Geek Daily

Working in JavaScript is one of my favorite things to do. I love how dynamic the language is and how powerful it can be. discount carpeting . This programming dream is often turned into a nightmare by varying browser implementations, blatant disregard for accepted Web Standards (I’m looking at you IE), and a host of other odd things that can pop up.

The Problem

As is usually the case, Internet Explorer is very forgiving when it comes to the DOM and lots of times implements alternate methods of accessing certain functionality.In my current project I am using the rel attribute to keep track of which row of data is being accessed. I know some of you may frown on this, however, it is an acceptable (to me) tactic as this is for a closed intranet where there is no concern for search engines. In Internet Explorer object.rel is an acceptable method for accessing the value of the rel attribute of a particular property.Somehow I worked past this point without testing in Firefox so when an error kept occurring that was caused by Firefox not liking object.rel it took me a while to work back through the code to isolate this problem.

The Resolution

The problem has a really simple fix. In my case it was harder locating the problem then actually fixing it. To get around this problem you don’t need any object detection, you just need to use the standard method for accessing attributes, object.getAttribute(‘rel’). Go figure.

The Moral Of This Story

The lesson that we should take away from this is to only use approved, standard methods of functionality. casino online . This too will lead you into problems due to inconsistent implementations but at least you are doing it the right way. You can then implement your own work-arounds or use a library like Dean Edwards’ IE7 script that will fill in all the holes in Internet Explorer to make it more standards compliant.

Yes, the title is a question. I think the answer to that is yes, although I am not sure.I encountered a very strange problem yesterday and it took a while to track down. I found this problem so frustrating that for a moment (only a brief one) I questioned my adoration for ASP.Net.What Was Happening?I’ll explain a little about the problem so you can understand where I am coming from.First off I should mention that this was occuring in an old in-house CMS product that, IMO, should be tagged as legacy code. It spits out bad HTML which is mostly to blame on a rich text editor that is used to design templates and modify text on pages. The pages have a HTML 4.0 Transitional doctype.The problem was that ASP.Net Session variables were not persisting on page refresh. classic . They were set and could be used afterwards in the same request but when I navigated to a different page or refreshed the same page all Session variables were null again.To screw with my head a little bit I tested 3 different browsers. IE7 and Firefox 3 had the problem consistantly but Chrome worked just fine, my Sessions stayed alive from page to page. What the…!The Solution…I ThinkI eventually tracked the problem down after more than 4 hours of going through [legacy] code, line by line. That was painful. The way the CMS works is any template tags that are unused get removed so there isn’t a bunch of useless HTML messing things up. Comcast Deals . Lead Certified . I found however that unused image template tags were still rendering but with an empty source attribute.

<IMG ALT="" SRC="" ONLOAD="constrain()">

Notice the all uppercase…gross. Anyway, I discovered that if the unused images were removed or the src was set to ‘spacer.gif’ then all was well again.The Take AwaySo, I am left amazed that bad HTML code can mess with something like ASP.Net Session variables. How is this possible and why didn’t Chrome/WebKit have a problem? My first reaction would be to blame Internet Explorer but even Firfox choked on this!And is leaving the src attribute empty even considered invalid markup (in HTML 4)?This is by far the weirdest thing I have experienced while using ASP.Net. Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone care to explain how this is possible?

What is JavaScript?JavaScript is used on a lot of websites to make your experience better and to allow for more interaction with the website. It is possible for Javascript to be disabled so the steps below show you how to enable JavaScript in the event that is gets disabled.More and more sites and services are requiring JavaScript. relationships . An example is Google Docs. Without JavaScript enabled you cannot use the service at all.How do I enable JavaScript on my computer?Internet Explorer (6.0)1. Select Tools > Internet Options.2. Click on the Security tab.3. Click Custom Level button.4. Scroll down to the Scripting section.5. Under Active Scripting, select Enable and click OK.Internet Explorer (7.0)1. Select Tools > Internet Options.2. Click on the Security tab.3. Click the Custom Level button.4. Scroll down to the Scripting section.5. Select Enable for Active Scripting and Scripting of Java Applets.6. Click OK.7. Select YES if a box appears to confirm.8. Click OK. painting color wheel . Close window.9. Reload page.Mozilla Firefox (2.x)1. Open Firefox.2. On the Tools menu, click Options.3. Click Content in the Options list.4. Under the Content section, check the box next to Enable JavaScript.5. Click the Advanced button to open the Advanced JavaScript Options box.6. Check the boxes under Allow scripts to section that you want to allow.7. Basement Remodeling Denver . Click OK.8. Click OK.Why would you want JavaScript disabledThere are a few reasons you might want to disable Javascript:1. You don’t want to see annoying ads that get past popup blockers.2. JavaScript code can crash your browser or make the website very slow if it is written poorly.3. You don’t care about bells and whistles and just want to get to the content.

