Category Archives: software

CSS Debugging Tools

Aug
5
2007

Xray Your Structure

Seems lately that we are now starting to get a good spread of CSS and JavaScript (DOM Scripting) debugging tools available. About time too, for too long we web designers have spent endless hours debugging inconsistent implementations of CSS over the various browsers. Time for us to take some of that ‘lost’ time back. Now we all know about Joe Hewitt’s famous FireBug extension. If you don’t then go get it, install it, and it will change the way you design. That wonderful extension aside, what else is out there in the market place:

PDF Accessibility and Optimisation

Jul
11
2007

Lego Mini figures and PDF accessibility

You know the story. Your client or boss wants to put a report online, it’s just a few pages long, but they want exact print output control of the document or they just want to ensure that the cost is kept to a minimum. So you end up putting the document online as a PDF. Now I ask you is it really readable by everyone. That is normal viewers, assistative technology viewers, search engine bots and viewers in remote areas on slow connections. I can bet that in most cases one of these groups is missing out

Twitter Lemmings

May
18
2007

Did Twitter Jump the Shark

It was a little amazing last night (WST-AU) Twitter had been a little flaky, but at least it was operational. Then “it” started, someone was talking about alternatives to Twitter. Slowly but surely people went and checked out Jaiku, signed up, collected their friends, of course this meant more of their friends signed up as well. The wave of Jaiku signup spam started to lap my email inbox. Within 12 hours my lonely old Jaiku account had gone from 5 odd contacts on Jaiku to a modest 40 odd. It was just amazing to see the power of the peer group. People not wanting to be left out, not wanting to be out of the loop, just in case people did migrate to Jaiku. Often the Jaiku sign up was followed by the statement:

Giving My TV Some Joost

Apr
29
2007

The Joost Interface

The other day managed to get hold of an invite to the service , that is currently in Beta (and we all know what that means). First off, I have no invites, so don’t ask; okay. Update - I do have a few invites (900+) in reality I think Joost maybe open to the public soon anyway, however you can still email me for an invite (if you want the invite you find my contact).

You connect up to Joost via a downloaded purpose build desktop application. It launches you into the Channel Selector and straight into the programs that are available. The interface is very simple are easy to use with either a mouse or keyboard.