Archive for October 2002

In spirit of the holiday entry, I wish everyone a Happy Halloween. To those in Mexico who celebrate El Día de los Muertos… I don’t know what the typical greeting is and couldn’t find it in a quick search. Does anyone know the appropriate thing to say?

Ah, the perfect geek Halloween costume comes from Foxtrot. Dang, why didn’t I think of that instead of the two-faced politician (made two masks with the faces of the two guys running for Texas Senator).

Again, thank you for your kind emails and submissions for the CSS Tableless Sites. Because of you, there are 48 more sites listed with about 40 more waiting in my inbox.

It’s great seeing corporate sites, ecommerce sites, and non-profit organizations joining the list of numerous personal sites. On top of that, some of the sites qualified for the accessibility list that has barely begun.

I’m in awe with many of the sites and impressed by the creativity in which they use CSS. Some sites look like they could not have been done without tables, but they have. It’s great hearing from Italy, France, Canada, Germany, UK, and many other countries. Some of the notes put a smile on my face. Merci, gracias, grazie, toda raba, danke.

Never did pay much attention to the thoughts behind recognizing a holiday except admiring Google’s creativity with its logo (Friday, it had a Picasso-styled Google logo in honor of the artist’s birthday). Many Web sites offer holiday and other special occasion wishes and I always thought it was a nice thing to do… remember that there are humans behind the Web sites.

Jakob Nielsen shares his insight at UseIt: Celebrating Holidays and Special Occasions on Websites.

Suzanne Solomon of ClickZ asks, Is Content Going to the Blogs?. She points out Doonesbury serial on blogs (see October 21 through 26) and comments that blogs have become meaningless. Solomon doesn’t say that blogs should go away, but be meaningful in how they’re used. She cites examples of what she believes are good uses.

I agree that some blogs just babble about nothing, but hey Seinfeld succeeded with a show about nothing… so why shouldn’t a blogger? Blogging has a lot of potential in the world of business and we’ve barely scratched the surface.

Commentez vous?

Wow! Thanks for the overwhelming show of support and appreciation for picking up where Webnouveau left off. I received many submissions and will add them to the list as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, I am trying to think of a way to improve the design to make it easier to find things. Love to be able to alphabetize and categorize them, but not sure if I can do that without spending too much time. I know it’s tacky CSS right now, but I did what I could to get it up fast. I’m also going to fix the contact me link and offer a mailto with a spam line written in for removal.

I plan to add resources for CSS layouts and templates like Glish and The Noodle Incident. Go ahead and submit resources like these to me.

Also, layout / design suggestions are heartily welcome.

An interview with Nick Finck, Digital Web Magazine Editor-in-Chief from SXSW Interactive Tech Report.

I have my ticket for sxsw, but not sure if I can attend. I bought it before I found out the official news because I wanted to get it while it was cheap.

What happened to Webnouveau (webnouveau.net), the list of 800 CSS tableless Web sites? I didn’t see any announcements about it going down, but it has been replaced and and the domain bought by someone else.

Update: Thanks to Jenett for getting the site’s creator name. The individual’s name is Donimo Shriver.

Update #2: I’ve put up all eight pages of Webnouveau’s List of CSS Tableless Web Sites with credit given to Donimo. If I hear from him and he has an issue, I’ll take it down. In the meantime, his valuable resource is back online. It ain’t perfect lookin’, but it’s the best I could do in 30 minutes time with a boomin’ headache. You’d forgive a pregnant woman, wouldn’t you?

Proudly announcing the Grand Opening of a new meryl.net blog.

New review posted over at the articles takes a look at a multilingual dictionary for the handheld.

Getting ready to travel to another country? Already carrying a handheld device? Don’t buy a book, download SloveEd for your multilingual translation needs and just add the languages to the PDA. Choices include the following languages converted to another: Croatian, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian.

Using the Spanish / English dictionary for the review, just select the Folder icon from the top menu to quickly switch from English to Spanish and vice-versa. The dictionary sorts the words according to its native language alphabet and includes special characters like ñ and é.

New entries can be added and existing entries edited. Switch to full screen mode to view the translation by clicking on the icon left of the Folder. Search the history of words previously searched to review words again from the drop-down arrow next to the entry. Multiple languages can be loaded into the PDA at the same time. Save handheld space by loading the dictionaries and even the program onto an expansion card.

A unique feature is the resident module, which gets the translation of word without exiting an application that is currently active. Just select the word you would like to translate and do an up and down motion over the magnifying glass (FIND silk button). The dictionary appears as a pop-up on the lower half of the screen. While it’s open, either scan other words or close it by clicking on X.

It’s easy to immediately start using the dictionary. The software is accompanied with the usual help file, which is likely needed to understand some of its features. It uses all of the handheld’s functions to the fullest including the graffiti area, up and down buttons, and touch screen scroll bars. Some programs make the unfortunate mistake of disabling the up and down button. Not so with this and there are multiple ways to do one task giving the user a choice of what works best. No one can ask for anything more in a handheld dictionary.

SlovoEd is from Paragon Software. The Palm version is compatible with Palm, Handspring Visor, Sony CLIE, HandEra, TRG Pro, IBM WorkPad, and other Palm OS 3.x-4.x devices. Pocket PC and other devices have a compatible version available, see the site for details.