Today I wanted to send a link to a specific location in this web page. If you're curious, go to the link and search in the page for "square bracket notation". Unfortunately, the web page does not identify that section in the source. Is there any way to do this with today's modern browsers (Firefox, Opera, Safari)?

What I'm looking for is something like SVG Fragment Identifiers where you can use XPointer syntax in the URL to navigate to a specific section of a document. Before I spend time learning XPointer syntax, can anyone tell me if any HTML browsers support it as fragments in the URLs?

Another option is to link to a cached page from a specific Google Search, but it still requires the user to scroll down to the highlighted section. It's a shame that Google doesn't insert specific anchors into the web page for this very purpose. It might make some web authors angry that Google mucks about with their source, but this is a case where I don't mind - authors should learn to properly identify portions of their documents. This becomes increasingly important for mobile devices with those smaller screens.

§397 · October 9, 2007 · Google, Questions, Software, Technology, Web · 1 comment ·


I added some Environment Variables to my Windows operating system recently (right-click on My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Environment Variables). I was wondering if there is any way from an existing Command Prompt to pick those up. I know that all Command Prompt instances after this point will have those new environment variables defined, but I was just curious if there was an easy way to get an existing Command Prompt instance to "re-source" its environment variables.

On the other hand, is there any way to add a System Environment Variable to Windows from the command prompt?

§396 · October 3, 2007 · Microsoft, Questions, Software, Technology, Tips, Windows · 2 comments · Tags:


I found Chad Vader last night and finished watching the series this morning. This is not your typical YouTube video, the production value is pretty high. Apparently they are compiling the series onto a DVD while planning for "Season 2". Each video is about 5 minutes long. Here are the links in recommended watching order:

Chad Vader Season 1

Chad Vader Video Blogs

Chad Vader Music Video

I like how the last episode of Season 1 and the video blogs set up the major plots for Season 2. I'm looking forward to it! 🙂

§395 · September 14, 2007 · Entertainment, Television, Video · Comments Off on Chad Vader: YouTube Diversion For Today ·


My wife was watching TV in the other room and suddenly I heard Feist's 1 2 3 4 (that I wrote about only a couple weeks ago). We saw Apple's new commercial twice tonight for the colourful iPod nano. Looks like much bigger exposure for Feist.

For me, I'm still holding out on buying an Apple product - it's not a boycott, it's just that I already have a free mobile phone and a cheap DAP. We'll see how the iPodTouch fares - that might be what I need (an audio player that lets me browse the web over WiFi). Some may claim that it makes more sense to spring for the iPhone because the iPhone is only $100 more - but it's the 2-year AT&T chokehold that I dislike...

§394 · September 9, 2007 · Entertainment, Life, Safari, Technology, Television · Comments Off on iPod Nano Gets Feisty ·


Here are a few links to keep you busy:

  • There appears to be a formal agreement established between Microsoft and Novell to develop and support the Linux-based version of Microsoft's Silverlight, called Moonlight.
  • Speaking of Microsoft, Alex Russell of Dojo speaks of how poorly the Microsoft IE team has communicated future plans. I agree. It's not a way to build trust among web developers who you've pissed off for so long. Where's the news on the next version of IE after 7?
  • Speaking of web browsers, Apple announced the iPodTouch, which will soon put WiFi web browsing capabilities (via Safari) into the hands of many a music geek. Couple that with the iPhone now selling for $200 less and I believe that Safari is soon going to be one of the most widely used browsers out there in the Mobile Web, competing head-to-head with the Opera Mini. When Safari 3 gets out of Beta and is distributed to its millions of users, we'll suddenly see a huge increase in the number of users that can view SVG.
  • Speaking of Opera, I mentioned yesterday that Opera 9.5 Alpha 1 was out. Here are some interesting performance results, though Mozilla evangelist Asa Dotzler is quick to point out that Opera still lacks an auto-update feature.

That's it for now.

§393 · September 6, 2007 · Linux, Microsoft, Opera, QuickLinks, Safari, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · 2 comments ·