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FontMonster.org has some great free fonts for Mac and PC available from their site.
I downloaded pinchedfat.zip, poetic.zip, ringpull.zip, sale.zip, squishy.zip, sticky.zip, torn.zip, transist.zip, unconform.zip, unconformrounded.zip, velcro.zip... but you might like others.
(via Zeldman)
30 Days to becoming an Opera Lover is now available in two download formats.
The two options are a PDF file (with bookmarks for each day) and a single (loooong) HTML page, both about 1.2 megabytes in size. Enjoy.
An update for Opera7 is planned once Opera7 goes final.
Calling all web junkies! You now have a new toy to desire...
LRSPC2661T 26 cubic foot Multi-Media RefrigeratorWatch the morning news, download recipes, send and receive e-mail, or leave video messages for your family with a refrigerator? You can if it's the LG Multi-Media Refrigerator. It combines leading-edge refrigerator technology with digital connectivity and control and brings you an unprecedented degree of convenience, quality, and coolness. All enclosed in a fingerprint-proof Titanium? Finish.
The Multi-Media Refrigerator from LG. The first refrigerator of the Internet Age.
Source: LGappliances.com
Lots of responses here:
1) I wonder what level of HTML/CSS/DOM it supports? (Their website is Flash-heavy... does the fridge do Flash?)
2) Does it use IE or something else? If IE, what happens when IE crashes? If something else, how long will it take before Browser Sniffers start sniffing it out?
3) Can my fridge get hacked now?
4) Can I hook it to my cable modem or is it dialup only? (Do I need a special dialup account for my appliances?)
5) Does is support Bluetooth? Wi-Fi?
6) Can it email me when someone drinks out of the milk bottle? How about when someone puts just a little bit of milk back in the fridge? Or if my leftovers have spoiled? Can I email it and ask it to tell me what I need to pick up at the store?
7) Will it: Tell me when I need to put in a new box of baking soda? Chastise me for eating late at night? Tell my mom the vegetable bin is empty, and not because I've been eating them, but because I haven't bought them? Warn me not to open that Tupperware container I put in their last spring? Not to eat that lunchmeat I found behind the pickles?
More later if I think of others....
So I’m in exile from my cable modem for awhile, and using MSN dialup access instead.
How hard can it be, right?
So I downloaded the 42 megabyte file of MSN 8 (named msnsetup_full_9x.exe for reasons I couldn’t explain). I installed it on my laptop (reluctantly, but the alternative was nothing and there were 750 emails from this morning alone, I really didn't want to be offline for long).
Worked alright, got setup, no big problem.
Hrm. My outgoing mail isn’t going anywhere. I'm using authenticated email through Operamail Premium, it ought to work anywhere.
Is the server down? No.
Ah.... MSN has blocked outgoing connections to port 25. Ok, I can understand that, it’s an easy step to take to fight spam, sure...
So what SMTP server should I use with MSN?
Google was surprisingly little help. All I found was how to setup Outlook Express and Secure Password Authentication. I don’t use Outlook Express, and wouldn’t use it even if it wasn’t full of security holes.
So I called the tech support number. Now when I needed help with my password, the call was answered in a few minutes. When I went to the generic tech support line, I was on hold for more than 35 minutes. Finally, Tech Drone answered.
Me: Yeah, I’m trying to setup my email on MSN...
Him: Are you using MSN now?
Me: Yes
Him: What error message are you getting?
Me: None. Messages just stay in the OUTBOX
Him: Did you try sending yourself a test email?
Me: Um.... yeah, but it too is in the OUTBOX and didn’t go anywhere?
Him: It didn’t show up in the INBOX too?
Me: No.... They’re all still in the OUTBOX.
Him: (Flipping through pages or their web site or something... total silence from the other end of the phone, with only the occasional Um
thrown in apparently so I would know he was still alive.)
Me: I’m just looking for the SMTP server hostname?
Him: Um....
Me: If you can just tell me what that is, I can configure it myself.
Him: What program are you using?
Me: (knowing this was going to end badly) Opera
Him: I don’t support Opera... I only support Outlook Express.
Me: I don’t need you to support Opera, I just need you to know what the hostname is
Him: Well, I don’t have that information..... I can see if I can find it though
Me: That would be great.
Him: (5 seconds later) Yeah, the hostname is like 150 characters, and no one here knows what it is, but if you go to O.E. Config you can setup Outlook Express from there and just copy the information out of that into Opera.
