Month: <span>March 2004</span>

What’s more fun? Blogging or creating the pages? What’s more fun? Reading RSS feeds or creating them?

I’ve just got around to creating an RSS feed for this page, as you can see from the link on the right. Being somewhat lazy, and also being convinced that something that comes from a database (as my blog does) should be able to auto-generate a suitable RSS feed I did the only decent thing and created an ASP page that will output valid RSS from the database without human intervention. So, every query of the RSS feed gets the latest data!

That leaves me a happy chappy, and free to get on with actually typing stuff in to the blog.

Next feature? Perhaps a ‘comment on this’ form to allow others to respond, that is, providing anyone is reading this stuff.

Finally validated the latest version of the page.

I’ve been using Firefox as my web browser of choice for some time now. It’s much better than Internet Explorer. Firefox comes as a basic package – a web browser, but with multiple tabs, so you can open as many web pages as you like without having to open another browser windows. Firefox blocks popups by default.
On top of the basic package you can download multiple extensions and themes. Extensions enhance the functionality of Firefox whilst themes make it prettier, or not!

If you want to try this Open Source product, it’s a free download, just click on the link on the right. Of course it is available for Windows, Linux and OSX

At last! Xandros Linux is up and running at a decent resolution. Firefox is installed and running. Ximian Evolution is configured and my Palm Zire has generously donated it’s contact and address details to prime Evolution with vital information from my production machine running XP Pro.

Now at least I can explore the possibilities of using Linux. At the very least I can use it to insert records into a SQL Server database, ie. my blogs on this site (the joys of asp!).

Time for a rant about Linux. I’m not the slowest in the IT world, and I’ve installed every operating system I have come across from the various versions of DOS (MS and others), I’ve installed OS/2, I’ve installed every version of Windows and many versions of Linux.

The thought of buying a proper Linux distro really appealed – something solid that I could use to test all those bits I currently run on Windows, or at least those that have an equivalent in Linux.

Experience to date is not a happy one. The installation overdrove my monitor on installation. The VESA mode left me with a maximum of 800 x 600 resolution. Putting another video card in the machine resulted in a freeze on install every time.
This of course still leaves me with a complex set of instructions to complete in order to have Ximian Evolution work with my Palm.

I know there are bits that don’t work in Windows, but this episode takes me right back to the bad old days when every operating system install was fraught with potential pitfalls.

Come on Xandros & co. there’s still progress to be made before the move to Linux is as painless as it should be.

What’s in a design? Been Stumbling through the graphic design recommendations. Why do graphic designers insist on Flash? The point of broadband is to make sites fast, not so that graphic designers can dump even more data down the line to us.

Surely good design is more to do with working within the medium rather than adding to the medium in order to blow us away with wonderful Flash animations. I’m sure Flash and other forms of animation have their place, as do other forms of rich media, but that place is not on the home page of a web site.

If as much thought went into the initial look and feel and working within the medium of html/css to produce a slick smooth good looking design as was put into building a huge Flash file the end users would be happier and visit more often.
Any site that forces me to wait for a download before I can view it is quickly passed over in my web surfing.