New customer

glazou — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:46:00 +0200

I am extremely pleased to welcome the European Parliament as a major user of BlueGriffon.

Anecdote

glazou — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:33:00 +0200

En 1994, j'ai fait un bref passage dans une SSII appelée CR2A. J'en ai un peu parlé ici. Mais j'ai également une anecdote croustillante à son propos : nous avions dans l'entreprise un Finlandais, finnois de langue, qui bossait avec l'équipe sur un projet commun avec son entreprise. Évidemment, il imprimait de temps en temps des mails venant de sa propre boîte. Un jour, un collègue vient me voir tout dépité et me dit « je crois que l'imprimante est cassée, elle imprime plein de k et de voyelles avec des trémas au lieu du texte normal ». J'en ris encore dites donc

Rasism i Sverige

glazou — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:35:00 +0200

Jag är fransman och har 0 procent svensk blod. Jag kan läsa, skriva och tala svenska även om jag vet min svenska är inte perfekt. Jag har bott sex månader i Sverige i 1990/91 och började att prata språket när jag bodde i Stockholm. Jag fortsatte med svenska kurser vid svenskt Kultur Huset i Paris. Tjugo år senare, jag pratar inte svenska så ofta men jag fortfarande drömmer på svenska. Jag tycker om landet, folket, språket och det hjälper mig att ge min åsikt om Sverige och svenskarna. Var snäll och förlåt mina misstag på svenska...

Jag läste med stort intresse öppet brevet som författaren Jonas Hassen Khemiri skrev till jusititieminister "Bästa Beatrice Ask". Jag kommer ihåg min först dag i Stockholm, kanske den 29 augusti 1990 : jag kunde bara säga "ja" "nej", "tack" och räkna från ett till fem på svenska. Jag såg typisk fransk ut, med svarta hår, bruna ögon, mörk hy efter sommaren. Jag bodde i Lappis, vid Universitetet och tog för första gången tunnelbanan mellan Universitetet och T-Centralen, för att handla mat på marknaden eller Åhlens.

Marknaden var stäng so jag köpte 14 eller 15 artiklar på Åhlens och köade på första kassan med bara en kund. Kunden var en mycket gammal kvinna, kanske 90 år gammal. Hon såg mycket snobbig ut, mycket « gammal Frankrike » som vi säger på franska. Hon tittade på mig med arga ögon och visade en affisch på svenska, skrikande. Jag förstod ingenting på affischen eller på vad hon sade, men den kille bakom kassan var chokad. Den gammal kvinna repeterade samma ord och började att slå mig med hennes paraply ! Kässoren sedan ringde säkerheten och översätt för mig vad kvinnan sade. Hon sade flera gånger « Svart skalle! ». Jag visste inte vad det betyder så jag fragade. Det var första gången i tio år jag möte rasism... Säkerhetsmannen fråg mig på engelska om jag ville lämna en klagomål mot kvinnan. Jag svarade nej, om hon ursäktar hon. Kässoren översätt på svenska och den gammal kvinna började att slå mig igen med hennes paraply !!!

Säkerhetsmannen ringde polisen som kom i mindre än två minuter. Dom arresterade kvinnan, med handbojor i ryggen !!! För första dagen i Stockholm, det var inte en trevlig välkomm...

Thierry, en fransk vän i Stockholm, bodde i Bromma vid en svensk familj. Den farfar talade en ganska bra franska och berättade att alla grannar var på stationen när först tyskt tåget änkomm i Bromma i 1940-talet och gjorde nazistiska hälsningar...

Jag har hört flera mer gånger « Svart skalle » mot mig in nästa månaderna eller år, sista gången kanske i 2003. Ofta i tunnelbanan eller pendeltåget. Ingen, jag repeterar ingen, har aldrig hjälpt mig, ingen har aldrig svarat. Allt folk sade var « bah, bara en luffare », « bah, bara en full finsk » eller « säg ingenting, det är farligt ». Den värste episod var när en kollega i KTH kom till mig, i TDS-avdelningens kafeterian och frågade « Daniel, är det sant att ditt namn är judiskt? ». Ja, mitt namn betyder « glasmästare » på jiddish. Och ??? Han har aldrig, absolut aldrig, hälsat mig igen...

En av mina kolleger, Luis, bodde i Rinkeby. Han bjöd mig in till hans. Det var vintern, efter arbetet, allt var mörkt. Jag kommer ihåg han sade « det är bra du har svarta hår, det är livsfarligt att ha blonda hår i området ». Jag frågade varför. Han svarade att det fanns så mycket rasism mot « Svarta skallen » det var en reaktion på rasism...

