merriam

Mozilla microblogging: "You may not register with nickname"

The usual registration method at https://mozilla.status.net/main/register fails with

  You may not register with nickname 'merriam'

for any choice of nickname.  The workaround is to sign up using OpenId.  You can use your Google profile as an OpenID.

apport: "This is not a genuine Ubuntu package" (the current Linux kernel package)

bug report

Drag and drop attachments onto messages - Official Gmail Blog

Adam de Boor:

We'll enable this for other browsers as soon as they support this feature. For now, you can drag and drop attachments in Chrome and Firefox only.

via gmailblog.blogspot.com

Drag-and-drop works in Chrome on Ubuntu, but not Firefox.

a new kind of volume control

3 hours before April Fools' Day, David Friedman at Ironic Sans:

Not since Nigel Tufnel introduced the world to volume knobs that go to eleven has there been an advance in volume control technology this revolutionary. Now, embracing the power of HTML5*, Ironic Sans brings you a brand new kind of volume control.

*This technology is so revolutionary that it only works in some browsers. Sorry, Firefox (and Opera?) only.

It works very well here (on Ubuntu Lucid beta) with SeaMonkey 2.0.4.  With Firefox 3.5.8 and Firefox 3.6.3 there's timing jitter on volume changes.

If you have Firefox, SeaMonkey, Opera, or another suitable HTML5 browser, try David Friedman's volumething.  NoScript may get in the way here.

Then read about his new kind of volume control at Ironic Sans.  It's funnier if you try it out first.

Power Mac G5 pictures revisited

Since so many people are still looking for big pictures of the G5, I've edited my index to Bill Noll's pictures so that you can find them more easily.

The last two from the list:

• processor heat sink, fan removed (Powermac G5 internal detail disassembled) (page)
• fullest view, side, cover removed (Powermac G5 side view, cover off) (page)

more

buying a laptop

I'm interested in buying a notebook, and I'm looking at the Acer Travelmate 2304WLMi.  Please comment here, especially if you have tried Linux on one of these or on something similar.

update on 2005-04-26:  I have bought one.

I've been thinking.

This post was about a long pause. It can now stand for general inactivity here.

implementing a spam-proof feedback form

Snowman, I wasn't condemning your feedback form. I was just recommending an improvement. Maybe I'm condemning Flash, though that's putting it a bit strongly. The format itself, considered apart from various commercial software, the licenses, the hype, etc, might be quite useful.

Yes, that's one bad aspect of Flash: the hype. You and Glen are giving the impression that you're under its influence. There's a tendency to treat hyped technology like magic -- to marvel at what it does and to assume it can do much more. When you're using the technology to provide a service to other people, you need to know a bit about what it does and how it does it.

I now realize you're assuming the Flash form magically protects site owners' email addresses. You're using Flash to "encode" addresses. You're taking a site owner's address, encapsulating it in Flash and giving it back to him to put on his pages. You're essentially taking the option you describe in that bold paragraph.

... if your email address can be encoded, what's to stop someone modifying a spambot to decode it?

Nothing. So why are you using that method? Flash just obscures the address a little, and it seems to me that it's less obscure and more inviting to spammers than TypePad's JavaScript address munging. It's easy to extract addresses from SWF files, for people who know a little about the format. I'd be very surprised to learn that no address harvesters do it now, and they certainly will soon.

Here are my suggestions.

• Don't put email addresses in the forms. Replace them with random keys (not serial numbers). The form sends the key to the server. The server uses the key to look up the site owner's registered address. This is what I assumed you were doing when I wrote my previous entry. Your description vaguely implied otherwise, but I didn't believe it.
• Add the option of an HTML form. A site owner can set exactly the style he wants. He can also edit the form down to about 1/6 the size of the Flash object if he wants to save on bandwidth and keep the pages loading quickly.
• Generate the initial site owner's form with CGI directly from the data submitted from the sign-up form.
• Tell the user what he's getting. Include a privacy policy. You have both reminded me that no one is forced to use the form -- that there is a choice. Make it an informed choice. Tell the user exactly what will be done with his address.

Generating a customized HTML form with CGI is easy. Using appropriate tools, I expect you can do the same with SWF. It's ridiculous that the software you're using makes you enter the data from the sign-up form by hand ("each form has to be customised by hand, by us"). Let people pay a little toward the server and the programming perhaps, but not for doing by hand what the computer is supposed to do.

I agree in principle with what you're doing. It's a useful feature that TypePad doesn't have. When I started using TypePad, I assumed that the "Comments Closed" option was it, but that just prevents new comments. I don't know what similar services are available, but in any case I expect you could provide a unique service in some way.

accessibility and Macromedia Flash

Snowman, why Flash? You can do all that, and do it better, with an HTML form.

Spamproofing for website feedback is a useful feature, but I don't think a Flash-based contact form is a good way to do it.

If you use only a Flash-based feedback method, many visitors won't be able to use it, and won't even know that feedback is possible unless you say so outside the plug-in. If you offer an accessible, otherwise identical method as an alternative, you might as well use that method exclusively.

Most TypePad users are already offering two somewhat spamproof feedback methods, and an obfuscated email address is a third. These clearly offer features that visitors want to use, and don't significantly obstruct accessibility, web standards, freedom or security.

Which visitors won't see Flash objects? Some are blind. Some are using mobile devices. Probably most just don't like to read text that is surrounded by animated adverts and other ugly distractions: they're browsing without the plug-in, or using something like the Flash Click To View Mozilla Firebird extension.

With Flash Click To View, a small Flash obect like the Unofficial TypePad Resources Flash-based contact form looks just like another advert. It's not animated, ugly or distracting, but it's tarred with the same brush and blanked with the rest.