Internet Explorer never ceases to frustrate me. I have been writing my own JavaScript library, mostly to sharpen my skills. I was moving along and had written a large portion of code, easy OOP classes, a few utility functions, and my HtmlElement extensions. Problem was I had only been testing the code in Firefox. louis vuitton outlet . At this point I desided to run it through Internet Explorer just to verify that it worked. becker animal hospital . This is where I stayed for about 30 minutes. No matter what I did I could not get things to run in IE. landscape jobs . It kept throwing a useless error, ‘Object expected’, that didn’t seem to relate to anything.As it turns out IE has a couple of instances you cannot use.First off you cannot use the word class in any way, shape, or form. It doesn’t matter if it is a method or property of an Object, you just can’t use it.Secondly, you cannot have a method or propery of an Object named extends.These apply to all lowercase letters only. cheap longboards . If you try this IE will throw errors all day long while every other browser in the world will gladly accept it and run fine. I should have guessed when I saw that Mootools was using Class and Extends but then again it is just impossible to guess what kind of mess is under the hood of IE.If you are wondering this is not fixed in IE8 beta 2 either…probably never will be. My guess is that they are used internally somehow so you are blocked from using them.Hopefully my 30 minutes of frustration will save you from running into this problem.

//what doesn't workvar class = function() { };var obj = { extends: function() { } };//what worksvar Class = function() { };var obj = { Extends: function() { } };

I must say that my first expereinces with Chrome have been very positive. I’ve been browsing around my usuage spots with it today and I am noticing a difference, a good one.A bit about my habitsNormally I browse with Firefox. substance abuse treatment centers . I use Firefox for all the typical reasons; it’s more secure, has better web staqndards support, easier javascript debugging, Firebug, and a host of other great extensions that improve my browsing experience. However, Firefox is a big memory hog, not as big as early reports of IE8 mind you. There are plenty of intense sites that just don’t perform well for me in Firefox (especially in a terminal server environment) and are sluggish. For those of you that are yelling at me, yes I have Firebug turned off and it is still slow.First reactionI was pleasently surprised when these sites were blazing fast when using Chrome today. Quickly looking at the Task Manager, it looks like Chrome is only using a fraction on the resources of Firefox as well. Putting it to the testTo put Chromes promise of better performance for JavaScript and Ajax applications I decided to pull out all the stops. Benjamin Joffe’s Canvascape is a 3D JavaScript world using the canvas tag. Firefox really chokes on this app, especially in textured mode. rehab treatment center . I thought that if Chrome could preform well here it probably would perform well just about anywhere.To my delight Canvasscape runs smoothly and flawlessly in Chrome, even in textured mode. It runs so well it seems that the walking speed may need to be adjusted to as it seems to walk very fast or maybe that is just because I am used to the very slow performance in Firefox.ConclusionsThis first experience with Chrome has been very positive and I hope that future betas and the final product continue to perform this well. Currently Chrome doesn’t have a lot of options, not extensions facility which will hopefully be added in a future beta. Hopefully performance isn’t degraded once more features start getting added to the browser.

If you haven’t heard by now Google has annouce Google Chrome. Chrome is a new browser from Google that is based on WebKit and includes a lot of exciting new features and looks to push web standards to the fore front were they can’t be ignored any longer. Check out the comic book that explains Chrome.On the other hand, early test of IE8 beta 2 don’t look so promising. Tiny Prints Promo Code . According to InfoWorld IE8 consumes a whopping 400MB of RAM and executes upto 200 concurrent threads. In short, it uses more resources than Windows XP..yes I mean the OS!!!

