<Glazblog/>

A few photos from the Desktop Linux Summit that took place last week in San Diego.

" After reading it, you may still think the French are arrogant, aloof and high-handed, but you will know why. "

Thanks JJEnser for the pointer.

So I have now two iPaqs 5555 in front of me. One running Familiar and Minimo and one running Windows Mobile 2003 and Pocket Internet Explorer. Minimo is 100000 times superior to Pocket Internet Explorer. And Familiar Linux is often better than Windows; in particular, it can rotate the screen so I needed to find a utility doing the same on Windows.

• Nyditot virtual display, a must-have, super-powerful... DotPocket is another tool for rotating the screen and changing the resolution, but I found it unstable and crashing.
• Once you have installed the above, MultiIE is also very useful
• Topkey, useful and really cheap

C'est un joli bout de nana pour qui j'avais un respect certain à force de la lire. J'étais encore plus respectueux en lisant les tétraflopées de commentaires laissés sur son blog par des boutonneux presque pré-pubères en mal d'émotions fortes et voyant son calme à gérer ça. Je ne l'ai rencontré qu'une fois et que je crois qu'à part "bonjour" on n'a pas du se dire grand'chose, il faut dire qu'elle avait son troupeau de mâles autour d'elle, certains focalisés sur son discours, d'autres sur la dentelle noire-ou-rouge-je-sais-plus-et-puis-je-m-en-fous de son décolleté plongeant, et que ça bride un peu les capacités de discussion normale. Elle vient de péter un plomb grave, mais alors grave comme grave, et je ne la reconnais plus. Comme quoi un blog, ça ne décrit pas forcément, voire jamais, quelqu'un.

B2R...

Back to reality.

A part ça, la nuit est chaude à San Diego et le restaurant Firenze à Encinitas est vraiment remarquable à tous points de vue. C'est mieux que Romorantin, Montbéliard et l'ensemble de la Lorraine, de la Marne et des autres belles contrées hexagonales où même les corbeaux volent sur le dos. Retour sur Paname demain.

Ah, au fait, faites-moi seulement penser, le jour où je voudrais vraiment gagner de l'argent, à m'installerà San Diego comme gonfleur de poitrines, le marché est florissant au-delà de l'imaginable ici...

I know, the title is bad, but I am lazy. I am in San Diego, sitting on a bar's terrasse with free WiFi, although I don't know if it's provided by the bar itself or some hacktivist in the area. The pretty young girl in front of me does not understand why I was laughing at loud a few minutes ago (it's Tristan's fault, his last post is hilarious). The beer is excellent, the view too, and I enjoy an hour of rest after 3 days of work, 16 hours of travel, 9 hours of time shift, and two nights of jetlag.

I was supposed to have dinner with a friend yesterday night, but that did not work well; I had to have dinner alone and tried to find an empty spot in a correct restaurant... After 45 minutes, I gave up. Each restaurant I visited had a waiting list of 40 to 75 minutes. Eventually, I went to the supermarket, bought some excellent hot food I brought back to the hotel, and had an excellent dinner in my own company, listening to Bob Woodward interviewed by Larry King. Larry King is never better than when he has a smart guest, and Woodward has a wonderful brain.

The Desktop Linux Summit went very well and the panel I was in was quite appreciated I think.

For those of you who know the story behind the terms disruptive innovation, besides the fact blake and hyatt went upset about it when I said firefox/firebird/phoenix was a disruptive innovation for the Mozilla Application Suite (and I was right about it), I had the chance to hear Clayton Christensen, Innovator's Dilemma's author, give a speech at the end of the Desktop Linux Summit. Quite interesting; not brilliant, but interesting. I had a question for him, given the fact his books and all his examples only deal with corporations: does free software increase or not the disruption given the fact the software authors have no constraints of ROI or time while sustaining technologies' providers do have such constraints. The answer was a bit disappointing "well, you are right, maybe harvardian smile meaning I can tell you more for a thousand bucks an hour)". He also told us about the concept of "trivial innovation" from Andry Grove . That was more than interesting; unfortunately, he spent only a minute or two on that topic.

