IE8 Passes the Acid2 Test

@21:08 Leave a comment

A few of you may be wondering what the Acid2 test actually is. There's a Wikipedia article about it, but basically it's a test designed to highlight flaws in the way a browser renders CSS and HTML. Any standards compliant browser will render the image of the Acid2 Face correctly. As you can imagine, IE doesn't render the face correctly at the moment.

However, all that is about to change. Today, Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch posted an entry on the IEBlog declaring that the latest build of IE8 now passes the Acid2 test.

All I can say is, "About time!". I'm very much looking forward to not have to put up with all the quirks IE causes with compliant code. Of course, who knows when it'll be released, but it's a step in the right direction at least.

Obviously Acid2 doesn't test everything about the standards compliance, so it will be interesting to see if it copes with everything else.

Oh, and for those who are wondering, Firefox 2 fails the test and Opera 9 passes. Hopefully Firefox 3 will pass once it's out of beta. You can take the test here.

Tags : internet, css, browsers

CSS Animation

@13:21 Leave a comment

Safari have announced a new CSS feature, animation specified in CSS. Giving the designer the ability to code transitions such as fading out, and rotating elements on the page. All gracefully degrading for browsers which don't support it (which I imagine will be most).

While it's interesting, I'm rather worried that we'll be going back to the days of the "blink" and "marquee" HTML tags (*shudder*), where it'll just pop up on every site and we'll be overloaded with fading panels and ads which spin into view.

According to the article, they're planning on proposing these changes to be included in the CSS spec. As yet, I am undecided if this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it's nice to see some expansion on CSS, but on the other hand... rotation effects?!..

I guess I'll just wait and see how this one turns out.

Tags : CSS, Design

Looking at Safari 3 on Windows

@12:36 Leave a comment ( 1 comment )

I've been meaning to try out Safari 3 for the last week, but only got around to it today. The Apple site claims that Safari is twice as fast as IE7 and Firefox. Something which I don't believe is true at all.

It was easy to install, but their claim that it loads faster than any other browser is very wrong. It took about twice as long to load on my system than both FF2 and IE7. I figured it would just be because it was the first run, so I kept trying, but each time I tried, it took just as long to start. But of course, that's not really a big problem for me as once my browser is open, it tends to stay open until my computer gets turned off (which is a very rare event).

The interface is just as you would expect from Apple, in the same style as iTunes. Easy to navigate and pretty intuitive, so there's no problems there. I'm not a fan of the brushed metal look though, but I'm sure there's some tool out there that will allow you to change that.

The claim that the pages load twice as fast is perhaps an overstatement, however I will admit that they do load faster. At least for the sites I visited. I also like the smooth style fonts it uses to render the page, which is a noticeable difference from IE or FF.

CSS compliance is always something I look for in a browser, and Safari stands up very well. It's no better or worse than FF or Opera, so that's good. We all know what IE is like for standards, so I'm not even going to go there.

It's got all the features you would expect like tabbed browsing, RSS integration and Google search.

However, despite all this good, there is also some bad. Not being an Open Source browser like FF, is going to hurt it. The reason I like FF so much is because of the ability to make extensions and themes as you want, and I have several extensions which I simply could not live without (such as Chris Pederick's Web Developer Extension). The other annoying thing is that Safari seems to like my CPU.. so much so that it insists on using 95% of it, and likes to use more memory than Half Life, averaging at around 200Mb. I tried several times to use Safari today, and after roughly 5 minutes, the CPU usage would shoot up and not come back down. This is a serious problem and is the sole reason I won't be using Safari other than for testing.

Obviously though, this is just the Beta, so it isn't going to be perfect. It's certainly a browser I will be keeping my eye on (if only for the lovely smooth fonts). As people who know me well will know, I'm not a big fan of Apple, I've never owned a Mac and I never will, but I will admit when I'm wrong, and if the final release fixes these issues, then I may just become a Safari user.

I wouldn't hold you breath though.

You can download a copy of the Safari 3 Beta from the Apple website here.

Tags : Technology, Internet

12 Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards

@6:26 Leave a comment

There's a great article over at A List Apart called "12 Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards".

If you've been designing sites for years but haven't gotten around to taking a look at CSS, then this is the article for you. It's pretty interesting to read even if you have been using CSS for a while though too.

Tags : CSS, Design, Article

iTunes Music Store goes DRM-Free!

@12:32 Leave a comment

Just went to purchase a song on iTMS, and it popped up with a little message.

"Perhaps you'd prefer to use iTunes Plus? iTunes Plus music is our DRM-free, highest quality audio format. iTunes Plus music videos now contain our highest-quality audio tracks and are also DRM-free."