It amazes me that not more businesses are adopting Cloud Computing. With things like GMail and Google Apps available for free and rivaling the expensive desktop suites like MS Office why not use them? There are many reasons why some businesses choose not to use online applications. PrivacyThis is a huge hurtle for advocates of computing in the cloud. Business just don’t trust a 3rd party to host their sensitive email and business documents. This is for good reason too. There is no way to know 100% for sure that someone is not looking thorugh private communications.That being said for non business uses cloud computing is perfect for the average internet user. You get access to your email and documents from anywhere in the world at anytime as long as you have an Internet connection.ReliabilityA debate broke out on Slashdot yesterday, as often does, in response to an article posted about recent outages of Google Apps and GMail. Comcast Deals . jewelry stores . The article speculated these outages hurting the adoption of online computing. Some commentors strongly disagreed.As the debate hit upon different arguments and angles the main discussion centered around GMail versus MS Exchange and which was better and more reliable from a business point of view. There were strong opinions on both sides which got me thinking…there is no right answer. No matter which you choose there will be trade offs. It just depends on your specific needs.Here is a nice list of pros and cons for each choose. You decide which fits your needs and budget best.GMail Pros

• FREE or just $50/user/year for premium accounts
• 24/7 access from anywhere with an Internet connection
• Solid reliability from Google’s enterprise data center
• Platform independant
• No overhead costs

GMail Cons

• Must trust Google to respect and protect your privacy
• No access if Internet is down, many fault points along the pipe

MS Exchange Pros

• No 3rd party privacy concerns
• More in control (or at least that is the illusion)
• 24/7 web access (some minor limitations)
• Access to stored emails and can send within network if Internet is down

MS Exchange Cons

• Expensive Windows and Exchange license fees
• Large overhead costs
  • Network administrator(s)
  • Servers and backup technology (data and power)
• Dependant on Windows (some may not care)

I am sure I have missed some points on all those list but those are the basics. You decide what you need and what you can afford to compromise on (financially and personally).

Here is what I found interesting this week.IE and Windows XP Service Pack 3Sadly Microsoft has decided to keep shipping IE6 with SP3 for Windows XP. They missed a great opportunity to boost IE7 adoption.3 Golden Rules For Working From HomeOne of the great things about working from your own home is freedom.Freedom to start work when you want, wear what you want and work thehours that you want. margarita machine . Right? Well actually, probably not.In reality working from home doesnt work like that – well not inmy experience anyway. You usually end up working normal business hoursplus a few more to boot (though you may still be in your PJs).

Here is what I liked this week. Enjoy!

Comparing Popular JavaScript/Ajax Frameworks
After four days of ASP.NET AJAX training with Stephen Walther I set out to learn more about my options in choosing a solution for a JavaScript/Ajax framework. If I realized days later I would be writing this comprehensive post on 7 of the most popular frameworks, I may have just went with the “Inny-Minny-Miney-Moe” method!

jQuery AJAX calls to a WCF REST Service
Since I’ve posted a few jQuery posts recently I’ve gotten a bunch of feedback to have more content on using jQuery in Ajax scenarios and showing some examples on how to use jQuery to cut out ASP.NET Ajax. In this post I’ll show how you can use jQuery to call a WCF REST service without requiring the ASP.NET AJAX ScriptManager and the client scripts that it loads by default. Note although I haven’t tried it recently the same approach should also work with ASMX style services.

SQL SERVER – Better Performance – LEFT JOIN or NOT IN?
First of all answer this question : Which method of T-SQL is better for performance LEFT JOIN or NOT IN when writing query? Answer is : It depends!

Video: Write Your First Silverlight Game
In this video, I demonstrate how to start writing your first Silverlight game. I show how to create a dramatic space scene, add a soundtrack, and associate movement with the mouse wheel. This is the first part of a two-part series.

