labs.hinterlands tag:labs.hinterlands.com.au,2007-08-19:/blog//1 2007-12-14T06:41:44Z Movable Type Publishing Platform 4.0 Opera ask Microsoft nicely? tag:labs.hinterlands.com.au,2007:/blog//1.8 2007-12-14T06:11:08Z 2007-12-14T06:41:44Z Opera has just filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft, I generally support this move. Microsoft have put in some effort on IE7, but its too little too late as far as I see it.... Chris Blown antitrust complaint against Microsoft, I generally support this move. Microsoft have put in some effort on IE7, but its too little too late as far as I see it. ]]> effect this might have on the Working Group could end up being positive, depending which side of the fence you're on. Generally I think the resultant response by most developers will be "great where do I sign" however some experts say otherwise. Who knows what the net effect maybe, but its about time somebody stepped up and did something its been going on for far too long. Its high time Microsoft stopped bullshitting everyone and fixed up their browser. All the slightly fuzzy crowd who follow IEs blog might disagree here, but I think the lack of activity and recent push by Molly is decent enough evidence that Microsoft couldn't care less.


]]> Bitten by the Leopard tag:labs.hinterlands.com.au,2007:/blog//1.7 2007-10-31T02:51:27Z 2007-10-31T03:19:50Z I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Leopard last night. Some cool stuff in this release; some other things not so cool.... Chris Blown ]]> Ars Technica review of Leopard, as always John Siracusa is on the money.

I just jumped in and upgraded, my MBP isn't that old and anyway I had a backup of all my important files so I'd be OK if it bailed. I'd seen that a few people had a "blue screen issue" after the upgrade so I was a little cautious.

The changes are subtle enough not to bother you too much coming from tiger. The curved menus caught my eye a few times, they look quite different especially how the hover doesn't quite line up on the bottom of the menu. anyhow moving on...

Pros

  1. Cover flow in the finder is cool ( it works the machine though, my fans spin up )
  2. Overall it feels snappier - I always thought Tiger was a bit lazy
  3. Spaces - about bloody time Apple! we had them in Linux ten years ago!! Spaces is well executed.
  4. Consistent application windows. I never liked all the different styles of windows.

Cons

  1. The transparent top menu is pretty stupid, way too hard to read. ( you can turn it off with a hack thankfully )
  2. The dock reflection is great but the little blue light isn't distinct enough, while I hated the little black arrow, its better than this blue orb.
  3. The finder folders are a bit ugly and harder to spot than the tiger equivalents since they are subtly embossed.
  4. No Java 6 included, please Apple can you at least tell us when? Hopefully it'll be in the next major update.

Overall though I find Leopard to be the best thing my MacBook has ever tasted. I need some time to test time machine and the other new features. I'll post more once I have.


