Chainsaw on a Tire Swing

Web Browser (User Agent) Built-In CSS

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Every web browser has a built-in (User Agent) style sheet for rendering default HTML elements. Here are the locations for those UA style sheets:

W3C & WHATWG
- HTML 4.01
- HTML5
- HTML5 Living Standard
- CSS 1
- CSS 2
- CSS 2.2
Firefox
- Mercurial, at mozilla-central/layout/style/res/html.css (or look at dxr.mozilla.org)
- GitHub, at gecko-dev/layout/style/res/html.css
- In Firefox, open resource://gre-resources/ & then select html.css
Safari, at trunk/Source/WebCore/css/html.css
Chrome & Opera, at chromium/chromium/blink/master/Source/core/css/html.css
Microsoft
- IE 6–9 (Trident) (Note that the bottom of this page contains links to user-agent style sheets for Edge, Chrome, Firefox, & Safari)
- Edge 13
Opera (pre-Blink)

UA style sheets from 2014 can be found on GitHub at sw4/revert.css.

HTML5 Boilerplate is an attempt to solve any inconsistencies (which there aren’t many of anymore).

Original pointers from Stack Overflow & Jens Oliver Meiert.

Updated 2017-10-30 to fix broken links & add link to HTML5 Living Standard.

The title page of the 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica

Sat, 04 Jul 2015 00:00:00 -0500

I love things like this. The full title of the 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (1797):

Encyclopædia Britannica; or, A dictionary of arts, sciences, and miscellaneous literature; Constructed on a Plan, by which the different sciences and arts Are digested into the Form of Distinct treatises or systems, comprehending The History, Theory, and Practice, of each, according to the Latest Discoveries and Improvements; and full Explanations given of the various detached parts of knowledge, whether relating to Natural and Artificial Objects, or to Matters Ecclesiastical, Civil, Military, Commercial, &c., Including Elucidations of the most important Topics relative to Religion, Morals, Manners, and the Oeconomy of Life; together with A Description of all the Countries, Cities, principal Mountains, Seas, Rivers, &c. throughout the World; A General History, Ancient and Modern, of the different Empires, Kingdoms, and States; and An Account of the Lives of the most Eminent Persons in every Nation, from the earliest ages down to the present times. Compiled from the writings of the best Authors, in several languages; the most approved Dictionaries, as well of general Science as of its particular branches; the Translations, Journals, and Memoirs of learned Societies, both at home and abroad; the MS Leaflets of Eminent Professors on different Sciences; and a variety of Original Materials, furnished by an Extensive Correspondence.

You can see for yourself at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013729671;view=1up;seq=7.

Some interesting notes on the near-ubiquitous hamburger menu

Fri, 22 May 2015 00:00:00 -0500

The BBC News has an interesting article on its website—“Hamburger icon: How these three lines mystify most people”—that has some really good info in it. In particular, this struck my eye:

“I did multiple tests,” says James Foster, a web developer based in New Zealand, who has surveyed users’ interactions with the button over the course of many months. “The results all came out the same - the icon is not as clear to some users as developers and designers think it is.”

Adding the word “menu” underneath the three lines increases the button’s use by 7.2%, according to Foster’s tests.

Putting the hamburger inside a box, so it looks like a button, increases use by 22.4%.

Switching the lines for the word “menu” makes 20% more people click, Foster found.

Now, there are obviously some problems with the numbers here—increased it 7.2% from what? 80%? 2%?—but I still find this useful, & it jibes with other things I’ve read & seen. Just knowing that certain design patterns increase usability is useful to know.

A guide to getting webmail services to work with mailto links

Sun, 03 May 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Virtually none of my college students use actual mail programs—like Outlook, Mail on OS X, or Thunderbird—on their computers. Instead, they use a webmail service, like Gmail, Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail), Yahoo Mail, or AOL Mail. When it comes time to test mailto links or a mailto action for form submissions¹, however, we run into a problem: mailto will not, by default, open an email with a webmail service. However, there are ways you can fix this so webmail services will work. This page details those solutions.

