philwilson.org

Ed Dumbill’s Small slices of Mono wonder post mentions IKVM:

IKVM is a translator from Java bytecode to CIL bytecode that will run Java programs in Mono. It’s a technical marvel.

Indeed.

Of particular interest to me is that I could tie an existing RDF-based Java app which uses Jena into the Mono bluetooth stack or dashboard API to provide some amazing functionality without having to actually rewrite all my code. This kind of interop is really impressive, and for projects like Mono means that a pre-existing group of developers can write for it without having to learn a whole new language which will probably increase both initial and long-term uptake rates.

del.icio.us provides you with a virtual inbox to which you can add any other users’ bookmark lists. You then have access to this inbox via RSS. So, for example, in my del.icio.us inbox I effectively have the feeds for blech, yoz, kellan, msippey and xurble all bundled into one big feed with each item having an associated dc:creator to tell me who created each entry.

The problem I have with this is that I use JabRSS for all my RSS and Atom needs, which does nothing with dc:creator at all, making it pretty much impossible for me to tell who posted which item.

I can smell a new Jabber-based aggregator in the air.

XULPlanet has returned! and thank god for that, really.

In case you don’t know, XULPlanet is the place to find out about how to write XUL apps for Mozilla and/or do cool stuff with the Mozilla interface (and this includes Firefox and Thunderbird) without resorting to reading the source code.

Last week one of my work mates asked me if I knew how he could write his own extension for Firefox; after a quick hand he ended up with a nice new, working extension and I pointed him at XULPlanet if he needed to find out more. Except that it was gone, and I was left looking a buffoon.

Hurrah for the return of XULPlanet and the saving of my non-foon reputation!

There’s a nice little introduction to CSS3 selectors on XML.com which contains this little comment:

The Mozilla Project has already implemented several CSS3 selectors and is working on implementing the rest soon. The other vendors aren’t far behind, either.

Where those “other vendors” doesn’t actually include the market leader with over 90% of the share, obviously.

What do you reckon? 2010? Ever? After all, if you’ve got Longhorn you’ve got rich internet controls provided by your OS far surpassing anything you can do in CSS or Javascript. Why would they ever need to improve their current rendering engine?

A nice keyboard, rendered in CSS.

Sometimes, you’ve got to think, y’know, just maybe some people have too much time on their hands.

Another rare yet beautifully sunny day in Sheffield.

Only slightly marred by the fact that the view of the Winter Gardens is overshadowed by a massive crane.

Posted by Pip from .

The Showroom (location)cinema and bar in Sheffield provides free WiFi access to all customers in its bar, and is only a two minute walk from my apartment.

Now all I need is a laptop with wifi

Given:

Posts Written: 343

and:

Comments aren’t enabled for older posts (prior to when you turned on comments), and there (unfortunately) isn’t an automated way to do this.

and it’s quite an arduous process to enable comments for old posts. Do I do it? Do I invest hours of my life pointlessly turning on comments for year-old posts?

Probably.

It’s also quite upsetting that the <$BlogItemCreate$> tag (which adds the link that lets people leave new comments provides a URL with unescaped ampersands, immediately invalidating your all-new-l33t-web-skillz template. Of course, you could hand code the URL since your blog ID is unique and you can get the post ID from the <$BlogItemNumber$> tag but that relies on the Blogger comment form staying in the same location (currently http://www.blogger.com/comment.g). If it ever moves it’d mean updating your template and republishing your whole site.

Swings and roundabouts innit? How important is validation to you?

I’ve been meaning to finish this post for about a week and a half now, but time constraints mean that I’ve not been able to do so. Nevertheless, for your perusal, a non-insightful look into a BBC redesign…

Two weeks ago the BBC Collective site fundamentally changed its layout. Like the rest of BBC site it’s all-table based and therefore obviously hideous but the new design is a lot easier on the eye as well as being easier to navigate due to better delineation of content.

Menu headings are clearly coloured orange which contrasts well with the green (just what is that colour?) and attract the eye. The clear border and white background of the main content section presents a much more professional appearance as well as making the text much easier to read.

The new icons are much clearer

Despite the use of tables for laying out the pages CSS has been used for the rest of the presentation – all fonts, backgrounds and borders are separately maintained in a number of CSS files. There are also several styles defined inline in the <head> section of the page but as they’re probably part of a global template I think we can let them off.

Bright and colourful icons have been used to decorate pull-out boxes such as “talk about this?”, and its good to see some common sense used in what iconography they’ve used. No abstract concepts here: standard imagery for sound and video are used, lightbulbs for help, envelopes for mail, and so on.

The help has become a lot more obvious, and it’s much easier to find your way around and move between sections without feeling as though you’ve accidentally got lost (as I found true on the old site), and the actions you can take to contribute to the site are also better highlighted by good use of colour and icons.

I think the guys and girls behind Collective should be really pleased with the changes they’ve made; I’ve been signed up for quite a while but never used it because I never knew what I was supposed to be doing, where to go or what to do.

See my BBC Collective profile.

Mozilla 1.7 RC1 now has Support for the CSS3 opacity property. (via web-graphics).

As the commentators there have pointed out, Safari has had this for a little while now, and Opera can’t be far behind. I wonder when we could even dream about IE supporting anything like this? Or even CSS1. That would be nice.

Scoble is always talking about how he wants feedback, and how we can make one request to the allegedly-not-dead IE and have that implemented, but it’s bollocks, and a complete smokescreen. As long as someone from MS is even talking publically about IE moving forward then that’s enough to keep the investors happy.

I’m a massive Mozilla/Firefox advocate but the fact that around 80% of my company use a Gecko browser as their default with no prompting from me speaks volumes. We’re talking about QA teams, C++ coders, basically everyone except the finance department :). These aren’t people with a vested interest in web development. They don’t do any web work at all, but Firefox (which is what the majority are using) just provides such a substantially better browser experience that everyone has separately downloaded and installed it on their machines instead of using the browser that comes bundled with their operating system. Now, I’m under no illusions, and until the finance departments in companies around the world are switching voluntarily then nothing will happen to IE and Firefox will just be the illusion of competition which Microsoft can wave at future legislation against them.

When I install Mozilla or Firefox there are about ten extensions which always comes with me. Currently I have exactly twenty extensions installed. Extensions are almost always cited as Firefox’s killer feature, but get this - apart from me, only one guy has anything other than the Googlebar extension installed. That means everyone else is using it for other reasons. Popup blocking without the need for a third-party toolbar. Javascript blocking. Tabbed browsing. A clean, simple interface and a lightning fast rendering engine. It turns out that these are the features that Windows users want. They’re not getting them from IE, and guess what, they probably never will.