Category
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Web Design
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Simple CSS drop shadows, revisited
With improved support for complex scripting and CSS, simple CSS drop shadows are even easier to do.
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Canada.com goes standard
Yet another Canadian news site unveiled a standards-based redesign, this time canada.com. Unlike the Toronto Star redesign (which was likely hampered by a crusty CMS), canada.com’s mark-up is much cleaner and elegant. Not exactly semantic, but not too crufty either.
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Toronto Star goes all CSS
Well, credit where credit is due: the Toronto Star unveiled a redesign that makes it the first major news site in Canada to use a CSS-based layout. Though later than hoped, the Star’s relaunch beat The Globe and Mail by a good couple of months.
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No consensus on design survey
François Briatte did a survey. What he discovered is that key [W]eb sites agree on implicit, internalized layout and design norms. In a flurry of coincidental posts, the staff at webgraphics post three different views. The survey, variously:
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Get off the table
Doug Bowman, after learning how many Web designers don’t use tables for layout, urges people to throw tables out the proverbial window. To bolster his case, he use the microsoft.com homepage to demonstrate the savings that can be achieved.
Latest Postings on Web Design
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Simple CSS drop shadows, revisited
With improved support for complex scripting and CSS, simple CSS drop shadows are even easier to do.
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Mozilla’s multi-columns, and an IE7 update
There’s been a lot of news during the past week or so that has almost tempted me to break the posting silence, but only one managed to break the floodgates: the release of Mozilla 1.8 Alpha3. Forget the awkward name, this is, for me, the most important release since 1.0.
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Get off the table
Doug Bowman, after learning how many Web designers don’t use tables for layout, urges people to throw tables out the proverbial window. To bolster his case, he use the microsoft.com homepage to demonstrate the savings that can be achieved.
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Mutli-columns with Mozilla
One of my most desired CSS features is coming to a browser near you — Robert O’Callahan has checked a patch into Mozilla that implements the three-year-old CSS3 multi-columns working draft.
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New IE5/Mac filter
Doug Bowman tapped Tantek Çelik’s brain and out emerged the IE5/Mac Band Pass Filter. The result causes the former to eulogize the browser the latter helped build
Latest Postings on CSS
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What’s the object?
The W3C concludes its two-part series on how to embed multimedia into HTML documents, and asks the Web standards community to help them QA browsers. The timing is just about perfect for this because as most reading this are no doubt aware:
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The W3C’s XHTML FAQ
Ever wonder: what’s the deal with XHTML? Now you can find out thanks to the W3C’s YABA-compatiable HTML and XHTML FAQ. Once you’ve digested, that enjoy the brand new draft for XHTML 2.0
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XAML implications; resting Rainmain
Chris Kaminski (through the WaSP’s Buzz blog) has posted a thorough overview of XAML and its implications, including a bit about the W3C’s “response”: SVG 1.2’s Rendering Custom Content.
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XAML is real;
XAML is real, is pronounced zamel, and is “the language used to declaratively render the user interface of the pages that make up the application” within Longhorn. (The presentation subsystem XAML accesses is dubbed “Avalon,” the UI, “Aero.”) From an article on MSDN, here’s the simplest XAML-based file you can write:
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Microsoft’s XUL: XAML
Coming out from under a pile of work to alert you about XAML (which as of this moment only pulls hits from Google on the “Transaction Authority Markup Language” — not the rumoured new language from Microsoft). Eric Meyer echoes exactly my grave concerns about this.
Latest Postings on HTML
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Why doesn’t Internet Explorer add a table using appendChild?
Adding a table using the DOM is relatively easy — all you need to do is dynamically create the needed TD (and/or TH), TR, TBODY (and/or TFOOT and/or THEAD), and TABLE nodes using createElement. The you add each child to its parent using appendChild.
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Fixing the CSS validator; CSS footers and JavaScript galleries
Following yesterday’s minor kerfuffle over the CSS validator and CSS hacks, Zeldman is asking people to request the W3C update its validator. In reply, the W3C’s Olivier Thereaux is asking the community to help fix the open-source validator.
