h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... and all the other useless stuff out there that people insist on using all of the time even when they don't need to.

HTML5 can't come quick enough.

That is all.

Standards reliant web-design, without any* propiety addons... no flash dream world
Found a fantastic website the other day, obviously cost them a fortune to have it designed... no HTML at all, barely any XTML, but lots and lots and lots of Flash... Illegal indeed strickly speaking under US 508 and UK DDA but hey, it might look pretty if your using the exact same browser, with the exact same configeration, on the exact same monitor arrangement as the designers... its companys liek that, who are being ripped off by webdesigners who just do it all in Flash or whatever it might be, make a pretty site, which takes them no time, and no thought* at all and you get a loverly unusible site where can I sign up to this campaign?

Sign up below, I'll need your credit card number, pin number, D.O.B, and any other important information. Oh,and I'll also need to know which version of flash you're using

I've found some really cool sites that do stuff in HTML5, great fun when I'm bored.

http://mrdoob.com/

I'm pretty sure that PDF has now been opened as a standard. I have Free Software (Evince Document Viewer) which opens PDF files. On Windows, you can get Foxit, which is free (though I'm not sure whether it's FLOSS). And Open Office can save as PDF.

While we're calling for things to die, x264 is FLOSS, but the H.264 standard which it implements is patent encumbered, which means that using it in the US, Germany, or other countries which recognise the MPEG-LA patents is a dicy business. And yet the most popular form of video on the web is H.264 (to be pedantic, H.264 baseline video and MP3 audio (also patented) in an MP4 container).

Firefox now implements Theora video and Vorbis audio in an Ogg container, and should soon implement VP8 video and Vorbis audio in a WebM container. YouTube is publishing videos in MP4 and WebM modes.

***

HTML5, to be accurate, is not one thing. It's a whole host of things. Most of it is already in browsers. I was playing with localStorage the other day. That's another part of HTML5, which should make games and suchlike more playable. Internet Explorer has had it for years! It's one of the very very few places where IE was ahead of the competition. But all the others have it too, now.

http://diveintohtml5.org

TRiG.

well I like Flash and PDF

Quicktime (and iTunes and all their other guff come to that) you can keep

Weirdo

Quite! its horrid... so horrid

Mmh, let's see... Geeky computer-related title that I don't understand...

*looks at top of page*

Yep, it IS a Penguin thread.

and I really really resent being in a Geeky computer-related thread and being called the "weirdo" here

Look... if there's one person in this thread who's goign to be called a 'weirdo' I think we all know who It should* be...

Talking of Flash, javascript and suchlike... I've had to uninstall Flash a bluddy again on both of my computers as its playing up chronically at the moment on some web-sites and a strange one the other day, a web-site which kept crashign the browser (whichever one I tried), unless I turned off style sheets

you see?
I know that the words, individually, are English. But I understand not a word of what you say.

Something about you flashed something?

come on! your kidding.... that wasn't even remotely y talk
Were it that, I'd have mentioned the problems I'm having with my SQL databases and PhP form/board design, trying to get it working with my HTML and CSS, and beginning to ponder weather it'd be easier if I went for XML, and put in a Javascript application on the page instead to render the database querries to the SQL... Or maybe, even if I shoudln't give up and instead host external content and link through some kind of plugin within my HTML, I guess again it'd have to be a javascript application or maybe a macromedia flash box, but I dont' really want to have to use Flash if I can avoid it, so perhaps I should just keep bashign about awith the PHP until I can get the SQL database working how I want...

"Were it that, I'd have mentioned the problems I'm having with my SQL databases and PhP form/board design, trying to get it working with my HTML and CSS, and beginning to ponder weather it'd be easier if I went for XML, and put in a Javascript application on the page instead to render the database querries to the SQL... Or maybe, even if I shoudln't give up and instead host external content and link through some kind of plugin within my HTML, I guess again it'd have to be a javascript application or maybe a macromedia flash box, but I dont' really want to have to use Flash if I can avoid it, so perhaps I should just keep bashign about awith the PHP until I can get the SQL database working how I want..."

Translation:
I can't see the data and I'm not sure why.

spot on! (actually I'm also in the very early stages of this problem, so not only can't I see the data, I cna't figure out how to get it in the database in the first place )

well I haven't spent 10yrs as AP, SAP, SA, SP, DBA, DBBS, SAD, SOD, BSS respectively for nothing (and yes, one of those isn;t real)

Reminds me of the time I asked my BF to give me the RP on the QT about the PTA, because my SO didn't know this I had to GE, and eventually found a KP who knew the RP on the QT and could get me UTS on everything connected to the PTA...

everyone else on this thread has gone very quiet...

When I did my degree in computing there was one paragraph in the course book for SAD (Systems Analysis and Design for everyone else) which became quite famous on the course. It consisted of about 12 lines of text, in about 3 sentences and almost every other 'word' was a TLA. Utter gibberish - even if you did know what they all meant!

exactly... I spent my univeristy time reading scientific papers with pretty mcuh the same attitude to english language

The TNF alpha SNP at -308 .... etc., etc., etc., actually think I've fogotten most of it by now, not the sort of stuff I need to recall to mind on a daily basis

you can't scare me with pointless acronyms.

I used to be in



Military Intelligence.

DON'T SAY IT!

as if we would.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYFjGOCaiQk