A List Apart
When broken links frustrate your site's visitors, a typical 404 page explains what went wrong and provides links that may relate to the visitor's quest. That's good, but now you can do better. With Dean Frickey's custom 404, when something's amiss, pertinent information is sent not only to the visitor, but to the developer?so that, in many cases, the problem can be fixed! A better 404 means never having to say you're sorry.
As in finance, so on the web: self-regulation has failed. Nearly ten years after specifications first required it, video captioning can barely be said to exist on the web. The big players, while swollen with self-congratulation, are technically incompetent, and nobody else is even trying. So what will it take to support the human and legal rights of hearing impaired web users? It just might take the law, says Joe Clark.
We asked. Our gentle readers answered. In A List Apart No. 263 we inquired how you walk the blurry line when you work from home. Here are your secrets?how to balance work and family, maintain energy and focus, get things done, and above all, how to remember the love.
Organize multiple style sheets to simplify the creation of environmentally appropriate visual experiences. Support older browsers while keeping your CSS hack-free. Use generated content to provide visual enhancements, and seize the power of advanced selectors to create wondrous (or amusing) effects. Part two of a series.
Ideas are at the heart of every creative process. However, coming up with them can be hard work. Mark Boulton arms us with tools to meet this challenge.
Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!
Hack a Day
A coworker approached us today wondering if they could get a performance boost using Samsung’s newly announced 256GB SSD. Most of their work is done in browser, so we said “no”. They’d only see benefit if they were reading/writing large files. Their system has plenty of RAM, and we decided to take a different approach. [...]
Tellart turned an iPhone into a duiPhone with its latest Sketchtools kit. Combine a 3G iPhone, an ordinary store-bought breathalyzer, and the NADA Mobile, which consists of a communication board, sensors, and actuators, and get a useful iPhone application. Blow into the mouthpiece, and the iPhone will inform you if you can safely drive, or [...]
German designer [Michael Schoner] of NL Architects turned an ordinary street bench into a public sound system that can be accessed by passersby with iPods and cellphones with Bluetooth. Boom Bench features 60 watt co-axial speakers, two subwoofers, and a bass shaker in the seat that’ll allow you to feel the vibrations of your music [...]
Add lights to your graphing calculator. Do it now. [Sil3ntP8nd8] added some, and seems to have done a decent job. They are spread around the back, supplying a nice even light on, well, on whatever is under your calculator. It may be difficult to see too much detail though on account of the water marks. [...]
[Lynne] had this crazy idea to build a piece of clothing that would give you feedback about your surroundings using sonar. She started with a carefully selected thrift store jacket. She wanted something that looked good and also provided plenty of places to hide electronics. She used the LilyPad system, with a vibration pad and [...]
A Phrase A Week
Everything to do with shifts and nothing to do with graves.
Go on, you know you want to.
Stuck in limbo? Could it be time to get out the pole and start dancing?
Not English? Not male? So, where do you live?
Going hedging? You'll need your pruning shears.
A VC
Slideshare is doing a contest to pick the top credit contest slideshow. There are a bunch of good ones. Here's my two favorites. Creditcrisis 30slides Final View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: capitalism mortgage) Credit Crisis to Collaborative...
That's a question I used to get all of the time in the early days of this blog. I don't get it so much anymore. Because slowly but surely people are wising up to the fact that blogging is work...
I wrote a post about our most recent investment, Boxee, today on the Union Square Ventures blog. Boxee founder and CEO Avner Ronen wrote a post on the Boxee blog about the investment. I encourage you to click on those...
The post of the day comes from Andy Finnell who writes that iPhone app developers must abandon the $0.99 price that many apps are selling for these days. Andy calculates that a developer who wants to make a living off...
I started this discussion yesterday with my observation that Obama ended his weekly address with the point that "in this nation we rise and fall as one nation, one people." But that doesn't ring true to me. I think we...
Blogzilla - a weblog about Mozilla
The Microsoft Team RSS Blog announced today that to encourage consistency between browsers, IE7 will be using the Firefox RSS icon to represent RSS and RSS-related features.
IE View is a useful extension for web developers that launches IE and lets you view what the page looks like in IE.
FirefoxView is the opposite of IE View, it lets you complete the round trip and view what a page looks like in Firefox from IE.
Kind of a strange extension install; it's an extension you install in Firefox, which installs "View This Page in Firefox" item to the context menu in IE. Windows only, and doesn't work with Norton Antivirus 2004 with script blocking enabled.
In response to an entry discussing view source in Firefox, Brian King created the View Source Choice extension with the exact feature we were looking for. The ability to:
[r]edirect View Source to current window (current default in Firefox), new tab, or new window.
Thanks Brian — I've installed the extension, and it works great! The planned ability to override the view source keyboard shortcut already has me anticipating version 0.2.
Update 2006-01-20: View Source Choice has been updated and now features an optional override.
As part of the community marketing for Firefox 1.5, Mozilla Firefox Flicks has launched with two new campaigns, Testimonials and Ad Contest. If you're the type, record a testimonial of yourself talking Firefox and you can win Amazon.com gift certificates. Me, I don't even like having my picture taken. Although it would be pretty funny if a Pornzilla fan recorded a testimonial.