I also found the time to visit the local Fry's Electronics. I just can't make a trip to California without a visit to Fry's. I'm coming back with a few gadgets that I can't find in France in these versions or that cost so much more in France that it's worth bringing'em back from the US. I bought for istance a wifi/g printer server for $119 that costs 249EUR in Paris... Unfortunately, still no iPod mini.

Since I did not want to play yesterday evening's game, trying to find a restaurant, I ended up at McDonald's. Asking for a 6pcs McNuggets meal. To my big surprise, the hostess started laughing, telling me 6pcs are only in the HappyMeal for kids and that adults meals were 10 or 20pcs. Laughing myself, I said "ok for a kids's happy meal" Got my nice paperbag with a toy inside, the other people looking at me as if I was an alien from outerspace! No wonder why so many people are fat here, sucking sodas from sunrise to sunfall and eating for two or three.

Last thing, I am pondering a W3C's membership for my company despite of the price, I already blogged about that. If Disruptive Innovations joins, that'll be to work on CSS and the HTML4 errata. We'll see.

" En tant que nouveau cadre promis à de futures promotions, Chen devait beaucoup à Li, son mentor dans les arcanes politiques de la police. "

Qiu Xiaolong, Visa pour Shanghai

1. prendre le livre le plus proche.
2. ouvrir le livre à la page 23.
3. trouver la cinquième phrase.
4. écrire le texte sur votre journal ainsi que ces instructions.

Nice body, perfect shape, friendly and smart, I am in love.

We have promised to contribute back all Nvu's code to Mozilla.org. Time has come. More details will follow.

The review is available here.

There is no way to define a local site

Right. That was included in 0.20 release notes. 0.3 will allow to create a local site.

I think this is unacceptable because all web developers first develop on their own machines

"Unacceptable". Hum. Even in a v0.20? In my humble opinion, you are expecting a v1.0 feature level from that 0.20...

I wish N|vu could create documents with different doctypes like XHTML transitional or strict

That's on the TODO list.

Currently these settings are in Format menu under "Page Colors and Background" and "Page Title and Properties". I would suggest the author to merge these 2 menus into one and make it available via right click for easy and fast access

Why not. I have to see it is possible.

Sadly I could not find any way to change the page encoding except modifying the source code.

You can do find using File > Save as charset (that menu item will be renamed "Save and change encoding").

Since I could not find a way to attach an external style sheet to my page

Ah, you missed it. Tools > CSS Editor.  Click on "Link element" button.

I wondered if it could save these inline codes to an external CSS file

It can. Extract the styles of the element using the contextual click on the structure toolbar then open the CSS editor and select the internal stylesheet the application just created. You can export it to the local filesystem.

<style type="text/css">
*#moz_BIYVeVTk3320
{
 margin-top: 0px;
 margin-left-value: 0px;
 margin-left-ltr-source: physical;
 margin-left-rtl-source: physical;
 padding-top: 0px;
 padding-left-value: 0px;
 padding-left-ltr-source: physical;
 padding-left-rtl-source: physical;
}
</style>

This is a bug and should be fixed. Thanks for spotting it out.

Sadly it did not append code to that file but overwrote it

Euhhhhh.... The button says "Export", not "Append"...

It also has a neat preview feature for text, background and borders related styles

Not only text, background and borders. All styles applied through the CSS editor are immediately applied to the document and the effect is instantaneously visible.

One thing I'd love to see is the ability to apply a class or id to a tag by right clicking on it in status bar

That's in the forthcoming version.

While dialog boxes to insert both forms and tables are very simple and yet professional, the default-generated code is again bloated

This will be fixed in forthcoming version.

table body tag being unrequested

according to the HTML 4.01 specification section 11.2.1, at least one tbody element is mandatory inside a table... And Mozilla serializes all elements, there is no way in the DOM to tell if an element was really present in the document instance or was implicit.

One may say that WYSIWYG programs are used by newbies and that they don't care about the code but I strongly disagree, because this was a mistake made by MS FrontPage, and because of that, these days the web is full of wrongly-coded web pages which look different on each browser

Please... FrontPage is a good tool producing bad markup, that's all. It's possible to do wysiwyg and valid markup, we'll prove it.

Again, implementation of a global Properties bar would make developers' lives easier

and increase drastically the size of the editor window or reduce drastically the size of the content area... Our editor should be useable on screens smaller than 21 inches.

