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FrontPage to kill Dreameaver?!?!

Currently FrontPage is to Dreamweaver what Etch-A-Sketch is to PhotoShop. But our friends in Macromedia had better start trembling.

FrontPage 2003 is just around the corner..."We focused on really being able to extend your Web pages beyond static pages...to become data driven and connected to multiple data sources using XML," said Melisa Samuelson, a Microsoft product manager. "We've heard in the past that customers felt our code wasn't transparent enough, that we generated messy code," she said. "We've really focused on generating clean, industry-standard HTML code." http://rss.com.com/2100-1012_3-1015009.html?type=pt&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news Read More

DMXzone staffer to speak at UK Web Accessibility Conference

DMXzone's Bruce Lawson is to speak at the UK Web Accessibility Conference alongside such luminaries as Eric Meyer of Netscape, Sue Sims of Opera Software and Julie Howell of the UK Royal National Institute for the Blind.
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Review of Designing with web standards

New Rider’s slogan “Voices That Matter” is one that I generally take with a large pinch of salt. In Zeldman’s case, that’s true.

If Tim Berners-Lee is the father of the internet, Zeldman and the team at the Web Standards Project are the net’s midwives. The W3C wrote the standards (or recommendations as they apologetically and coyly them), whilst Zeldman and his gang set about the hard, political and (until now) thankless task of bullying (browser-beating?) Netscape and Microsoft to conform to the standards that they’d helped set.

Get the full details on the book here: http://www.dmxzone.com/go?5004

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MX Looper Suite 1.1 (PHP) launched

MX Looper Suite 1.1 released to correct all the known bugs and to comply to the Macromedia Exchange requirements. InterAKT has launched the 1.1.0 version of MX Looper Suite, a bugfix release that corrects all the known problems to fit the Macromedia Exchange standards. The current version has also been tested on Mac OS X. MX Looper Suite is one of our most successful products with a 200+ satisfied client base all over the world, that use it to build database-driven dynamic websites with ease. Read More

Microsoft stop developing standalone IE.

From a recent chat, deep in the Microsoft site (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/itcommunity/chats/trans/ie/ie0507.asp):

Host: Brian (Microsoft)
Q: when / will there be the next version of IE?

A: As part of the OS, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation.

Host: Brian (Microsoft)
Q: Why is this? the anti-trust? (no further standalone)

A: Although this is off topic, I will answer briefly: Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1. Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS.

bruce

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AOL / Microsoft lawsuit controvery continues

There's a good discussion on MetaFilter (http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26099) on the ramifications of AOL (who own Netscape) successfully suing Microsoft, and (as part of the settlement) taking IE for the next 7 years as the AOL default Windows browser.

Some good rants like "Web monkeys who only write for IE, or write to IE's buggy implementation while ignoring standards are lazy, sloppy, and/or dilettantes", and speculation that " for the foreseeable future, most people browsing the Web are going to be using IE6 or lower."

Bruce

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Lovely Doggies and Pretty Kitties Friday

All the way from Japan, this week's Pretty Kitties link features "CAT PRIN" the tailoring service for cats.

Enjoy!

bruce

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Microsoft settles AOL lawsuit: $750m

Software giant Microsoft has agreed to pay $750m (£454m) to settle a lawsuit claiming it used its dominance to crush competition. The case involved Netscape Communications which now belongs to the AOL group. As part of the agreement, Microsoft will give a new royalty-free, seven-year licence of its browsing technology to AOL. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2948672.stm

So no immediate possibility of breaking the dominance of IE; if AOL were to switch to Netscape or Mozilla for their 30million users, the de facto IE monopoly might be less secure.

Bruce

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StrangeBanana robot web designer

StrangeBanana (http://www.strangebanana.com/generator.aspx) "is a program that creates a random webpage design. The page design you are looking at has never been seen before - it was created programmatically just now. If you want, you can use this design for your own website (in that case you should save it immediately, because when you leave the page, you will never be able to get the same design again)." - uses XHTML and CSS

bruce (thanks Zeldman)

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We want PNG support and we want it NOW!

When the same image is saved in both PNG and GIF formats, in an editor with full and proper support for both formats, the PNG image is typically a smaller file size, is free from royalties, patents, and copyright restrictions that hinder the GIF format, and can use more than 256 colours - up to 48-bit colour. So why don't we use it much? Because support in Internet Explorer is terrible!

Owen Briggs has an on-line petition to Microsoft, requesting proper PNG support in IE/ Windows.

It's here http://www.petitiononline.com/msiepng/petition.html. Why not check it out and sign it?

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