Rasism i Sverige är en gammal historia, men en historia man berättar inte. Jag inte säger att Sverige är ett rasistiskt land, jag bara säger det finns rasism i Sverige och regeringens svar mot rasism kan vara, måste vara effektivare, snabbare, starkare. Vi, in södra-europeiska länderna, har en bild av Sverige som ett land av frihet, ett land av tolerans. Vi vet vad är rasism, tyvärr lever vi med den varje dag ; jag trodde rasism var en omöjlig missförhållande i ett modernt land som Sverige, ett land kännt för att välkomna så bra så många invandrare.

Jag hoppas att Sverige kan utrota rasismen i tiden. Jag hoppas att Sverige blir igen ett modell för hela Europa.

Arnaud Montebourg

glazou — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:00:00 +0200

Non, mais c'est moi ou il faut vraiment qu'Arnaud Montebourg change de crêmerie ?!? Voici ce qu'il aurait déclaré à propos du projet d'acquisition de DailyMotion par Yahoo! :

"Je ne vais pas vous laisser vendre l'une des meilleures startups françaises", a lancé M. Montebourg à M. Pellissier, directeur financier de France Telecom. "Vous ne savez pas ce que vous faites!"

Parce qu'Arnaud Montebourg est, lui, un expert de politique industrielle dans l'IT et les télécoms et que lui sait ce qu'il fait ?

Arnaud Montebourg, vous venez juste de donner un signal à tout investisseur étranger que toute prise de participation même indirecte de l'état français dans une entreprise est un no-go formel pour une acquisition étrangère. Il donne également un signal extrêmement défavorable sur les moyens donnés à France Telecom de disposer de sa stratégie d'entreprise propre. Tout entrepreneur va désormais devoir réfléchir à deux fois avant une entrée, même minoritaire, au capital de son entreprise d'une société même en partie seulement détenue par l'état. Bravo, vraiment bravo.

Pourrait-on s'il-vous-plait se débarasser du Ministère du Dressement Reproductif et revenir à un Ministère de l'Industrie avec un vrai Ministre qui ne raconte pas n'importe quoi ?

Developer Tools! Developer Tools! Developer Tools!

glazou — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:27:00 +0200

Fixing a bug in BlueGriffon's CSS properties panel yesterday, I suddenly had an idea. Six hours of work later, I have a screencast to show you

Amazon vs. Apple Book Store

glazou — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:13:00 +0200

Dear Apple,

I wanted to read Nolan Bushnell last book "Finding the Next Steve Jobs" and I wanted to read it on my iPad, and in English. So I visited your Book Store. I can't buy that book, even if it is available in the US Book Store, because my account is a "french" one.

So I installed the Amazon Kindle app. Visited amazon.com. Bought the book there in 5 seconds.

I think I will buy more and more from there in the future.

Well done Apple.

Boston

glazou — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 08:04:00 +0200

I just heard journalists on TV say the arrest of Tsarnaev was a big success for the FBI. Sorry, no. This is a big failure for the FBI. I also heard President Obama say the question is why he did that. Sorry, no, this is not what is important for the future. Why ~~two american citizens~~ (correction: one American citizen and one permanent resident) became terrorists without the FBI detecting and arresting them before they act is the important question. A similar problem occurred here in France with terrorist Mohamed Merah. French press reports their mother was questioned at least once in the past about one of the brothers visiting djihadist web sites... If this is true, they were already flagged and FBI failed stopping them; some heads are going to fall at the FBI and a deep reorg will follow.

It has to be noted too that a city lockdown for hunting one single wounded 19 years old man is a quite drastic situation almost nobody complained about. I understand the circumstances. But 9,000 policemen and soldiers who found their suspect only because a citizen found him in his boat also seems a rather pathetic result for the police/FBI/SWAT/army.

I also heard Carmen Ortiz is now in charge of the Tsarnaev case. Wait. Oritz? The Carmen Ortiz mentioned for pursuing the case against Aaron Swartz, right? Urgh.

Update: Republican US Senator Lindsay Graham calls for extreme measures in this case. I find this lame, anti-democratic, catastrophic, a true shame.

(Comments closed, I have no time to moderate blog trolls today)

Vous êtes prof d'informatique ? J'ai besoin de vous !

glazou — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:49:00 +0200

J'ai la semaine prochaine une réunion très importante pour parler de l'industrie du logiciel en France. Si vous êtes enseignant d'informatique dans le supérieur, je suis très intéressé par les réponses que vous pourrez fournir à ce tout petit questionnaire qui vous prendra 20 secondes. Merci !