Reading binary files using Ajax
But when it comes to binary files, helping hands from server-side technologies are often necessary.

So I googled around to see what I can do about binary files with Ajax and found this Marcus Granado’s post at http://mgran.blogspot.com/2006/08/downloading-binary-streams-with.html

What he posted there worked like a charm for FireFox and Safari but I couldn’t get it to work for IE.

But luckily, within the same page, someone had posted up a solution for IE as a comment, which is written in VBScript.

Safari CSS Masks
Webkit continues to impress with it’s early implementations of new standards. WebKit now supports alpha masks in CSS. Masks allow you to overlay the content of a box with a pattern that can be used to knock out portions of that box in the final display. In other words, you can clip to complex shapes based off the alpha of an image.

Here are some interesting stories from this week.

IE 8 strict mode doesn’t allow for CSS opacity?
So the fact that this has been labeled as by design suggests that IE8 will be the only browser produced in the last 10 or so years that will not support opacity in its strictest mode. Thats rediculous.

Google Will Sell Performics, SEOs Exhale
Exciting news from The Official Google blog today that reveals Google will stop scaring SEOs everywhere and will sell off Performics, the search marketing company that they accidentally acquired when they bought DoubleClick last year. To avoid the conflict of interest that comes when you’re a search engine selling search engine optimization services, Google will split Performics into two companies – an affiliate marketing company and a search marketing company – and then sell the search marketing half.

Webforms is dead. Long live MVC!
Scott Hanselman’s fourth screencast *confirms* that the interfaces and abstractions made as part of the MVC (HttpContextBase, IHttpRequest, IHttpResponse, etc.) will not be put into the existing Webforms model. That means that once MVC is released, the old HttpContext object in WebForms will *not* inherit from HttpContextBase, nor will the WebForms versions of HttpRequest and HttpResponse objects implement the interfaces.

But I’m not moving my mouse!
The IE team reacted correctly: the bug has been solved in IE8b1. When the mouse does not move any more the mousemove event stops firing, as it should.

However, this same bug was recently introduced in Safari (Windows) and Opera!

Safari 3.0 and Opera 9.26 support mousemove correctly, but Safari 3.1 and Opera 9.5b have copied the IE bug.

Here is what I found interesting this week.

Key events and Safari 3.1
There has been a change in Safari 3.1 for how keypress events are handled. John Resig interviewed Yehuda Katz to get the skinny and understand why this was done.

eBay Discriminates Against Ebook Sellers, Squashes All Digital Downloads
In what will go down in Internet history as probably one of the lamest decisions ever in e-commerce, running second only to the firing of AOL CEO Jon Miller in 2006, eBay announced yesterday it will no longer allow any digitally downloadable product to be sold via an auction.

Where’s my .NET 3.5 (on IIS), Dude?
The not so obvious ‘problem’ is that if you fire up a machine that has .NET 3.5 installed, you might be surprised to find that the IIS service panel’s ASP.NET does not show an option to select the .NET Runtime of 3.5.

Opera and WebKit pass Acid3 test
The latest builds from Opera and WebKit are scoring a perfect 100/100 on the Acid3 test. Wow!

Where is Firefox on Acid 3? Here.
Some people have been surprised to not hear much from Mozilla around Acid 3. WebKit and Opera are duking it out, but what about Firefox?

Mike Shaver of Mozilla has posted on his views that Acid 3 is a missed opportunity and is pretty damning of the whole thing.

Using the YouTube API via Ext
With the YouTube API recently released, there’s bound to be lots of cool controls coming out soon. Thorsten Suckow-Homberg spent a weekend hacking up a Ext-based user extension that leverages YouTube’s chromeless API to build The Ext.ux.YoutubePlayer.

20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider
When you use WordPress you’re given the choice when publishing between doing it as a ‘post’ or as a ‘page‘. Posts go up on your blog while ‘pages’ are static pages that you can publish without it having to go up on your blog.

I have decided to start doing a Friday round up of all the interesting articles I find during the week. Here are some stories I found interesting for the week of March 3 to March 8. Enjoy!

