Tag: site

Ongoing site maintenance:

  • Killed the “Retrolook” tab in the tab navigation bar
  • Subsequently, killed the old style sheet and index2.html file; so now the look you see (if you’re not just reading with NNW) is the only look available. Until I decide to start skinning the site…
  • Have begun conversion from .html files to .php. This will help streamline the amount of work I have to do, along with continued use of CSS, for the look and feel of the site. So if your bookmark for the main page is _https://www.retrophisch.net/index.html_, rather than just _https://www.retrophisch.net_, you’ll need to update with the latter.
  • As part of this conversion, the Retrophisch Read(tm) page is now rendered via PHP as well and has the new site look. Other pages to follow.
  • So far, it appears that the old archives have remained intact as .html files, as well as having .php peers. So everyone who has permalinked to me (Lee, Michael, Eric) shouldn’t have to re-link.

If you have linked to me, and you find the permalinks breaking, the quick and dirty fix is to replace “.html” in the link with “.php”. And my apologies if you have to do so; such is the price of progress.

Libel protection for bloggers

The 9th Circuit actually gets it right this time, with an extension of libel protection to online self-publishers, like moi, and those who participate in online discussion lists.

Server moving

The site will be going down for a bit this evening as we move the server. Should be back up some time after dinner time, CST.
UPDATE, 7:30 PM CST: And we’re back…
Thanks for the quick move, Jim. This was just a physical move for the current server, as prep for our move to a new box in the near future.

Microsoft comes full circle with IE

Marc Marshall brings up the excellent point that Microsoft has come full circle with regard to Internet Explorer. His is the last post in Macintouch’s Browser Future report for today:

The bottom line in this situation is this: For the past several years, Microsoft gave away a free browser to kill the competition, and succeeded. Now, they have stopped development of their standalone product, and are giving people exactly three choices to get their “standard” product: 1) Buy Windows. 2) Use MSN for Internet access. 3) Pay them $10/month or $80 per year. No free options, no free upgrades.

The price is higher than Opera or Omni’s paid competition, and you don’t have a free option, and you have an ongoing fee. In fact, if MS starts charging annual licensing for Windows, there will be no lifetime-licence-purchasable version of IE. This sounds like exactly the sort of consumer hostile situation that monopolies create, and governments are supposed to protect us from.
Now that they’ve pretty much saturated the market, Microsoft has been scrambling on how to consistently generate revenue. They have long discussed subscription software licensing, and this situation with IE appears to be the first shot across the bow. Unfortunately, I do not forsee the mass sheep of Windows and IE/Mac users torpedoing the Microsoft Bismarck any time soon.

IE6 gives me hives

Ok, not really, but it’s really ticking me off. Why is it that my site validates as XHTML 1.0 Trans, validates as CSS2, looks perfectly fine in Safari, Camino, even IE5/Mac, yet looks like complete dung in IE6? I know, I know, IE6 doesn’t fully support the CSS2 spec, yet, so I’m sure that’s playing a huge role. I suppose I could drop it to CSS1, but I’d rather be posting than fiddling with making the site look exactly the same in Microsloth’s stupid Windows browser.
In Microsucks’ defense, there are some font issues with the site in Firebird, but at least pages scroll properly in that browser. I haven’t tried Opera for Windows yet.

Good riddance, IE, part III

Speaking of the dress-code-aware genius that is Dan Benjamin (is that enough, Dan?), he offers up some delectable food for thought on the discontinuation of standalone IE development for the Mac. I say standalone, because it seems that IE will continue on in MSN for Mac OS X.
Zeldman sums it all up rather well.

From here, as it has for several weeks now, it looks like a period of technological stasis and dormancy yawns ahead. Undoubtedly the less popular browsers will continue to improve. They may even gain in market share. But few of us will be able to take advantage of their sophisticated standards support if most of the market continues to use an unchanged year 2000 browser.

But enough, and enough, and enough. We are glad of the latest versions of Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, Safari, and Omniweb. But on this grey and rainy day, this news of a kind of death brings no warmth. To Tantek and Jimmy and their colleagues on the IE/Mac team: for what you achieved on behalf of web standards and usability, much respect.
When it arrived, IE5/Mac was the standard for web browsers. It shamed Netscape. Complacency and stagnant development, however, have left it behind technologically. Zeldman mentions reasons people switched from IE to Camino or Safari; I switched for all the reasons he discusses, including that it’s one less Microsoft application on my system. There are choices people, and they’re better than the “standard.”

DNS Primer

If you’ve ever been interested in how your email gets from your computer to someone else’s, or how your browser knows how to load up a web site, you need to read Dan Benjamin’s excellent DNS primer at MacDevCenter. It’s geared toward Mac OS X users, but anyone can learn the basics of DNS, IP addresses, routing, and all that other techie stuff that makes the Internet work, boiled down in to simply terms by Mr. Benjamin (of Hivelogic/Hiveware fame).
Oh, and hire this dress-code-aware guy, if you have the need. Too much talent to not be getting paid well by someone, somewhere.

Latest look for retrophisch.com

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been working on a site redesign. I decided today to take it live. (You can ignore the links in the archived post; they’re flip-flopped now.)
The entire site does not, at this time, reflect what you see here on the main page. I had planned to wait until it did to switch over, but at this rate, if I continued to wait, it would be a long one. So here it is, hope you like. If you hate it and just have to see the site the way it was (and updated just like the main page), click on the Retrolook tab above and enjoy.
Not that those of you who stop by regularly really care; I know you’re reading with NetNewsWire anyway. 🙂

More blogging coverage

Business Week Online has a good article on the growing pervasiveness of weblogs, and what they mean to mass media and consumers. I like Nick Denton’s term of “open-source media.”

Death of PNG?

Ric notes a News.com story about the impending expiration of the patent that controls the GIF file format, and what that may mean for the PNG graphics format. See, LZW compression forms the basis for the GIF format, and Unisys owns the LZW patent. A few years ago, Unisys began to flex its muscles in enforcing the LZW patent, and this basically meant the death of free and cheap shareware GIF creation/manipulation software.
To compensate, the PNG graphic format was created, and a movement to rid sites of all GIFs was born. Well, Unisys’s patent expires in the U.S. later this month; in the rest of the world, next year. The PNG format, despite many advances over GIF, has not caught on heavily outside the geek community. And it doesn’t do animation, which GIF does.
Personally, I like the PNG format, and use it when possible over GIF. (Unless I’m using someone else’s graphic, though I have converted them in the past.) Most modern browsers support it, though perhaps not fully (viz: IE).
So after the patents expire, are we going to see an explosion of activity in the GIF creation/manipulation software market? If so, you may see the PNG format remain a second-class graphic file citizen, or worse.