Pretty much the ultimate test for any JS engine is this website.  The stars above are pretty hardcore (there’s a lot of them, and the code isn’t optimized).  Google Chrome is impressively fast (but so is Safari), but the rendering of the stars looks a bit odd.  Are there PNG/opacity problems perhaps?

Update:  yes, there are.  Chrome uses a new drawing engine, and it doesn’t work.  Also, translucent text doesn’t anti-alias properly (check out the BBC News website – the Accessibility link is humourously unreadable, while the rest of the site is fine).

It is quick though.  Another good test of the browser is my Easter card.  http://www.kufluk.com/easter/
I’ve added a larger number of bunnies than usual, and the JS is fine!  Sadly, the animated GIFs are causing trouble though.

There is a lot to dislike about printers.

• The cost of cartridges
• The printing software http://camendesign.com/?200806291149
• The way they stop picking up paper properly after 6 months, forcing you to buy another printer
• The way they notify the whole house when they run out of paper.

Let’s face it:  I have no love for printer makers.

But the drivers?  WTF?

You know how you cancel a print job, then it hangs around, freezing all printing, forever?
To fix you must:

• Open Services (Control Panel, Admin tools, Services)
• Stop the print spool service
• Delete the print queue (c:\windows\system32\spool\printer)
• Restart the print queue
• Restart the application which originally printed.

All this is a bit awkward.  Nothing seems to have really improved since Windows first allowed you to “do other things” while printing.  Woo.

“We seek to share with all parties to the UNFCCC the vision of, and together with them to consider and adopt in the UNFCCC negotiations, the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognising that this global challenge can only be met by a global response, in particular, by the contributions from all major economies, consistent with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”

“We seek to share the vision of the goal”.  Pfff

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7494891.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7472722.stm

Cool.

I wonder:  How do you clean the windows?

Something people have asked me to do before.  I didn’t know how to do it, but I’ve found it here:

http://yahoorezinr.com/

The form has an action mailto:email@ddress.com?subject=blah blah

And the form submission data is the body text of the email.  In FireFox anyway.  IE seems to add a postdata attachment instead.  But I guess if one of the fields was called “body”, then it would be the message text.

It’s kindof ok.  But ugly in both.  Anyone know how to do this nicely?

Do they test stuff on the live site?

It seems so.  Yesterday we had a javascript error all day.  Today, there’s a huge, obscuring Apple test banner.

Since our Internet access here at Digitas is a bit wacky, people think we’re in Belgium (Google does anyway), and the BBC gives us adverts.  After always complaining that the USA treats outsiders like second-class citizens (fingerprint scans, crappy plane seats), it’d be disappointing to discover we did it too.  I mean, unless it was specifically targeted

Surely the BBC tests things properly first, right?

Ok, so I’m old fashioned.  Not to mention, right-handed.

I prefer to use PC keys for cut, copy and paste, which are shift+del, ctrl+ins, shift+ins respectively.

They don’t work in Flash.  Usually, when you try to cut (shift-delete), you actually delete, which is very frustrating six minutes later when you can’t paste.

So I’ve installed AutoHotKey (autohotkey.com), and added this as a script:

+Del::Send ^x
^Ins::Send ^c
+Ins::Send ^v

This now works everywhere

Please give all your hard-earned to the little kiddies while I run round London in the pursuit of more painful feet. Continue reading →