Connor’s Blog

Web Developer, Student, Blogger.

Archive for February, 2008

Masked Media Website Update

Feb 21

Posted by Connor in Internet, Other Things

I’ve been working on the Masked Media website nonstop over the past few days. I have the navigation done (its easy to change, external script), and all I need to do is add some last minute links to external pages, such as our MySpace and Facebook pages. The banner is going to be changed in a week, have a few people working on banner’s for the shows as well. Besides the fact that I haven’t built the database structure, I have made major strides in less than two days. I recreated the entire design (yes, entire), including navigation and directory structure. Now, instead of having a drop down for each genre of show (Tech, Culture, etc. as it was previously), I have condensed all of the shows into a show drop down, added a team drop down to list all team members (and their profiles), corporate to house the about, advertising, and privacy policy pages, and an random one to hold the MySpace, Facebook, Weblog, and Community links. I think that this system works, and looks, loads better than our previous one. Hope everyone else thinks so, too.

The directory structure had the largest change (besides the design, of course). Instead of having a mod_rewrite page (/amerikanpolitik), the page is now its own directory, which will house all the pages for that show (including custom CSS and banners, as well as the ‘resource.list’ file). A lot better to manage, and adds a level of customization to the site off of what we originally had. Each show can now lists all of its episodes (/amerikanpolitk/all), its top rated episodes (/top), and even more, including a blog (well, kinda). Before, they would have to be listed differently.

As of now I cannot figure out what to do with the main content area of the website. I just don’t know what I want, so that has to wait. I am working on the watch page right now, which will house the media player (being skinned at the moment), the show notes, and other related episodes and links. I am not sure how I want to do comments, but I don’t think they will be on the watch page, mainly so the page can load faster and not be ‘loaded down’ by comments. Well, that’s about all I can say for now, besides the fact that we officially launch on March 8th, but you are free to watch the site grow at http://www.maskedmedia.com. See ya later.

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The Open Web Standards

Feb 12

Posted by Connor in Internet, Other Things

I’m really tired of the W3C. Honestly, they think they are the America of the Internet, and this is coming from an American as well (New Yorker, even worse :P). The W3C thinks they can control exactly how web developers make websites, and honestly, a lot don’t even know about them, let alone listen. I am all for open standards, but when they are decided by a group of paying members, that really bugs me. The major corporations of the Internet have a say in the W3C, and I don’t think that is right, since the regular people are the ones who fuel the Internet. That’s why, today, I want to announce
the first Draft of the Modern Style Sheet (MSS) file type, and some information on the Modern Hypertext File (MHF) file type, both for the web.

The Modern Style Sheet Draft

So… CSS turned 10 years old this month. Doesn’t that scream change? CSS is an outdated standard, no matter how many times they release a new version (approve, I should say). The main issue I have with the W3C in general, including CSS and HTML, is the fact that they are to worried about ‘breaking the Internet’ by deprecating code. You know what I have to say to that? To damn bad. If a website looses compatibility after 6 years, the site either is out of date and the developer doesn’t care, or it isn’t in use anymore. So, why not created a new standard with values that DO NOT have to be deprecated, because they are in use now, or will be in the future? Makes a lot more sense then fooling around with a 10+ year old code set. Modern Style Sheets use a lot of existing CSS, for the most part. Any values that I felt where deprecated, or will be in a few years, where removed. Some properties like ‘text-align’ where changed to ‘font-align’ for example. I will upload the first draft of the MSS file type into the bottom of the post soon, under ‘Content’. I will use this blog to discuss the further development of MSS.

The Modern Hypertext File Draft

HTML is even older than CSS. More recently, XHTML has come to modernize HTML, and honestly, being a thing of the W3C, its to scared to deprecate code. That is where MHF comes into play. It cleans up code that isn’t needed anymore, and provides new code for making current tasks easier. I don’t have specifics yet, but I will in a few weeks.

Open Web Standards

Thats why I am announcing today the formation of a new group, called the Open Web Standards Group. Like yesterdays post, I don’t have much on it yet, but it is coming.

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My Review of the Safari 3.1 Beta

Feb 11

Posted by Connor in Reviews

How many of you have heard of the Safari web browser? Well, in case you haven’t, let me explain.

Some Background

Back around 2001-2002, Apple was working on a web browser for their then-new Mac OS X operating system (I believe Safari 1 came in the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther release, but don’t quote me on it). Ever since Steve Jobs had returned to the company (Apple) in 1997, the main internet browser on Mac OS (9, and at that time 10) was Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac. Apple, who still rivaled Microsoft, decided it was time to remove the last standard Microsoft application from their OS and create a better web browser. That was when Safari was born.

Over the next few years, Safari would take the open source web render (KHTML, used in the Konquer web browser), rebrand it Webkit, and build a new browser off of it. Back at WWDC (World Wide Developer’s Conference) 2007 (last June) Jobs unveiled Safari 3, which was the first version to ship as both a Mac OS X release and a Windows one. Safari 3, which went final back in October, has been called a ‘failure’ for the Windows platform, and most reviewers said to ‘stick to Firefox, even IE can do better.’. Now its time I give my personal review of Safari 3.1 (released a few days ago to Apple Developer Connection Members).

Some Specs and Thoughts

I have used Safari in the past (the first Beta of 3 back in June for both Windows and Mac OS X, and more recently, the final version of 3 for Windows). Honestly, and this does not effect my review, Safari 3.0 was garbage on Windows. That taken into account, its blazing fast on Mac OS X. Regardless, for the past two years my default browser on all operating systems I’ve used* has been Firefox.

