Month: October 2004

My theory, and only a theory, on why major software developers skip software version numbers beginning with the number 4.
If you go around looking, you’ll notice that many software vendors skip the 4. In a few oriental languages, the number 4 is an unlucky number. Forexample in Chinese, it means death. (more…)

A very interesting article I found, here. claims that researchers have found a mutant gene that is resistant to HIV.
However, it’s too small of a sample to infer any facts.
Hope it’s a step closer to the AIDS epidemic cure; which lately seems to have been put on hold. I find it strange, while it’s still prevalent.

CSS is supposed to be a standard. However, Microsoft has managed to bungle the thing up so much, that it’s barely useable.
Those that develop webpages and are informed usually make pages so that the code displays properly for the VAST majority of pages. I know many far too many that don’t — and these people really shouldn’t be coding for a living. These people have great design skills, but they only can make it work for the shrinking percentage of MSIE users.
I’m just wondering when they will learn, or perish without knowing, of other important, standards compliant browsers out there. I personaly will stick to the major brands, as that will cover the 98% of users. If it works for mozilla, and MSIE, it’ll work for almost everyone.
Firefox is great, but it’s many rendering issues have me annoyed as well.
Flash is something else I’ve started to tinker with. It has the visual interface, and the actionscripting which is catching my attention. With a combination of mysql + php + flash and actionscripting, combined would make a very presentable and pleasing web portal/application.
Flash would just bypass the CSS crap, and all the browser non-standardness. Flash works on LINUX, WIN32, and Mac. So I don’t see any issue of compatibility. How it looks on one OS will like the same on all the other supported OSes. Though it is not standards compliant (that I know of), it’s still a route I’m willing to take, because of the issues of compatibility.
The actual writing of code is not the challenge to me, it’s getting it to display the same on all platforms.
For example, I spent a few hours today, tinkering with the CSS on this blog… I could have spent my time on better things, but it’s learning, and hopefully developing it into a useful skill.