JavaScript: The Definative Guide - 4th Edition comes out next month. Here's a beta chapter on the Document Object Model. Check Example 17-3. It's gotta wicked function, reverse(), that skims through the document nodes and reverses their output to the browser window.
I recommended this one to a JSP programmer at work who also gave it a great review. Trey said, "It's got a much better overview and introduction to object-oriented programming techniques than any Java book I've read."
New announcements for the Mozilla project...
I've been reading more about Mac OS 9 lately and I may be starting to change my mind about Mac OS being a slow operating system. I don't mean processor speed, I mean being able to navigate through the computer quickly. Even though (as a student) I used to work in a Mac-only computer lab, my prejudice lay in the fact that Mac didn't have a second mouse button or as many hotkeys. My current mouse has five buttons and a scroll-wheel — Mac users, you have no idea what you're missing — but back to my point... Mac OS is adding many time-saving features like "Search by Label", "Spring-Loaded Folders", and numerous additions to the system hot-keys. The disappointing aspect of this is that there is almost no way to find out about this stuff unless you read a third party book. Even when they do list the hot-keys, they use cryptic symbols for keys such as "Alt" and "Control". OSX claims full keyboard navigation, which will be nice. I can't wait to try that out. Another friend recently said I almost fainted the first time I opened a *nix terminal on a Mac.
Haha, times are changing.
I finally got Windows 2000 drivers for my Matrox card and I no longer rely on Windoze 98 at home. It's refreshing to have a somewhat stable operating system with <sarcasm>revolutionary features</sarcasm> such as "search text" in Notepad. Hopefully all my video programs won't crash so much while I'm performing live...
We took a field trip today at work. We went to the University of Texas Institute for Technology and Learning to surf with JAWS. You see, Dr. John Slatin and Kay Lewis have put together a user testing laboratory for internet users with visual disabilities. JAWS is the most popular screen reading program allowing blind or vision impaired users to access computer and internet resources. We turned off the monitor and tried to surf the web. It was pretty difficult but we learned a lot and I've since corrected several accessibility flaws on one of our corporate sites.
I also have a new flash experiment up in my webx section. It deals with Full Transparency in Flash so the other elements of the page can show through without a square bounding box. Unfortunately it doesn't work in most browsers. I think it fails on Mac IE5. I know it works in IE5.5 on PC but I haven't had time to test in other browsers. Soon it could be a practical reality though.
Mozilla released another milestone on Friday. Download version 0.9.5 and see how stable it's gotten. If Linux is the posterchild operating system of the open-source movement, then Mozilla must be the little brother open-source application. They are steadily moving towards that 1.0 goal and I can't wait to see it. James noticed there is a developers conference on November 9th at the Netscape Campus in Silicon Valley. Maybe they'll announce some big news like a launch date for version 1.0.
I found out how to make dynamic images today so I made a form that allows you to enter text and it creates an image for you. Dynamic images are nothing new, but I hadn't done them before so I thought I'd try it out. Enjoy!
Finally! Back in June, I stopped using TheCounter.com because they started charging. They had really cool stats for hit tracking, but it wasn't worth paying for. I looked for other free ones, but all they would track were number of hits. I've gone several months now without any tracker... but then I noticed James uses one called Web Trends Live. It blows everything away with fantastically detailed reports, all for free. I so happy with it, I'm even dedicating this blog post as an advertisement for Web Trends Live.
I had no idea my job was so easy.
I found a book called Teach yourself HTML and XHTML in 10 minutes. Not only is that an idiotic concept for a book, it's also 256 pages long and I'm guessing there aren't many people that can read 25.6 pages per minute. * sigh * I haven't read it, but I don't recommend buying that one.
If you are serious about learning HTML & XHTML, you should get The O'Reilly Definative Guide instead. It's twice the price, but I'd bet money it will be infinitely more useful. (and it's got a cute koala on the cover!)
Show of hands here... does anybody use Opera? Last I checked the world web stats said that over 99% of all internet use was done on Internet Explorer and Netscape. I'm just guessing but I think Opera has a fairly small share of that. The reason I mention it is because I noticed an cookieCrook display bug in that browser yesterday. It's been a week or two since I've tested with Opera so it may have been there a while.
You're an interenet user... Do you use Opera? If you're a web developer, do you test in Opera? Please let me know.
I posted a new web experiment on my webx projects page. I was thinking about the hover pseudo-class of CSS and I figured out a way to make image rollovers without using javascript. It only works in Internet Explorer though I validated the CSS and XHTML so everything I'm going to report it as a bug to the Mozilla Project.
Wow! Fast response... I was using Mozilla 0.9.3 but the bug is fixed in 0.9.4 and the speed easily outperforms Internet Explorer. No need to report the bug! Get Mozilla!
The W3C posted their response to public comments on the W3C Patent Policy Framework Working Draft. In case you hadn't heard, there has been a big fuss over the thought that open-source web technologies may be subject to license fees. *shudder*
A List Apart is finally back! This week, J. David Eisenberg writes a much needed article on how to interpret those cryptic W3C specifications. He explains some general terms and even makes a brief introduction to Document Type Definitions and Backus Normal Form (BNF) used in regular expressions, DTDs, and most programming languages.
I only got on the computer once this weekend for a total of about five minutes. That's quite an accomplishment for me. I got a lot of yard work done and it was quite relaxing to "unplug" from the networks. Last night, about six hours after I mowed my back yard, I saw the biggest spider web I've ever seen. It was about eight feet tall and five feet wide! The spider was only about two inches in diameter so he/she must have been working really fast to erect such a large structure in so little time. I'm not sure what kind it was but it was brown and looked almost exactly like this picture.
In unrelated news, I've been trying to determine if anyone still uses Rich Style Summaries (RSS) anymore. My buddy James Tikalsky mentioned it recently and I thought it may still be useful. It sure seems like a good idea to attract visitors to a site by making sure they actually want to be there. Who'd have thunk it?
I found a recent post on Scripting.com about rich site summaries. It had a link to some RSS newsfeeds. I'm gonna have to check that site more often.
XHTML 1.1 | CSS 3.0 | RSS 0.91 | WCAG 1 AA+ | | Blogger
