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Wiki code for ComputerTips

1: <UL>\\
2: <LI><A HREF="#LinkThatMovesAndResizesBrowser">A Link that Moves and \\
3: Resizes Browser Windows</A> \\
4: <LI><A HREF="#MeaningOfXML">The Meaning of XML</A> \\
5: <LI><A HREF="#Dreamweaver">Dreamweaver Web Site Manager</A> \\
6: <LI><A HREF="#IsoDateStandard">ISO Date Standard</A> \\
7: <LI><A HREF="#KinesisKeyboard">Kinesis Keyboard</A> \\
8: </UL>\\
9: <HR>\\
10: <H2><A NAME="LinkThatMovesAndResizesBrowser"></A>A Link that Moves and \\
11: Resizes Browser Windows</H2>\\
12: <P>When opening a new browser window, the window is often not in the position \\
13: you want or sized the way you want. I used to spend way too much time \\
14: moving and resizing browser windows. Now I have a link on the browser's \\
15: link bar (both IE and NS) that resizes and moves the window to the left \\
16: side of the screen and another link that moves it to the right side \\
17: of the screen. The links have the following text in place of the URL:</P>\\
18: <P> \\
19: <BLOCKQUOTE> \\
20: <P><B><FONT COLOR="green">javascript:moveTo(450,0);resizeTo(835,1000);</FONT></B> \\
21: </P>\\
22: </BLOCKQUOTE>\\
23: <HR>\\
24: <H2><A NAME="MeaningOfXML"></A>The Meaning of XML</H2>\\
25: <P>What is XML? I've encountered a lot of misconceptions about what XML \\
26: is, so I'm going to give a quick high-level explanation. XML is a character-level \\
27: format on top of which element-level file formats can be built. That's \\
28: an important thing to understand. Whenever a new human-readable file \\
29: format is developed to save information to, it's necessary to worry \\
30: about the file at the level of individual characters even though we're \\
31: trying to save chunks of information. Every time a programmer wants \\
32: to create a simple config file, they shouldn't have to write a parser \\
33: that has to look at a text file and determine where certain chunks of \\
34: information start and end and what things contain what other things \\
35: and how to deal with inserting characters that are already being used \\
36: as delimiters in the file. That's a lot of effort and the process can \\
37: easily be error prone for all but the simplest files. Furthermore, the \\
38: programmer will have no choice but to write the code that verifies that \\
39: the file is correct. That's a tedious and often error prone process. \\
40: With XML, we can use someone else's parser (since it's a widely known \\
41: standard), or we can write our own parser once and make sure it does \\
42: everything well. From then on, we only need to worry about things at \\
43: the element level. XML is hierarchical, so it's more convenient for \\
44: storing information than is a file that's organized into a table (like \\
45: CSV). I'm writing a more in depth analysis, but the truly key issue \\
46: is that XML is a character-level file format on top of which element \\
47: level file formats can be built.</P>\\
48: <HR>\\
49: <H2><A NAME="Dreamweaver"></A>Dreamweaver Web Site Manager</H2>\\
50: <P>I now use Dreamweaver to edit HTML pages and organize my web sites. \\
51: Dreamweaver is excellent! It allows the user to edit a page by directly \\
52: modifying the HTML code or by editing it in a WYSIWYG window. The coolest \\
53: thing is that the generated HTML is actually well formatted for human \\
54: eyes (unlike a certain popular HTML editor that generates practically \\
55: unreadable HTML) and its possible to edit the HTML and have it update \\
56: the WYSIWYG view in real time! Dreamweaver also scans all the pages \\
57: in the site and checks them to make sure there are no local dead links. \\
58: It's also possible to have Dreamweaver scan the pages for browser compatibility. \\
59: (E.g., check to see if all pages on the site are compatible with Netscape \\
60: 4.04 or IE3, etc.) If I move a page from one directory to a different \\
61: directory (using Dreamweaver's interface), all links that point to that \\
62: page will be updated to reflect the page's new location. Also, all the \\
63: relative links in that page will be updated so they point to the pages \\
64: they pointed to before the move. Dreamweaver has numerous other capabilities \\
65: that make life easier for a site maintainer. In short, Dreamweaver is \\
66: great! I strongly recommend it. Dreamweaver is made by Macromedia, costs \\
67: roughly $270.</P>\\
68: <P>The only downside to the program (at least in version 2.0) is that \\
69: it's rather slow. I still like it though.</P>\\
70: <HR>\\
71: <H2><A NAME="IsoDateStandard">ISO Date Standard</A></H2>\\
72: <P>Although this isn't really news, it's information that I think should \\
73: be spread: There is a standard ISO date format for date and time. The \\
74: standard format recognizes (among others) the following date formats \\
75: (I'm using my birthday as the example date):<BR>\\
76: <UL>\\
77: <LI>1975-09-12 \\
78: <LI>1975 September 12 \\
79: <LI>19750912 \\
80: </UL>\\
81: You might want to check out a page that summarizes the entire <A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html">ISO \\
82: date and time standard</A>. \\
83: <P></P>\\
84: <HR>\\
85: <!--\\
86: <H2><A NAME="IW_Q500A_Case">IW-Q500A PC Case</A></H2>\\
87: <P>I bought a case to house my new motherboard and the case is absolutely \\
88: awesome! It's an <A HREF="http://www.in-win.com/framehtml/ino_q500.html">IW-Q500A</A> \\
89: and the most wonderful thing about it is that it's a two piece design \\
90: that allows you to slide out the motherboard. This makes motherboard \\
91: installation infinitely easier! I got mine for $90 (with a 300W power) \\
92: supply at <A HREF="http://www.techstore.com">www.techstore.com</A>. \\
93: At techstore.com it's described as: "ATX FT CASE 300W 12BAY 5 5.25 \\
94: 7 3.5" (it's made by In Win Development).</P>\\
95: <HR>\\
96: -->\\
97: <H2><A NAME="KinesisKeyboard">Kinesis Keyboard</A></H2>\\
98: <P>After several difficult days using the Kinesis keyboard, I'm back up \\
99: to, and possibly slightly exceeding, my previous typing speed. Due to \\
100: all the possible factors, it's impossible to tell how much it's helping \\
101: to reduce the joint pain in my fingers (the Advil, and once an hour \\
102: stretching exercises obviously help quite a bit), but it definitely \\
103: reduces wrist movement, and that can only be a good thing. I've learned \\
104: that the pain in my finger joints is almost certainly not the result \\
105: of anything local to those joints. Apparently it's caused by that nasty \\
106: and vengeful Mr. Carpal Tunnel choking the nerves to my fingers (or \\
107: something along those lines). I'd like to replace Mr. Tunnel with a \\
108: better form of nerve impulse transit (cellular nerves?), but Microsoft's \\
109: network of LEO satelites dedicated to transmission of nerve impulses \\
110: hasn't been put fully in place yet and will probably be delayed till \\
111: fourth quarter 1999 due to the justice department's apparent concern \\
112: about Microsoft's potential control of million's of extra hands. </P>\\
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