16Apr
Firstly excuse the post title, I couldn’t resist.
As I write this post I am making use of the free Wi-Fi on a National Express train, to be honest the experience isn’t fantastic. Although my laptop is registering an excellent connection of 11Mbps most web pages are going a bit slow and Live Messenger will not connect, luckily i can use Meebo web messenger to stay connected.
The reason I’m travelling down to London is for the Future of Web Design conference which kicks off tomorrow, with a pre-conference party tonight in Covent Garden. As this is my first time at a conference like this I have high expectations of learning lots and meeting a great group of like minded people.
I’m hoping over the next few days to find time to blog about my experiences of the event to show a newbies perspective. I’m sure there are a lot of people like myself that register for conferences and have no idea about what really goes on, so hopefully I can answer some of the questions that people have.
12Apr
As i’ve been working through a new site build that integrates a WordPress blog I’ve hit across an interesting problem.
Although through WordPress’ permalinks settings you are fully capable of giving a post a .html extension it seems impossible to do the same with pages. This seems a little odd, I tried a couple of things, such as changing the page permalink that it allows you to do, but when you add the .html WordPress removes the dot and leaves you with pagehtml rather than page.html.
Luckily if I enter .html into a browser it will redirect, however this leaves inconsistent url’s through the site. If the system can handle .html for a post, why not a page?
9Apr
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7336940.stm
This morning it has been reported that many ISP’s in the UK have asked that the BBC contribute for the upgrading of the broadband network system due to the increased strain brought by the use of the iPlayer.
It seems ridiculous that ISP’s can apportion so much blame on one site for the increased strain on broadband networks. Though it is true that since it’s launch the BBC iPlayer has been very successful, but why is this one service being targeted alone. Many of the UK channels now offer an Internet TV service, this coupled with sites like Youtube and the many torrent sites must account for a larger strain on the market. However charging these websites/companies has not been mentioned.
Is it because the BBC is a publicly-funded service that the ISP’s feel they are capable of getting some free cash?
7Apr
Today I came across one of the first implementations (i’ve seen) of Microsoft’s Silverlight not to be produced by Microsoft themselves.
http://www.itv.com/CatchUp/default.html
ITV’s own version of the BBC iPlayer appears to utilise both Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight together. Although Flash is used to create the interface of the application it appears that Silverlight is being used in some capacity for the streaming of video content.
When starting to play a video the Silverlight logo can clearly be seen as well as a message about the use of Silverlight to broaden the applications compatibility with Firefox and Mac users. This is obviously a good thing considering the high profile issues the BBC iPlayer had with compatibility through various operating systems.
Although I have not used Silverlight to develop anything myself I have high hopes for it. Although it may not be the Flash killer some have speculated it may help push along development of media-rich web applications and hopefully make them easier to use and develop.