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Challenging the tarrif; VeriSign wants RFIDs; cross-browser DHTML Behaviors
Not like it was unexpected: Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and a bunch of retailers are challenging the tarrif to be placed on MP3 players. A successful suit could lead to the end of legal downloading in Canada, though.
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QuirksMode; opposing Eolas
Note: when streetcar tracks are wet and you are passing over them on a diagonal on a fast-moving bicycle, do so carefully.
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WebStandards.TO meets; JavaScript optimization tricks
Tara Cleveland’s got details (and pics) on the first 'WebStandards.TO meet up. Not a bad turn-out given the ice storm hitting the city.
Latest Postings on JavaScript
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Canadian relief sites clogged
The Globe and Mail listed five sites accepting donations to help ease the horrors occuring as a result of the South Asian earthquake and tsunami, half are slow or not responding. Although it could be coincidental, I’d like to believe Canadians are flooding humanitarian aid sites.
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Making space
The latest issue of Usability News has two studies on the use of white space.
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Purple numbers
Joe Clark famously did it when moving his incredible book, Building Accessible Websites online, and Eugene Eric Kim made them visible with “Purple.” Chris Dent turned Tim Bray onto them, and, in turn, Simon Willison made the technique dynamic while improving it visually. The purple numbers idea makes Joe’s work usable and will most likely be seen on the new version of this site
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Nielsen’s visited links
Guru Nielsen has already received well-argued flak over his latest column on visited-link colours, but don’t dismiss it outright; there’s a kernel of truth to be found there. Normal users do rely on links changing state once visited, especially in non-navigational elements (such as the content of a page) — I’ve seen the email to prove it
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“Real” bad design
Wired News explains how bad Web design can potentially destroy a dominant product.
Latest Postings on Usability
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Lessons from working with Web standards
During the past five months I’ve been working on a project that’s been alluded to on this site a few times, and it will very soon be done. Once things settle down, I’ll be going into a lot more detail, but for now I’ll tease out a few things I’ve discovered:
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Canada.com goes standard
Yet another Canadian news site unveiled a standards-based redesign, this time canada.com. Unlike the Toronto Star redesign (which was likely hampered by a crusty CMS), canada.com’s mark-up is much cleaner and elegant. Not exactly semantic, but not too crufty either.
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Toronto Star goes all CSS
Well, credit where credit is due: the Toronto Star unveiled a redesign that makes it the first major news site in Canada to use a CSS-based layout. Though later than hoped, the Star’s relaunch beat The Globe and Mail by a good couple of months.
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Dream project
Imagine your dream project. Now imagine it being handed to you. What would you do?
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Seeking standards-based Web developer
Keith was mentioning it earlier, and I agree, it’s hard to find good Web standards developers. So with that in mind, consider this an open call for ones in the Toronto area. Essentially, I’m looking to hear from those who dream live Web standards, and dream semantic mark-up. Being a news junkie who knows why * html can make IE behave is a definite bonus.
Latest Postings on Web Standards
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An Overview of the Best Practices
Looking at the key best practices emerging in the Web design industry.
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Thank Hotwired, Saila suggests
Although my first thought was to Twitter this (apparently the frequency for which I do that is starting to make cats salivate), but it deserved more than 140 characters. That being said, had it been a little tweet it would have said this:
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Saila Suggests
The Web development industry’s best practices are built on top of of Web standards, are informed by human-centered design, and honed through nearly a decade of trial and error. This series will begin cataloguing and explaining how to put these best practices into use, and apply them to on your own Web site.
Latest Postings on Web Patterns
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WAT the?
Just as the buts had begin to settle after Matthew Somerville–Odeon conflict, IBM releases a tool that converts normal Web sites automagically into accessible ones. The Web Adaptation Technology is a non-specific-site extension that is currently available only to a select audience, but it may inspire others to release a similar tool via open source
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Singing with Opera
You can talk to your browser…or, at least, the next version of Opera. The Norwegian browser will use IBM’s Embedded ViaVoice to let users navigate and fill-in forms just by speaking. Using the proposed XHTML+Voice (X+V) specification, the voice-enabled — or multimodal — browser neatly hits three markets:
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CSS filter results; screen readers study
Thanks to those who tested the CSS filters I posted here a couple of weeks ago, my initial tests are now confirmed.
