Archive for January, 2007
Jan
31
2007
at 7:34pm
For the past year or so there has been quite lot of buzz about Microsoft’s new committment to web standards. They’ve talked about it on their blog, they’ve upgraded support in IE 7, and even released a new suite of standards compliant development tools. One of their employees has been named interim chair of the W3C HTML working group. Today eminent web standards evangelist Molly Holzschlag announced that she has been hired by Microsoft to consult on web standards.
By all appearances, they have changed their ways. Microsoft is now committed to web standards and working together with web developers. We can move on and embrace this new relationship. Some web developers really believe this.
But can we really? Have they really changed their ways for good? Read more…
Posted in Software, Web Standards | 2 Comments »
Jan
26
2007
at 2:43pm
Gerry McGovern had an interesting article the other day about the difference between search words and marketing words:
The words that people search with may not always be the words they would like to read when they arrive at a webpage.
The word “cheap” is a good example here. You probably don’t want to brand yourself as “cheap”. “Cheap” brings connotations of poor quality and bad service – something you probably want to avoid. Words like “affordable” or “low-cost” would be more more appropriate. But you can bet that people will be using the word “cheap” when they search for sites like yours.
Mr. McGovern, unfortunately, stops just when the idea starts to get interesting. Read more…
Posted in Marketing/SEO/Monetization, Writing | 5 Comments »
Jan
25
2007
at 1:58pm
OperaWatch has a link up to an Opera skin that makes the Oprea interface look like Firefox.
I know I’ve heard a few people mention that they can’t get used to the interface in O, so there you go! All you have to do is click on a simple link, and you’ve got OperaFox! The guy who made it, Rijk, also has a site with lots of Opera customization info.
As an aside, Opera has a really cool way of handling display setups. All the information is stored in individual files. You can easily switch between interfaces, install setups built by others, or even edit your interface file in a text editor.
Personally, I love being able to change Opera around to do work exactly how I want it too. No restrictions!
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Jan
25
2007
at 10:19am
Andy tagged me in this meme so I guess I have to do it 
Here’s my five:
- One thing people are always surprised to learn about me is that I did my degree in Urban Planning. In the middle of 3rd year I realized I didn’t want to do that for a living, for various reasons (too political, among other things). At the same time, I started doing web design as a hobby and spent my last two co-op work terms in web design and there was no going back after that.
- I grew up on a farm. I loved it when I was a kid. I spent most of my daylight hours playing outside. Mom used to have to holler out the back door to get us to come in for supper. In the winter we made all kinds of great snow forts and climbed around on the piles of snow dad shoveled up from the driveway. There weren’t any hills around there to go sledding on (unless down the side of the ditchbank counts), but if there was enough snow you could run and jump into a ditch and wind up chest deep in it. It was great!
- I can be particular about the way things are done. I’m not obsessive compulsive or anything, but I like it when things are in their place. I don’t alphabetize my cans, but I do sort them by type. In fact, anything that can be sorted or ordered is sorted in the most logical way. I also have quite an elaborate grocery shopping scheme. Liam won’t even write anything on the grocery list in case he does it wrong. It’s genetic – I get it from my dad’s side of the family.
- When I was in high school my friends and I liked to talk in fake English accents. Yes, we were very strange and geeky. The even stranger part was that we got it from watching the show Art Attack (which I still kind of enjoy). It’s very ironic then that I ended up marrying an Englishman. Liam says that my fake English accent sounds like Dick Van Dyke in Marry Poppins.
- I can never think of a fifth thing. Put me on the spot and I can’t think of anything. I espeically hate signing cards for people in the office. Just what am I supposed to say when everyone has already said “Happy Birthday”. Okay, I’m going off on one now…
I’ll tag Adam and Adam, to include all the people who regularly comment here. Three regular commenters … jeez, I gotta work on promoting this site better!
Posted in General | 5 Comments »
Jan
24
2007
at 2:52am
(By Liam McDermott not Megan McDermott)
I’m blaming Plesk! It’s like the Windows of control panels, not allowing you to do anything for yourself. So when I needed to move meganjack.com over to meganmcdermott.com (and our server manages domains like they’re users) all I did was rename some directories, it worked. Unfortunately Plesk associates databases with domains, so when I deleted the old directory Plesk also deleted the databases associated with meganjack.com.
Doesn’t make sense, I know: you had to be there. 
If anything, I think that Apple will make leaps and bounds in the coming years due to the iPod being so popular
(Quoted from Adam K. in Megan’s post on the broken site and patform indepdendence).
There’s a saying that’s applicable here: ‘Takes one to know one.’
Read more…
Posted in General, Software | 6 Comments »
Jan
22
2007
at 11:31am
Awhile back I needed to sign up for a hotmail account. Yes, hotmail. The last time I used that was around 1999. I had to sign up again so I could test some HTML emails. Most of our students use either hotmail or gmail, so the easiest thing to do is just to sign up for accounts and test them that way. Gmail is no problem – I already have an account.
So I went to sign up for a hotmail account, thinking it would be a relatively simple procedure. Was I ever wrong about that!
Read more…
Posted in Usability, Web Culture | 18 Comments »
