January 2006 Archives
January 28, 2006 5:25 PM
Well I have converted the font on this site to elastic. What does this mean? Well for some it may not mean much at all. Let me explain what I did and why.
If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer then you may have noticed that the text on this site was unable to be changed. Let’s say the text the too small and you wanted to make it larger. In Internet Explorer you would go the menu and select View > Text Size and make the text larger. Well, this would do absolutely nothing! That would suck for anyone who is not able to read small text on a computer screen.
Anyone using FireFox or Safari would not have to worry about this as all they would have to do is press the command-plus keys to increase the text size. Many people use Internet Explorer so I knew I had to change the way text shows on my website.
So how did I change the text? I used to use pixels (px) to define default text size. This is fine for most browsers except Internet Explorer. That browser does not know how to change the text size if it is defined by pixels. Text size is now defined by percentages (%) with the default body text being defined by a keyword.
In short, this means that the text is now elastic. All browsers can now increase or decrease the text on my site if they so choose. Try it on Internet Explorer and you will see the text increase/decrease.
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January 24, 2006 4:00 PM
According to a survey, Apple’s iWork is second place after Microsoft Office in market share. This does not mean that iWork is going to dominate over Microsoft Office. Microsoft has a strong lead, but in one year iWork has taken an impressive percentage of users. The latest numbers are
- Microsoft Office: 95%
- Apple iWork: 2.7%
- Corel WordPerfect: 1.6%
NPD analyst Chris Swenson stated: Apple’s share is particularly impressive considering that iWork runs only on Macs, which account for a small fraction of computers.
Mac users may not be in high numbers, but the iPod has introduced many people to Mac and the user base is increasing.
iWork was introduced January 2005 and includes presentation software (Keynote) and word processing software (Pages). While this is not a full office suite, the numbers are impressive. For instance, it is reported that on the Mac platform iWork accounted for about 17.4% while Microsoft Office got about 82%.
A few things may contribute to this increase in market share. One is the fact that a trial version of iWork is bundled with Mac OS X may help in the figures as users may buy once the 30-day period runs out.
If you do not use the full potential of Microsoft Office, there are many free alternatives available. OpenOffice is the most widely known alternative. It is a full-featured office suite which is compatible with Microsoft Office.
For my office suite I use NeoOffice, also an open-source project, which makes OpenOffice run natively on Mac OS X. What does this mean? In short, this means that NeoOffice has access to Mac OS fonts and other features. OpenOffice does not have this access as it runs as a UNIX program in Mac OS. If any of this is confusing to you then do not worry about this techie stuff that I speak of.
Because I have no desire to spend large amounts of money on Microsoft Office, I find that NeoOffice works well for me and I can save file in the Microsoft format if I choose.
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January 16, 2006 8:55 PM
Tonight at the ApplePickers meeting we discussed the announcements during the keynote address. iLife ‘06 made some updates and even added a new application. Apple is making lots of the features only accessible with a .mac account. iLife ‘06 sells for $79. I’m not going to go too much in detail about this.
iWork ‘06 is still not the full-featured replacement for AppleWorks, it does add more features to both Keynote and Pages. Pages 2 adds mail merge with Address Book and new templates. Keynote 3 adds new HD themes and new cinematic transitions. Both Keynote and Pages add 3D charts, tables with calculations, and freeform curves, shapes and masks.
The last announcements were the first Intel powered Apple laptop and desktop. The new laptop is the MacBook Pro and the desktop is the iMac. The PowerBook is slowly dying as they are still making them, but all Apple computers will transition to Intel processors by the end of 2006.
This seems to be last nail in the coffin for classic Mac OS (Mac OS 9 and earlier). Only Mac OS X is supported by the Intel Macs. Apple seems to be making a smooth transition. During this transition Mac software will become Universal Binaries, which mean the application will run on Intel Macs and PowerPC Macs (the current processor Apple uses). Many programs are already universal binaries.
That is just a brief overview of what happened at Macworld. I will probably add more information as I learn more. Back to the ApplePickers meeting, we had a great question and answer session and had our monthly raffle which included some software which sold at great prices.
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January 10, 2006 11:31 AM
OK, so I am a little late on the greeting. Things have been busy and today was the first day that I had time to write. So with that out of the way let’s get on with it.
2005 was a year of planning and 2006 will hopefully be the year of implementation. Personal debt has been cut and will continue to be slashed as the year progresses. My car will finally be paid off and hopefully April’s car as well. We are also starting our search for a house.
This will also be the year that April gets a new job before she ends up in a mental institute. As for me, I received some books this Christmas regarding web development. I will be working on refining my skills as well as building my portfolio.
So enough about my life. My lasts few posts have been more about technology and as this year starts I have thought about posting more tech tips. I will write about basic technology tips and may discuss more advanced material later.
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