Raible Designs

Don't like Flash?

Try playing around with this site for a while and see if it changes your mind. I was mesmerized for a good 5 minutes just clicking and enjoying. Found via youngpup.net.

My New Editor?

The Mozilla Composite Editor is a LOT better than I originally thought - check this out. On your Mozilla browser, go to Preferences -> Composer and check the box at the bottom that says Use CSS styles instead of HTMLelements and attributes. Yeah baby! If you look at the source for this post (written with the Editor), you can see that there's a bunch of CSS to mark everything up rather than <b> and <i> tags. Install it here. NOTE: You will have to close your browser and re-start if you change this setting.

On second thought (after cleaning up the HTML in this post) it does enter <br> tags at the end of every line and screws up the spacing a bit. But it's definitely still very cool - it'll be great when it evolves into my full time Roller editor. Of course, that might take a few more releases.

HTML Editor as a Plug-In?

Found via Be Blogging, the Mozilla Composite Editor. Here's the scoop:

ComposIte is a chrome overlay which enables a streamlined Mozilla Editor for html composition in textareas. To use the editor, hit ctrl-e in a textarea. Alternately, you can turn on an 'Edit with Composite' button in the Composite prefs (v0.0.5 and higher).

The bad part, as Ugo notes, is that it does not generate XHTML. I haven't tried it, but it does come from Mozilla.org, so there's definite hope.

Built-in Blog.

I found this treat on Robert Scoble's site this evening:

Steven Vore points out that TopStyle is one of the first products he's seen that has a weblog built into it. Here's the Weblog. Update: here's a picture of how it looks inside TopStyle.

Cool - I own TopStyle 3.0 - guess I have a new blog to read now!

Tame your lists.

In Issue No. 151 of A List Apart: CSS Design: Taming Lists. This article will show you how to do cool lists like the one below with CSS.

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3

For you impatient readers, here's the code used to render the list above:

ul.glassList {
    list-style: url(../images/aquadot.jpg) disc outside;
    line-height: 1.5;
    vertical-align: top;
}
...
<ul class="glassList">
    <li>Item 1</li>
    <li>Item 2</li>
    <li>Item 3</li>
</ul>

Have a great Saturday!

Google News

I dig Google's new News feature I found this tasty treat this morning.

Microsoft acknowledges Linux threat
"We got beaten by Linux in the very high-end systems, but we have a whole development team despatched on that now," he is reported as saying in the Financial Times: "Linux isn't going to go away. Our job is to provide a better product in the marketplace." -- Steve Ballmer, September 2002. [ Full Article ]

Buying a Digital Camera?

If you're considering the purchase of a new digital camera, you might want to read this article from PC Magazine. The Editors' Choice winners are:

For $300: Nikon Coolpix 2500
For $500: Fujifilm Finepix F601 Zoom

I'm planning on buying one in the next few months for the arrival of the little one. Hopefully this article will make my decision easier - more research needed.

Flash Remoting MX - Developer Edition.

Good news! On the install, when I didn't enter a serial number, I received the following message:

Swwweeeeeettt! About time they started giving out "Developer editions." The install includes a WAR or EAR file (with samples) - your choice. Basically, it's up to you to deploy - the choice is just which ones you'd like placed on your hard drive for deployment. As a service to my readers - download the war.

BTW, I tried to publish the samples to this site, and it appears that there are some hard-coded localhost references in *.fla files. I checked all the JSPs and fixed one, but it didn't help. Works great locally on Windows XP, Tomcat 4.0.4, JDK 1.4.1.

Macromedia Flash Remoting MX Released.

From theserverside.com:

Macromedia today announced Macromedia Flash Remoting MX for J2EE AppServers (and also for .NET). Flash Remoting MX allows you to connect any J2EE-backend (EJB's, JMX, Servlets, java classes) to new GUI written in Flash; it was already used to create a new Petstore GUI on top of the original Petstore EJB layer. [ press release ]

The interesting thing about this product is that it seems to be app-server agnostic. Here are the system requirements:

A 5.64 MB Download. It troubles me that it's a trial download though. That means that Macromedia is going to charge me if I ever want to use this. In other Macromedia news, they sent me an e-mail today asking me if I wanted to be a beta tester for HomeSite 5.2! My fingers are crossed for Java support.

Good Advice from Aaron

at youngpup.net - How to Create Pop-Up Windows. It's basically a way to create javascript pop-up windows that are friendly to both web-savvy surfers and beginners alike.