Filed under: Browsers
Post taken from fromthefrontend.co.uk
You can download this blog post in audio format here (right-click and save target/link as..) or play it using the podcast player on the right.
Firefox 3 – code named Gran Paradiso is under development. It will use the Gecko 1.9 engine and the latest build released already is said to have passed the CSS Acid2 test. Although Opera, Safari have already achieved this it’s a big landmark for Firefox and a good sign of things to come.
Firefox 2.0 already features the most advanced CSS 3.0 support including CSS rounded corners and alpha transparency and Firefox 3 is set to have full support. Other features include improved graphic rendering and support for Javascript 2.
Of course we can expect there will be many bug fixes and tweaks making Firefox faster and more stable. It has been optimised to make better use of your systems hardware so if you have a good graphics card you should notice big improvements both in visual quality and speed for sites that take advantage of this.
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Filed under: News
Post taken from fromthefrontend.co.uk
Although off topic this issue got me so fired up I had to post it. This was motivated by a plain-text email that I received from Ryanair this afternoon.
Irish Airline Ryanair has recently been getting a reputation on being a rip-off with the many hidden charges that inflate a seemingly low cost air fair to premium prices. These increases in charges come with no increase in quality of service. An advertised price of £2-10 can soon escalate to £60 when taxes, baggage and credit card fees are applied.
Now Ryanair may have taken it a step to far. Customers that have existing bookings due to take place after 1st of Feb will have received an email today notifying them that their tax on their flight will be doubled! As a budget airline in many cases the tax on the flights is more than the air fair as it is, with the tax being doubled this makes a significant change to the value of the booking.
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Post taken from fromthefrontend.co.uk
In Podcast two I interview James Myers of CNET Networks regarding Microformats. We discuss, what it is, how to get involved and how it was used on ZDNet.co.uk.
Download the Podcast here (right-click and save target/link as..)
or Play Here:
Transcript to follow shortly. 2 Awards were given out during this interview – you can view them here
Post taken from fromthefrontend.co.uk
At long last I’ve pulled my finger out and typed up the transcript from my now not-so-recent interview with Reinette De Villiers. Enjoy.
Download the Podcast here (right-click and save target/link as..)
or Play Here:
Add to iTunes
or read the following transcript.
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Filed under: Gaming
Post taken from fairlypriced at gamespot
A new contest for UK members has launched. This one offers some Nightfall Goodies.
If you can drag yourself away from Burning Crusade for a bit or if the subscription fee or availablilty in your area has meant your not playing it then Nightfall is a great alternative.
I happen to play both which means I no longer sleep!
You won’t find the prizes anywhere else – they are exclusive to Gamespot so if you win you can really show off.
Meanwhile if your ever on Nightfall look me up – Marissa Tabago (SunSpear). If your a wow fanatic I’m on Deathwing – Hathoria (Draenei Priestess).
Have fun people.
Filed under: Gaming
Post taken from fairlypriced at gamespot
Excited to get my game discs I started the install. Unfortunately not a pain free process. The 4 CD discs each installed successfully, however, at the end of the 4th disc I am asked to upgrade my wow account. Clicking this link takes you to the wow upgrade page which currently shows a count down of 8hrs 36mins – any bets that the upgrade page will fall down about 30seconds after midnight tonight…
This was to be expected as the launch isn’t until the 16th but I thought I’d login anyway to see if there is any changes. When loading up the game I am greeted with the new cinematic (as featured on gamespot) – although I’ve seen it plenty of times before it still exciting to see it when you’ve finally got the game. After this I agree to the terms, login and then… An update.
I go through the update process only to discover it is an update I already downloaded and installed days ago. I login and agree to terms again – and again it asks me to update. This time to 2.0.4. I have already been playing wow with this update. This means that the content on the Burning Crusade CD is version 2.0.2 so the BC has to be patched up to 2.0.4. (A 219mb patch and a 17mb update). I don’t think I had to actually download them again just have the existing download reapplied.
Thinking I’ve finally got there I logged in and agreed to terms again. Yet another update. This one is new – the 2.0.5 update address issues that some players on lower end systems were struggling with. I have to say on my office PC I’ve noticed a slow down due to the new fancy animated background at the login screen, as to whether there is any change in game I don’t know as at this point my lunch break was over. I did manage to get as far as the character screen and can confirm the two new races are still grayed out and unavailable. A character that I did a paid transfer on had arrived on my account though – not bad considering how busy wow must be today – I only requested the transfrer this morning.
I am sure there will be serveral more updates tomorrow as players on various obscure systems go through the dark portal for the first time and find glitches or slow downs as their system grinds to a halt.
Post from fairlypriced at gamespot
Yes my Burning Crusade (BC) discs arrived this morning:
I bought 2 copies at Amazon and 2 at Play.com just to make sure. So far the play.com discs with free delivery arrived (about 10am). I paid for express delivery with Amazon and still no show. Well done Play – very impressed.
I will be heading down to the HMV Midnight launch tonight (with a few other from gamespot) to get my copy signed – I suspect I’ll end up having to buy a HMV copy to – well you can’t have too much wow.
I have 2 wow accounts and the rest are for friends but I suspect a sell out and then the ebay frenzy will start. Anyway good luck to all those queueing tonight.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Post from fromthefrontend
You may have read me rave about Mikons before – the fun tool that lets you create icons and logos online.
They have just improved the service by adding some great new features.
Most noteably – Colour. You can now be even more creative with colour Mikons. You can also type text giving you even more freedom.
To celebrate the launch of these hot new features they are running a contest for the best logo with a great prize for the winner.
Check it out a Mikons.com
Here’s some I made earlier:
Post from Fromthefrontend
Firstly, sorry for the lack of posts recently – it’s amazing how much time is consumed in looking after a new baby. No doubt you’ve seen Baby Olivia’s photos in my flickr stream featured on the rhs of this blog.
Since been back at work after the Crimbo break I’ve had the chance to work on interactive maps for the first time. Having avoided javascript as much as possible during my time as a front-end designer I suddenly found myself wading in with Ajax.
The project was for the atlarge.com home page as previously mentioned on this blog. I had a look at several 3rd party APIs and settled on Yahoo! Maps as being the best option.
It was the easiest to implement and control, had the most features and I had working map with most of the effects I wanted in an afternoon. However, I had to stop using the Yahoo! API because of 3 major problems.
- view full article for more -
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Filed under: Uncategorized
Now that I have 4 blogs running I wanted to consolodate them all here using the wordpress import feature. This seems to have worked successfully for my main blog – From the Front-End as you can see below. However, my blogger posts couldn’t be imported as I’m using the new beta version, I hope wordpress.com supports this in future. The other blogs are not listed as supported by wordpress.com (gamespot and zdnet) so I may just have to reference posts made there, or manually copy them.
Some links in posts were javascript pop-ups which get disabled on wordpress.com so if you find a link that doesn’t work you may have to visit the original post on the site it was orginally on.
