Gran Paradiso Alpha 7

As I'm typing this now, I'm using what will ultimately be the best web browser available.
Yes, Gran Paradiso is shaping up nicely with the latest release 'Alpha7'.
The first thing you will notice on opening Gran Paradiso is that nothing has been done to the theme yet - and I welcome that!
Its nice to see that the developers have focussed on much more importing issues, for example:

1) Full ACID2 compliance - try it out yourself and see the yellow smiley face rendered to perfection. Then open the same in IE7 and laugh at how badly it comes to rendering the page correctly.

2) Speed - pages seem to be opening a lot faster than they did with Firefox 2

3) Bug fixes - So far I have noticed that the dreaded cursor in an input field within an absolutely positioned div has been fixed! Nice one. Now my popup dhtml dialogs can be used properly.

On the downside, its still only an alpha and I've literally been using it for about 10 minutes (excluding the time taken to complete this blog). However, it is looking very very nice.

Javascript Alpha Background PNG Fix IE6

Want to fix the background PNG 24 Alpha image of an element in IE6?

Here's how I do it

function FixIEPngBG(elmnt){
if ((navigator.appVersion.indexOf('MSIE 6')>-1) && (document.body.filters)){
bkg = (elmnt.background? elmnt.background : (elmnt.style.backgroundImage? elmnt.style.backgroundImage : elmnt.currentStyle.backgroundImage));
bkg=bkg.replace('url(', '');
bkg=bkg.replace(')', '');
while (bkg.indexOf('"')>-1){
bkg=bkg.replace('"', '');
}
elmnt.style.backgroundImage="url(images/blank.gif)"; // has to have a background image otherwise it wont be recognised on drag.
elmnt.style.filter="progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='"+bkg+"', sizingMethod='scale');";
}
}

Linux Ready For The Desktop

As most people working in IT will know, requests from friends, colleagues and family to rescue dead PCs come with the job.
Recently I recovered data for a colleague. The data was recovered from a dodgy windows XP machine (not even sp2).
Rather than try to fix the dodgy XP installation, I recommended the owner of the PC try Ubuntu.
Ubuntu comes with CD burning software, open office suite, firefox, email software, pretty much everything a basic user would want.
Anyway, I received a text message today saying that the PC actually worked better with Ubuntu than the dodgy version of XP!
The soundcard had never worked under XP and it worked perfectly with Ubuntu.
Not only this, every peripheral attached to the machine worked perfectly too.
All they had to do was transfer their recovered data to the Ubuntu machine and then they had a perfect installation.
Maybe I will be ditching my XP installation for Ubuntu (as soon as my 24track firewire mixing desk is supported).

Ask a Ninja

Rather than sit there reading my blog, why not check out www.askaninja.com.
If you ever wanted to know a ninjas view point on any subject, or you need a tricky question explained by someone with lightening reactions, then this is the site for you.
I thought it was hilarious - especially the explanation of Pod-casting.

Silverlight AKA WPFE AKA M$ web monopoly strategy

Imagine a world where rich interactive web experiences are available across platforms with ease of development - and guess what.... it will even work in IE and Firefox! A world where 'web 2.0' means a lock down in to proprietary technologies and where 'cross platform' means M$ and Apple only. A world where developers too inept and lazy to learn the latest javascript effects libs and AJAX technologies instead turn their efforts to Microsoft.

Welcome to the world of Silverlight, Microsoft's latest web monopoly strategy.

In 1991 the internet was invented with 1 major idea - that the web would be accessible by any machine, any browser, any person through an open and royalty free system. The user should not be bound by the technology. 'That is the most important property of it - its universality' [Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, inventor of the internet]

Silverlight is the absolute antithesis of this sentiment. I am warning people now - do not develop software for this framework! Every web page that features silverlight is directly undermining the principles that the web was founded on.

Silverlight websites will not work with Linux. This is directly contributing to the current M$ monopoly.

The world wide web should never be owned and its content should be accessible by anyone on any machine with any operating system.

I also recommend people to read the following article.

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1418.html