Two notes:

I don’t mention Internet Explorer at all. For this sort of testing, there is no real need to use Internet Explorer when Chrome, Firefox, or Safari will do just fine.
I don’t mention Opera. There’s probably a good chance that one of the extensions on this page will work for you.

Gmail
Yahoo Mail
Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com
AOL Mail

Gmail

Gmail in Chrome on Windows, OS X, & Linux

Go to Gmail in Chrome, & you should see a double diamond icon in the right side of the Omnibar (what Google calls the address bar).

Click on that little double diamond icon & a little sheet should appear that asks “Allow mail.google.com to open all email links?”.

Select Allow & then click on Done. The sheet should disappear, & so should the double diamond icon.

Now when you click on a mailto link, or submit a form that has a mailto for an action (which, remember, is a horrible idea, but we’re using it with this assignment so you can test your form), it should open an email in Gmail.

If you ever want to change this, perform the following steps:

Click on the hamburger menu (the 3 lines on top of each other, which looks just like a hamburger) in the top right of Chrome & select Settings.
Scroll to the bottom of Settings & click on Show Advanced Settings.
Scroll a bit further down to the Privacy section & click on the Content Settings button. A Content Settings dialog box should open.
Scroll down to the Handlers section & click on the Manage Handlers button. The Protocol Handlers dialog box should open.
Under Active Protocol Handlers you should see mailto. Next to mailto is a select list that should say mail.google.com. Click on that select list & change it to none.
Press the Done button to close the Protocol Handlers dialog box.
Press the Done button to close the Content Settings dialog box.
Close the Settings tab in Chrome.

Gmail in Firefox on Windows, OS X, & Linux

Click on the hamburger menu (the 3 lines on top of each other, which looks just like a hamburger) in the top right of Firefox. A panel should open with a bunch of icons on it.

Click on the Preferences (or Options if you’re on Windows) icon in the panel. The Preferences window should open.

Click on the Applications button at the top of the Preferences window.

In the Search box at the top of the Applications tab, enter mailto. You should see mailto under the Content Type column.

Under the Action column, choose Use Gmail from the select list.

If you’re on a Mac, close the Preferences window.

If you’re on Windows, click the OK button to close the Options window.

Gmail in Safari on OS X

You want to install the Mailto: extension. Click on the previous link, & once you’re at Safari Extensions, click on the Install Now button to install it.

Once it’s installed, the Mailto: Options window should immediately open in a new tab in Safari. Select the Gmail radio button & then close the Mailto: Settings tab.

Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail in Chrome on Windows, OS X, & Linux

You want to install the mailto: extension. Click on the previous link, & once you’re at the Chrome Web Store, click on the Add To Chrome button to install it.

Once it’s installed, the Mailto: Settings window should immediately open. Select the Yahoo Mail radio button & then close the Mailto: Settings window.

Yahoo Mail in Firefox on Windows, OS X, & Linux

Click on the hamburger menu (the 3 lines on top of each other, which looks just like a hamburger) in the top right of Firefox. A panel should open with a bunch of icons on it.

Click on the Preferences (or Options if you’re on Windows) icon in the panel. The Preferences window should open.

Click on the Applications button at the top of the Preferences window.

In the Search box at the top of the Applications tab, enter mailto. You should see mailto under the Content Type column.

Under the Action column, choose Use Yahoo Mail from the select list.

If you’re on a Mac, close the Preferences window.

If you’re on Windows, click the OK button to close the Options window.

Yahoo Mail in Safari on OS X

You want to install the Mailto: extension. Click on the previous link, & once you’re at Safari Extensions, click on the Install Now button to install it.

Once it’s installed, the Mailto: Options window should immediately open in a new tab in Safari. Select the Yahoo Mail radio button & then close the Mailto: Settings tab.

Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com

Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com in Chrome on Windows, OS X, & Linux

You want to install the mailto: extension. Click on the previous link, & once you’re at the Chrome Web Store, click on the Add To Chrome button to install it.

Once it’s installed, the Mailto: Settings window should immediately open. Select the Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com radio button & then close the Mailto: Settings window.

Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com in Firefox on Windows, OS X, & Linux

You want to install the Live Mailer extension. Click on the previous link, & once you’re at the Firefox Add-Ons website, click on the Add To Firefox button to install it.

Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com in Safari on OS X

You want to install the Mailto: extension. Click on the previous link, & once you’re at Safari Extensions, click on the Install Now button to install it.

Once it’s installed, the Mailto: Options window should immediately open in a new tab in Safari. Select the Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com radio button & then close the Mailto: Settings tab.

AOL Mail

AOL Mail in Chrome on Windows, OS X, & Linux

You want to install the mailto: extension. Click on the previous link, & once you’re at the Chrome Web Store, click on the Add To Chrome button to install it.

Once it’s installed, the Mailto: Settings window should immediately open. Select the AOL Mail radio button & then close the Mailto: Settings window.

AOL Mail in Firefox on Windows, OS X, & Linux

On the top right, under your username, click on the Options link. A select list should appear.

Select Mail Settings in the select list. The General Settings webpage will load.

On the left side of the General Settings page, click on Compose. The Compose webpage will load.

Scroll all the way to the bottom of the Compose page, to a section titled AOL Mail Add-On.

Click the link to the right of AOL Mail Add-On that’s titled Use AOL Mail As Your Email Client When Browsing Web Pages.

A dark bar will appear at the top of Firefox’s viewport that says Add AOL Mail (mail.aol.com) As An Application For mailto Links. To the far right of that text is a button that says Add Application. Click that button, which is shown below. The dark bar will disappear.

You’re not finished! Click on the hamburger menu (the 3 lines on top of each other, which looks just like a hamburger) in the top right of Firefox. A panel should open with a bunch of icons on it.

Click on the Preferences (or Options if you’re on Windows) icon in the panel. The Preferences window should open.

Click on the Applications button at the top of the Preferences window.

In the Search box at the top of the Applications tab, enter mailto. You should see mailto under the Content Type column.

Under the Action column, choose Use Yahoo Mail from the select list.

If you’re on a Mac, close the Preferences window.

If you’re on Windows, click the OK button to close the Options window.

AOL Mail in Safari on OS X

You want to install the Mailto: extension. Click on the previous link, & once you’re at Safari Extensions, click on the Install Now button to install it.

Once it’s installed, the Mailto: Options window should immediately open in a new tab in Safari. Select the AOL Mail radio button & then close the Mailto: Settings tab.

I have them use a mailto action just for testing, & warn them never to do that in real life. ↩

Anti-virus software often causes more problems than it’s worth

Wed, 29 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Eric Lawrence just wrote a great post on his blog that shows the flaws in anti-virus software:

Every year for Microsoft’s annual AV summit, the IE Team puts together a chart of the impact of AV on browser performance, showing the variation across the top 20 AV products (the variation is huge). They don’t want to publish this data, but the impact ranges from “bad” to “absurdly unbelievably bad.” The best products impact performance by ~15%, the worst slow the browser by 400% or more. Several of the products crash the browser entirely and can’t be benchmarked properly. Conducting these benchmarks properly is difficult—you need to account for every piece of software running on the machine and ensure that the test conditions are entirely fair (hardware, software, updates, etc); as a consequence, many of the “public” benchmarks are rather inaccurate.

…

Personal anecdote: I have Symantec Endpoint Protection running on a machine with a high-end i7-4771 CPU; even after unticking all of the “optional” protection features I can find in the Symantec control panel, the Octane score in Chrome 43 is 11659. On the same hardware in the same browser version without Symantec installed, the Octane score is 32555, 279% of the original score.

