kartooner.com

I’ve noticed the Print Preview results in Firefox look sloppy compared to that of Internet Explorer’s print preview. Maybe it’s just me but Firefox’s preview trunacates text outside the page borders even if a print style sheet is setup to do just the opposite. IE on the other hand (with a print style sheet) displays the text in the preview inside the margin boundaries.

For testing purposes I’ve set up a print style sheet for the main index of kartooner.com (in other words, the front page of this web site and not the archives).

Try this experiment for me; if you are using Firefox go to File > Print Preview and screen capture the results. If per chance you are using Internet Explorer please do the same.

Would you be so kind and send your screen capture(s) to erik(at)kartooner(dot)com.

I’ll be sure to display the results and hopefully I’m not just seeing things.

I should mention that I’m currently using Firefox 0.8 (nightly build) on Windows XP. Thanks goes to Adam Bramwell for sending me the first Firefox screenshot.

Likewise, his results are the same on his nightly release for Windows XP. Anyone else getting these results? Apparently, Nico Kaiser has also received similar results with Firefox on Debian and Chad Cooper on Windows XP. Is this a bug?

Firefox 0.8 / Latest Build - Print Preview screenshots

Internet Explorer 6 - Print Preview screenshots

When I finished reading Jeffrey Zeldmans’ Designing with Web Standards the first time, I was puzzled. It all made sense mind you, it’s just the core of its message didn’t sink in as I had originally planned. Whether this was attributed to late night reading, or my proverbial ineptness I’m not sure, my point is that typically when something doesn’t seep in the first time I’ll go for a second try.

I’m almost done with Designing with Web Standards for the second time and everything has clicked together. Evidence of this is this personal site which evolved from using Movable Types’ default templates to slight template modification and finally resulting in what you see now, original layout and code.

I have to thank Zeldman (and a list of others) for inspiring me to take this leap of faith if you may. Prior to using CSS and XHTML I was relying on spaghetti code, sliced and diced image slash table hybrids and a bleak understanding of semantics. Proof of my sloppy code habits exist in EMWare Productions which was hosted on Geocities (before Yahoo bought them out).

After building this site, in Netscape no less, I listed it under the Software category on Yahoo, which resulted in several lucrative and potential partnerships with Japanese software companies. Truth be told, I was only 18 at the time and wasn’t concerned with corporate partnerships let alone trying to run a company with members scattered around the world.

This was before the dot com boom and the revitalization of web development which meant — during that point in time — I could get away with an unprofessional looking web site. Flash forward to November of 2000 wherein my brother and I receive a cease and desist letter from emWare, a company based in Utah. Despite the fact that EMWare Productions had been shelved for several (6 actually) years now, we still get a chuckle from our adventures in software development.

Today I cannot stress enough the importance of semantics and standards-based web development. As Zeldman explains; grasping these concepts and utilizing them accordingly will pave the way towards a leaner and cleaner world wide web. Sites like the CSS Vault, Zen Garden and countless others are pushing these ideals into the public forefront without a dime attached.

As H.G. Wells once said;
> The future is now.

This is quite belated, but kartooner.com was listed in the CSS Vault. For those of you at home who might not know, the CSS Vault is a digital gallery of inspirational CSS designs.

In the words of its creator, Paul ‘9rules‘ Scrivens:

> Instead of showing off great sites to everyone, let’s show off great sites that use CSS so we can inspire others to use the technology. [The Vault] is a collection of CSS resources and CSS sites that help to inspire and teach every designer.

In short, I am honored to be a part of a fantastic collection of CSS designs and thank Paul for hanging me on the wall with the rest.

When I used iTunes for the first time I was disappointed that it didn’t have a preview feature. Then I figured out by simply double-clicking the title (or referenced song) iTunes would stream a 30-second preview.

“Duh”, I thought, “It would be foolish for Apple to not include a preview feature. Think about all the potential sales that would be lost because the user wasn’t sure if they liked the song or not.”

In the recent build of iTunes, version 4.5 in fact, Apple now includes movie trailers. Last night I found the trailer for the upcoming Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks flick ‘The Terminal‘.

As reported by countingdown.com:

>The Terminal tells the story of Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), a visitor to New York from Eastern Europe, whose homeland erupts in a fiery coup while he is in the air en route to America. Stranded at Kennedy Airport with a passport from nowhere, he is unauthorized to actually enter the United States and must improvise his days and nights in the terminal.

Impressed by the trailer I shared it with my inlaws who agreed that it looked like a good movie. However after sharing it with my wife she wasn’t as impressed as I was. After prodding her for the reason, she swiftly replied “I’m not convinced Tom Hanks could be a foreigner.”

Hanks has made out with a mermaid and a bull mastiff. He’s lived near a cannabilistic cult and has shared screen time with a volcano and a volleyball.

How on earth can he not be convincing in whatever role he embodies?

Whatever the case, it’s Spielberg so count me in.