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Accessify’s Acrobot
Ian Lloyd, of Accessify, has put together an excellent little tool called Acrobot to automatically parse a text sample for abbreviations, and wrap them with the appropriate abbr and acronym elements. Not only that, the resulting mark-up includes the relevant definition.
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Standard savings; accessibility: do as we say, not as we do
ESPN.com redesigned its homepage a while back, and now uses CSS to lay the page out. Given its size, a lot of people took notice including Eric A. Meyer who interviewed ESPN.com’s associate art director Mike Davidson about the process. The second half of the interview appears this Friday.
Latest Postings on Accessibility
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Thank Hotwired, Saila suggests
Although my first thought was to Twitter this (apparently the frequency for which I do that is starting to make cats salivate), but it deserved more than 140 characters. That being said, had it been a little tweet it would have said this:
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Checklist for standard-based Web development
Need a checklist? Get a one for standard-based Web development; it’s good to use when producing quality CSS in a team environment. Meanwhile, Signal vs. Noise offers some rock-solid suggestions on what to do for every new feature added
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Two tutorials
There are many self-styled tutorials on Web building on the Web — probably more tutorials than developers. That being said, occassionally one emerges worth a bookmark from even the most cynical “seen-it-all” crowd. Rarely do two appear, but that’s what has happened.
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Resurrection
Webmonkey, like the Netscape browser, looks to be back from the dead. I happened to hit the site today and noticed it was on the “wired.com” domain instead of a directory of “hotwired.lycos.com”. Plus there’s this note: “We’re totally back! Webmonkey is alive and kicking, serving up new articles all hot-n-fresh like a stack of banana pancakes. With syrup.” The site will has been publishing new articles every other Friday since the beginning of July:
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The new Web design gurus
What did I say about lists? Anyway, here are two visions of the top minds in the Web design world right now. The first, selected by Eric Meyer’s readers, are those CSS experts whose writings people would most like to read in a book. The second is actually two “top Web-design blogger for 2004 (so far)” lists (one from Digital Web Magazine and one from Scrivs).
Latest Postings on Web Resources
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Two “me toos”
Normally, I refrain from “me too” posts, but today Zeldman echoed my experiences over the past few weeks
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Clipping clip; new products from Macromedia
SimpleBits has a nice example of CSS-based zoom feature for images (based on Pixy’s rollover), and that in turn, inspired me to try to do use clip to create a thumbnail/zoom function. The results so far have been less than satisfying…CSS’s clip property is one of those things that never behaves as I think it should.
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Post-blackout links
Back from the blackout (my neighbourhood was essentially powerless until Sunday morning) with some links. (I have posted a description of the first day and night without power along with some pics.) As Toronto powers ahead at (please, please) half-steam, here are some links for your consideration:
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Veen blogs
For a long time, the Jeffrey I associated with Web design was not Zeldman, but Veen. (As I’ve mentioned before, HotWired had quite an influence on me.) Now, it looks as though he’s blogging.
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Web Building Tips
This is a collection of tips about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other Web development and design issues.
Latest Postings on Web
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Lessons from working with Web standards
During the past five months I’ve been working on a project that’s been alluded to on this site a few times, and it will very soon be done. Once things settle down, I’ll be going into a lot more detail, but for now I’ll tease out a few things I’ve discovered:
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Searching The Globe
Another item on this site about stuff at the globeandmail.com — one of these days that site will actually have a blog to deal with this kinda stuff. Until then, I’ve created three search plugins for Firefox (or Mozilla, or Netscape 6+, or MacOS’s Sherlock).
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A little help from a friend
Hey Chris, glad to hear your back and looking for advice Hope this helps
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Microsoft to release IE7
Wow.
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Ask Mozilla
The also-ran search company Ask Jeeves is making some interesting plays lately. First, it bought Bloglines *the Web-based RSS aggregator) and now it’s talking up the Mozilla Foundation. Ask Jeeves has suggested it might donate it’s desktop search product to Mozilla and making it open source; as well there’s talk of building a Ask Jeeves-branded Firefox browser this year.
