Vancouver!!

Posted by Quinn at February 15th, 2006 10:42am under hearts, web 3 Comments Permalink

Yes, I am in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada!! I was looking forward to see this city for a while. I was told that I've been lucky because a whole week without a rain was unusual. Things have been great, much more than I was expecting. I attended Northern Voice 2006. I've met people in faces, and seeing and finding stuff I haven't found online and so on.

I know I haven't posted any about Vancouver before this, and I think many of you I met in Vancouver are wondering if this blog is actually Quinn's blog??? I am really sorry about this, but here I am. This is Quinn you know. I should have a notebook with Wi-Fi capability at least. It has been difficult to do online stuff during this trip. I am posting this from VPL right now. I have one more day to explore this city. I think I am going to rent a bike to wander around and do some shopping for my family and friends in Japan.

I apprecitate to those who came up and say "Hi" to me while I was there knowing almost no one. Some people actually tring to hook me up with other web developers, telling me some exciting stuff happening and local secrets(?), were really nice. Moreover, I was really happy to see a few guys even after the event, trying to help me around.

Lastly, Thank you to Boris, who put this event together. I was really happy to hear your talk, but sadly couldn't talk to you back much and entertain you with a nice chat. I totally understand the situation he was hosting an event with more than a hundred attendees.

That's really my problem, I think I definitively need to improve my English to keep up with you guys! Any volunteers for voice chatting with me? Anyways, I really appreciate your hospitalities here in Vancouver. Thanks!

Latest Softwares

Posted by Quinn at February 1st, 2006 9:22am under web 0 Comments Permalink

Thanks to a post, IE7 Beta 2 available to the public, by WaSP. I found out that Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 is now out.

However, this is likely to be one of those.. I needed the latest softwares.

I need Windows XP to test it. I admit that I must be way behind. I am not a Microsoft fan anyway. Oh yeah, I don't even have Tiger (Latest MacOSX) yet. So.. what am I anyway? a web developer? What a joke! Don't you think so?

Anyways, web technologies are all about the independencies to the end use (theoretically). I think that's the most fascinating thing and the beauty of this technology. Well, if you are a web developer, I wonder what you think about keeping up with the latest softwares.

I am usually a keeper. My kids still play with my first own computer, PowerMac 4400/200 which I bought 8 years ago. This subject my be refer to What was your first computer like? if you like to read others experiences.

CSS3 outline property

Posted by Quinn at January 21st, 2006 5:58pm under web 1 Comment Permalink

UPDATED: outline property is there since CSS2. I was wrong..

I found out that there is CSS3 property "outline" that recent Mozilla supports. I think the recent change on how outline of an active element is drawn in Mozilla browsers are in favor of this statement.

CSS3 Working Draft 18.4 Dynamic outlines:

The outline is drawn starting just outside the border edge.

However, it also says:

CSS3 Working Draft 18.4 Dynamic outlines:

The outline created with the outline properties is drawn "over" a box, i.e., the outline is always on top, and doesn't influence the position or size of the box, or of any other boxes. Therefore, displaying or suppressing outlines does not cause reflow.

These two rules should go together, but the later is not well behaved in Firefox1.5. It seems to work fine as long as the element is not inside of a box with overflaw:auto or these two elements are not the same size. So, in many cases, experimenting using this property may give you some fun. There are basically three properties to style the outline.

outline-width
keywords: thin, medium, thick
size: px and ?
example: :focus { outline-width: 2px; }
outline-style
keywords: none, dotted, dashed, solid, double, and more..
example: :focus { outline-style: dotted; }
outline-color
color: #fff, and more..
example: :focus { outline-color: #fff; }

There is also a shorthand property: outline. Cool!

outline
example: :focus { outline: 2px dotted #fff; }

I added new style on the cicada on top of this page. So, you will see the outline when you click it if you are using Firefox1.5 or other Mozilla browsers.

I also found out the way to get away with the problem I wrote last year on this post using another CSS property outline-offset with negative value. 

:focus {
	outline:1px dotted #000;
	outline-offset: -1px;
}

Please, check out these examples if you are using Firefox1.5. You will find the annoying problem we were facing is gone happily. Or was this just me?

Anyways, outline-offset is not in the W3C Draft, though I am glad that Mozilla supports this. I hope it stays this way.

In conclusion, I hope you now have a little more fun than yesterday. Moreover, we probably should specify the outline on every element if we want to have total control. Or probably, you could do this: 

*:focus {
	outline:none;
}

Some related documents on this subject are:

Shiira Web Browser

Posted by Quinn at January 11th, 2006 5:29pm under web, Apple 0 Comments Permalink

Since there are so many choices, I wonder which browser is your primary one if you use MacOSX. I think the top two goes Safari and Mozilla based browsers. However, there is another good free web browser which is probably not talked much yet.

I tried the web browser, Shiira today. I think it's pretty good. Shiira is built with WebKit and the rendering is just like Safari but comes with tons of awesome features!

Sidebar
Sidebar looks like the mailbox drawer in Mail.app with 5 tabs, which are Bookmarks, History, Download, Page holder, and RSS. This is simply better than opening small windows like most other browsers do.
Bookmarks
The browser imports bookmarks from Firefox and Safari on its launch. You don't need to do a thing to synchronize with your existing bookmarks on your computer.
Tab Exposé
This is just like Exposé introduced in MacOSX 10.3, enables to display all windows in full screen without overlapping them, but this one works for all tabs in Shiira, with simply hitting F8 key.
RSS
I was missing this one in my Safari since I still use MaxOSX 10.3. I am only able to use Safari1.3, which dosen't integrate with RSS feeds. I wish I could able to upgrade to Safari2. Shiira works with RSS just like Safari2 does. Wow!

I believe this application is developed by mostly in Japan, but It's well documented in English for introduction so just go ahead to visit Shiira Project | Shiira 1.2 Screenshot

Also, the website looks gorgeous with beautiful graphics, few html errors, and neatly done with CSS. Only a few questions for the website is why it is written in XHTML1.1 without XML declaration and text/html MIME type? Anyway, the website is definitely worth to take a look if you are a graphic person even though you are not interested in getting a new web browser.

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