Archive for March 2002

To all my friends who celebrate, Happy Easter.

To all my friends in the UK, my sympathies.

Just finished changing all of my Yahoo accounts to switch the marketing preferences to NO across the board. This is going to aggravate a lot of people. Y! reset the marketing preferences so every item is YES. The Slashdot | Yahoo Knows Best, Resets Users’ Marketing Prefs entry explains how to change it back to NO. [Link Rebecca]

How many sleeper movies have you seen and ended up enjoying yourself? Lee County Librarians have a list of Sleepers – Books You May Have Missed to help you find some possible books for that next vacation. (What vacation???)

Wow, that’s a new one. Wireless Librarian During sxsw, there was a lot of discussion about places with wireless capabilities — at Wireless Librarian, you can find a list of wireless library along with other resources. [Neat New Stuff I Found This Week]

I believe Flash is not used right on most sites that are created with the tool. Here’s an excerpt from Flash 99% Good: A Guide to Macromedia Flash Usability that takes a look at Before and After: A Flash Site Case Study.

<edit>Top 10 Tips for Usable Flash</edit>

Ah, it’s good to be back home. While catching up, I came across a note from Andy regarding WebReference.com – Pure CSS2 Rollovers. They say they’ve finally perfected the vertical CSS2 rollovers. These puppies even display (no rollover) similarly in netscape 4.x. There are three versions for your enjoyment. Next up – horizontal.

I’m in Fort Worth today and will be back home to my cherished computer and fast connection tomorrow. It’s a beautiful, sunny 70 degrees. Those who sent me email, I’ll respond tomorrow. I stupidly forgot my keyboard for the PDA and it’s a pain to respond longer than a sentence on the PDA.

Can’t surf blogs around here too well. I tried to go to one and it took over 20 minutes for it to load (and that’s with me STOPPING the loading). I’ll have to catch up tomorrow.

Dudley Moore and now Milton Berle. Israel has been hit with a massacre on the first day of Passover. Sure making it challenging to try to have a good day, eh? What’s happening out there on the ‘net? Peace. Out.

GnomeTomes – Portable eBooks for Everyone has launched. It offers 50 tips on a specific subject for $5. Not a bad deal, do you think? Oh, you think you can get this stuff for free on the Internet?

Probably. But it’d be all over the place and it would take up your valuable surfing time to find 50 valuable tips.

Why am I promoting this? No, Chris is not paying me. It’s an idea that I think has potential. Cheaper than a book, comes in a bunch of file formats so you can’t go wrong, and easy to skim.

I got the Windows XP eBook and it has some tips that has me slapping myself and thinking, “Cool.” Some of the tips are geeky and it’s an adventure to try them out. I’d tell you about the tips, but then Chris’ll kill me. *g* The site does offer sample tips so you can get a taste of what’s in the book.

Buy one and see for yourself. If you like it, check other topics. If you don’t like it, tell Chris and he’ll appreciate the feedback. Man, I really like the red design on the site. I find it easy to read, but wonder if anyone with color challenges has trouble.

IE 6 garners one-third of browser market. OK, I admit it. I have IE6, but only because I got a new computer and that’s what was loaded on it. I need to have IE 5.5 for testing purposes and of course, I can’t install it. [Link Kristine]

My top three annoyances with IE6:

• no automatic ability to maximize all windows. I downloaded a little program that was supposed to address this, but it doesn’t work.
• no ability to state preference of View > Status Bar being turned on at all times. Thanks, Dan! Solution below.
• centers text by default if the code doesn’t specifically left align – unfortunately, W3 specs say IE6 is right. This is one area where browsers can go right ahead and ignore the rule *g*.

Anyone figure out how to have IE5.5 and IE 6 loaded on the same machine? <edit>Ugh, it requires having two OSes on the same machine. Fugettaboudit</edit>

<edit>
Here’s how to permanently turn on View > Status Bar:

1. With (only one) IE open, click View and select: Status Bar
2. Hold down the Ctrl key and click the close button (upper right)
3. Open Windows Explorer, click View and select: Status Bar
4. Click Tools > Folder Options > View tab
5. Click the “Apply to all folders” button

Works like a charm.</edit>

King Kottke (Is this OK, Jason?) reported that Ad Age Group Acquires AdCritic.com. According to the article, “The new online service will be targeted specifically at ad industry professionals and will consist of premium-level content for business subscribers. Users will be able to subscribe online for a low monthly fee when the service launches early this summer.”

Oh, they want us to pay to see ads??? Ya gotta be kidding me. I would think they can work a deal with the commercial advertisers to pay for the AdCritic.com portion.