Latest Postings on Browsers
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BarCamp Seattle: The Father’s Day Edition
Sunday morning and another Seattle bus adventure means arriving once again late for BarCamp Seattle, thankfully, the sessions also got underway a bit later. Today begins (for me) with a discussion on social media design where I promote Pownce’s friend/fan and group pattern (potentially to be added to the new social media repository announced in the session) and will end with, apparently, Diet Coke and Mentos.
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Succeeding against Facebook
Facebook managed avoid ghettoization as YASN this May when it opened its Web site to third-party applications. Essentially, Facebook answered the unasked question of what to do after everyone you once knew are in your network (and you realize you don’t have much in common with your classmates from kindergarten).
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The Google Office
Looks like Google is partnering with Sun Microsystems to release a browser-accessible version OpenOffice. Is this the return of the network computer? The re-emergence of the GooOS meme? Is this why 37 Signals finally released Writeboard (which is kinda like a wiki and Writely)?
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Ask Mozilla
The also-ran search company Ask Jeeves is making some interesting plays lately. First, it bought Bloglines *the Web-based RSS aggregator) and now it’s talking up the Mozilla Foundation. Ask Jeeves has suggested it might donate it’s desktop search product to Mozilla and making it open source; as well there’s talk of building a Ask Jeeves-branded Firefox browser this year.
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What is the GBrowser?
Will they or won’t they? The GBrowser rumour mills are churning again with the CEO Eric Schmidt’s outright denial Google is building a browser.
Latest Postings on Search Engines
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Mix07 wrap-up
Finally made it back to Toronto after a case of mistaken departure and a very bumpy takeoff.
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Seeing the Web’s future
Vegas may be the city you can gamble 24-7, but try to find a decent bar open in The Venetian after 11 p.m.…
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New development platforms
Well, this has been eventful.
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The universal Web is hard to do
Sitting in the keynote for the Mix07 conference, I got intrigued by some of the demos of Silverlight (which is one of the reasons I wanted to come to this). All throughout people like Ray Ozzie have been talking about how its is part of the “univeral web” and can run both on the Mac and other browsers. I happen to to be using a Mac hear (in fact David Crow has the only other that I've seen) and am using Firefox, so…
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When to update a site
Mike Davidson’s thoughts on code promotion schedules have generated a number of interesting comments. Essentially, he began by questioning whether two weeks is too long or too short for releasing Web site improvements. There’s a lot of back-and-forth debating the meaning of “code” but most agree that it depends. (Anil Dash’s clarification of Vox’s scheduling explains in detail how good updates should be managed.)
Latest Postings on Web Technology
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BarCamp Seattle: The Father’s Day Edition
Sunday morning and another Seattle bus adventure means arriving once again late for BarCamp Seattle, thankfully, the sessions also got underway a bit later. Today begins (for me) with a discussion on social media design where I promote Pownce’s friend/fan and group pattern (potentially to be added to the new social media repository announced in the session) and will end with, apparently, Diet Coke and Mentos.
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First impressions of BarCamp Seattle
Probably a result of the venue, what with its actual class rooms filled with podiums, projectors, and microphones, the formality of this Seattle BarCamp is far more implicit than ever it was at the Toronto BarCamps (except for the one held, coincidentally, at the MSN Canada offices). Lots of hallway buzz, but the sessions have been sadly distracted by the jackhammering going on outside the Adobe building.
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Heading to BarCamp Seattle
This is being written on a bus (the 30) as I tardily trek to BarCamp Seattle — only the first of many differences between my experiences with the BarCamp scene in Toronto (although, coincidentally, on my way to the first Toronto BarCamp, I spotted some infamous graffiti on the outside of a Starbucks franchise).
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Web Directions North ’08 kicks off
Coming to this yearâ??s Web Directions North provided me with a very memorable first: entering Canada for the first time as a U.S. resident. (Explaining to the border guard that we actually did live in Seattle and weren’t actually re-entering the country was…interesting)). Thankfully, once we made it across I was happily re-united with my former co-workers at The Globe for an amazingly cooked meal at toothpastery’s< house.
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The year that was
A decade ago, the Web was in a boom that would lead to a bubble — now, it’s in a boom that will lead to…
Latest Postings on Web Culture
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CBC and spam
Tomorrow night (and again on Saturday), Canada’s public broadcaster devotes itself to a topic any connected person should care about.