The devastating impact of antivirus on browsing performance is one reason why your portable devices feel magically fast—on a AV-unhindered i7, IE11 runs SunSpider in 70ms. Add AV and it runs in 350ms. The IPad Air, running with Safari’s slower script engine, runs it in 380ms. Mobile devices offer “Desktop Class” performance only because your desktop has been wrecked.

…

But security software provides surprisingly little protection, as this delightful photo of a colleague’s laptop shows. In the foreground, the AV software promising that the user is protected. In the background, the ransom UI demanding payment to decrypt the documents.

Even worse, “security” software itself often introduces vulnerabilities into otherwise secure systems.

His recommendation is the same one I give people: use the built-in anti-virus software provided by Microsoft (or download it from Microsoft’s site if you’re using Windows 7 or Vista). It’s just as crappy as the others, but since it’s built-in, it’s faster & uses fewer resources.

And of course, if you use a Mac or Linux, don’t bother with anti-virus.

The Iron Law of Stardom & the tech industry

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Louis Menand’s “The Iron Law of Stardom”, from the March 24, 1997 issue of The New Yorker, put forward an interesting idea about stardom, claiming that it is always three years:

There is such a law. It is the law of the three-year limit, otherwise known as the Iron Law of Stardom. This law dictates that stardom cannot extend for a period greater than three years. There is no penalty for breaking this law, for the simple reason that it is unbreakable. It is not just a rule of etiquette, or a statistical norm, or a social-scientific conceit, like theories about the effects of birth order. This is the true a priori, the reality that explains all other realities. It is an iron law.

…

One obvious apparent counterexample can be disposed of right at the start. “What about the Beatles?” a person might reasonably wonder. In 1964, they appeared on the “Ed Sullivan Show” and immediately went to the top of the charts, where they basically remained until 1970, when the group broke up. “Meet the Beatles” was a No. 1 album (1964); so were “Help!” (1965), “Rubber Soul” (1966), “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967), the White Album (1968), “Abbey Road” (1969), and “Let It Be” (1970). That’s six years, not three…

The number six should give you a clue. The Beatles didn’t overcome the three-year limit; they simply enjoyed two consecutive three-year terms. In order to do this, they effectively had to be two different groups: lovable mop tops (1964-67), followed by hippie artistes (1967-70). If they had remained mop tops after 1967, they would have fallen from stardom, just as they would have if they had remained together as artistes after 1970.

…

A very small number of stars have, like the Beatles, reinvented themselves once—for example, Madonna, who enjoyed three years (1985-88) as the downtown queen of sexual hip and then three years (1989-92) as an uptown version of the same thing. But no star has ever done it successfully three times.

Once a star, always a star, of course—and that’s the problem. For stardom is not to be confused with being a star. “Stardom” is here used in a particular and technical sense, as the name for a discrete and recognizable episode in the life of a star. Stardom is the period of inevitability, the time when everything works in a way that makes you think it will work that way forever. The dial seems permanently tuned to the frequency at which the individual star is broadcasting. Stardom means (if you are the star) that nothing you do can be asymmetrical with what people want, because you are what people want. Stardom is the intersection of personality with history, a perfect congruence of the way the world happens to be and the way the star is.

The world, however, moves on. The star moves on, too, an animated relic of a moment now past. We often treasure the relic, which is why some people (Elizabeth Taylor) remain stars for decades after their original stardom (1963-66, from “Cleopatra” to “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) is over. Stardom is what makes people stars, but although stars may shine forever, stardom always fades. It’s the difference be- tween being recognized in restaurants and being talked about in restaurants.

I wonder if this works in technology. We have dominance, but is that the same as stardom? WinTel’s period of dominance lasted a bit over a decade (1995–2007; perhaps longer?), while Apple’s has been going on for almost a decade (2008–now). Of course, just as Hollywood can have more than one person with stardom, so too can the tech industry. Google’s dominance started when? Has it ended (perhaps a bit with some people—the Snowden revelations really put me off of Google for a lot of reasons)?