This code seems much cleaner, but again it has an unneeded <br> in it

Yes. And we need it to be able to select the empty line. It's a long story and I won't enter into details here but this is a VERY complex problem in Gecko, Mozilla's layout engine, going faaaar beyond Nvu and Composer. We started again recently discussing the issue and we know we have to fix the problem.

When switched back to Source view again I was shocked that N|vu deleted all that code. I think this is a bug.

I agree with that.

One disappointment was that my layer did not have any handles to move or resize itself.

Because the style rules attached to your div were not making it "position: absolute"... We are not going to show resizing handles and a grabber for all divs with an ID. A div with an ID is not a movable object by nature.

No layers support, code somehow gets deleted if it has no content (for layers).

You did that test too fast. You have 3 buttons in the main toolbar allowing to create a layer from the selection in one click, bring a layer to front, or send it to the background.

It still is a very young application and does not yet provide options to insert Flash, Shockwave, Java Applets, Movies and embedded plugins into the page

Right.

I am aware that Mozilla's source view has had a syntax highlighting for at least 3 releases. So I think it should not be too hard to implement it in N|vu.

You are wrong. Mozilla is displaying coloured source. Nvu would have to (a) edit it (b) preserving the selection between the normal view and that view. And that's hard. I started discussed  the thing with Mozilla peers and we have some tracks. I have some extra ideas. But it's harder than you think, trust me.

I think professional web developers will want to wait for the missing parts and features to be implemented

Seriously, that's not our primary target. Pros will always have to rely on much more advanced tools, integrating various technologies and not only a markup editor. We want FIRST to provide average users with a reliable, easy, powerful and clean content editor for the Web. Then we'll think about the pros. I got some feedback that some schools and university departments moved to Nvu. That's part of our target.

I don't like the GPL. Comments closed on this post.

Lindows goes public. It proposed LINE for its Nasdaq ticker. Don't ask, I don't have stocks.

Delayed 8 hours... The plane had a technical problem and the maintainance team could not repair. They were waiting for a guy coming from London with the part needed to fix the problem but a fire in London Heathrow delayed the plane 4 hours... So United put me on another flight for SD tomorrow via SFO instead of DC. Grrr

Calotte lovers, be happy, italian "scientists" think about you.

I'm glad to announce that Disruptive Innovations has been chosen by a big industrial european company to help them on Web standards and Mozilla-based technologies, including the editor, XUL and XBL. The name of the company and the project remain confidential. This is good news for Mozilla: Gecko and XUL are more and more perceived by tech deciders as a viable basis for their internal - and sometimes public - projects. Yay!

Update, 8 hours later: I am glad to announce that Disruptive Innovations has been chosen today by another big european name for its internal project, based on Gecko and XUL!!! I have not discussed yet the confidentiality of the thing so I can't give you more details for the moment.

Extrait de fciwa, reformaté en discussion. Nominable chez Mat, clairement...

moi: J'ai oublié la référence, désolé: http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-becss-19990804
lui: Edf coincé entre Netscape et Microsoft, je trouve çà assez original.
     Depuis quand il font des navigateurs Web, chez Edf ? 

• Amazon.com has launched A9... I'm not sure it means Joe Francis will have more time to spend on the editor core
• Lindowsspire.com

  

Taking a few days of vacation, finally, away from any computer, phone, email and blog...

Je confirme. J'en suis bien l'auteur:

" Il y a ceux qui font chier le monde, et ceux qui font. Moi j'essaye de faire. "

Now working on class assignment; it'll be better than in Composer++.

Néandertal	Cro-Magnon	Sapiens	Matignon

Hmmm. There's a bug apparently

Paris Carnet, c'est ce soir et pour la première fois depuis ls première édition, j'y serai. A ce soir.

The site manager is now able to browse local dirs, create new dirs, delete files and dirs. It took more time than expected because of the following problems:

1. don't try to directly set the cursor on a XUL page element... The result can be sometimes weird: cursor is set but some XUL elements become unresponsive
2. Windows sucks... And I found at least bug 239804 to prove it. It took me quite a while to figure out why the contents of the directory were correctly removed but never the directory itself.

