Update [10/09/2003]: It looks like I spoke a little to soon as I sometimes do. I searched a little more and found that what Winamp is really doing is using one initial file to “include” all the sub-files via an include tag. However my point still has legs to stand on here. It should be using entities (i.e. Trillian style).

In my absence there has been a renewal of the mini icons article I did over on Brainstorms and Raves.

I discovered that Winamp3 is essentially at a stop in its development. Nullsoft is now focusing on Winamp2 and a combination of the two to become a Winamp5 (2 + 3 = 5) of sorts, taking the best of both and putting them together. In reaction to this I stopped using Winamp3 and rolled back to Winamp2. I forgot how much better 2 is than 3. Not to mention there is just more out there for 2 then there is for 3.

Got my copy of Designing With Web Standards. This book is fantastic. I’ll do a full write up shortly. Go visit the mini-site (see the DWWS button).

I’ve started moderating on a new web development forum, Advanced Web Aid. They are very young and looking for members. I know one of the head admins, some really great people over there. Go check them out. Join even!

And perhaps the best news of all, a new job fell in my lap. Seriously. No resume (yet, at least), no searching (they searched me out) and best of all, all the employees are my friends. Unfortunately I must keep the details down for a while to protect the new company but as soon as I can, I promise I will fill in some details.

I believe that’s it. I’ll post as things come to mind.

Oh, I turn 21 in 16 days. Yeah for me!

Speaking of “compliant browsers”, this raises another issue that has cropped up regarding Microsoft’s IE release schedule. If you haven’t read already, Microsoft plans to halt production on future standalone browser versions. From now on, IE browser upgrades will only be available to those who upgrade to the next operating system that Microsoft puts out. I personally think this a terrible move, carrying with it very negative effects on the web development community. It’s bad enough that browsers currently don’t agree on standards, now we ave IE6/Win as our lowset common denominator.

As you can see, I have redesigned my site. It was largely done in CSS with a few minor changes to the markup but they were only so I could select things a little better. For those running Mozilla (and its derivitives), Opera and other browsers with native style sheet selection, the old design is still available (dosen’t stick though). I plan to write some JavaScript to expand this functionality to other browsers, but that will have to wait.

Please let me know what you think and definitely alert me to any bugs in the design.

My implementation is a bit different then Tamara’s though. I used a set of CSS3 selectors to select links that are external.

a[href^="mailto:"] {
background: transparent url('/images/aemail.gif') 100% 50% no-repeat;
padding-right: 10px;
}
div.content a[href^="http:"] {
background: transparent url('/images/aoutside.gif') 100% 50% no-repeat;
padding-right: 10px;
}
div.content a[href^="http://my-dimension.com"],
div.content a[href^="http://www.my-dimension.com"] {
background: inherit;
padding-right: 0px;
}

That last selector disables the icon on links to this site but that use a ful URL instead of a relative one. This won’t work in most browsers (not sure which though) but then again this is my persoanl playground. Not to mention it is a feature which is not required to interact with this site.

Update[04/18/2003]: It seems a lot of feedback is being generated by this attribute selector method. Something I need to clarify though, I did not create this method. I found it on as days pass by. I apolgize for not crediting this earlier.

But the saga doesn’t end there. Other browsers support this tag in different ways. One person noted this issue in Opera:

Opera appears to handle all objects like plugins, even those that are handled internally (and thus cannot be disabled by disabling plugins!).

And, according to an anonymous comment, Mozilla appears to not completely render the object beyond displaying the image:

I’m wondering why I can select the IMG one, but not the OBJECT one (in Mozilla 1.3). If I paste it in Word for example, the Img is pasted as image, the Object is pasted as HTML code. So it’s not quite all right in Mozilla neither I think.

I for one would love to see browsers come out with reliable support for this highly versatile tag. Robin Lionheart has an object test page which also shows some very interesting ways of using the object tag, such as providing layered, alternate content in the case of a lack of support for the primary content. In doing so you can provide varying levels of content and the browser “chooses” which one it can handle.

But alas, developers are hampered by poor browser support and as such are kept from providing, to their readers, a highly usable interface.