Wednesday, July 3, 2002

Cool CSS1 Tricks -- 11:49 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

If you have Mozilla, Netscape 6.x or higher, Konqueror (I tried it with version 3.0.0-12), or IE5 for the Mac, check out this page and this page. These pages show off the very cool effects you can do rather simply using only level 1 cascading style sheets (CSS1). Unfortunately, IE5 for Windows has a poor implementation of CSS and IE6 only supports a subset of CSS so these pages will not display as the author intended (although they will still look pretty good in IE6). Oddly enough, IE5 for the Mac was done by an entirely different team at M$ and has very good CSS support. Go figure.

I am in the process of converting one of my personal sites to XHTML and CSS. You can see the work-in-progress here. Some of the pages are done, others are still 404s. It is soooo nice to be able to design a site without using tables! With CSS, redesigning or "skinning" the whole site is a snap. If you don't have a browser that supports CSS well, it's time to upgrade!

And now for my rant: Microsoft! Get PNG alpha transparency working in IE6! If you have IE6 you will see the logo on my page with a white background. It should be transparent. Check it in Mozilla, NS 6.x+, or Konqueror to see what it is really supposed to look like. In this day and age, we shouldn't have to use 256 color GIFs if we want transparency.

UPDATE! I just downloaded Opera 6.02 for Linux. It has some minor problems displaying the two pages I linked to. It displays my page just fine, except that it doesn't reformat the text when you hover over a link so the end of the link gets truncated. I might change that anyway since having an entire paragraph jump around just because you hovered over a link is kind of annoting. Opera handles PNG transparency just fine, at least on my logo.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 11:37 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Kenny Holland did it again! The Red Wings GM managed to snag Cujo aka Curtis Joseph to fill their void in net next year. Looks like they've come to terms with Chris Chelios on the blue line as well. It's a good time to be a Wings fan. Plus, my folks came over from Michigan bearing a large amount of Red Wings swag, including outfits for all three of my boys. Too cool.

In gaming news, I just finished Jedi Knight II for the fourth time. That game is just way too much fun. The key to the replayability (is that a word?) for me is the force powers. You can go back and find new and improved ways to dispatch your enemies. This time I used the Jedi Mind Trick quite a bit. It's about the only "long distance" weapon in your force arsenal. With a level three mind trick you can turn your enemies against themselves. It chops the opposition down into more manageable parts, or just makes them very vulnerable to a well-timed 'saber throw.

I'm trying to resist J.t.'s temptations to get Neverwinter Nights, despite the fact that it seems to be exactly the RPG I've been looking for. If anyone would ever have it on sale for a decent price . . .

Tuesday, July 2, 2002

Episode II in Digital -- 3:01 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

ExtremeTech's Loyd Case saw Star Wars: Episode II in a digital theater and gives his opinion. While he states some positives, he was troubled by aliasing ("jaggies"). My cousin saw in a digital theater too and complained of the same thing. Problems are to be expected with any new use of technology. Hopefully things can be ironed out in the future.

No United Linux for Mandrake -- 2:58 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Mandrake, a popular Linux, has issued its opinion of the United Linux movement and why they won't be a part of it. Basically they view it as a merging of several distributions, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. They do have other significant problems with it though. Check the link for all the details. Thanks Slashdot.

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