Internet Explorer 8 will render in Standards Mode by default
The IE team has announced that it will render HTML markup in “the most standards compliant way it can.” It is nice to see that MS has decided to actually listen to what web developers want, in regards to IE, for a change.

The Top 5 Recommendations For Monetizing Your Blog
The readers over at ProBlogger have given their top recommendations on how to make some money with your blog.

Acid 3 released, Webkit praised
Jon Tan ran a few tests and posted the results. Hixie commented on his blog about the release, and praised WebKit on how they have been closing a large number of bugs

Silverlight to run on Symbian phones
Microsoft is working with Nokia to get Silverlight running on Symbian mobile phones. Would this help influence your decision to use Silverlight for UI over other technologies?

MVC Framework Preview 2 released, Jeff Palermo disappointed
Jeff gives a good overview, along with his opinion, of the changes that have been made in preview 2.

Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 is now available for download.
Take the first release of IE8 for a test drive. Will it deliver this time?

James Edwards has posted a very interesting article on SitePoint. He has developed and implemented (on SitePoint) a script that will unblock any ads that have been blocked by the AdBlock Plus extension for Firefox.

It is quite an ingenius idea. Now before you light your torches and grab your pitchforks, he has also explained how to block the unblocking script and he plans on removing it from SitePoint next week. It seems he lost a bet a had to expose his secret.

See, a while ago, when the whole firefox is blocked debacle was raging, I made some hand-waving statement about how easy it would be to circumvent ad-blocking software (though of course, I wouldn’t say how). Then a little while later (not quite sure when … I was probably drunk) I lost a bet, and had to prove it. The stakes were high, and I felt a little dirty, but I’m a man of my word, so I had to do it. And as it happened, it turned into a fun and interesting challenge, with a relevant point to make …

Netscape Navigator Goes Quietly Into the NightOn New Years Eve, the news went out from AOL that the long life of the Netscape Browser was coming to an end.Though this news will have little or no impact on the vast majority of web developers, those of us for whom Netscape was their first browser will give a wistful sigh of rememberance.Coming Soon: Changes to the CSS Working Group? On December 14th, one of the key members of the CSS Working Group, L. David Baron of the Mozilla Corporation made an announcement:

“Ive informed the CSS working group that I am no longer participating in member-only mailing lists or meetings. I believe the member-confidential nature of the group hurts the future development of CSS by making the group: * fail to accept the contributions of many who would like to contribute to CSS and * get mired in debates and stalling tactics that companies would not be comfortable using in public. “I still intend to participate in any discussions that take place on www-style, public-css-testsuite, and other public forums. “I support rechartering the CSS working group as a public group.”

Although there have been few public follow-ups, representatives of Microsoft and Google expressed their support. realtors . It seems like change within the CSS Working Group is coming, but like everything the Group does, it may not happen quickly.

It has been confirmed. the hotel . Rogers is modifying the Google homepage for it’s end users to display advertisement for account upgrades. Things To Do In New York . I can’t see Google sitting by and letting this happen for too long, especially since the advertisments are for Yahoo!

SitePoint has published an interview with Chris Wilson of the IE team. They talk about IE and standards and what we can expect from IE in the future.

At Web Directions South this year, I had a chance to talk with Chris Wilson, who needs no introduction. denver plumbers . Denver Bankruptcy Attorney . He’s the Platform Architect for Internet Explorer at Microsoft.

Vista ‘Kill Switch’ removed as of SP1Microsoft is to withdraw an anti-piracy tool from Windows Vista, which disables the operating system when invoked, following customer complaints.The so-called “kill switch” is designed to prevent users with illegal copies of Vista from using certain features.But the tool has suffered from glitches since it was introduced with many Windows users claiming that legal copies of Vista had been disabled.Microsoft says its efforts have seen a drop in piracy of its software.In a statement released by the company, Microsoft corporate vice president Mike Sievert, said: “Users whose systems are identified as counterfeit will be presented with clear and recurring notices about the status of their system and how to get genuine copies.”Microsoft Names IE8, Bill Gates to Look Into TransparencyMicrosoft has officially announced the name of then next version of IE: Internet Explorer 8. custom homes . Okay, okay, it wont win any awards for originality, but at least the announcement provides definitive and public confirmation that the browser is being worked on.The announcement comes just a day after my own chiding on this blog of the companys inability to announce even a name for the new browser. Though Ill admit this is entirely coincidental, what is not coincidence is Molly Holzschlags conversation with Bill Gates on the matter at a private preview of plans for next years MIX08 conference.

brothercake of sitepoint.com has taken the time to outline not only how Internet Explorer fails to implement standard specifications but also that it doesn’t even implement it’s own propritary features in a consistant way. This article proves once again just how badly IE is implemented.

