General
February 12, 2007
My friends at Lunarpages recently interviewed the well known tech/nerd author Eric Meyer.
Meyer is well known for his CSS books (I’ve read a few) and the books are pretty good overall. Especially the O’reilly titles.
My beef is that CSS hacks are just a bad idea, and Meyer uses his hacks all over his books …
–
That said, Amy (from Lunarpages) asked me if I had any questions for Eric; being a trouble maker that I am, I asked this question:
Do you regret promoting the use of CSS hacks given the recent issues with IE7 – i.e. that it broke certain commonly used hacks?
Eric: No. I always did my best to be clear that hacks were, by their nature, fragile beasts, and could be broken by a future revision. At the same time, what else could we do? It was either hack around browser bugs, or abandon CSS as a layout tool. Neither was palatable, but the former was less unpalatable than the latter. What I regret is that the hacks were necessary at all.
I find the answer interesting, but I don’t think it reflects the reality of the situation:
There was and is another option: IE conditional comments.
I won’t go in details about IE conditional comments here (just watch the video,) but I have to wonder why Eric and the other web standards proponents did not talk about this solution that easily and effectively solves one of CSS’ biggest failings (in the real world)?
Regardless of that point, it is an interesting interview with someone who has had some impact on web design today.
CIAO,
Stefan Mischook
read more
January 9, 2007
I’ve been a Windows user for many years (13) and just recently (and for the first time,) I decided to buy a Mac – I wanted to try something new.
BUT VISTA IS COMING OUT … THAT’S NEW!
I saw Vista (and Bill Gates’ keynote at CES,) and yes, it does have some nice looking baubles. But to me, it still looks like Windows.
One thing about Vista that has not been mentioned in any speech I have seen: stability and quiting an application.
–
Consider this common scenario when wanting to shut down a misbehaving application:
WINDOWS
end process – > ‘are your sure you want to do this?’
yes
end process – > ‘are your really sure you want to do this? it could make your system unstable …’
yes
end process – > ‘we were unable to stop the process..’
!!!
MAC OS X:
Quit.
-> Done
For me, that is the one ‘killer feature’ in an OS – no complaining and delays when shutting down an application.
… Since moving to Mac OS X, I’ve noticed my stress levels have dropped about 36.3%.
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.webshapes.org
read more
January 7, 2007
I’m happy to announce the public beta release of our new web template sharing site: Webshapes.org.
From the site:
Webshapes, a community-driven website template resource.
- Contribute your open-source templates: help build the community and get your name out there!
- Download templates to learn web design, or use them to rapidly build your own websites.
URL:
Visit Webshapes
This is a public beta release and I appreciate any feedback (good or bad) that you have.
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
read more
January 2, 2007
I just installed the latest and greatest web browser from Microsoft: IE7.
… I had problems already, and it’s only been 10 minutes! I have to give Microsoft one thing, they are consistent.
As a web designer / developer you will need to install IE7 because it will no doubt become a major player in the browser market. That said, you might find my own experiences installing IE7 interesting.
The quick hits:
- As you install IE7 on WinXP (sp2) you will find that IE7 (for unknown reasons) needs to install all kinds of other crap.
- Once IE7 is installed, it will have done you the favor of wiping out all your Dreamweaver FTP settings. Thanks Microsoft.
- IE7 does not render web pages like IE6 or FireFox. I guess Microsoft figured that another ‘standard’ was in order?
Years ago, I jumped away from the Microsoft camp (ASP and ASP.net, MS SQL) because of M$’s need to tie you into everything they had (their entire stack) by creating (encumbering) interdependencies between their operating system and all their applications.
… To do anything beyond the very basics, you need to have all kinds of M$ products installed. It is rather vexing.
IE7 CONTINUES THE PROUD TRADITION
So these many years later, I install IE7 because I have to test my new web applications. And again, I am reminded of M$’s god-cursed business practices … and I have to swallow that pill and smile.
… I think (for the first time in my life) though, I will have to buy a Mac.
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
read more
December 11, 2006
I was speaking with my cousin a few days ago and she showed me a letter she got in the mail recently.
It was an invoice (that looked legitimate) that stated that she had to renew her domain within the next 15 days or she could loose it.
Four things were disturbing about the letter:
- The company was unknown .. even to a nerd like me.
- The letter had a threatening tone to it – if you know what I mean.
- The cost for renewal was crazy high: $950 USD!
- The company was located overseas. Of course.
… She was wondering if this made sense and wasn’t sure what to do.
All you experienced nerds out there know this was (and is) an obvious scam. I guess the Nigerian inheritance story is loosing its’ charm.