Me: Ok... so is that OEConfig.com or...?
Him: No, it’s support services at MSN dot com slash us slash o e config. [I figured out he meant http://supportservices.msn.com/us/oeconfig/.]
Me: Ok, thanks, I’ll do that
Him: Let me give you a support ticket number
Me: (thinking: Oh yeah, like I’m really gonna wanna follow up on this conversation with you
)
Him: ... and just for future reference, we don’t support ‘Opera’
Me: (tired) No one is asking you to support anything... if you have the information, it shouldn’t matter what mail program I use.
Him: (not trying very hard to hide the fact that he’s got his Well-I-am-a-tech-and-so-I-have-to-be-nice-but-my-tone-tells-you-what-I-really-think-of-you working overtime) Well they don’t give me that information, does that make sense?
Me: Actually no, it doesn’t make any sense at all... Why anyone would use that broken Outlook Express is beyond me, but I understand that they didn’t provide you with the information that I need.
<fini>
So I went to the website he mentioned, only to find out that I had to login to read it (Passport). Once there what did I find? A page about how to configure Outlook Express to work with Hotmail.
*sigh*
Another glorious day for the state of Tech Support. It’s clear that he had nothing more than their own website and Google to try and answer my question.
So I went and logged into my old reliable Unix shell account via ssh and used PINE instead.
You know, it's bad enough that MS has screwed around with the standards for HTML, CSS, and everything else it touches.... now it's starting to encroach on regular old email.
And the mindset is still the same: "We support this or that application" rather than supporting standards, and let the user choose what s/he wants to use.
I have joked in the past that no one would ever accept the same restrictions with email that we were used to with websites, namely that you have to be using the mail software that the person who wrote the message said that you have to use.... but maybe that's where we are headed?
Crazy.
When Opera came out with an integrated email client, many people complained.
I was one of them.
I'm here to tell you I was wrong.
"Opera is losing its focus!" some people cried. "It's supposed to be a browser!" some exclaimed. "Why would I want an email client in my browser?!?!?" some questioned dubiously.
On behalf of "some" people, let me say, we were wrong.
First of all there is the important note that there is a small (read: 1 or 2) people working on the mail client. Secondly, it IS a browser, and a damn fine one at that which has just gotten better. Thirdly, there are some people (read: paying customers) who want a mail client with their browser.
M2 (Opera's mail client) is now my primary mail application.
Why did I switch?
1) My browser is always running, my mail client is always running. By having them be the same application, I save time and RAM.
2) Outlook and Mozilla Mail (both of which I have previously used) open links in their browser (IE and Mozilla, respectively) which isn't what I wanted.
3) Computers are supposed to make life easier. At their best, they should get out of the way and let you work, helping you by making things easier. Simplicity is preferable. M2 gives me what I want and need, without throwing a lot of cruft at me that I don't want or need.
4) M2 supports multiple POP3 accounts, IMAP, ESMTP, and the best filtering system I have ever seen.
To me, email these days is all about filtering, organizing my email so I can find it fast. Some days I'm pulling up to 1,000 emails a day, I can't afford to waste time with my email.
So I like to sort email into a lot of mailboxes. Always have. I've worked with filters on several different programs, and I like M2's way the best. Why? Because it does a lot of the work for me.
Mailing lists that are properly configured (i.e. that have a List-ID) are automatically sorted into their own folders. Hrm.... here we have an Internet standard (List-ID) and Opera's mail client uses that standard to make things faster and easier. Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah, the browser part of Opera!
So the other day when I signed up for 4 new mailing lists (I'm a bit of an e-sadistic when it comes to email I guess ;-) M2 automatically, repeat, automatically, made new folders for those lists as the first emails came in and sorted them accordingly.
Compare this to the old way: Get an email from a new list, view all headers, copy the information from the appropriate header, go to Tools, then Filter (or "rules") and step through the wizard (or whatever) to tell the mail program what folder it should sort to.
The new way: Opera does it for you.
Hrm, which do I prefer, a multi-step, tedious process,
or an automatic, immediate process?
Here's another common scenario: I like to have all of my work email address sorted to a certain folder (I can do that with M2). But messages from the boss go to a separate folder so I can easily refer to them. What happens when I, 2 co-workers, and my boss exchange several emails on a given topic? Do they go in the "work" folder or the "boss" folder, or do I keep the "boss" stuff separate from the rest of the thread?
