michaelwills.com » Technical

An engineer’s guide to cats

admin — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:27:51 +0000

Update to “Why Most Web Developers Loathe Microsoft”

admin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:36:32 +0000

In an amazing move by Microsoft, last week they capitulated to the public uproar from the web developer community and announced that they would release Internet Explorer 8.0, now in beta, set to render web pages in “standards mode,” which means that it should now work with web pages developed to the international standard. Previously, they were going to release it so that it rendered web pages incorrectly like IE 7.0 currently does.

That’s completely amazing, and I’ll believe it when I see it, but it looks to be great news for those of us spending too much extra time trying to make things work across the board.

Shameless plug

admin — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:39:44 +0000

Okay, so I’m getting a small discount for plugging this site, but it’s small enough (5%) to influence me to place this link, but not to lie about the company. We’ve been looking to upgrade our memory in our Mac Pros from 4 to 8 GB. It sounds crazy, but we both are running out of space and are swapping (we tend to have a lot of applications up at a time). We took a look at the Apple site, and their memory ran about $1,200 for two 2-GB SIMMs. Kind of prohibitive. We looked around and found MemorySuppliers, Inc. and were able to get the same thing for $270. The memory looks a little different (the heat sinks go a different direction), but the memory is working fine, and our Mac Pros are zippier. We’re ordering more.

Why Most Web Developers Loathe Microsoft

michael — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 18:02:46 +0000

I’ve just finished a very frustrating two days trying to figure out why this site, and another one I’m developing will not display correctly on Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or 7. My partner is sick to death of my rantings (and his own) about this subject, but as two developers who are constantly having to find solutions to the fact that Microsoft blatantly ignores the agreed-upon standards for CSS and produces a browser that renders web content incorrectly.

They’ve actually had the nerve recently to state that their standard is the standard, not getting that corporations don’t set standards; independent international groups do. What Microsoft wants is for everyone to use Active X to do tricky things on web pages, not JavaScript, CSS or Java, because then the web page will work only on a Windows system. They’ve gone as far as to give Active X development tools to many groups, such as those companies who develop the Multiple Listings databases across the country, ensuring that real estate agents must use Windows to access the MLS.

It’s sad that people who aren’t so savvy about computers will buy a Windows system, and use what comes with it for web browsing, when there are better computers (Macs especially) and better browsers (Firefox, Opera, etc.), that will render web content correctly.

The answer to the title of this post: Microsoft, by not following standards, causes web developers to spend two or three times the effort to make a web page that will show correctly on IE6, IE7, and all of the rest of the browsers. So first you get your page to work with Firefox, Opera, Safari (1 hour), and next spend 2 or 3 hours trying to figure out why it doesn’t work on IE.

It’s obvious that this is a strategy taken deliberately. Instead of fixing the bugs, they provide a way for you to include an if/then statement in your code that says “if this browser is IE6, load this style sheet, if it’s IE7 load this one, and if it’s neither load a third one.

They are despicable.

High Dynamic Range Redwoods

michael — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:04:58 +0000

Lately I’ve been experimeting with High Dynamic Range images. Traditional photography has a dynamic range problem: in a setting with a lot of bright areas and also a lot of shadowed areas, it’s impossible to set the exposure so that detail is captured in both. There are new cameras being developed that will be able to capture a greater range of detail, and in the meantime there is a software solution. It’s done by taking two or more photographs (three works better), a normally exposed shot, and under- and over-exposed shots. This can be done hand held, with varying results, on a tripod with great results. Also, if you shoot in RAW format there is so much more information there that you can adjust the exposure to create the multiple shots in software.Next you use software that merges the three, and then uses different techniques to let you show the detail in both the dark and light areas. I love the results (although many times I’m definitely guilty of over-saturating the result ending up with something looking like a cheesy postcard). Here’s a link to some photos taken up near Garberville a few weeks ago.