Category Archives: Technical

Hiring a web front-end engineer and a rant

Update 3/28/06: Still looking… not for a web designer but a web front-end engineer. Jemery does a good job of describing the distrinction. No doubt about it, this is a hot skill set that is extremely hard to find! I’m … Continue reading

Posted in Design, Javascript, Web | 6 Comments

Modal windows with Javascript and CSS

One of the side projects I spent a little time on today was researching the use of on-page modal dialog boxes using Javascript and CSS that shade or darken the rest of the page while they are open. It looks … Continue reading

Posted in Desktop, Javascript, Web | 3 Comments

Five aspects of OS X and the MacBook in need of improvement

I’ve gotten through my first week of work on a MacBook Pro after switching from Windows and before I go further let me say that overall it’s been a very positive experience, see my previous post on why I switched … Continue reading

Posted in Desktop | 13 Comments

Migrating from Outlook to iCal

Part of my switch from Windows to OSX involved figuring out how to get my Outlook Calendar data from Windows/Outlook to MacOSX/iCal. I was really dreading having to manually reenter the whole thing. Thanks to Norm Jones and Mike Baas … Continue reading

Posted in Desktop | 4 Comments

MacBook Pro first impressions and why I switched

I just received my MacBook Pro on Friday. For me this is an even bigger switch since I’m making the switch from Windows to OSX as my primary work desktop. Over the years I’ve alternated between Linux and Windows and … Continue reading

Posted in Desktop, Software Engineering | 48 Comments

Foxmarks Firefox bookmark synchronization

I use a slew of machines so keeping my bookmarks and files synchronized between them has always been a priority. I’ve had the file synchronization issue under control for a while now by putting my documents and such into subversion … Continue reading

Posted in Desktop, Web | 2 Comments

Captcha, or is it capfcha, no maybe it’s Gopfcho, dammit!

You’re trying to post a comment on a blog or sign-up for an online service and you have to respond to a captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) to authenticate that you are indeed … Continue reading

Posted in Web | Comments Off on Captcha, or is it capfcha, no maybe it’s Gopfcho, dammit!

Deconstructing Earl and Yuri

Let’s start with the difference between URL, URI, and URN because there is a lot of confusion around these terms, and rightfully so. The W3C had to issue a recommendation after URI and URL started being used interchangeably in RFC’s. … Continue reading

Posted in Web | 1 Comment

Spellchecking belongs in the browser, not on the website

With all of the different sites, forums, blogs, etc… that use textareas for writing on the web, it’s unrealistic to expect them all to have a good spellchecker. Even sites that do have spellcheckers have very different levels of quality. … Continue reading

Posted in Desktop, Web | 7 Comments

The top 5 most common XHTML mistakes

When I first started writing XHTML pages about a year ago I thought that all there was to it was closing every tag XML style. Oh how wrong I was! I’ve since learned to W3C validate as I go so … Continue reading

Posted in Software Engineering, Web | 8 Comments