d3ft.com

September 21, 2009

The Data Liberation Front

Google being serious about being open. I’ve often wondered why they offer so many ways to get your stuff out of Google apps (e.g. like all the data you can pull out of Analytics). Their motto:

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier for them to move data in and out.

More places should do this (*cough* *cough* Facebook Twitter MySpace etc etc etc *cough* *cough*). #

Georgia and Verdana typefaces become credible

I consider this a rather stunning announcement, considering the source (Microsoft). #

The HTML5 drag and drop disaster

A fine rant about something that Microsoft came up with that has somehow survived, and made it into HTML5. It should not have:

Web developers MUST NOT (in the sense of RFC 2119) use HTML5 drag and drop. They should use old-school scripts instead.

….

In fact, it’s so outrageously bad that I’ve gone on strike. I refuse to do any more research on drag and drop. Go do it yourself. Or don’t bother. Whatever. I don’t care.

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Thin Text in Safari

Mac OS X 10.6 changes the way text is displayed in Safari. This WebKit–specific code fixes the display in Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5 and later. Fixes a problem I didn’t even realize I had. Thanks fellas!

[via] #

Iconic Art

Felix Jimenez shows his favorite icons from his Mac. The attention to detail on these things is amazing, especially since the upgrade in pixels beginning in Mac OS X 10.5. It also shows widowed text on the Dictionary app. This bugs me because I expect Apple’s icons to be picture (and grammar) perfect. #

Aggressive Graceful Degradation

Jonathan Christopher on how to properly deal with the problems associated with Internet Explorer 6. He gives his best reason to continue working with the ancient browser in the first paragraph:

No matter how much it may bother us, IE6 is still quite a hot topic around our little community. Two camps have recruited their groups and each seems quite comfortable with the accepted stance on their side of the fence. To one segment, IE6 is literally a bane of existence, and taking active aggressive measures against IE is daily practice. The other side, however, sucks it up and deals.

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