Sometimes it's not obvious how a document is being interpreted by a web browser. For instance, you might write some XHTML 1.1, but the browser actually interprets it as HTML 4. You may be expecting the browser to be using Standards Mode (recommended), but it might actually be using Quirks Mode because you missed the DOCTYPE statement. I'll periodically update this blog entry to keep track of how to do this stuff in a variety of browsers. Read the rest of this entry ...
There's a lot going on in the HTML Working Group mailing list right now about opt-in mechanisms for HTML5, discussions with smart people like Chris Wilson (co-chair and Microsoft IE champion) and Ian Hickson (WHATWG champion). I've going to sidestep the polemics for now - I've been trying to distill my own thoughts on that big debate, but things are still swirling around in my head because I'm still learning about the history of HTML, quirks mode, standards mode, DOCTYPEs, etc. Instead, I'm just going to write a (hopefully) quick entry on something I just figured out today. Read the rest of this entry ...
About a year ago, I posted my technique for configuring the search bar in Firefox 1.5, complaining that it was far too small in the default UI layout that comes with the web browser. In fact, this bug still exists today and has 280 votes. But then again, your vote doesn't matter. Anyway, Firefox 2 alleviated the hacking that I had to do to get the search bar to expand to fill up remaining space. There's just one tweak in Firefox 2 that I still need for perfect search bar nirvana. Read the rest of this entry ...
I think Mike Shaver said it best when he stated (in a podcast here) that an Open Source project should do its best to let willing contributors get in and get out quickly. As a busy father, husband, home owner, and engineer - I don't have a lot of time to contribute to open source projects, so when I do have some time, I'd like my efforts to count. Ideally, it's best if I can find a bug to fix that will directly impact the user experience (as opposed to changing some software plumbing underneath that doesn't have any immediate user impact). In other words, as a part time contributor with not a lot of time to invest, I want my efforts to have some immediate visible benefit.
Furthermore, it's best to pick bugs (at least initially) that don't require full-scale immersions into software architectures to figure out the root of the problem. This wouldwill likely change ifas more time is spent working with such projects.
I just spent a half hour or so fixing a couple minor errors in the Basic tutorial in Inkscape. I had some back-and-forth conversations with MenTaLguY and Bryce on IRC and mailing lists earlier in the week where I learned that the tutorials, while deployed as SVG, are actually stored as DocBook format in the SVN repository. So here's how I did things using my OpenSUSE 10.2 box. Read the rest of this entry ...
I like Konqueror 3.5.5, I think it's come a long way, but I've been getting crashes every so often when playing some more complicated SVG samples, so I really want to have Firefox or Opera as my default browser for those times when I'm using Akregator and click on a link in a feed. I couldn't figure out in OpenSUSE 10.2 how to change my default browser through YaST, but I did discover on the internet that KDE has its own application to control its settings: kcontrol. Read the rest of this entry ...