Scripts.Indisguise.Org - a hobbyist's blog and scripts archive

Kelvin told me that the MacUpdate Parallels bundle went live yesterday, and I caved and bought it last night. The current bundle, which will continue to run for 12 days (at the time of this writing), contains the following gems:

• Hazel
• Art Text
• MenuCalendarClock
• Leap
• StoryMill
• Typinator
• DVRemaster Pro
• Sound Studio
• BannerZest
• Parallels Desktop

The latter three are currently still unlocked at the moment, with them getting unlocked once the 5,000, 10,000, and 15,000 bundles have been sold, respectively.

Personally, I’m interested in the following applications:

• Hazel - looks like this is the ultimate app to have if you’re obsessive compulsive ;) the tagline is “personal Max OS X housekeeper”, and while application deletion is already handled by AppZapper (which I bought in the MacHeist bundle before), this still looks like a good application to invest in.
• MenuCalendarClock - I’ll admit I’ve never used iCal and Address Book all that much, but with this application it looks like I’ll be using them a lot more now. I love being able to see to-do lists and events right when I login, something that I once had on my Windows PC.
• StoryMill - for anyone who knows me, you’d know why this is interesting ;) novel writing software! Looks pretty nifty, allowing you to organize characters, scenes, etc.
• Typinator - for shorter keystrokes all over! I’ll have to see how this works with me typing half the time in a different language. Actually, it just fixed one typo I had while writing this entry, from “hvae” to “have”. ;) Nifty!
• DVDRemaster Pro - DVD backups anyone? This is an important utility and it looks to be pretty robust.
• Parallels Desktop - of course. I need IE for testing. Booting up in another OS wastes a lot of time. This will be cool once it’s unlocked!

I plan to review each application in my interested-in list as I play a bit with it over the next few days, so check back if you’re interested. :) I’ll try to do the other applications, so let me know which you’re interested in, but no promises!

Go check the promo bundle out yourself! ;)

Edited to add: I’ve started reviewing! Click to see the reviews, if you haven’t decided on getting the bundle yet:

• Typinator Review
• Hazel Review

I came across this one today: JavaScript in StarGate. Man, it’s fun to see code you know on TV, but I love the comments on that post the best:

“The aliens are trying to open a new browser window a synchronize it with our screen size…..bloody bastards!!” –OndraM

“Wow, and we thought XSS Injection was a security vulnerability. In the future, h4ckers actually inject evil robot bugs into your lair via XSS.” –tj111

;)

Makes me want to seriously watch this show now.

From the start of my “awakening” to the knowledge of web standards, accessibility, and the like, I’ve been coding in XHTML. I started with XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and then as I got more into web standards, XHTML 1.0 Strict. I treat this issue of web standards, accessibility, and validity more and more importantly as time goes by. But the question is, is XHTML is correct choice, or was HTML the right document type definition I should have been using all along?

Gasp! I can hear it now. I’ve been an avid XHTML supporter for quite some time, making sure my scripts chug out valid XHTML markup. A lot of my online friends feel the same about XHTML. But I’ve been hearing more and more about the arguments for and against XHTML, that I’ve decided to sit down and really think about it.

Here are my reasons for choosing XHTML waaaay back when, and what makes these reasons invalid:

1. False: HTML is parsed as tag soup, but since XHTML should be valid when parsed, it should be parsed faster and better, not in “quirks mode”.

   Unfortunately, almost all usage today of XHTML is as HTML, and not as XML. This means that they are parsed as “tag soup”:

   “XHTML is an XML format; this means that strictly speaking it should be sent with an XML-related media type (application/xhtml+XML, application/xml, or text/xml). However XHTML 1.0 was carefully designed so that with care it would also work on legacy HTML user agents as well. If you follow some simple guidelines, you can get many XHTML 1.0 documents to work in legacy browsers. However, legacy browsers only understand the media type text/html, so you have to use that media type if you send XHTML 1.0 documents to them. But be well aware, sending XHTML documents to browsers as text/html means that those browsers see the documents as HTML documents, not XHTML documents.” XHTML Frequently Asked Questions

   If you want your XHTML to be parsed as XML (and take advantage of the marginally-faster parser… and when they say “marginally”, apparently it is “marginally”!), you have to send it as XML. Unfortunately IE doesn’t support that — you will get a document tree instead of your website layout, unless you give it extra instructions to do so. (See here.) And since IE is still the dominating browser around (yes, I know you’re annoyed), one just can’t ignore it.

   If XHTML is parsed the way it should be parsed (as XML), once your document is found to be not well-formed, the browser is supposed to choke and stop parsing. Period.