Or have you ever had to sort through ALL your folder to find a message that you couldn't remember WHERE it was stored? Or wished that you could have your UNREAD mail sorted to its own folder but also kept in one central folder with all your other UNREAD mail?
M2 solves all these problems instantly too. How?
Accesspoints.
Now accesspoints are a new way of thinking about email storage, so it will take a little getting used to, but if you work with it a little bit you will quickly see the power and flexiiblity. Someone made the comment that it may not be immediately intuitive, but it is very powerful and easy to use. "If I can create an accesspoint for a given keyword in a few seconds, why would I want to sort mails by hand in hundreds of folders, maintain a long list of filters, and decide in which folder to store a mail to might go into several ones?"
So how is M2 different? Basically all of your incoming email goes into one folder (called "Received"). Before you have an anuerism, it's ok. Relax.
They are also sorted into their own folders. As many as you like. Without having a dozen different copies of them sitting on your hard drive.
So my email from my boss can now be in my BOSS folder, my WORK folder, and any other folders I want.
Any time I want to find a message quickly, I just jump to my Received folder and start typing in the Quick Find box that works like the Inline Find... the more you type, the more specific your matches become.
I'm sure others will write more about the nuts and bolts of getting to know M2.
But I'm telling you I think it's awesome.
Oh, and is it powerful enough for you? Well here's a test... I downloaded 29 megabytes (yes really) of email.... 5900 messages. M2 took them and sorted the mailing lists automatically (all those good lists that have List-ID headers). It also did a pretty good job of catching spam and putting that into its own folder too. All without me defining a single filter. Try THAT anywhere else. Subscribe to a new mailing list? Opera will automatically make a new access point for it (assuming it has a List-ID... if it doesn't you can manually add a filter in the My Folders section).
FOR TESTING PURPOSES: You may want to check the box that says "Leave Messages on Server" - that way if you don't like M2 you can download them later into another mail client.
I've used TheBat (too much for my needs, nothing against it), Outlook, Mozilla Mail, PINE, and just about everything else at one time or another. I love M2. It's my new mail program.
Opera's sessions lets you save a group of windows.
Or several.
The windows will be saved exactly as they are shown, window size, position, history, etc.
You can set some up to start when you start Opera, or use the startup screen (previously useful only after a crash) to select which saved session you want to use.
Try something new. Play around with it. Be brave.
File > Sessions > Save Session
Opera7 lets you put FOLDERS in your Personal Bar!
Why would you want to do this?
Personal bar real estate (the amount of space you have there) is always at a premium, because it's limited.
Now you can group things in folders. I have a folder called "Site Check" that has bookmarklets for validating HTML, CSS, Section 508, and so forth.
In other browsers, I'd have to take up precious space for each one of those.
Opera lets me group them together in a normal bookmark folder, and right click the folder and check the box for Personal Bar. Voila!
Update: A reader tells me this functionality has been around for awhile. Well I guess I just learned my new thing for the day.
You want to get under the hood? Opera gives you not only the latch release, but a full set of tweakery tools.
You can change the menus and the KEY COMMANDS to what you like.
Checkout the INI files in the directory where you installed Opera (or if you checked the box for Multi-User support, check the appropriate folder where your personal settings are used.
Make backups of the originals so when you screw something up you can fix it.
Make backups of your changes in case a later version of Opera over-writes them.
This is beta-test land. You can handle it. No whining.
Opera has always done bookmarks better than other browsers. Opera7 continues the trend.
You can now set what FOLDER the bookmark will be stored in (a feature I suggested in the 30 days series ;-)
But there's more!
You know that "Description" field that no one ever used? Well Opera7 now automatically fills it in with the META DESCRIPTION information of the page in question (of course you can change it if you want to).
Also, ANY bookmark in ANY folder can now be placed on the Personal Bar. Check the appropriate box when adding bookmarks (control + T)
Adding a page as a Sidebar (aka Panel) is also easy, check the box in the Bookmarks window.
This is innovation. Simple changes that make life easier and help you use your computer more quickly.
The Window Bar is now the Page Bar. This is probably related somehow to the MDI + SDI thing they've got going on.
Life is change. Embrace it.
That is all.
For now.
Yeah Mozilla had the Site Navigation Bar first, but Opera's doing in better. How? Keyboard controls.