Idée de caricature

glazou — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:47:00 +0200

(inspiré par un tweet d'Éric Daspet)

Edwy Plenel discute avec son informaticien en chef qui lui donne une liste imprimée :

(le babasseur) voilà la liste des RIBs piratés sur le site de Mediapart...
(Plenel qui lit) Cahuzac, Jérôme, UBS, Genève ?!?!?

15 years of Mozilla, my Webstory

glazou — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:58:00 +0200

started working with SGML in 1991 at Grif, implementing the first CALS tables (that eventually gave HTML tables) wysiwyg editor. Worked with Jean Paoli and Vincent Quint. Met Tim Berners-Lee. Started working on stylesheets (the P language in Grif).
1994: working at Électricité de France, one of the first european customers of the recently released Netscape's browser. We bought thousands of licences, Netscape was not even incorporated here yet.
1998: noticed the Mozilla source code release while working for Électricité de France; was already a CSS WG member. Downloaded code to look at it but too much work to really do it well. Met Vidur, Peter Linss, Angus Davis, Troy Chevalier
1998: Peter Linss makes a referral about me at Netscape but a hiring freeze blocks the process
june 2000: I am available for hire and Pierre Saslawsky makes another referral about me at Netscape
september 2000: interviews in Mountain View with the Layout, Email, AIM and Editor teams. Moments with Vidur, Beth, Clayton and a few others I will never forget.
november 2000: hired by Netscape in the editor team, spending a month in Mountain View, starting diving into editor's code with invaluable help from jfrancis, kin, brade, cmanske, beppe, sfraser and mjudge. First bug fix in the style engine code, memory footprint-related. The day I arrive in MV, there's a barbecue party for the release of Netscape 6.0; everyone including me has a NS6 jacket and a trophy, some have a bonus envelop. I discover, to my greatest pleasure, that Netscape is a company that knows how to say thank you. Hixie is an intern at Netscape doing QA, Hamerly and I turn on the lights at 8am, Scott Collins sleeps every night in the cubicle next to mine, I am almost the only one using the espresso machine, there are baby clothes at the Netscape store for my first son and when I refused to eat at Denny's cmanske replied « I knew you had "class" ».
december 2000: peterv and I are the only developers at Netscape France. We send a mail to the whole team to introduce ourselves. Only two persons come to say hello, Tristan Nitot and an HR person. We're in a windowless corner of the offices, with sales people shouting on the telephone all the time.
2001: representing Netscape in the CSS WG, helping Beth in the HTML WG but XHTML2 seems to me a gigantic strategic error and I say it in public. When asked why I work from France for Netscape US, I reply « because they do beautiful things ». During a crepes dinner with Tantek in SF, he challenged me to implement :not() in Gecko; flying to San Diego the next day and spending the night on it, showing working implementation to Attinasi the next day. Adding CSS to the editor. Showing Syd Logan how to greatly simplify the IM conversation view with just a dash of CSS.
2002: all of AOL-TimeWarner France including Netscape moves to a new building in Neuilly sur Seine. Cool times, superb corporate restaurant. Many good and sometimes hilarious memories.
october 2002: wrote the Small Screen Rendering stylesheet that will be used in Minimo. AOL wants to patent it even if I warn them there is prior art from Opera.
december 2002: reorg at Netscape. Many good friends are gone. I'm myself in complete limbos, spending a few awful days and nights.
Q1 and Q2 2003: working on the Anvil project, a new editor at AOL will never release. I also start Composer++, a standalone revamp of the Netscape editor that will eventually become Nvu.
february 2003: at FOSDEM in Brussels; meet Mozdev's Brian King (of zibble fame) and Pete Collins.
15-jul-2003: laid off by AOL with the remains of Netscape. Leaving Netscape offices only the 2nd of august. My collection of Netscape t-shirts is orphan.
september 2003: meeting with Tristan Nitot and Peter van der Beken in Peter's flat, my two Netscape colleagues from the Paris office. I suggest we start together a company making products based on the open source Mozilla. I suggest "Disruptive Innovators" as a company name. Tristan and Peter skeptical, Tristan would prefer launching a european Mozilla foot.
13-oct-2003: Disruptive Innovations is incorporated... Pete Collins and Brian King gave my name to Lindows' CTO who was looking for someone to work on a Gecko-based editor. I start contracting for Lindows immediately, the result will become Nvu.
from 2003 to now: promoting Mozilla and Gecko all over the place. Contracted for many companies and academia around the globe, doing xulrunner-based apps or add-ons to Firefox, some public and some proprietary on intranets.
august 2006: Disruptive Innovations joins W3C.
so many conferences, seminars with other Mozillians I can't count them all. Wonderful time in Barcelona with Chofmann, epic dinner with Rey Bango and Pike in Berlin, cool week-end in Berlin with Robert Nyman. Gave one of my contracts to Paul Rouget.
2008: inviting Mitchell Baker as a KeyNote speaker to the Netexplo Forum under the golden ceilings of the French Senate.
2010: started working on my next-gen wysiwyg Mozilla-based editor. Rewritten from scratch. First investor in april.
10-may-2011: release of BlueGriffon 1.0.
2013: Disruptive Innovations is almost ten years old, what a ride. I'm still spending most of my time on Mozilla code and technologies, editors and Web Standards. I released the only Wysiwyg cross-platform native EPUB editor on the market, and it's of course Mozilla-based.

