sitharus.com
Comic Sans Be Gone update
Just a minor update, Comic Sans Be Gone now works on inline styles and FONT tags. Thanks to goblindegook for that.
For Chrome users goblindegook’s Allvetica replaces Arial and optionally Comic Sans with Helvetica.
Comic Sans? Shoo!
We all love to hate Comic Sans, so I whipped up a little Safari extension to remove it from any page and replace it with a much more pleasing font.
I was concerned that changing the font would mess up designs, but then I remembered that they were using comic sans, so it wasn’t a real concern.
However, it will slow down all web pages, as it iterates all stylesheet rules. If you notice your browser going slow this is probably why. Caveat Emptor.
So with that, I present Comic Sans Be Gone.
The latest information will be on the product page, and I’ve made an update manifest for it.
Dusk
It’s winter in New Zealand. I took this on my way home from work, at least the days will start getting longer!
Apple and Third-party frameworks
Over on the TaoEffect blog there’s an article on iPhone and third party frameworks where it’s claimed that cross-platform frameworks can work because it works for Firefox on MacOS X.
Even the blog acknowleges that there are problems, noting that it doesn’t integrate with the system keychain, but that these are “minor issues”.
I disagree.
Since Firefox doesn’t use the keychain passwords in Firefox are not subject to my keychain policy. I don’t know if the passwords are secure when I lock my machine, I can’t delete them using the administration tools, and they can’t be shared with other apps if I allow. This is a major issue, especially on a mobile device.
The important thing is the user would never notice that.
Firefox also doesn’t obey the system proxy settings. Granted, that’s useful for me, but imagine a corporate situation where there’s a company proxy. Start Firefox and it’ll ignore all system settings.
Then there’s the preferences dialog, which just throws the entire HIG out of the window.
While all this may be acceptable to many user, especially “power users”, this is not the experience Apple wants for the devices.
Games, of course, are a special case where the UI is almost entirely custom, but if developers get too “creative” it’s detrimental for all.
The Steve Irwin
Sea Shepherd’s ship, Steve Irwin is visiting Wellington for a few days after returning from the southern ocean. I may not completely agree with their methods, but all Greenpeace do these days is hassle people on the street.
Xero
This year I started a new job, moving from my old position of a Java/iPhone developer at Innaworks to a C#/ASP.NET developer at Xero. This involved using Windows as a primary platform for the first time in at least 5 years.
Windows 7, while in my opinion more refined than Windows XP, still feels like Windows. The development tools have more features than Xcode, but fewer than Eclipse, and the profiling tools just aren’t Shark.
However, I think it’s a good move. The people have been great so far, and I now believe I can do something that will actually affect people’s lives.
Movable Type 4, Lighttpd and FastCGI
Since this was very hard to google I think it needs more links.
I’ve just set up Movable Type 4.3 to use fastcgi under lighttpd. I use lighttpd because it’s (normally) easier than apache, and my VPS doesn’t have any swap - apache is heavyweight in the RAM department. However, I do have RAM to spare, so caching the perl seems smart, especially with CPU that’s probably overcommitted.
It turns out you need MT-Dispatch to get it running. I’m using Ubuntu Jaunty, so it’s a fairly recent lighttpd.
You’ll also want to modify the spawn-fcgi Ubuntu init script to spawn fcgi. I removed the PHP references and stopped it starting/stopping lighttpd with the fcgi.
So now I have fastcgi, it makes the admin interface faster :)
TypeKit is live!
I’ve long been a supporter of getting font embedding working on the web - I’m tired of seeing Arial and Verdana everywhere. They’re pretty screen fonts, but variety is the spice of life I’m told.
But today TypeKit is out of testing, ready for general consumption! This site is using typekit right now, you can see the fonts in any modern browser.