Turn on by View > Navigation Bar (use AUTO to have it appear only when needed)
See 'Navigation > Site Navigation' for key strokes, but the best two are shift+z for Previous and shift+x for Next.
Opera 7 rocks!
Opera 6 let you block pop up windows.
Opera 7 lets you block all pop ups or allow "requested" pop ups for sites that use them.
Use F12 or File > Preferences > Windows and select "Open Requested Pop up windows only"
Opera continues to be the best browser (IMO ;-) for accessibility testing with its new Opera 7 beta 1 release.
Opera7 ships with several default Style Sheets which directly benefit those testing accessibility issues or those who need accessibility features.
Default Styles Sheets include:
Emulate Text Browser
Accessibility Layout
Show images and links only
High Contrast (white on black or black on white)
Disable Tables
(and others)
These can be accessed via View > Styles or by clicking the DOWN ARROW in the Addressbar
Opera 7 beta 1 has been released.
You can get it for $30 (full license).
This is a beta test cycle.
There will be NO whining.
Be part of the solution (use it, report problems [clearly, using clean language, and providing URLs for sites that do not work rather than "Opera 7 messed up at lots of places"]).
This is beta software. Some features are missing.
This is beta software. It may crash.
It is beta software. Do not act like a jerk when you run into problems.
That is all.
...our display code people definitely do not (to put it
mildly) like the way IE do a lot of things; they've got their own
ideas about how to do things, for example how to pack functionality
into such a small package that it fits quite nicely on a mobile phone
(try to fit the IE engine into that, without losing functionality, and
without converting that pocket phone into a laptop phone, or should
that be a desktop phone?), and how the various tags in the various
display languages should be interpreted and displayed.
Read the full post (Hey, what's that URL at the bottom of his .sig?)
Dilbert on Design by Committee. That is all. ‡
I just happened to notice that MovableType has released a new version, and my name mentioned in the MovableType 2.51 changelog.
Movabletype used to use “More” for extended entries. If you had several extended entries, they would all say “More.” Well that’s of little use for people who use assistive technologies where they might read the text of links out of context. How do they know when they have the right link? (Opera users: press control + J to get a listing of all the links on any given page. If you can’t tell where they do, then the page author has done a poor job.)
You might have noticed that my Movabletype templates have not used “More” for this reason. I suggested to the authors (awesome folks, by the way, they responded very quickly and openly to my suggestion).
One small step towards accessibility becoming the standard.
Accessibility and usability (which are not the same, but often co-mingle) are not just for people with disabilities. I was in a bookstore today that I haven’t been in for awhile... it’s a cozy little shop that I really enjoy, except I can remember thinking that the shop would be totally impossible for someone in a wheelchair to move through.
Today I was in there with a stroller. It was nearly impossible for me to get around there too.
Design for accessibility and it will help everyone, perhaps even yourself. Search engines often give more weight to keywords found in links than in the body of a message.
“More” is bad design. “Click here” is bad design. What does “More” mean? Related information? Further reading? What would happen if I did “click here”? “Continues” is much more clear, it tells you there is more in this same article, indicates that you are reading an excerpt.
It doesn’t just help people with disabilities, it helps people who are in a hurry, who might be scanning a page looking for something. It makes it easier for everyone to use your site.
For a quick list of accessibility items, see the Section 508 and WCAG sidebar.
Flash Satay at AListApart solves the problem of getting valid XHTML with embedded Flash. If you have to, or even want to, use Flash, at least get it right.
By the way, the ‡ indicates the end of an entry, when I remember to use it, mostly on shorter entries.
‡
Unlike some other browsers, Opera makes it easy to disable Flash.
Quick and easy: Press F12 and make sure there is NOT a check mark next to 'enable plugins'
Advanced: If you want to disable Flash without disabling other plugins, you can also go to
File > Preferences > File Types
and look for
application/x-shockwave-flash
you can then set Opera's preference for what it will do when it runs into Flash.
Personally I have just edited the MIME type and file extension, so that
application/x-shockwave-flash
became
application/x-shockwave-flash_OFF
and
swf
became
swf_OFF
which will make it easier to re-enable if I should ever so choose by editing them again, and it makes it easy to see what MIME types you have turned OFF.
If you are really, really sure, you could delete the MIME type entry altogether, but I don't recommend that because it isn't necessary and this leaves you with a fail-safe in case you need to re-enable.