More details on how got I involved with Mozilla and Why I work for^H^H^Hon Mozilla. I'm still here, and I just contributed a patch to the editor to fix a regression in the table editor. Wishing a long life to a community that changed mine!

À voir absolument

glazou — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:25:00 +0200

Voilà. Gérard Filoche vient de résumer avec précision mon état d'esprit. Une merveille. Merci Monsieur Filoche.

Nouvelle unité de mesure

glazou — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:25:00 +0200

Jusqu'à ce midi, un Gaymard c'était 600 m² ; nos sincères félicitations à Jérôme Cahuzac qui devient également une unité de mesure pour 600 k€ dissimulés en Suisse.

Spam attack

glazou — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:05:00 +0200

Comments temporarily closed on the whole glazblog because of an ongoing spam attack.

Building Gecko

glazou — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:20:00 +0100

I have been building my OS X builds of BlueGriffon on the same OS 10.6.5 desktop i7-based machine for the last two years. Two years ago, the i386 part of the universal OS X build of BlueGriffon was taking precisely NINE minutes and 45 seconds (yeah, quite fast) to build from scratch, without ccache, with a -j8 flag.

Today, a build of BlueGriffon based on a very recent pull of mozilla-central on the same machine, same OS, same HD, same CPU, same -j8, same build options, ccache disabled, takes TWENTY-NINE minutes and 13 seconds...

So I have a very naive question: can someone explain me here in the comments why the time needed to build Gecko on a desktop has been multiplied by almost exactly three in these two years? Please no flame, this is not a rant but only a technical question and I would like to understand better; thanks.

Serious webdesign flaw in Facebook, LinkedIn and more

glazou — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:12:00 +0100

Many web sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have implemented an « infinite scrolling » view: when you reach the bottom of the content area, more articles are dynamically loaded and the page's height changes. I won't go into the details or accessibility of such a design, but I want to list here one of its bad and painful side-effect on another area of the page, the page's footer...

Both Facebook's and LinkedIn's web sites show a page footer with several links:

Here, the dynamic data are loaded so fast I don't have the time to read the footer to find the link I want before it goes away, pushed outside of the viewport by the newly inserted content! Extremely painful.

And when a webdesign flaw makes vital (to the user) information unreachable, it's then a functional flaw.

Update: someone just asked me how I did the two screenshots above. Excellent question, indeed... I had to use the PageSaver add-on to Firefox... Using screencapture on my Mac was a no-go, the page update was too fast...

FirefoxOS-based watch :-)

glazou — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:09:00 +0100

WANT !!!!!

Tunisie, encore...

glazou — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 07:18:00 +0100

Je le reconfirme : tant qu'un tel parti sera au pouvoir en Tunisie, il est hors de question que je mette un pied dans ce pays pour quelque raison que ce soit.

Five years..

glazou — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:00:00 +0100

Peter Linss and I were appointed co-chairs of the CSS Working Group exactly five years ago

Le Manifeste des Autruches

glazou — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:07:00 +0100

Parce que le RSI, les URSSAF et les autres organismes auxquels les entrepreneurs - quelque soit la taille de l'entreprise - ont à faire sont organisés de façon catastrophique et sont souvent nos pires cauchemars, il faut lire et signer le Manifeste des Autruches.

Opera+SkyFire

glazou — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:12:00 +0100

There is something I didn't get about the new WebKit-based Opera for Android.. It's now clearer. So in normal browsing mode, the rendering engine is WebKit. But in "mini" mode, the rendering engine, server-side, is still Presto, right? I don't think the teams had enough time to move to a WebKit-based server farm.

A while ago, SkyFire was a Gecko-based solution. Fellow mozillian Alex Vincent worked for them on that and I contracted for them too. But SkyFire switched to WebKit two years ago and they're a server-side browsing solution. So SkyFire was acquired for that. Well not only for that, but that's certainly a major point.

Until full integration of SkyFire into Opera's servers is achieved, users should probably expect browsing differences switching between "normal" and "mini" mode...