As most people tripping around the blogosphere know, the Firefox 1.5 web browser was officially released tonight. If you already have Firefox 1.5 RC 3, then you already have the final version, but if not - go download your free copy now.

I guess this means that I have to start downloading the Firefox trunk builds if I want to be on the "bleeding edge"? For those of you who don't know, the "trunk" is the main line of development where new and untested features are included while the "1.8 branch" constitutes the stable line of code on which Firefox 1.5 is built.

§186 · November 29, 2005 · Firefox, Software, Technology, Web · Comments Off on Get Your Firefox 1.5 ·


The W3C CDF Working Group has released third Working Drafts of their documents:

Remember the quality of these documents depends on getting good feedback in the form of review comments that you can submit to the CDF WG Mailing List.

[Note that as of 2005-11-22, 8:43 AM CST all four links to these documents are broken, pointing to XML documents that require login. I have sent an email to have them corrected.]

[Update: Links were corrected by Kevin E Kelly as of 2005-11-22, 9:54 AM CST]

§185 · November 22, 2005 · Software, SVG, Technology, Web · Comments Off on Compound Document Formats – Third Working Draft ·


Sam and I took the boys to Toys "R" Us last night more for something to do than for shopping. They had fun, smeared their germs on some toys while Sam and I got some ideas for Christmas.

Anyway, on the way out while packing everybody into the minivan at 8:45 PM (we didn't realize how late it was), I saw two younger guys getting out of their car and carrying a bundle of stuff towards the store. I didn't think anything of it until I started pulling out of the parking lot and saw them sitting down beside the store entrance, in other words planning to camp out for the night.

"I wonder what they're camping out for... is there a Ticketmaster outlet in Toys 'R' Us?"

This morning when I got into work and checked my feeds, Mister Scoble enlightened me as to what they were waiting for: The Xbox 360. It was cold last night, I hope it was worth it...

§184 · November 22, 2005 · Entertainment, Games, Kids, Life, Technology · 1 comment ·


I came across this XML Matters article today: Beyond the DOM by Dethe Elza. For the most part if you're a seasoned web developer with years of experience with the DOM there's probably nothing new here for you, but I found a couple handy things that I'll be adding to my JS libraries that I include with my projects:

  • A JavaScript function that eases creation of DOM elements (link)
  • Some mapping and filter functions (note that Mozilla Firefox natively supports very similar functionality in their JavaScript implementation which should improve speed) (link)
§183 · November 18, 2005 · JavaScript, Software, Technology, Web · Comments Off on DOM Tips ·


Thank you Anne for clarifying my confusion between "activities" and "working groups". It was indeed the W3C announcement that caused my confusion when I misinterpreted the following quote:

The Compound Document Formats Working Group chaired
by Kevin Kelly (IBM) moves to this Activity, and continues to develop a
framework for combined documents

as an indication that the CDF WG would be absorbed into either the Web Applications or Web API Working Groups. Ok, I learned something new today...

§181 · November 17, 2005 · QuickLinks, Software, Technology, Web · Comments Off on CDF Not Swallowed ·