afongen

I know too few people who take Macs into consideration when designing. (On the other hand, I am too often guilty of paying inadequate attention to details in IE/Windows, an egregious, spiteful oversight.) So for those who aren’t already reading the articles on Apple Developer Connection, you can read it elsewhere: Peter-Paul Koch’s CSS Hints for Internet Explorer 5.

In general, the Mac version of Explorer is more strict in its standards compliance (and supports more of the standards) while the Windows version supports more Microsoft proprietary styles and JScript methods. And the Mac version is way ahead in terms of CSS support. For example, it supports position: fixed, something the Windows browser still hasn’t been able to implement.

The Mac build of IE, like most browsers, has some bugs and idiosyncrasies that can trip up unaware developers.

From a package of diaper pins:

Remember: Children are precious and no product replaces adult supervision.

Whew! Cuz otherwise:

K: Where’s the baby?
S: Oh, I left him in a room with some diaper pins. He’ll be fine.

or:

S: Where’s the baby?
K: I pinned him to the wall with those new diaper pins. Good thing we’re using cloth diapers!

Please join us in welcoming our baby boy, Owen Thomas Buchanan, born 10:18 p.m. on Monday, November 4, 2002.

Having arrived 5 weeks earlier than anyone expected, Owen further surprised us all by being a remarkably healthy weight of 6 pounds, 8 ounces, at 19 inches long. Tall. Whatever. He is a sleepy, quiet little guy, delighting us all.

The labor and delivery went well. Everyone’s happy and healthy. And sleepy. I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting over the next couple weeks. Things have sort of changed.

Let the hyperventilating begin. Episode II is being released at IMAX theaters this weekend.

As a fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, comics retailers can bid to have Jim Lee fly — at his own expense — to their store for a signing, dinner, artwork, etc. Cool.

Wait a minute. Comic Book Legal Defense Fund? I am appalled that our society is such that we need an organization like this.

Note to self: when you schedule a root canal, don’t schedule it more than 3 weeks away, thinking that the tooth doesn’t hurt that much right now and you can wait.

You can’t. The pain will only get worse.

I’m about a third of the way through Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites. This is without question the best book on web accessibility out there. Read it. I skimmed Constructing Accessible Web Sites a few months back, and it’s quite good, but I find that I’m actually reading Clark’s book. Part of that is the visual design. I never thought I would care so much about the visual and tactile appeal of a technical book (not that this is necessarily a technical book). Perhaps I was taking certain publishers‘ work for granted. glasshaus has been publishing some very good books, but their design makes the books rather unpleasant reading. Clark went to great lengths to make his book a worthwhile experience on so many more levels than just the words.

In other news, O’Reilly has published the third edition of Unix Power Tools. This is to Unix what the Perl Cookbook is to Perl. Once I had a basic handle on how to use Unix, how to move around, do basic administration, etc., I used Unix Power Tools to help me grok Unix, to understand its idiom, shortcuts, and mindset. I’m not sure whether I’ll buy this — I’m curious to see what’s been updated in this third edition — but I will wholeheartedly recommend it.

Too, a new collection of Rising Stars comics has been released, Visitations. This pulls together some … I don’t know, apocryphal stories, I guess you could say. If you’re a Straczynski fan, you should read this series.

US Senator Paul Wellstone, his wife Sheila, and daughter Marcia died in a plane crash today. I am floored. It might be a while before I post anything here.

In the Minnesota Daily yesterday: USA Patriot act allows easier access to library records.

Congress passed the USA Patriot Act last year in a flurry of anti-terrorist hype. One of the things this act did was to make it easier for Federal authorities to access library records. No probably cause need be demonstrated to obtain a warrant.

“With the USA Patriot Act and its amending of FISA, the FBI only has to show a secret court that what they were searching for is relevant to a terrorist investigation,” Freedman [president of the American Library Association] said. “It’s in a secret court. The library has no appeals process. The search warrant can be served immediately. There’s no due process.”

Distressingly, librarians can’t even admit whether they’ve been asked to relinquish records. The act states that “no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI has sought or obtained tangible things.”

Librarians are rightfully outraged.

This came up a couple months ago at work in a debate about new security policies for MnSCU (my employer). MnSCU’s been exploring options for securing public-access computers against attack or being used in attacks. One of the options put forward for consideration — one of several proposals, I want to emphasize — involved requiring logins for all computer use. This inspired vigorous and at times histrionic debate, in part because of poor communication typical of an organization with over 15,000 employees, but also because librarians are keenly aware of the USA Patriot Act and have no desire to participate in activity that puts them in the position of policing library patrons, risking both civil and academic liberty.

I very much like being able to track packages on UPS’s web site. It’s a great feature of the service. On their tracking page, they’ve recently started requiring you to check a box indicating that you agree to their terms and conditions before you can submit your tracking number(s). A slightly annoying extra step, but perhaps they’ve been experiencing some abuse. More than likely lawyers got involved and decided this was a good idea. Whatever. Click.

I noticed by chance today, though, that the link to their terms and conditions page is an image, not text. What’s more, the image is actually a form submit button.

Hm. Odd. And worse, there’s no alt text. I wonder why. Other links on that page are text links. A bleeding shame, since now that text is completely unavailable unless you are physically able to see the image. It’s certainly not to create valid HTML: <input> can contain an alt attribute, but not the width or height attributes, one of the reasons I’m generally not too fond of using images for submit buttons.

I’m not trying to rag too hard on UPS, though I will send them a nice note. Just thought it strange.