C'est HÉNAURME... Et puis faut bien que quelqu'un remplace TotalementCrétin par ces jours de disette!

Plusieurs personnes m'ont envoyé des courrier privés pour me demander ce qu'était "l'ambiance fin de règne des dernières années de Giscard" et pourquoi j'avais l'air de lui en vouloir, lui qui est si intelligent et si au-dessus de la piétaille. Il est à noter que les 4 personnes en question ont toutes moins de trente ans, ce qui explique qu'elles n'aient que très peu de souvenirs d'avant 1981... J'ai donc fouillé dans mes archives personnelles et j'en ai ressorti la Perle qui répondra à toutes les questions que vous pourriez vous poser sur Giscard d'Estaing entre 1960 et 1981: le numéro 1 des Dossiers du Canard Enchaîné "Giscard: la monarchie contrariée" d'Avril 1981, totalement épuisé depuis longtemps bien entendu. Vous les trouverez cependant assez facilement chez les bouquinistes des quais de Seine, pour un prix en général entre 5 et 15 euros. Pour votre information, j'ai acheté mon exemplaire lors de sa sortie en avril 1981 pour la modique somme de 2,50 francs, j'avais 14 ans et cela représentait la moitié de mon budget hebdomadaire.

La lecture de ce Dossier du Canard est un pur moment de bonheur, mais aussi d'effroi vu comment Giscard et sa clique se comportaient. Affairisme, morts inexpliquées, barbouzes, diamants, avions renifleurs, tout y est. Trouvez-le et achetez-le, je vous garantis que vous ne le regretterez pas, même à plus de vingt ans d'écart (nom de Zeus que le temps passe trop vite). Nota bene: Le jeu de mot du titre n'est pas totalement dénué de sens; les français ont vraiment rejeté Giscard en 81 aussi fort qu'ils ont rejeté la Chiraquie il y a peu.

Frankenstein was biological. Dell made the first silicium-based monster. It's a laptop, the new Inspiron XPS, dedicated to gaming:

• up to P4 HT 3.40 GHz, On-die 2 MB cache (L3), On-die 512 KB cache (L2), 32 KB internal cache (L1), 800MHz front side BUS, Intel 865PE Chipset
• up to 2 Gigs of RAM 400MHz DDR Dual Channel Memory!!!
• strict minimum 9.06lbs (4.11 kg)!!! Is it still portable?
• 2 inches of height, that's considerably more than my Inspiron 8500 and that one is already thick!
• 4 USB2. Of course Firewire. DVI output.
• up to 100Gig 2"5 hard-disk!!!
• integrated subwoofer! yeah baby, make that table groove!
• cooling everywhere: the laptop leaves 2 millimeters wide open at its bottom for air circulation. The batteries and other parts have special air circulation holes. Don't put that laptop on your knees!
• Gigabit ethernet
• and the "quicksnap" covers... Aaaah, don't miss them!!!

So who's going to be the first one to bring such a laptop with a Cipher or Skullz cover to a W3C meeting? Hmmm?

Markup cleaner, still ugly UI, basic but functional. I am adding a pref to run it automatically when a document is saved.

Dixit la presse ce matin:

«C'est un grand défi pour M. Sarkozy aux Finances», appuyait hier soir Jacques Chirac

Certes. Et Chirac ne devrait pas oublier que Sarkozy peut toujours remettre sa démission. Il utiliserait alors exactement la technique de Chirac lui-même contre Giscard, sauf qu'il sera en nettement meilleure position puisque n'étant pas personnellement à l'origine de la totalité de la politique menée. Il apparaîtrait alors comme un sauveur potentiel, un libéral de rupture avec la gabegie et le chaos UMPien. Et puis il lui fallait absolument quitter le Ministère de l'Intérieur... Le printemps va être chaud, il ne fait pas bon être le patron des CRS qui répriment les manifs. En clair, loin d'être enfermé dans Bercy comme le prétendent les media, je pense que Sarkozy vient encore de mettre une nouvelle arme dans sa besace.

Mais ne le dites pas à Chirac, il a oublié qu'il ne représente que 20% des électeurs environ...

A short and great post by Andy Edmonds: XUL vs FLEX vs XAML. A must-read.