commafruit.co.uk. welcome.

This one slipped under my radar somehow: Microsoft have changed the default rendering behaviour of Internet Explorer 8. Previously, the plan was that IE8 would behave as IE7, unless the developer added a special <meta> tag. Now, the default is to use the (slightly more standards compliant) IE8 renderer by default, but give the developer the option to use IE7-style rendering (again, but means of a <meta> tag). PPK sums it up nicely:

Microsoft has decided to put the interests of web standards above the interests of the Intranets of its corporate clients.

I advise you to read the previous paragraph again. Even two years ago I had never expected to be able to write such a statement.

The Yahoo board have rejected last month’s unsolicited purchase bid by Microsoft. Phew!

FancyZoom is a Lightbox-like JavaScript library for browsing images on a webpage. Actually, I think it’s better than Lightbox in some ways, great animation.

Sun Buys MySQL

Easter eggs in PHP. Didn’t know that!

Only just realised that Vitamin, the great web magazine, is created by Carsonified, who also create great conferences.

Canada, I thought you were cool

reCAPTCHA

You may already have seen it, but it’s worth recommending: IEs4Linux is excellent resource, allowing you to run IE6 (and, if you choose, 5.5 and 5) on Linux. Worked perfectly for me first time, that’s running Ubuntu Feisty.

Just thought I’d say, having used them both extensively in recent projects, that I have a preference for TinyMCE over FCKeditor. That is all.

Nifty method, complete with PHP source, of serving compressed CSS while still retaining the original file in editable, commented format.

Why does this news that Canonical and Linspire are “teaming up” for future Linux distribution, put me so much in mind of this Penny Arcade strip?

I know I’m hardly their target market, but Walmart’s attitude to Firefox and other, non-IE browsers is completely unacceptable.

Metisse describes itself as “not focused on a particular kind of interaction (e.g. 3D) and should not be seen as a new desktop proposal. It is rather a tool for creating new types of desktop environments.” It’s project page is also very keen to stress that it is “not a 3D desktop.” Check out the videos for this, it looks extremely promising.
The work will be made part of Mandriva Spring 2007, and Mandriva already has a page for them.

Google have altered their search algorithm to prevent Googlebombing (or at least reduce the effects).

Are we real? Or are we all just part of some kind of enormous simulation? Reassuringly, the article concludes that it really doesn’t matter: “Even if we’re not real, we perceive our world to be real.”

AJAX-y Timeline of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! Acquisitions - very nice interface. Hopefully the author will keep this updated, it makes keeping track of things very simple.

Game of Life v0.0.1

This is a temporary name for a project I’ve been working on - it’s an implementation of John Conway’s Game of Life, in Mono. I hope to use this as the first project which I conduct properly, managing the code and it’s development rather than just making the whole thing up as I go along as I normally would. Additionally, I will be learning, C#, Mono, Gtk#, and (possibly), Subversion or similar.

Anyway, the first release is here, along with the full source code. Behold Version 0.0.1!

While reading notes for the Will Wright link (below), I found that Sim City 5 is in the works. Not earth shattering news, but it’s good to know that the series is still under development. I stopped playing the 4th edition when my laptop was stolen over a year a ago, as it had my only remaining Windows installation. Since the game does not run to my satisfaction on Linux, I haven’t much played it since.
I see that Sim City 2000 (which I have a copy of somewhere - at my parents house maybe?) runs nicely under Wine. I shall test this when next I get the chance.