Becuase of this, I have been reluctant to try Safari 3.1 because of its issues on Windows. I tried it on Mac OS X when it was released a few days ago and enjoyed the experience (though not as much as Firefox 3 Beta 2). But I bit the bullet and tried it, and thus, here is my review.

Machine Specs (Purposely):

- Windows XP Service Pack 2
- 256MB RAM
- Intel Pentium III Processor

The Review

As soon as I finished installing, I opened Safari. I wasn’t surprised when the load times where very similar to my previous use of Safari 3 (referred to as v3.0). The one thing I did notice was that my homepage (http://www.maskedmedia.com) loaded faster than it did in Firefox. Impressed? Yes. Not only is this an improvement over v3.0 (I’ll explain why in a minute), it is because the blog has images, scripts, and Javascript which all need to be loaded. Pretty nice surprise. This is because of the new version of Webkit built into this version of Safari, which early reports have running 2 times faster than v3.0. I browsed for around an hour, and man, this was a lot faster than the previous version, though Firefox in the end did have better rendering speeds.

One of the main reasons I like Safari so much is it’s interface. It looks exactly as it does on Mac OS X, which I love. If you haven’t used a Mac, it pretty much looks like iTunes (except not the same scrollbars).

In the End…

Safari 3.1 is a major improvement over the previous versions. It’s speed enhancements, both with rendering web pages and the interface earns a great praise. On the downside, Firefox 3 still feels faster overall. Sometimes Safari’s menus lag, including the bookmarks menu, which is what I use most often. I will continue to use it over the next few days to see if I can get some more power out of it, but I think Safari may have just passed Internet Explorer in my book.

The Ratings

Speed: 3/5 – Safari 3.0 got a 1/5 for speed (which was a gift). This version definetly improved on its predecessors rendering and interface speeds, which got it some bonus points, but still needs some tweaks to get to the point of a very good browser.

Interface: 4/5 – Same rating as the previous version. Nothing has really changed, since it is essentially the same skin since version 1. The only thing from making it a perfect 5 is its slow bookmarks menu and lack of iTunes scroll bars, which really piss me off .

Other Stuff: 2/5 – Yes, Google and Yahoo! searches are standard, but I have yet to find a way to add other searches like Firefox. I have some search engines that I use literally every hour (besides Google) installed in Firefox, including IsoHunt, Wikipedia, GoDaddy, and the Facebook API wiki. If I can’t add these to Safari, it really stops me from using it full time. Other than the searches, I have yet to come across a lot of plugins for Safari, but I hope they come soon.

Overall: 3/5 – Safari has definitely moved forward since 3.0 (which I gave a 1/5 to), but it still has a way to go.

*My Operating Systems

Windows XP (Service Pack 2, Service Pack 3)
Windows Vista (Release Version, Service Pack 1)
Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.11)
Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.1, 10.5.2 Beta)
Ubuntu Linux (7.10)
Ubuntu Studio Linux (7.10)

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Announcing the Open Source Software Initiative

Feb 11

Posted by Connor in Other Things

*This Is Not Related to The Open Source Initiative

Today I am pleased to announce my first web project of 2008. Back in late December (on the old blog, Rest in Peace) I decided that all of my works would be released under a Creative Commons license, aka Open Source. Well, today I want to talk about how I am going to help bring that to everyone else. It is called the Open Source Software Initiative.

I came up with the idea after looking at the MacHesit 2 bundle of Mac OS X applications (11 ones for a 75-80% price lower than all of them combined), all of the money which went to charity. After a certain number of people bought the package, another application was unlocked for people who purchased the bundle previously, and to everyone else. Instead of waiting to make your application lower priced (essentailly free for charity), why not release the source to not only benifit people who would have stole it anyway, but improve the software to something that a company couldn’t do. That is the power of open source.

When people think of open source, most think of Linux. Yes, it is open source. Yes, it is powerful and has come a long way than most people would have thought, but my personal favorite open source project is phpBB (bulletin board software, http://www.phpbb.com). The recently released version, Olympus, is a major milestone in my opinion. I remember back in my early internet days (2005-2006) running a forum using phpBB 2.x. It may have taken a long time to bring it into the future, but it was worth it. When people get together and work on a project, it really helps to advance it in ways a corporation couldn’t do.

Another major advantage of open source software is bugs. Everything has bugs and glitches, it is a fact. But when everyone has access to the code, it becomes so much easier to fix the issue. No longer do major companies have to put their best people at work to find a little bug when the community can find it and fix it faster than ever possible before.

So, how do I plan on doing this? Most companies wouldn’t give anything away for free, let alone making it open source. Today is the day I announce the Open Source Software Initiative (OSSI), and it will launch on March 1st, 2008. From March 1st to March 1st, 2009, I want the internet community, including companies, software groups, and independant developers to release their software under an open source license (check out the Creative Commons link in my sidebar). How many pieces of software? 50. Just 50. That is just one piece of software a week (seeing as though there are 366 days this year). Simple release a piece of freeware, shareware, or commercial software under a Creative Commons/Open Source license and request to be added to the Initiative. Once we approve your request to join, you are added to the list and we up the counter by one. Once we hit fifty, whether in a month, year, or a decade, we will officially end the first Open Source Innitiative.

Pretty soon I will be begining the system for people to join. We will have two groups of people, Supporters and Members. Supporters are pretty much the consumers and regular people who will benifit from this (yes, developers too :)). Members are companies, groups, and independant developers who go Open Source for the initiative.

I hope, together at least, we can get closer to a future of amazing open source software.

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