Finally, they're getting the idea that DRM is bad.

For those wanting to test it out, you'll need to the new version of iTunes (7.2), which you can get from here.

When Apple were first discussing the idea with EMI (Tech Digest Article) it seems they were going to increase the price for the DRM-Free tracks. So far I haven't seen a price increase, however I may have just missed the tracks the prices have been increased on. So keep an eye out for that.

Added at 17:44 - Ok, they want 20p per song for DRM-Free versions. Not sure why it didn't charge me the first time (although to be fair.. it probably did charge me the 20p, but it hasn't come out of my account yet). There's also an option to upgrade your library here.

Despite the fact they're charging more for the DRM-Free versions, something which I'm not sure if I'm willing to pay the extra for, it's still a step in the right direction. At least in my opinion.

Tags : Music

Music Recommendation

@12:34 Leave a comment

The final part of my degree is the final year project. My masters project is based on music recommendation. While in principle it sounds quite simple, I can assure you that it is not.

The approach I'm using is to combine two techniques. User-based collaborative filtering and Item-based collaborative filtering using what is known as similarity fusion. Along with that, I'll be generating implicit ratings based upon certain criteria such as how many times a track has been listened to, and how many times a track has been skipped. This is the main bulk of the project, and the part that's causing me the most headaches. But progress is being made, and I'm *nearly* there.

However, one of the other features of the project is that I'm going to create a visualization tool that will allow the user to see exactly why a recommendation has been given to them. Generating the recommendations is easy in comparison to this.

I'm over half way through the project now, and it needs to be completed in the next 10 weeks. If you're interested in testing, then head on over to project.wblinks.com and sign up. You need to be running iTunes in Windows, or Amarok in Linux. If you're feeling adventurous, you can make your own plugin to use my system by reading the App Server Documentation. There's also part of an AppleScript to use iTunes in OSX, but I don't own a Mac, so I can't test it, so if you know AppleScript and want to finish it, go right ahead.

If you're already a tester, then just keep listening to music and you'll be getting some recommendations soon.

Tags : Project, Music

The New-ish W(e)blinks

@11:44 Leave a comment

First off, I'd like to apologize for the downtime. It's been quite a crazy new year for me, having lots of projects on the go at the same time. I've been spending my free time (what little of it I have nowadays) completely rebuilding this site from scratch.

It doesn't look very different to me!

That would be because the stylesheet hasn't changed. It's still using the Flux style. However, everything underneath the site has changed completely. The database structure has been redone, along with all of the PHP. I've also ironed out most of the bugs with the Flux style. I've also added some new features to the site, like the ability to have a user account which makes leaving comments faster. There's also automagical translation, just add "-fr", "-de", "-es", "-it", or "-pt" to the end of the URL and the page will be translated into the appropriate language. Groovy. Although knowing online translation tools.. I doubt it'll make sense.

Huh?.. So we've gotta login to use the site now?

Not at all. Links and notes won't require a login. You also now have access to my photo album. However, if you do get an account you'll be able to add comments to things a lot more quickly, as your comments won't be moderated before they're posted and you won't have to keep entering your details. Also, if I know who you are, I will mark your account as a "friend" and you'll be able to see all of my notes and photos that are just for friends to see.

Are you ever going to change how the site looks?

Up until about a year ago, the site changed it's layout pretty much every few months. However, I quite like the current style, which is why it's still the default. I am currently working on a new style for the site called "Strike", but I don't expect it to be completed for a long time as I'm in the final year of my degree, and so I need to focus all of my attention on that.

I don't like it! You suck! Why don't you include (insert random thing) on your site?

Well, that's fair enough. Everyone is welcome to their opinion. If you've got any suggestions for the site, feel free to contact me. I welcome constructive criticism.

What's happened to some of the old content?

A lot of the content on the old site was very outdated and of no use anymore, which is why it is no longer here. I've been through all of the links and removed any that are bad. You'll also notice that there is no longer a "blog" section. I never updated it very much as I use my livejournal blog for that. So now there's a new section called "notes" which will be where I post about things to do with my course, my projects and random coding things. Plus whatever else I feel like posting.

What's next?

I'm going to be focusing all of my attention on my masters project for the next few months. However, I will be updating the site (for once) so there's probably going to be a few new features added here an there. Unfortunately I haven't finished coding the AJAX stuff yet, so you'll have to cope without all that AJAX goodness for now. I also imagine that there will be a few bugs I've missed, so no doubt I'll be fixing those too.

Tags : wblinks