What about the majority who can see the form? The text doesn't match the main text of the page, or scale with it. OmniWeb users can't zoom it to a sensible size for editing. If I change the theme, how easy will it be to change the colour of the Flash object to match?

Flash is good for fun and games. It'll probably be good for adverts for another few years. It's bad for meaningful communication, among other things.

weblog layout and content

One problem with TypePad's "3 columns" and "2 columns left" weblog layouts is that they get in the way of content. If you don't use the author's stylesheet you have to skip to the content by some other means. There's a lot of text in the way that isn't directly relevant to what you wanted to read.

This problem applies to similar _p weblog layouts _q with other designs, and to _p web page layouts _q in general. I'm using TypePad's stock layouts as examples.

Another problem with CSS columns in general is that they don't narrow nicely unless you use a special stylesheet or ignore CSS.

Steve Crandall has asked tingilinde readers for responses by mail, but I'm putting my oar in with a TrackBack instead.

typing, commands, keyboards, modifiers and chords

update on 2004-02-25: more here

For hundreds of years we have had keyboards with precise, parallel mechanisms, and they have been used in precise, parallel and complex ways. The use of chords and counterpoint on a keyboard instrument is inevitable given its design.

Since the nineteenth century we have been using keyboards for writing, not just for music. Typing text is naturally a mainly serial operation. You press and release one key at a time, except for the shift key.

A great deal has changed since the nineteenth century, and now we're doing all sorts of things with that old typewriter keyboard. In addition to writing text, we are issuing thousands of different commands. But we still have the same old keyboard with some extra keys, and we are still using it in much the same way. We have some more shift keys, now called modifier keys, and some more lock keys.

There's endless talk among geeks about how to bind keys to functions, but the discussions and the results are remarkably conservative. Modifiers and lock keys are added and moved around, commands are grouped in various ways, and letter keys are reallocated, notably in the Dvorak layout.

What happened to chords and counterpoint? Now that we have so many characters and commands, it would be useful to take into consideration the precise order and timing of key events -- both presses and releases -- just as we do in music.

On an ordinary computer keyboard you can press a chord at any time. Almost all combinations of two, three or four keys can be pressed simultaneously. Hundreds of these combinations can be pressed easily without moving from the home position. Why should they not signify commands or symbols? Why use chords only on special keyboards? They can be mixed with ordinary typing on the keyboard you have now.

Any single key or chord can act as a modifier for another. You can still use it to signify a character or command in its own right, as long as timing is taken into account. Why use only dedicated modifiers in awkward positions at the sides of the keyboard?

These are not new ideas. Arguably they are as old as keyboard music. There are many reasonable answers to my questions -- impediments to the use of chords and undedicated modifiers on conventional keyboards. I think implementing these concepts and integrating them with popular software would be difficult but worthwhile.

indexing: _p typing _{q p} keyboard _{q p} typewriter _{q p} modifier _{q p} chords _{q p} chording keyboards _{q p} undedicated modifier _{q p} undedicated modifiers _{q p} keyboard layout _q

Firebird's Web Panels

The picture index in my previous entry (link updated) is a good example of where Web Panels are useful. Web Panels are simply web pages displayed in the sidebar. The feature is in builds from early August. It has since been taken out due to bugs, but perhaps it will be in the next release.

Here the Mac G5 entry (link updated 2005-04-22) is in the sidebar. Links open on the right. Left-click a link and it replaces the current page. Right click it and it loads in a background tab. This is particularly useful with these large pictures, as you can middle-click several to load while you're looking at others. By default large pictures are scaled to fit the window. Click the image to alternate between scaled...

and full size.

Set browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing to false to turn off this scaling behaviour. If you have a recent Firebird build, go to about:config and type "resi" to find it.

high resolution Power Mac G5 pictures (Powermac G5)

LittleThinkTank points to a Flash-bound gallery of high resolution (2000 by 1500 pixel) closeups of Apple's new G5 taken with a Sony DSC-F717. Here is an index for those who find the Flash presentation inconvenient.

Flash--the rear upper corner

Flash--the huge heat sink and the graphics card

Flash--the rear, the power socket, a fan

Flash--"SuperDrive", drive bay. The black hemispherical screws fit the bay rails.

Flash--front: power switch, headphone, USB 2, FireWire

Flash--AGP and three PCI slots, one of seven or nine quiet fans

Flash--rear: cover latch, card plates with graphics card, aerial sockets for LAN and Bluetooth, optical audio socket

Flash--Airport Extreme, RAM slots, processor fan

Flash--cover latch again

Flash--lithium battery, card slots

Flash--rear: ports including Gigabit Ethernet and modem

Flash--a quiet processor fan

Flash--rear, perforated metal, card plates

Flash--processor heat sink, fan removed

Flash--the fullest view, side, cover removed

an Apple page that might help you understand what you're seeing

Mozilla and the searchable user interface

Mozilla now has a searchable user interface. In about:config there is a small but significant new feature, a "Filter" field.

If you're using a Gecko-based browser such as Mozilla Seamonkey, Firebird, Camino or K-Meleon, you can follow the about:config link to see if you have the "Filter" field. Right-click and bookmark it if you can't follow it directly. You may have to wait a while unless you use an unstable recent build, such as a nightly Firebird build from The Burning Edge. I don't know about OS X builds. Any recommendations?

The feature is present but broken in current sid and Gentoo builds of Firebird. I'll post updates when they're fixed.

In the cropped screenshot above I have just typed "bli", hoping to find a setting to disable the blink tag. It's already there at the top of the list. There are about 1400 settings in my instance of Seamonkey and about 1000 in Firebird. I have more to say on the searchable UI, but I hope I don't have to explain why this feature is worth pointing out.

keywords: _p searchable user interface _{q p} searchable UI _q