   “To minimize the occurrence of nasty surprises when parsing the document, XML user agents are told to not be flexible with error handling: if a user agent comes upon a problem in the XML document, it will simply give up trying to read it. Instead, the user will be presented with a simple parse error message instead of the webpage. This eliminates the compatibility issues with incorrectly-written markup and browser-specific error handling methods by requiring documents to be “well-formed”, while giving webpage authors immediate indication of the problem. This does, however, mean that a single minor issue like an unescaped ampersand (&) in a URL would cause the entire page to fail, and so most of today’s public web applications can’t safely be incorporated in a true XHTML page.” Beware of XHTML

2. False: HTML is so old-school, it’s getting deprecated.

   Apparently not. I’ve heard of HTML 5 for a while now, but only fully realized recently what this means. The W3C renewed the HTML working group, and apparently, web browsers have leaned more towards HTML5 than XHTML2.

   Even more shocking, XHTML2 is not backwards-compatible!

   “XHTML 1.x is not “future-compatible”. XHTML 2, currently in the drafting stages, is not backwards-compatible with XHTML 1.x. XHTML 2 will have lots of major changes to the way documents are written and structured, and even if you already have your site written in XHTML 1.1, a complete site rewrite will usually be necessary in order to convert it to proper XHTML 2. A simple XSL transformation will not be sufficient in most cases, because some semantics won’t translate properly.

   “HTML 4.01 is actually more future-compatible. An HTML 4.01 document written to modern support levels will be valid HTML 5, and HTML 5 is where the majority of attention is from browser developers and the W3C.”

   Beware of XHTML

These are the most important arguments, arguments that I can’t ignore as a web developer. Obviously, the Beware of XHTML document is a good read, gives both the myths and benefits of using XHTML. What’s even more important is that the way XHTML is used, it’s just like “the new HTML”, when it shouldn’t be that way. XHTML is XML, and should be treated as XML. The extension shouldn’t be .html. Browsers should “give up” when there’s an error, and not try to repair the document — after all, that’s what browsers do with ill-formed XML documents, right?

What doctype declaration do you use? And why?

So last night, armed with my nifty new font, I decided I’d get a move on with the next top-level version of Enthusiast. (Yes, I’ve started working on Enthusiast 4.0.)

(For those of you interested in it, it will probably be slow going, as whatever free time I have needs to be spent juggling between rest/recreation/social/family/other hobbies… and because I’m putting in a lot more effort in the backbone, and in usability.)

One thing I’ve always believed in is that you only get as good as what you actually do. That one might read a lot of tech blogs, a lot of white papers, a lot of those hifalutin framework blueprints… but if you don’t get down and dirty with code, you can’t expect to get better. It’s a given that the first few codes you churn out will be riddled with flaws. That’s normal, but that’s better than never getting over that simply because “I can’t fully understand OOP yet, I need to read more about it”. Ugh, get a grip, and get on with playing with code.

My first PHP project, way back when I was doing self-studying, was actually the precursor to Enthusiast. It was the script that handled my then-fanlisting, Bubblegum Crisis. After it was working, I moved on to the first “system” — an admin tool for handling my directory for NeoPets galleries. I actually put up that site, got a pretty nice following for it, and then when I weaned off NeoPets, I shut it down.

And then I started working on Enthusiast (the single-fanlisting version).

Without these first projects, I’d never have learned PHP. And this time, with PHP4’s End of Life looming in the distance, Enthusiast will be bringing me forward to PHP5. OOP, Exceptions, and many newfangled stuff in PHP isn’t new to me, but it’s been a while since I’ve actually handled PHP code continuously (almost eight months–the same time I’ve been with Yahoo! as a frontend engineer). I will be getting personal with a lot of these new things, in order to do what I need for it to do. And that’s quite exciting.

For anyone who’s thinking of learning PHP, the best way to learn really is by doing something you’re passionate about using PHP. I was passionate about NeoPets galleries; I was passionate about fanlistings. The passion drives you forward, and that’s a great thing to have.

I will probably be blogging here occasionally about new things I find out while working with PHP, or thoughts on development in general — what would you like to hear about?

I came across an interesting monospace font, Inconsolata, when it was featured at Smashing Magazine (along with other interesting fonts). I’ve started using it — it speaks to both my geek programmer and aesthetic sensibilities.

I’ve noticed that straight quotes (single or double) lean slightly to the right, as if it doesn’t know if it’s a straight quote or a curly quote, exactly. This is “pretty”. Unfortunately, the backtick (`) leans the same way to the left, around the same angle. This can possibly be a problem (or maybe that’s too harsh: the word is annoyance) especially for types such as myself who habitually use backticks and straight quotes in the same line (see the SQL queries above).

The same goes for zero (0) and uppercase O — the former isn’t slashed, and the difference in width between the two is rather slight especially at small font sizes. I don’t want to need to use a bigger, less space-efficient font size just to use the font. The number one (1) and lowercase l seem different enough to me, so that’s good.

The font is pretty, but is pretty enough?

We’ll see. If I end up getting annoyed because I’d be hunting for code errors and can’t easily distinguish it (due to things looking somewhat the same… especially at 3AM in the morning and some 486732478623472 lines of code later), I suppose it will be time to look for another font.

For the moment — it’s shiny!