Software utilities

If you need to have a background color with a background not fully opaque, i.e. with an alpha layer, here’s the sample CSS taht you need:

.alpha60 {
/* Fallback for web browsers that doesn't support RGBa */
background: rgb(0, 0, 0) transparent;
/* RGBa with 0.6 opacity */
background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6);
/* For IE 5.5 - 7*/
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#99000000, endColorstr=#99000000);
/* For IE 8*/
-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#99000000, endColorstr=#99000000)";
} 

the last two lines of the CSS are for older Internet Explorer browser, while Internet explorer 9 and the upcoming IE 10 fully support the alpha channel. The problem is that those browsers will use both the opacity lines, so you will have a double level of opacity, and a different behavor in IE9 and IE10 (strangely, in this case IE6-7 and Firefox Chrome Safari will behave the same!!). The best solution would be to add a conditional css inclusion and put the last two lines in an external browser, like this:

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href="css/ie.css" />
<![endif]-->

and add the last two lines above in this file.

Inprivate ^TM is a new feature available with the upcoming Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (beta 2 available), which guarantees a much safer navigation on the Internet. The main goal is to make sure that when you surf the internet using someone’s else PC you won’t leave any hint of where you have been: this could be useful for surfing on public spots. Also, it could prevent websites and advertisers to track users navigation. You’re wondering how do they track you? Well, for example, when you navigate on two sites, both having Google adwords or other forms of ads, you can be tracked, in the sense that in this case Google knows that you navigated on those two sites. This is also a useful info for advertisers, since they use this to deliver advertisement to match users (supposed) interests.

What do you think? Will you use this feature?

Maybe you need to run Internet Eplorer 6 (IE6) under Vista, either for compatibility with older web applications or for web development or, if you ‘re insane, to use it instead of IE7 or Firefox (recommended choice). Well, you can download this file, directly from Microsoft, that emulates a Windows XP SP2 with IE6. There are also images with IE7 or IE8 Beta 1.

Have fun!

Poor poor thing. I almost feel like singing him a lullaby and rocking him ever-so gently ‘til he falls asleep with his thumb in his mouth and a drool a mile long.

But I won’t.

‘cos …well….I think he’s got a gazillion million millions stuffed in his pillow for comfort.

You made the decision to leave, Billy Boy, so what’s with the choked-up speech and the misty eyes? You’re not dying, you’re just leaving, moving on. Change is necessary as you very-well know, Billy. All you have to do is look at all the different versions of Windows, Office, yadda-yadda-yawn, you’ve piled out to know that what I’m saying is true. One minute, it’s Windows 2000, then it’s XP, then it’s Vista. If we can live through those dramatic versions/changes, then you, my friend, can live with the almighty big one you’re about to embark on.

Imagine all the things you’ll have more time to do now. You could go on a holiday. Ever heard of that, Billy Boy? Hol-i-day?

No, not the song by Madonna, dufus.

Well, a holiday is when you jump on a plane (erm, in your case, I guess it would be one of your private jets) and go to a place where you can leave the world behind, relax, reflect and have fun. I heard the mangoes are really good in the Caribbean. Greece is heaven on earth. And Brazil will make you smile all over.

So how about it, Billy Boy? Go on a holiday and thank the heavens that you still have enough of your life (and your money) to enjoy the journey ahead (whichever path you choose to take).

It’s not the end, old man – it’s just the beginning.

You’ll be fine, Billy Boy. We’ll miss ya, but you’ll be fine.

Just fine.

.

I had a problem with the margin CSS property on a website with cake. Actually, I used a CSS template for WordPress, copying the code to my website. The code seemed identical, the CSS too, but while on Firefox everything was ok, using IE 7 the page was left oriented (while using Firefox, or accessing a blog with that theme with Iinternet Explorer 7, it was centered). After a long debugging, i discovered that CakePHP was configured with debug level 1, which outputted the compilation time at the beginning of the page, in a comment. This seemed to upset IE, because when I set the debug level to 1, the comment disappeared and IE 7 displayed the page properly too.