Another thought: just as actors experience stardom, can tech leaders? Steve Jobs certainly experienced stardom, & like The Beatles in Menand’s piece, he did it twice: once in Apple’s early days, & later during the hyper-growth brought about by the iPhone. But he was always a star. Bill Gates? During the mid-90s, sure. But after the antitrust trial, he definitely faded. He’s still a star—being the richest guy on the planet will do that—but obviously not central to the industry.

Who’s it right now? Marissa Mayer? No, she’s not central. Sergei or Larry? Maybe at one time, but not now. Tim Cook? Powerful, but carrying an aura of inevitability? The company, sure, but the man? Not to my thinking. Jony Ive? Maybe.

Who am I missing?

Now THIS is useful advice!

Sun, 29 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Some researchers have figured it out:

They found that women rated [male] dancers higher when they showed larger and more variable movements of the head, neck and torso. Speed of leg movements mattered too, particularly bending and twisting of the right knee. In what might be bad news for the 20% of the population who is left-footed, left knee movement didn’t seem to matter. In fact, certain left-legged movements had a small negative correlation with dancing ability, meaning that dancers who favored left leg motion were rated more poorly. While not statistically significant, these findings suggest that there might be something to that old adage about “two left feet” after all. One final surprise — arm movement didn’t correlate with perceived dancing ability in any significant way.

And definitely watch the videos. They are truly … inspiring.

Good info to remember about monopolies

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0500

In a good article about Google’s status as a monopoly, Vauhini Vara makes the following important point:

According to the people familiar with the investigation, Google got off the hook largely because, however the company might have harmed competitors, the F.T.C. found that its behavior, by and large, hadn’t hurt competition or, by extension, consumers. (The distinction between harm to competitors and harm to competition is an important one: according to the modern interpretation of antitrust law, even if a business hurts individual competitors, it isn’t seen as breaking antitrust law unless it has also hurt the competitive process—that is, that it has taken actions that, for instance, raised prices or reduced choices, over all, for consumers.)

I often have to remind students that in the United States, it’s not illegal to be a monopoly; instead, it’s illegal to abuse your status as a monopoly. The quotation above seems like a good adjunct to that statement.

How to download YouTube videos

Sun, 08 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0600

I teach a lot of classes & give a lot of talks, & long ago I learned a painful lesson: never rely on the Internet to be available. Murphy’s Law & all that. So if I have a video to show, I try to get an offline copy just in case. Since YouTube has everything in the world on it, this usually means grabbing a copy of the video from the ubiquitous service.

The most reliable method I’ve found is a wonderful command line tool called youtube-dl. Its man page describes itself thusly:

youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should work on your Unix box, on Windows or on Mac OS X. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.

(By the way, note the sort of tongue in cheek “and a few more sites”. It actually works on a lot of other sites. Not all, but quite a few.)

To install it on your Mac¹, use Home Brew via your terminal²:

brew install youtube-dl

Now that it’s on your machine, let’s test it. I’ve been playing the new zombie apocalypse combined with parkour jumper game Dying Light lately, & that first night mission is incredibly tense & scary. Let’s download the video so you can see for yourself!³

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG8j3SqOxJw
[youtube] QG8j3SqOxJw: Downloading webpage
[youtube] QG8j3SqOxJw: Extracting video information
[youtube] QG8j3SqOxJw: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Destination: Dying Light - First Night Mission-QG8j3SqOxJw.mp4
[download] 100% of 77.89MiB in 00:20

A short wait later, you’ll find an MP4 file named “Dying Light - First Night Mission-QG8j3SqOxJw.mp4” in your Downloads folder. Note that youtube-dl figured out the largest resolution available for the video & then downloaded the MP4 version of that file (& named the file with the YouTube ID as well). If you want a smaller resolution, or a different format, start reading the very complete man page or the online documentation.

