Distracted Sanity

Okies, here’s the deal. Microsoft is putting out (pun intended) Internet Explorer 7 as a Windows update. As a designer, I happen to hate IE6, and I would just loooooove to drop it for good. But even with IE7 on every Windows XP system, is that enough? Can I finally stop testing the sites I make with IE6?

I personally think that the answer is no, but I’d like to hear your opinions.

OK, I just have to ask, what’s with this new Yahoo/MSN Beta? Chatting on the MSN network with Yahoo? Just not right… too wierd.

In my mind…no. But you should here what some guys think. In this article, the author describe four possible scenarios of Google's future. Here's an excerpt of scenario 2: 

But the real genius of Gbrowser was to make the operating system irrelevant.[3] Few people know or care today whether their computers run on Windows, Linux, or the Mac OS. It's simply part of the plumbing. Gbrowser handles just about everything you use a computer for, especially since Google adopted the Linux-based OpenOffice software and bundled it. The Justice Department's investigation into whether this made Google an illegal monopoly closed five years ago; it might have made more headway had the charges not been brought by Microsoft.

I'll write some good prose or poetry sometime… Meanwhile, I thought I'd let you know that I'll soon be releasing a WordPress theme. It's called Elegant Grey and it's currently in the coding stage.

Here's the preview: Elegant Grey 

I did a little work onmy redesign of The-Glitch to make the content spiffyer.

The-Glitch Redesign v1.5

Ok, so it's not an official redesign, but I made a mockup just for fun. Tell me what you think, guys.

http://www.deviantart.com/view/34774199/ 

My best writing often seems to come with bouts of manic depression, anger, and other such symptoms of insanity. Seeing as I can't come up with anything to write, I must conclude that I am having a good day.

So I don't leave all my dedicated readers [snicker] without their fix, I've created a new category for nerd stuff, where I'll be telling you about all that amazing computer stuff that nobody can figure out. And my first nerd post is dedicated to: sIFR.

As a web designer, it's kind of annoying to have to use the default Micro$oft fonts for everything. It's fine for the main text on a page, but for headings, quotes, and other random pieces of text, it would be nice to be able to use a special font, sometimes. sIFR 2.0 is the solution for that.

Here's an explanation of how it works, blatantly ripped from: http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/

How it works

sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash. Here is the entire process:

1. A normal (X)HTML page is loaded into the browser.
2. A javascript function is run which first checks that Flash is installed and then looks for whatever tags, ids, or classes you designate.
3. If Flash isn't installed (or obviously if javascript is turned off), the (X)HTML page displays as normal and nothing further occurs. If Flash is installed, javascript traverses through the source of your page measuring each element you've designated as something you'd like "sIFRed".
4. Once measured, the script creates Flash movies of the same dimensions and overlays them on top of the original elements, pumping the original browser text in as a Flash variable.
5. Actionscript inside of each Flash file then draws that text in your chosen typeface at a 6 point size and scales it up until it fits snugly inside the Flash movie.

Looks interesting to say the least, but I have yet to test it.