Im spending most of my time these days working on SitePoints upcoming Ultimate JavaScript Reference, a task that I can fairly say is eating my brain.Unlike the authors of the imminent Ultimate CSS Reference, I didnt have any particular inclination to be nice to Internet Explorer. Solar Training . Robert M Pardes . And I knew I was going to run into bugs and quirks, none of which would be any different in IE7, because the DOM simply wasnt on the development radar for that version.Even so, Ive been nothing short of staggered at the sheer amount of chaotic brokenness evident in its implementation of even the simplest of things.You may remember, not so long ago, that I wrote about the behavior of href attributes in Internet Explorer, and how for links they come back as qualified URIs rather than literal attribute values. But, oh man that is so the tip of the iceberg when it comes to getAttribute()

Read more…

Jon Sykes has discovered a bizarre bug in Internet Explorer 7 (and presumably IE6 as there is next to no difference in the JScript engines). You probably wouldn’t encounter this bug very often but if you did it would really make you pull out your hair trying to debug.

There is a bug in IE7 where by a line of code inside a conditional statement that NEVER runs, can cause an object that is set with a fairly standard object declaration to be whipped. heating and air . Things To Do In Atlanta . Even weirder is that it will have whipped the code even if you put a debug alert of the object before the code that does the whipping. Confused? I know I am.Thankfully it does look fairly simple to work _around_ and avoid. But it’s probably a debug nightmare, and it’s a bug I couldn’t find referenced anywhere, so I figured it was worth sharing.

I find myself eagerly awaiting the beginning of each new months to see how much browser share IE6 has lost. law loan . Sadly in August IE6 only fell 0.65%. SEO Website . It seems we have hit a threshold of IE7 adoption.This is of concern to me as a web developer because as bad as IE6 is and the fact that IE7 only fixed a few glaring problems having to support both, each with it’s own unique challenges, is far, far worse. Personally I have desided to stop supporting IE6 once it drops to 5% of browser share. Sadly this could take a while as it is still sitting at 44.59% and dropping agonizingly slow.I am considering going as far as displaying a noticable but unobtrusive message on the login screen of my applications encouraging upgrading to IE7, or even better yet, Firefox.Anyone else care to share their opinion on this?

By: Paul WilsonWhew! According to Computer Gaming World, there are 80 gazillion free Flash games sites in the cyber world.Popular sites are: * www.games.yahoo.com – this has card games, word games, arcade games, as well as puzzles. The number of violent games is limited so the site appeals to the “old-young” -those who are young at heart. * www.shockwave.com – a popular site with original games as well as PopCap ones. One can do a jigsaw here everyday. * www.addictinggames.com – has free games that are updated every week-Friday. The site has action, arcade, puzzle, as well as sports games. * www.arcadetown.com – has Flash games, java games, downloads and more.Since Flash offers many advantages to developers as well as players, many games are designed using Macromedia Flash. 10 Carat Diamond . four seasons . It is by far the best game platform and has incredible features.In an industry that’s evincing exponential growth, Flash has become the universal and popular choice for multimedia intensive web sites. Flash, singly crosses most barriers- * It supports complicated and wonderful graphics. * Allows download of files via the Internet. * And is compatible with playback devices.In the world of Flash enabled games the hosting system is the web server itself. Flash enables web sites to host animated as well as interactive movies and games. There is no paraphernalia required. banner stands . All that is needed is to download the game itself. The costs are minimal and not recurring.To play on the web all that is required is: a web browser, a Flash player, and the Internet. Flash is the universal plug in needed to play games. It is installed on every PC with Windows XP and Mac.Playing online can be fun and most games can now be played by many players from all round the world. Just keep in mind: * That there are players who cheat at games. Look for PunkBuster software on the server, this detects cheats who try and gain unfair advantages. * Play with others who have credibility and are accountable for their actions. Many online sites need verified log ins, they are actively managed gaming environments. This is a better choice for safe gaming. * Create a select group of friends and use the broadband server to host a private gaming server. honolulu storage . * Do your research thoroughly. Seek safe and high quality gaming sites.Gaming is in its golden phase and is set to reach new heights. Innovation, new business models, and unprecedented growth is expected to open new avenues in gaming.