The ad contest is for those familiar with Final Cut Pro to create a 30s commercial for Firefox.
Mozilla has, without a doubt, raised the bar with Firefox 1.5. Amongst the countless enhancements and bug fixes, though, I found something to make particular mention of, that of view source and bug 262915.
Before, the view-source pseudo protocol (i.e. accessing view source from the location bar instead of by shortcut) would open a new browser window. For a single-window/tab user like myself, this bug was annoying — to say the least. But now with that particular bug fixed, page source can remain in a tab, alongside all other open tabs. And here's where the tip comes in...
Combine keyword searching (we recommend the keyword 'vs' for, wait for it, view source) with this bookmarklet and navigate to any page you'd like to view the source of. Replace the URL in the location bar with 'vs' (or applicable keyword) and hit enter to view source in a tab.
Finally, I'm looking for a way to keep the original site in a tab and open the source in an adjacent tab. Any way to accomplish this with one bookmarklet?
Update 2005-12-03: A Blogzilla visitor created the extension View Source Choice, which addresses the request above.
Worldchanging
Emily Gertz: 158 Nations Reach Agreement on Greenhouse Gas Reductions Run Your House on a Prius Municipal WiFi Stalling in America? Mexico City Launches Plan to Cut...
WorldChanging Team: In a new study, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) reports that the gap between the rich and poor in many Asian countries, particularly China, has...
WorldChanging Team: The European Commission is developing legislation that will require minimum sustainability standards for biofuels development, European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said at the recent International...
Regine Debatty: Jean-Baptiste Labrune recently pointed me to this excellent overview of "Walking as art." Here's a new project to add to that list: The Energy Harvesting...
Emily Gertz: The US presidential hopefuls are not ignoring the internet...but they're not getting it, either. Or maybe they don't really want to. Witness this week's breathless...
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AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth
a little pregnant
When I first started this blog in 1588, shortly after positing the Earth's shape as an oblate spheroid but long before I invented the Internet, I made a conscious decision to limit its scope, confining myself to writing solely about...
What you've done "I'm sure you won't read down this far," said a commenter on my last post. "You won't have time to read all these," said another. And from another, "I wish there were something I could do for...
I made three stops on my drive home from Albany: One. I stopped at the first mall I saw to buy a copy of The Who's Quadrophenia. The whole way home, I listened to "Love Reign O'er Me" as loud...
Strangely enough, no one has asked me, "Why Minnesota?" Maybe you know how much I love Prince. But no: I know the chances of my encountering His Purple Highness in the corridors of reproductive medicine ? which are kind of...
Hey, I owe you a story, don't I? About our meeting with the social worker at the new clinic? Yes. But first a few links you might find intriguing: Lesbian sues crappy doctors for being totally crappy and crappily refusing...
Yarn-A-Go-Go
Lala brought something home from work for me yesterday. A blanket. Made for me by readers who love me. Started for me when Mom died. It's one of the most perfect, gorgeous presents I've ever received. I am completely undone...
I've always wanted to type that title. In writer-speak, getting The Call is not God urging you to become a priest. It?s when your agent calls you to tell you that an editor wants to buy your book.I've been DYING...
I have SO much to tell you. I had a very full day yesterday, very full indeed. I think I'm just going to slap the pics in here and then narrate them, because otherwise, I have no idea where to...
Tomorrow, Saturday, is the day you can do something about California's Prop 8, even if you live in another state. There will be a protest near you in the ACLU's Nationwide Join the Impact Protest. I'm going to be at...
Don't forget, I'll be reading this Saturday night. I hope you can come. I really do -- I'm pretty darn nervous about it. It won't be long, just 15 minutes each for the three of us, and I've heard a...
Whedonesque | a weblog about Joss Whedon
http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0811/19/idwfeb.htm
There's the conclusion to After The Fall, the start of Aftermath, Smile Time #2 and the Spike: After The Fall hardcover.
http://www.buddytv.com/articles/ncis/exclusive-interview-with-liza-24614.aspx
She is also starring in Dexter, NCIS, and the new Fast and Furious movie. She is new to me, but it seems like she will be known to everyone within a year.
The Dollhouse stuff is toward the end of the interview.
http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=8549
Check out all the details on our former Mr. Harris' new horror comedy "Blood on the Highway."
http://www.fireflyshipworks.com/2008/11/map-of-the-verse/
A stunning piece of work. Kudos to the people behind this.
According to the Firefly Ship Works Ltd website:
The Map will be available for the first time next weekend at the Creation Serenity Convention in Burbank, CA and then shortly thereafter on the QMx website.
And just for comparison, there's also an impressive unofficial map of the 'Verse as well.
http://www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,7273-850-60475,00.html
Doug Jones (one of the Gentlemen in the Buffy episode "Hush") returns to Ball State to give a presentation with a Q&A session following.
Doug Jones is most often listed as playing Faun in the movie Pan's Labyrinth, but he was also one of the Gentlemen from the Buffy episode "Hush" and Abe Sapien from Hellboy. He graduated from Ball State and recently returned to make a movie entitled "My Name is Jerry" with 50 other Ball State students. His presentation is at 7:30pm at the Emens Auditorium on November 19th (tomorrow).
This is where I graduated from, so I have to say I'm proud of who's come out of the acting school at BSU.