iBlog

You adhere and the rose do party

It’s only a matter of time before my order for a tricked out 12" PowerBook G4 makes its way to Apple. Until then I find amusement in articles like this...

»plink« · January 31, 2003

A week late

This past week’s Photo Friday challenge was Children’s Toys. My entry: I have three girls, what can I say?

»plink« · January 30, 2003

Decisions, decisions...

For a while now I have been wanting a Mac that can burn DVDs. But I am not ready to buy a new tower yet. I’d rather wait until the next generation of chips for that. So I was really quite pleased when Apple added a SuperDrive option on the eMac. I thought that would be a good interim solution.

Then the prices on the 17" iMacs became a bit more reasonable, and I started to lean in that direction. The 15" PowerBook with SuperDrive didn’t really appeal to me, mostly due to the cost. But I also couldn’t see using a laptop to burn DVDs—that seems like something you do at a workstation that is anchored to your desk. Of course, most of the time the TiBook I use from work sits on my desk, whether I am at home or at work, so maybe the argument isn’t really there after all. But the cost was more than what I want in an interim solution.

I wasn’t ready to buy anything until after the first of the year anyway, so I waited to see what Apple would announce at MacWorld. I was hoping for updated, and perhaps cheaper, iMacs and/or eMacs. Of course we got none of that (though I think they are coming soon).

When I saw the new PowerBooks I thought they were very cool, but I didn’t give them much thought beyond that. The 17" is way cool with all the extra stuff it has (and all the extra pixels). But as much as I enjoy the TiBook, it is a bit large, and I often find myself envying those with iBooks.

But the 12" PowerBook. Wow. A full featured ’Book in an ultra-portable form factor. And you can burn DVDs (and run a second monitor at 1600x1200) to boot. And what’s not to like about the price point?

So now I’m in a quandary—17" iMac or tricked out 12" PowerBook? Time for a comparison (winning feature in bold and green).

So, as of today, it looks like the 12" PowerBook is the winner. I should note that I would likely purchase a Mouse from a 3rd party, and possibly a keyboard, too. And If I went with the iMac, I'd purchase the RAM from a 3rd party vendor as well, so the price difference would likely be less of an issue. Also, I don’t want to buy either until I’ve seen the PowerBook’s screen (hopefully next to a 17" iMac screen), and by that time the specs/price on the iMac may have changed as well...

»plink« · January 10, 2003

Add Safari

• David Hyatt: One of the co-founders of the Chimera project, still works on Phoenix, was hired away by Apple to lead the Safari Team. In his weblog he tells you how to update Safari with patches for things like 96dpi, improved Flash Support, and more. They are listening!
• John Gruber: Daring Fireball reviews Safari (thanks for the link, Steve!)
• Apple Discussion Forum: Danger! Danger! Danger! thread about potential data loss when option-clicking to download a file in Safari. There are still mixed results being posted...
• Apple Care Knowledge Base Documents:
  • Safari Beta: How to Use Your Own Style Sheet
  • Safari Beta: A Web Page Doesn't Appear to Be Using My Style Sheet
• Apple Care Knowledge Base Recent Updates: Scroll to January 8, 2003 for more Safari Beta Knowledge Base articles (the contents of this page will change daily, and the Safari info will be gone in a week)

»plink« · January 9, 2003

On the lighter side

In the tradition of Middle Seat, Apple comes up with another winner in Big and Small. And if you like those, you might want to take a look around this site before Apple legal finds it...

»plink« · January 8, 2003

On Safari...

The question on everyone’s mind (well, everyone who is a standards conscious web developer anyway) is how standards compliant is Safari? Or perhaps better phrased, “How does my web site look in Safari?” At least that is what I wanted to know.

You may recall that I am a non-early adopter, so though I’ve had a copy of Jaguar for a couple months now, I was content to stay in 10.1.5. Much like iPhoto pushed me over the edge and into OS X, Safari pushed me to upgrade to Jaguar.

Safari does a decent job on this here blog, and quite well on my other sites. Since it is still in beta, I’m loathe to make any major adjustments just to appease it, hoping that Apple will take seriously the bug reports and fix them before declaring it golden. Given that they have placed a bug report button in the real estate typically used for branding in other browsers, I am fairly certain that they are ready to listen, and act on what they hear.

For those who are interested in just how well Safari is doing, standards-wise, I encourage you to take a look at what Mark Pilgrim has to say, view MacEdition’s updated browser comparison, and see why Peter-Paul Koch rates it as the third most compliant browser out there (just behind Opera 7 and Gecko-based browsers).

»plink« · January 8, 2003

14 years...

I love you, sweetheart!

»plink« · January 7, 2003

Wow...

• Final Cut Express
• Safari
• Keynote
• iLife
• 12" PowerBook
• 17" PowerBook
• Backlit Keyboard
• AirPort Extreme
• BlueTooth
• FireWire 800

»plink« · January 7, 2003

They said it couldn’t be done

A very common question from web designers switching from TABLE based layout to all CSS is how to center something both horizontally and vertically on the page. The horizontal problem has several solutions. The vertical issue has been a bust (there hasn't been a solution that works in all browsers), until now.

In this month’s Web Page Design for Designers, Joe Gillespie has detailed a method that works across all the major browsers (most recent versions). It has some limitations, in that you need to know the height and width of what you want to center. But usually you are going to want to center an image, or something else of known height and width, so it isn't as big a problem as it might sound.

And you really should check out the rest of this month’s issue, dealing with CSS and JavaScript, while you are at it...

»plink« · January 03, 2003