You could also delete the NPSWF32.dll from your hard drive, but that too is overkill for some people.
An elderly Florida lady did her shopping and, upon returning to her car,
found four males in the act of leaving with her vehicle.
She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to
scream at them at the top of her voice, "I have a gun and I know how to use
it! Get out of the car, you scum bags!"
The four men didn't wait for a second invitation, but got out and ran like
mad, whereupon the lady, somewhat shaken, proceeded to load her shopping
bags into the back of the car and get into the driver's seat.
She was so shaken that she could not get her key into the ignition.
She tried and tried, and then it dawned on her why.
A few minutes, later she found her own car parked four or five spaces
farther down. She loaded her bags into her car and drove to the police station.
The sergeant to whom she told the story nearly tore himself in two
with laughter and pointed to the other end of the counter, where four
pale white males were reporting a car jacking by a mad elderly woman
described as white, less than 5' tall, glasses, and curly white hair,
carrying a large handgun.
No charges were filed.
[more proof that all the nuts roll South]
It ought to be so easy to write valid web pages. Why isn't it?
XHTML and CSS are all about relationships (class and IDs relate to styles)
XHTML, especially, is about being very specific, exacting, in what you want to do.
It ought to be so easy to write valid XHTML with CSS.
It ought to be simple.
What level do you want: XHTML or HTML, strict, transitional, or frames?
CSS - font sizes: pixels, ems, %, or absolute font sizes?
Absolute or relative positioning?
It occurs to me what what we really need is an Object Oriented App to handle this.
Each element would be its own object, right click to set CSS for it: positioning, color, background-color, border, z-index, float/
Drag objects around, "Do you want this element's position to be fixed, relative, or absolute?"
Maybe not WYSIWYG, but close.
Is it out there?
XHTML + CSS should give web designers more flexibility than they've ever had before (especially if they aren't concerned about relic browsers).
Someone is going to revolutionize this process.
I hope it's soon.
Some areas in Florida have new touch screen voting booths.
They are causing delays and confusion.
The image below started as a joke, but I'm starting to think it might be our only option!
![[voting booth by Playschool]](images/florida-2004-electoral-ballot.jpg)
Opera Software announces Opera 6 for Mac OS 8.6-10.2 Beta 2
(FreeBSD last week, Mac this week.... hrm...)
‡
![[BMW with fire hose through broken windows]](images/priceless-bmw.jpg)
Mark Pilgrim of DiveIntoMark posted a note that he was taking a break from his blog for awhile.
The man knows how to take a break which in this case happens to even relate to his domain name.
I'm jealous.
‡
New levels of stupidity in browser sniffing achieved by KPMG!
Upon reaching the site, I receive this friendly message (see original KPMG message):
INCOMPATIBLE BROWSER
The browser you are using is incompatible with KPMG.COM To use this KPMG site, you must have:
A 4.x or 5.x web browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer (5.x for Macintosh computers). To download versions of this software, click on the appropriate icon below.
KPMG's web site is incompatible with browser versions 6.0 and above.
It never ceases to amaze me how many business sites are willing to shut people out because they use the "wrong" browser.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Standards are a good thing.
Imagine trying to call someone on the phone and getting a recording: "We're sorry, but your phone is not compatible with the person you are trying to call."
Or trying to email someone and getting a message back: "We don't support your mail program, please use Outlook."
No one would think of doing something that moronic, and yet many people will do the equivalent with their web site.
This is based on two main bits of flawed thinking: a) that web design should support any particular browser (as opposed to web standards) and b) that good web design means looking the same on every browser.
Why does KPMG need you to use one specific browser? Well, actually, they don't. You can view the site no problem using Opera, once you sneak past their moron web security guard.
Day 15 talked about F12 and gave a non-short history of browser sniffing. Change your Browser ID to MSIE 5, get past the initial check, and then change it back.... or simply disable Javascript for the initial page.
That said, there's little at the site to warrant all that extra effort. Almost every time I find a site that blocks me out, I find a) that there was no real reason to block Opera and b) there was nothing really worth looking at in the first place. There are a lot of outdated sites around from the days when people thought browser sniffing was a good idea.
Those days are over, folks. Time to move on.
![[George W Bush being advised by Microsoft Clippy]](/images/beyond30/clippyanddippy400x303.jpg)