By: Paul WilsonInternet games use the cyber world technology for playing. Denver criminal attorney . Games are extremely popular and constantly evolving.There are: * Games played using e-mail. car cover . * Games played on a browser window by using a web address. * Games played using Internet Relay Chat, Telenet, MUD client, or a Web based forum. * Games that are graphic need stand-alone software that permits players to play with or against one another using an Internet connection.The first game, MUD, was developed in 1978, and the market has burgeoned since then.To play, one needs: * A reliable Internet connection. * A personal computer or game console. * Selected software required by specific games.One can play simple board games like scrabble, or bingo, or games like poker, mahjong, and pool. Another popular category is simulation games-these imitate real-life situations and cover aspects like combat, city planning, strategies, as well as flight simulation.For serious gaming the computer performance must be optimized. This can be done by: * Running the disk defragmenter and organizing the computer files. This should ideally be done once a month at least. * Correct folder and file errors by using scandisk—use once a week and the computer will give trouble free performance. * Clean your hard drives-get rid of Internet files, temporary files, as well as files in the trash/recycle bin. Clear the cache and uninstall programs that are not in everyday use. * Update the operating system software. Download any new security patches. Keep video drivers updated. * Clear space on the hard drive—store files on a back up system. * Clear any spyware you have inherited from websites. * Minimize number of programs running-when playing a graphic intensive game if there are too many programs running simultaneously the graphics will become choppy and game will be slow. * Delete add on game files-wall papers and other paraphernalia will just clutter the computer. * Run an anti-virus program regularly but disable it when you are loading/playing games. Antivirus programs slow down games. * Always shut down the computer properly.The Internet allows gamers to compete with people across oceans, on the other side of the world and anywhere in the universe. Some use PCs while others use consoles. What you use is a personal choice and depends on issues like costs and so on.Before you buy a game you must: * Consider “system requirements” – some games can run on systems that are not exact others need specific hardware. * Find out if the game is single player or multi-player. Many games need the Internet-and, the broadband connection is more efficient than the dial-up connection. Many like Xbox Live only work on a broadband connection. * Find out if the game can be played using a mouse/keyboard or whether it will need a full-featured joy stick.Be wise and try a demo before making an actual purchase. Playing a demo benefits the player as well as game developer. Many online games offer free trial periods – beta testing is a great opportunity to find out if the game suits your taste as well as pockets.Do your research thoroughly-usually there are several games competing for players within a genre. Read game reviews before taking the final step.

I saw thias article on Ajaxian and just had to tell you about it. This is exciting. limo rental . Finally all the major browsers can be tested on one platform (if your a Windows user that is).

Steve Jobs gave the keynote at WWDC this morning, where he announced a couple of items that affect Ajax developers.Safari for WindowsApple is releasing the public beta of Safari for Windows today. cosmetic dentist in encino . Steve gave demos of Safari, claiming that it screams: * ibench html performance: IE 4.6 sec, FF 3.7, Safari 2.2 seconds * javascript: IE 2.4 sec, FF 1.6, Safari 0.9 secondsWebKit is getting a real solid foundation on Windows with Apple joining Adobe on the Windows port. a1 . I bet Adobe is happy.

interior designs . If you’ve ever tried copying and pasting a multi-line address into Google Maps just to realize that an input box will only take one line at a timemeaning that you have to copy and paste each line individuallythere’s a simple Firefox tweak that will solve this problem

read more | digg story