]]> PHP and Java Co-existing.. tag:labs.hinterlands.com.au,2007:/blog//1.6 2007-10-13T08:12:48Z 2007-10-13T08:44:59Z Came across an interesting blog post by Mark Figley on PHP and Java - Best of Both Worlds? I see an awful lot of sense to this relationship and I am excited about the potential of scripting languages running inside... Chris Blown PHP and Java - Best of Both Worlds? I see an awful lot of sense to this relationship and I am excited about the potential of scripting languages running inside the JVM. IBMs Project Zero and QEDWiki application are strong indicators that Big Blue are taking PHP seriously. Systems like the Zend Framework are even more reasons to consider PHP for rapid development. So with pure Java implementations of PHP like Quercus we can only expect PHP to shine even brighter. Best of both worlds? Damn close..
]]> Commentary on CSS3 tag:labs.hinterlands.com.au,2007:/blog//1.5 2007-09-21T01:04:42Z 2007-09-21T02:36:58Z Recent discussions on CSS3 are showing that a lot is being said and nothing much is being done. Alex Russell has a good write up A giant serving of FAIL, I mostly agree with Alex's main points. Hixie was on... Chris Blown Alex Russell has a good write up A giant serving of FAIL, I mostly agree with Alex's main points. Hixie was on the money months ago about the working group being irrelevant.]]> David Baron makes some counter points on his blog concerning the working group. His concerns about the complexity of browser implementations are fairly light on detail and fairly unconvincing.]]> Ext 2.0 - Examples tag:labs.hinterlands.com.au,2007:/blog//1.4 2007-09-08T03:44:22Z 2007-09-08T04:12:22Z Ext 2.0 continues to move forward with some cool new features. The Ext team has been focused on enhancing the desktop-like experience, adding new functionality, improving performance and keeping the overall file size down. Take a look at the Ext... Chris Blown Ext 2.0 continues to move forward with some cool new features. The Ext team has been focused on enhancing the desktop-like experience, adding new functionality, improving performance and keeping the overall file size down. Take a look at the Ext 2.0 examples.
]]> Papervision and Depth of Field tag:labs.hinterlands.com.au,2007:/blog//1.3 2007-09-08T03:36:18Z 2007-09-08T03:43:43Z Some impressive depth of field experiements by Ricardo Cabello aka Mr.doob, using Papervision3D and Tweener, a very powerful and easy to use tween engine.... Chris Blown impressive depth of field experiements by Ricardo Cabello aka Mr.doob, using Papervision3D and Tweener, a very powerful and easy to use tween engine. ]]> Mac Firefox and web start - doesn't. tag:labs.hinterlands.com.au,2007:/blog//1.2 2007-08-19T11:49:28Z 2007-09-08T04:15:03Z Recently while trying to get Java Web Start working on my MacBook Pro under Firefox, I came across a strange issue with Firefox and its management of mime types and file associations.... Chris Blown Java Web Start working on my MacBook Pro under Firefox, I came across a strange issue with Firefox and its management of mime types and file associations.
]]> Java Web Start working on my MacBook Pro under Firefox, I came across a strange issue with Firefox and its management of mime types and file associations.

The application I needed to test, of course, requires the latest Java runtime and the first thing I noticed is that Apple haven't officially released Java 6.0. A quick visit to the Apple Developer Site and a few minutes later I had Java SE 6.0 developer release installed. While I am impressed with how well Java performs on OSX, Apple should have Java 6.0 sorted and released by now. It'll probably be included in OSX Leopard which is due to for released in October of this year.

java_prefs_panel.gifOne thing to mention is that the developer release installs along side Java 5.0 and provides a prefs panel that lets you adjust which runtime to use. This gives you an easy way to test against Java 6.0 ( JRE v1.6 ) and then swap back to Java 5.0. Something like this under Windows and Linux would be extremely handy.

Now that I had all the base requirements for the application setup, I started Firefox and gave the application a go. Everything looked fine "Java Starting.." window appeared, waiting, then nothing, no java console, nothing. At this point I jumped into Safari and tried it there, no problems - and it started fast too - much faster than Windows and Linux.

Firefox does seem to have its fair share of issues on OS X or I seem to be having a fair amount of bad luck, either way, I had to resolve the issue, since Firefox is my browser of choice and if Safari can do it, damn it, so can Firefox.

My first step was to check the file type associations in OS X itself, I located a JNLP file ( the extensions used by Java Web Start files ) and did a Get Info ( Cmd+I ) OS X had JNLP set to open with Java Web Start, and opening a JNLP file from the Finder worked perfectly. Running Firefox a few times it became apparent that somehow Firefox had a different file association to that of the OS, how this had happened I have no idea. So could I just wipe this out and start over? Firefox failed to let me choose an application to run against, I had open with Java Web Start or Save to Disk, and no option to Choose. Firefox preferences didn't help either, it has a section for file assocations but you can't add in any, you can only list and delete - what is the point of this I ask you?

In the end I found a very useful java web start guide on mindprod.com that pointed me to an great firefox extension called MIME Edit that allows you to setup mime type / app associations. Once I had MIME Edit installed I setup a mime to for "application/x-java-jnlp-file" and hey presto it all started working. I am sorry to say in this instance that Firefox failed in its file type associations when the host OS had everything laid out.

Hopefully we'll see some improvement in this area in Firefox 3.0.
]]>