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A defence of spam
Over the weekend, Doug Saunders demonstrated, once again, his flair for writing in his defence of spam
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Who’s the manager? Semantic Web pushes ahead; additional beautiful blogs
From a Bulgarian software outsourcing company’s spam sitting in my inbox today:
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OJA nominees; Floatutorial; Sympatico brought to its knees
The American government seems to have found a clever way around the freedom of the press: treat online journalists as ISPs.
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Self-healing systems
Talk about self-healing systems: a new worm is crawling the Web trying to patch the Windows’ security hole used by Blaster (via SvN)
Latest Postings on Spam/Virus
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They come in threes
What happens when the inevitable happens not once, but three times in four days?
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Time-sharing and terminals back in vogue
HP steps into Apple territory (again) by offering computers to schools. The difference is these computers are for African schools and are designed to save the schools up to 60 percent of their computer costs. It manages this by harkening back to the early days of computing: one CPU can be used by four people. There are no plans — for now — to make the HP Multi-user 441, though
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Geeks anniversaries
A couple of anniversaries that helped shape a generation or two of geeks: BASIC is 40, and Space Invaders is 25
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Distributed computing renamed
Apparently distributed computing (of SETI@Home fame) is now called grid computing.
Latest Postings on Computers
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Securing identity online
Although The Globe and Mail article suggests it could end spam, the Seven Laws of Identity have little to do with unsolicited bulk email. What the framework could do — which Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s privacy commissioner, endorsed and extended today — is reduce spam while protecting what data companies can collect about us. (For a nice summary, download the brochure — or download the full white-paper for more details.)
Latest Postings on Privacy
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Mozilla and GNOME
UserFriendly tries to poke fun at the Mozilla browser. (The Mozilla Foundation recently met with the GNOME Foundation … I wonder what about?)
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New TSN.ca and real-life Spidey skills
The new TSN.ca site relaunched today with a new look (which, at launch ran the same main photo as Canada’s other big sports site was) and a new mandate. The site now incorporates all of content from six television channels: TSN, RDS, ESPN Classic Canada, NHL Network, WTSN, and OLN.
Latest Postings on Technology
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Viola not prior art for Eolas patent
One of the big arguments against the Eolas patent (the one potentially costing Microsoft US$560 bmillion and Web developers a lot of headaches) was the existence of prior art in the form of the pre-Mosaic Viola browser (ironically developed at UC Berkeley)
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Freeing the GIF in Canada
Finally, the GIF is patent-free in Canada
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Rewarding openess
Today Tim Berners-Lee receives €1 million from the world’s largest technology prize, the Millennium Technology Prize, for — in part — not patenting his most spectacular invention, the Web itself.
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Eolas invalid
Missed this over the weekend, but the infamous Eolas patent — the one claiming ownership over plug-in technology — has been invalidated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This should mean the expected service pack for Internet Explorer 6 won’t include the “fixes” Microsoft released five months ago, which in turn, revealed how to install multiple versions of said browser
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QuirksMode; opposing Eolas
Note: when streetcar tracks are wet and you are passing over them on a diagonal on a fast-moving bicycle, do so carefully.
Latest Postings on Patents
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Succeeding against Facebook
Facebook managed avoid ghettoization as YASN this May when it opened its Web site to third-party applications. Essentially, Facebook answered the unasked question of what to do after everyone you once knew are in your network (and you realize you don’t have much in common with your classmates from kindergarten).
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FacebookCamp Toronto: Follow-up
The first FacebookCamp Toronto is done, and kudos to the organizers for holding such a successful event. The reported turnout was about 450 people, making it the biggest Facebook Developer Garage yet (other cities, like San Francisco, often have had ten times less people); and, despite the buzz Facebook is creating in the marketing world, nearly half of the attendees were developers, and a quarter of those were actively developing Facebook apps.
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FacebookCamp Toronto
What started out as a little gathering for 30 TorCampers to showcase some development techniques with Facebook’s developer platform has exploded. First it jumped to 60, now it is being held at MaRS and although the declared maximum is 350, more than 600 people have signed up.
Latest Postings on Social Media
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