Now, that’s cool, but what if you’re like me, & you’re thinking that you’d like to be able to perform a workflow like this:

See a video on YouTube’s website.
Download said video using youtube-dl without having to manually type or cut & paste.

Keyboard Maestro to the rescue (insert picture of superperson with a large KM on their chest)!

I use Safari, but this could be applied to any web browser. Set up a trigger (in my case, I open a palette of commands in Safari & press Y) & use the following actions:

Type the ⌘L keystroke
Select the address bar.
Type the ⌘C keystroke
Copy the URL of the current webpage.
Activate iTerm
iTerm 2 is my terminal app of choice, & it’s always running.
Type the ⌘T keystroke
Open a new tab in iTerm.
Insert Test by Pasting: cd ~/Downloads && youtube-dl "%CurrentClipboard%" && exit %Return%
The cool part: cd to my Downloads directory; if that happens successfully (the &&), then run youtube-dl using the URL copied earlier; if that happens successfully (again with the &&), then exit the shell, closing the tab we opened earlier. The %Return% is there to execute the command.
Delete Past Clipboard 0
No need to keep that URL.

You could always extend this, so that, for instance, after the video downloads it immediately loads & plays, or that you go back to Safari after the download finished, but I’ll leave that up to you. For now, happy downloading!

If you’re using Linux, you should be able to find youtube-dl in your software repository of choice. If you’re Windows, you can download an executable from the website. ↩
If you don’t update your Home Brew installation very often, you’d better get in the habit. It seems like youtube-dl updates a few times a week. ↩
Warning: This video contains scary zombie monster situations & some bad language, but nothing like the bad language you would have heard coming out of my mouth when I was playing it for myself! ↩

You're invited to a public talk on Wednesday

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 15:27:00 -0600

… & you’re invited!

Title: Intellectual Property: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly in 2 Hours

Description: There are four core subjects of so-called intellectual property law: patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and trademarks. Attorney Denise Lieberman and Professor Scott Granneman have taught on this subject many times, and they’ll be covering all four of those core subjects. What are they? How do they work? What’s good about them and what’s bad (and there’s lots of bad)? And just why does Scott insist on calling it “so-called” intellectual property law? Join us and find out!

Who: Scott Granneman (me!) & noted local attorney Denise Lieberman

When: 6:30-9 pm

Where: Graybar Electric Co., Inc., facility at 11885 Lackland Road, 63146 (directions at http://www.sluug.org/resources/meeting_info/map_graybar.shtml; map at http://chnsa.ws/ks). Park in the lot, come inside, sign in with the guard, & take the elevators to the bottom floor.

Denise & I have taught & lectured on this subject quite a bit, & we’re very excited to be giving this talk. Please join us—I guarantee you’ll learn a lot, & you’ll be entertained as well. Oh yeah, & there’s also free food.

See you there!

Chainsaw on a Tire Swing

Web Browser (User Agent) Built-In CSS

The title page of the 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica

Some interesting notes on the near-ubiquitous hamburger menu

A guide to getting webmail services to work with mailto links

Table of Contents

Gmail

Gmail in Chrome on Windows, OS X, & Linux

Gmail in Firefox on Windows, OS X, & Linux

Gmail in Safari on OS X

Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail in Chrome on Windows, OS X, & Linux

Yahoo Mail in Firefox on Windows, OS X, & Linux

Yahoo Mail in Safari on OS X

Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com

Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com in Chrome on Windows, OS X, & Linux

Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com in Firefox on Windows, OS X, & Linux

Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook.com in Safari on OS X

AOL Mail

AOL Mail in Chrome on Windows, OS X, & Linux

AOL Mail in Firefox on Windows, OS X, & Linux

AOL Mail in Safari on OS X

Anti-virus software often causes more problems than it’s worth

The Iron Law of Stardom & the tech industry

Now THIS is useful advice!

Good info to remember about monopolies

How to download YouTube videos

You're invited to a public talk on Wednesday