I just received spam from an organization urging me to boycott Microsoft products because they send spam.
The mind boggles.
Author Archives: Kelson
Princess Leia, Pole Dancer
Don’t tell me you aren’t thinking it.
(From the new Star Wars “Unleashed” statuette line.)
Reading Comprehension
I’ve complained about people not reading the page they’re on before they fire off an email or fill out a contact form (and dealt with it here as well), but this is just pathetic—in every sense of the word.
For those who don’t want to RTFA, someone posted a blog entry about Wal-Mart’s entry into online music. A year later, it somehow landed the top search hit for “walmart application online,” and people started leaving comments asking for applications. Dozens of them.
(via IO Error)
Something for everyone
Today’s spam haul included:
Hot penny Stocks
How amateur golfers (can think like a pro)
Half the second line was cut off, and I misread it as “Hot amateur golfers!”
iCab beats Acid2?
On Sunday, a development version of Konqueror passed the Acid2 test. In the comments, someone posted a screenshot of iCab also passing the Acid2 test.
I did a double-take. iCab? Das Internet-Taxi für den Mac? The browser with the nice “Make iCab smile” campaign to encourage non-broken HTML on websites but CSS capabilities that have rivaled Netscape 4 as little better than a bad joke? That has been in perpetual beta for years with no sign of shipping a final release?
So I did the only thing I could do. I downloaded the new beta and tried it. Not only did it nearly pass Acid2 (there was a narrow white line across the middle of the face) but it actually handled all the layouts on my own site… something which it had always failed at spectacularly before.
The WaSP Buzz posted a congratulatory note to both this morning. Strangely, iCab is the first browser available to the general public that passes Acid2. The up-to-date Safari is still sitting inside Apple’s development labs, and while you can download the source for the updated Konqueror, you’ll have to wait for KDE 3.4.2—or possibly 3.5—to be able to use it yourself without running a bleeding-edge desktop. Update: Apple has just launched CVS access to WebCore, putting Safari in the same situation as Konqueror: you can download and compile the latest source code if you want, but if you just want to grab an installer, you’re gonna have to wait.
Follow-up in 2024: I’m surprised to discover that iCab still exists, and is still developed — though in 2020 the author rewrote it so it uses macOS’ built-in web renderer (like Safari) and not its own engine anymore.
Elephants in the Web 2: Firefox
Following up on my comments on Opera, Firefox supporters have a major blind spot as well. It has to do largely with the heavy emphasis on web standards among the developers and the early adopters, and the ideals of the open source/free software community. There are a lot of websites out there that don’t look quite right on anything but Internet Explorer, and there are sites out there that just plain don’t work in anything but IE. This is largely due to three facts:
- There is a lot of broken HTML out there that has only been tested on IE, and the designers relied on IE’s particular error-recovery behavior.
- There are sites that rely on ActiveX or other IE-specific code without providing an alternative.
- There are sites with bad browser-detection logic that deliberately exclude other browsers, regardless of whether they would otherwise handle the site.
In each case you can either change the browser to handle the websites, or you can change the web to handle the browser. Both approaches are difficult, and while the former often yields more immediate results, the latter is more ideal, because it benefits users of all web browsers. In most cases Opera has chosen to adapt the browser, while Mozilla has chosen to promote standards for web development. Continue reading
Last of the Lazy Lizard
While cleaning the apartment this weekend, we found a long-forgotten bag of “Lazy Lizard” Mozilla Coffee. RJ Tarpley’s, the company which sold it (and donated a percentage of profits to the Mozilla Foundation) disappeared last summer. By September, I couldn’t even find a whois record. The domain name has since been picked up by a link farm.
It was decent coffee, and it helped support some good software. And I got a nifty mug while they were still in business. There was maybe half a pound left, but 12-month-old decaf coffee just isn’t fit to drink anymore, so instead of brewing one last pot in salute, we tossed what was left.