year I waffled on about a Windows Update utility for Firefox, called WindizUpdate. I was pretty impressed at the time and used the utility for a few months, but I was left wanting due to a lag between Microsoft releasing updates and finding that they were available for WindizUpdate. Now I’ve found something I like even more.

IE Tab is an extension for Firefox which embeds Internet Explorer in a Firefox tab. Unlike the IE View extension which simply opens selected pages in a separate Internet Explorer window, IE Tab displays selected pages using the IE engine but contained wholly within a Firefox tab.

So, why might this be useful? I currently use Internet Explorer exclusively for two reasons:

1. To run Microsoft Update / Windows Update, which won’t otherwise work in any other browser.
2. To check web pages as I develop them, to ensure that my pages look consistent between browsers.

Now with IE Tab I can do both of these things from within Firefox, simply by right-clicking and selecting “View Page in IE Tab”. And to mark the happy occasion of first running Microsoft Update within Firefox I snapped this celebratory picture for you:

Yes, I realise that using IE Tab really means that I’m using IE. But if nothing else I’m enjoying the convenience of doing it all from within a Firefox window.

One of our favorite utilities for several years is DadaMail. We have never used it on our site, but have installed it for many other people. If you need help installing it, we are happy to do so for a donation, link or whatever. Of course we also encourage you to donate to the author of the fine software.

Justin, the head dadaist as he self styles himself, just released version 2.10.11. The biggest plus to this version is that it tracks sending status and picks up where it left off if it is interrupted. A nice feature.

We keep asking for a multi-user function. Right now if you want two people to have access to one list for management purposes, they need to share a common password. Allowing two passwords would be a big plus. I should probably write such a hack.

Anyway, check out what he has to say here and let us know if you need help with an install.