Proposing <bdo> for Hiding Email Addresses
There are so many methods of email address hiding, the most popular being using the MailHide service (which basically CAPTCHA-protects your email address), embedding your email address in an image, and using unescape() and JavaScript to print the email address.
All of these methods work but they all have caveats, and there is no method that can be used that will, in effect, not have caveats. By far the most usable method is the JavaScript method as it allows the user to select the email, but the downside is that JavaScript has to be enabled.
That’s why when I found out about <bdo> I was surprised people weren’t using it more. I hope with this blog post to be able to alert people to this usage, and perhaps, give myself more insight on this practice with your comments and such.
Featured on LH (What I Learned) + Affinity Update
I (or rather, my workspace) got featured on Lifehacker a while back. I got home, turned on my computer, and opened up my email and out popped 50 emails, half of them from my contact form. I didn’t know what happened until the 18th email, where someone congratulated me for getting featured.
Wow. It was amazing, seeing all the comments, all the views. Google Analytics wasn’t reporting any new views (it seems to have a day lag) but I knew people were looking: my website went down with all the views, I got more comments than before, and I felt good.
It’s amazing how the world treats us: it seems to be so passive and it waits to let us reap results. As of writing, this website has gone through its seventh revision already. Although I call it version 6.5, there’s been more, I just don’t want to look so desperate.
Why Is Software So Selfish?
I recently got a new router (D-Link DIR-655), and with it came a neat feature called SharePort that allowed me to plug in a USB printer into the router and have it shared with the entire network. I thought it was a great idea, so I plugged the printer into the router and fired up the network printer dialog.
Thirty minutes later, I wasn’t thinking this “feature” was so neat anymore: it wouldn’t work at all, no matter what I did with it. Finally, I gave in and put in the CD into my computer. Lo and behold: the SharePort installer.
Once the software was installed, everything worked, although the interface was less than sleek. But now whenever I need my printer I need to have a memory-consuming software running.
Really, guys? Is this the best you can do? And for that matter, isn’t this what all software does?
Reflections on Blogging, and New News
I’ve blogged for four years now and I started when I was eight. I didn’t know how to code; I didn’t know about design or programming. All I knew was that I wanted to write, and I wanted my voice to be heard.
That was a while ago. I’m now twelve, the creator and writer for three blogs, each on diverse and different topics. One of them, my literature blog, was the original one I had. It now has over three hundred articles (325 at time of writing) in its archives, all written by me.
Yet still, nobody knows about me. My literature blog, with its many articles, barely registers views at all.
The world is cruel yet reasonable: it makes you learn every single life lesson painstakingly and with great price. I thought I would become the next Seth Godin of blogging. To keep it short? I didn’t.
But in these writings, I’ve found out so much about how people perceive those who blog, and so much about how not to write a blog. I’ve tripped over so many cracks and stumbled over my own feet so many times. Continue reading this »
[Update] A Personal Disaster
Recently my home was hit with a disaster: a power surge that I had thought would never come hit my house. The damage was all-around, but most crucially, the complete work room was knocked out.
Things that were broken were my computer, my dad’s computer, the router, the modem, the VoIP module, the printer, the surge protector, and the light switch (now stuck on hi). It’s been a great personal blow to my family and because the router was knocked out I could not get Internet for many days.
I am now using the Internet from my laptop, my dad has stolen my mom’s computer (from downstairs) and we have purchased new routers, a new computer, and lots of other stuff while everything else that was broken gets fixed. Continue reading this »
HTML5 for the good?
HTML5 is a huge step forward in terms of web usability, of web coding, and web design. It makes things incredibly easy to do, clean, and makes websites suddenly have a no-frills attitude. How easy is it to type in a simple code line <video src=”blah.avi”> on your website? That wasn’t hard, right?
So I suppose you’re happy, right? And in a way, you should be happy. Because instead of hours of work, bam, that took three seconds, right? You didn’t need to convert it to .flv to watch, heck, you didn’t even need a video player to come with it. Just pow, one line of code.
But is this too easy? Continue reading this »
Firefox 3.5 Color Profiles Not That Great
I know, I know, color profiles are great for photographers, but here’s a quick rant: although colors are richer and prettier, when users mess around with the default controls in their browser and they enable color profiles, backgrounds and images that designers have color-matched to fit in are suddenly mismatched.
It’s easy to tell where a background image picks up and starts off suddenly. This is a huge problem, because a lot of people are going to want to mess around with their settings and enable color profiles. Designers will now need to save to PNGs and forfeit IE6 support (which wasn’t that important to begin with, but still).
Instead of enabling it for everything, each photograph should have a specific setting saying “yes” or “no”, and browsers should obey it. It makes sense that the developers for Firefox have turned it off on default.
Stunning Silence v.1.1.2 [WordPress theme]
Note: this version has been deprecated.
Stunning Silence: a WordPress theme with alluding beauty and a beauty all around, from the backend to the front-end. This is a theme you will want on your blog. Featuring a huge options page for hard-core customizing and a simple modern look on the outside, it is great for your blog.
The Battle Of Fonts, and the Future of Typography
For what has seemed to be the longest time, I had no care for fonts. Words were words, and nobody cared about how they were spaced or whether there were orphans or not.
Then I came across two magazines: one with incredible text, and one with the most ugliest layout I had ever seen. And by the layout, I mean the typography: ligatures weren’t used, line height was horrible… from that point on, I realized the importance of typography.
5 Life Lessons Coding has Taught Me
Coding is a passion, a joy, and a love to me. Although it’s extremely nerdy of me, sometimes I just love to sit down and code for an afternoon. But coding hasn’t just been lines of parentheses and exclamation marks. It has taught or reminded me of many things in life.
From mistakes to rushing, I think that coding as well as the rest of my life (school, sports, music) have pretty much placed me more prepared for the real world than I was a year ago. But I still have a lot to learn.
Time Constraints and New Projects
Lately, a lot of things have been going on in my life. Frequently I forget that I’m still a student, and that I still have to keep my grades up, my parents happy, my teachers happy, my friends happy, and pretty much everyone happy.
What is going on with my life? Well, a few things. End-of-year finals and TAKS testing are mandated for my grade level right now, and there’s no way to not take it, and there’s no reason to not take it either.
I also participate in several out-of-school activities, including swimming and Chinese school (as part of my mission to be bilingual), and please don’t forget I’m almost out of my mind trying to keep up with several blogs at once: this blog, my literature blog, my technology blog, as well as the evil little project I’m trying to do.
Sometimes, Forget IE!
Sometimes, you just want to throw out IE. Honestly. Sometimes you just wish it didn’t exist.
I am one of those people; the type of people that honestly wish that IE didn’t exist. More specifically, that IE6 wouldn’t exist. IE7 is better, but it’s all worse than Mozilla Firefox. IE6 can’t even pass an Acid test. That is just kind of sad.
I remember my original designs, making a beautiful design, uploading it, just to discover… this horrid bad light-blue border leaking through my PNGs. Although there are fixes for this, I still want to forget IE.
Unfortunately, forgetting IE isn’t as easy as just telling everyone to forget it. Every single school I have walked into seems to have seemingly forgotten about Mozilla Firefox and IE7. And the worst thing is that I can’t blame them.
Until IE6 gets phased, it’s still high on my view charts. Therefore, it has to be high on anybody’s priorities. I have compiled a list below of the things that I don’t mind losing, and that you shouldn’t mind losing either. Continue reading this »