Domain name renewal should cost you no more than the cost of buying them from a proper registrar in the first place – about $10.
If you want to be safe, log on to your registrars website and check the status of your domain.
–
So if you get this type of letter in the mail (or email,) just toss it in the trash.
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
read more
November 17, 2006
I was tinkering with the animated Stef character, and tried to have some fun:
http://www.killerphp.com/vid.php
.. just wanted to get honest reactions to our attempt at being funny.
Can you get enough of killersites?
Let me know,
Stefan
read more
November 16, 2006
Web-nerds need to stay on top of what browsers people are using since still today, there are differences with how browsers will display web pages.
I thought some of you might find this interesting – it’s always good to know what is going on out there …
Highlights:
- MSIE: don’t bother with anything before IE6.
- Firefox: something you have to pay attention to.
- Netscape: only the dead and government employees (same thing?) use this browser.
- Opera: Not Netscape, but I’m not loosing any sleep.
- Safari: pay attention.
- Everything else: check you own site’s stats just in case you have some freakish gathering of strange nerds.
read more
September 7, 2006
A little of topic but I feel that I should warn people about this terrible product.
If your looking to print labels for mailings etc … don’t get the Avery Personal Label printer. It simply does not work well to begin with … and after a few days, not at all.
HOW ABOUT TECH SUPPORT FROM AVERY?
Avery has 800 numbers, but nobody answers, all you get is an automated message.
TO SUM IT UP
After printing a few labels, the printer started to become flaky, where it needed constant restarts and force feeding of labels.
… It got to the point that the printer simply would refuse to print anything! After an hour of messing with it, I gave up.
NERD RULE: If you are an experienced nerd and a computer related product or software does not work relatively easily, the product is badly built.
Good luck,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
read more
September 1, 2006
I have a nasty habit that is born out of my petty and self destructive instinct for revenge: I spam spammers.
I’ve (like many of you,) have been and still am subject to constant spam attack. But not just one ‘style’, I actually get spammed on all fronts:
- Email spam.
- Blog spam.
- Forum spam.
… it seems that the spam world considers me to be a ‘spam-licious’ target.
REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED WITH PHP
Being an ubernerd … I got me some options to reflect the pain back to my assailants: php mail() and a for loop!
Check it out:
$str = “Automated response From: Killersites.com – you (spammer@some_domain.com) have sent us spam messages … not nice.”;
for($i=0; $i < 250; $i++)
{
$did_send_mail = mail('spammer@some_domain.com','Automated Response From: Killersites.com System', $str);
}
-
Nothing special in the php code here. But it holds a special place in my heart.
🙂
Now whenever I see it as required, I fire off this script to the lil' bastard that spammed me. Their lucky I don't slap another zero or two in the loop count:
250 -> 2500 or even 25000!
DOES IT WORK
Well I tend to get much fewer repeat offenders since I’ve been doing this.
read more
August 24, 2006
It has been a couple of years since I moved (from in-house hosting) my Java based web applications to using an outside company.
When I was hosting my little apps from my Windows 2000 server (using Caucho Resin,) on a DSL connection, I never had a problem … probably because it was so small.
Since growing and moving to Tomcat on Linux, I’ve found that Java is not the most stable thing … it is not uncommon for Tomcat to lock up.
Contrast this to my PHP based applications (WordPress for example) and I have yet to experience a problem.
THE JAVA FACADE
The Java community loves design patterns (they need them with that overly engineered Frankenstein of a language …) so I’m sure they’ll understand this -> Java is heavy, whenever you start a Java process it like putting on 50 pounds – it slows you down.
The Java facade is the claim that Java is a light nimble thing … the JVM that is. It is not anymore. It once was say back in 1997.
I always wondered why Sun (a billion dollar company) could not get Java Applets to work whereas the relatively tiny company Macromedia, could with the Flash player?
… I’m ranting, so sorry.
CPANEL IS SCARED OF JAVA
Funny, when you activate Tomcat to work with a domain on CPANEL, it gives you a warning about how much juice Java swallows up … and warns against enabling too many Java based websites. It doesn’t say jack about PHP …
JAVA’S FUTURE IS IN LEGACY
It seems a contradiction, but I think that’s where it’s at. Java will become (strictly) a technology of the Enterprise (and legacy integration) while nimble languages like PHP and Ruby will be used to create the new innovative software.
Why?
PHP and Ruby programmers can (and do) code circles around Java developers. You can’t blame the Java developers: the Titanic couldn’t turn on a dime either!
Zing!
read more
