If you’re a front-end developer, you’ve probably been waiting with misty eyes for that far-off day when CSS3 is roundly supported. I’ll bet you didn’t expect it to be today.
CSS3 PIE (Progressive Internet Explorer) is an open source script that gives IE6-IE8 the ability to render the best parts of CSS3. Drop behavior: url(PIE.htc) into a group of styles and a metric ton of CSS3 properties suddenly work:
Jason was kind enough to let me beta-test PIE. I’ve used it in several projects now, and my first-blush reaction is this is way too good to be true. It’s light, fast, easier to implement than a PNGfix, and it just works with standard CSS properties. It’s now a standard part of my development toolkit.
If you’re particular about these things, the focus will be on “semantics” with a lower-case “s”. In other words, the quick, dirty and practical approach of HTML5 tags, well-named classes and Microformats.
Video JS: an open source HTML5 video player under the MIT license.
The source code is pretty straighforward and the UI is nice. It is remarkable how much simpler it is to create a themed video experience with HTML5, instead of Flash.
You know who does some great illustration work? Dan McPharlin. Year One: a new piece for the Life in 2050 exhibition.
You may remember all the hoopla about WordPress and the GNU. I never really understood the confusion around the GNU license terms. Yet as a non-lawyer, there is a lot I don’t know about open source and licenses. You may be in the same boat. Well, wonder no more: FOSSFAQ is an open-source FAQ site from the fine folks at RedMonk.
It has become fashionable nowadays to speak of the subjectivity or the relativity of truth. I find such talk ridiculous at best. Let’s go back to Randall Dale Adams. He found himself within days of being executed in “Old Sparky,” the electric chair in Walls Unit, Huntsville Texas.
There is nothing post-modern about the electric chair. It takes a living human being and turns him into a piece of meat. Imagine you – you the young journalists of tomorrow – being strapped into an electric chair for a crime you didn’t commit. Would you take comfort from a witness telling you that it really doesn’t make any difference whether you are guilty or innocent?
The new HTML5 parser in Firefox’s nightly builds renders inline SVG and MathML. SVG is an XML vector image format; MathML, an XML vocabulary for advanced math.