Here is a link to a mozillazine.org knowledge base article detailing the various about: links supported by FireFox (and Mozilla):
http://kb.mozillazine.org/About_Protocol_Links
Those cache links are good to know about - they’ll come in handy when debugging. The award for kookiest goes to about:kitchensink. And you know what? The length of that bugzilla thread discussing it does not surprise me one bit.
flex-mx.com points to a recent entry in Mitchell Baker’s blog providing some good news about the Netscape DevEdge material. Apparently AOL has agreeed to grant a license to the Mozilla foundation allowing them to host and maintain the docs. The devedge.netscape.com material was one of my primary JavaScript references before the site went dark back in the fall.
From the update post it seems like the DevMo content will most likely be hosted at http://developer.mozilla.org/. Presumably the links here will start working again.
Excellent.
kevinsites.net has won the 2004 wired.com RAVE award for blogger of the year:
http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/rave.html?pg=8
Kevin Sites is a journalist who has covering the war in Iraq for NBC and CNN (among others?) and blogged about his experiences while doing so. You may recall Kevin as the journalist behind the camera that documented the shooting of a wounded and unarmed Iraqi prisoner by an American soldier in a mosque during the offensive in Fallujah a couple of months prior to the Iraqi elections.
I’ve mentioned Kevin Sites’ blog previously. There really is some amazing stuff in there and the firestorm he became the center of is just a part of it.
From boingboing.
I’m not a big fan of this behaviour in Authorware.
When you close a framework icon any maps or frameworks that are its’ children are also closed. I suspect it pre-dates the Close All Maps (Ctrl+Shift+W) menu option which would have made it useful as far as removing clutter goes. I think these days though clutter is less of an issue, what with the multiple monitors and enormous desktops.
As a compromising kinda guy, I propose a solution of holding down a key when closing the framework. Now as to whether that keypress overrides the current functionality or enables it…
…I think.
The site underwent a fairly painless WordPress update this morning. Version 1.5 (Strayhorn) was officially released this past week and I figured I could take advantage of some of the new features. I broke the comment functionality during the update process so it took a bit of fiddling to get things back in running order. On top of that some kindly (and tenacious) spammer chose this morning to help test out some of the new comment and trackback handling. A bit of junk slipped through in the middle of the update but I’ve cleaned it out. It was actually very easy to do thanks to the new Check past comments against moderation list link. Sweet.
So, Mr. texas-holdem-online-poker-prescription-phentermine dude the beta cycle is over. Thanks for all your efforts in testing the site, your diligence helps to make it the best it can be. We have some modest “appreciation schwag” for you so if you’ll just send along your personal contact information I’ll be sure to get it in the post.
I’ve also tweaked the format of the syndication feeds a little. They should now also contain the full text of posts so you won’t have to browse to the site to read the entire post. As well I’ve limited the item count to the 5 most recent posts to keep bandwidth down for the dialup folks.
If you come across anything that is broken or could be improved drop a coment (or email). Thanks.
Comments off
Macromedia have announced an update to the Shockwave Player the Shockwave Player installer and apparently the only change to this version is the addition of something called the WeatherBug desktop weather application. According to this technote WeatherBug will only be offered to U.S. customers who also have the Yahoo Toolbar installed. You may recall that the Yahoo Toolbar is also offered as part of the Shockwave player installation.
I haven’t developed any web based Director pieces for 5 (or more) years so don’t know why this chafes me. Perhaps it’s that I worry a little that Macromedia will pull something similar with the Authorware web player (though I have my doubts). Macromedia seem to offer two basic explanations for this move saying that it is a part of their commitment to provide great services and user experiences to our customers as well as it being an effort to increase the visibility and resources dedicated to Shockwave Player.
I was curious about how the part about making the WeatherBug available to U.S. customers would go so I installed the Shockwave 10.1 player in IE and permitted it to install the Yahoo Toolbar. Next I uninstalled Shockwave and then ran the installer again. Sure enough I was presented with a “Macromedia and WeatherBug are pleased to offer the #1 desktop weather software” dialog. Not exactly what I was expecting as I would not consider myself a U.S. customer (in fact some of my Canadian compatriots are rather vocal about that). Still curious I left the Install WeatherBug box checked and moved to the next screen which prompted for a U.S. zip code and required a valid one to continue. I backed out.
Anyhow, I’m still curious if the zip code entry screen is the sole method for recognizing U.S. customers or if there is some more sophisticated “localization” detection going on behind the scenes. Anyone have a different experience? Also, my mind’s still open and I would be interested in hearing a bit more about the benefits of these promotions.
I first picked this up from Macromedia’s Tom Higgins.
Update: It seems the installer identifies U.S. users by the computer’s regional settings. I modified the setting and was able to reinstall without the WeatherBug offer.
We saw Riding Giants the other evening. It’s a great documentary looking at the history and evolution of big-wave surfing. Quite interesting and certainly worth watching even if (like me) you’re not a surfer. A word of warning though - if you’re fighting off any mid-winter what am I doing in this place (or job)… feelings this film will not help.
Sony’s website for the film is here:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/ridinggiants/
On a geek note. When documenting some of surfing’s early days the filmakers used an interesting special effect to add 3D like movement to a number of the still photos in the film. I scanned the making of piece that seems to be de rigueur with DVDs today and am pretty sure I heard them mention that they used Adobe After Effects to achieve this particular effect.
I did not know this.
On Windows 2000 or greater Press Ctrl+C to copy the contents of a Windows error messagebox to the clipboard. This is a javascript alert() to try it out on. (It would seem that this functionality does not work in Firefox 1.0 but does in IE6).
Some interesting Macromedia Macrochats this month:
Partial Page Caching in ColdFusion MX
Debugging Director Movies Using the alertHook Command
Flash Video Basics Macrochat
MacroChats are online presentations from Macromedia done in Breeze Live. There is a chat while the presentation is being made so some specific questions can get answered. They’re usually limited to about 200 participants so it’s good to get yourself registered (but only register if you can make it so as to not waste a spot).
Previously recorded Macrochats are archived here:
http://www.macromedia.com/community/macrochats.html
