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My 5 wishes for Opera (tagged)

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I've been tagged by Non-Troppo. I was expecting this, hehe. :smile:

Here are my 5 wishes:

  1. Developers, developers, developers. I obviously want web developers tools. Even when something doesn't work properly in Opera, I try to debug the problem with Firebug in Firefox - trying to figure out what could go wrong in Opera. The available Opera developer tools are not (good) enough.
  2. Performance improvements all over. Fix the serious performance issues with transparent PNGs.
  3. Stability.
  4. Automatic updates.
  5. Improved accessibility and usability: a query interface and native GUI on KDE, Gnome, Mac OS X, and Windows.
  6. Improved BiDi support. Make YtseJam happy. :smile:

Also, don't forget my huge wish list for Opera 10.

Picking the people to tag is harder. I tag Lucian Marin. I'm out of ideas. Anyone wants to be tagged? :smile:

New site, new blog

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Hello!

I have finally released my new web site, ROBO Design version 5. It has a completely new backend, new functionality, dropped functionality, and more. Me and my twin brother decided to completely change the structure of the site and make it more personal.

There you go: www.robodesign.ro.

The new site has a blog for each of us. So, I will no longer post "articles" in here. I will use my site. I might occasionally cross-post what's interesting for the My Opera community (anything related to the Opera browser).

Thanks for everyone who read my blog and/or posted comments. I really appreciate comments. :wink:

P.S. I am not leaving the My Opera community. This is only a choice for a larger audience: my entire site, not only you guys. :wink:

Capsula Timpului - Integrarea în UE

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În continuarea articolului precedent, despre proiectul "Capsula Timpului" şi despre blogosfera românească, voi scrie despre integrarea în Uniunea Europeană.

Despre acest subiect am avut săptămâna trecută de scris un scurt articol de o pagină A4. Scopul? Participarea la un concurs pe tema integrării României în Uniunea Europeană, concurs şcolar organizat în judeţul în care mă regăsesc :smile:. Am participat la rugămintea doamnei profesoare de informatică.

Integrarea în UE a început sub o oarecare formă încă de la revoluţia din 1989. Tranziţia la democraţie, libertatea de exprimare, accesul la informaţie, şi garantarea proprietăţii sunt câteva din principalele valori ale Uniunii Europene. O altă formă de integrare a României în UE, care a început de asemenea imediat după revoluţie, a fost intrarea companiilor şi corporaţiilor puternice pe plan mondial, în România. Companii precum Coca-Cola, Sony, Renault, Microsoft, European Drinks, Danone şi multe altele s-au "instalat" în România. Fiecare din ele în momente diferite, însă acestea au ajutat la formarea unei Românii moderne, europene. O ţară complet izolată, fără produsele acestor corporaţii pe piaţă, nu ar putea intra în UE. Astfel, integrarea în UE în 2007 este oarecum doar o etapă firească. De asemenea, această etapă nu e nicidecum ultima, fiindcă mai urmează trecerea la moneda europeană (€), şi alte etape.

Într-un anume fel companiile străine, şi media care imită modelul străin, au contribuit la "europenizarea" românilor. Copii sunt cei mai "afectaţi" de noul model, fiindcă ei se obişnuiesc cu reclamele, cu televizorul, şi cu calculatorul. Majoritatea reclamelor îi au pe ei în vizor, li se adresează. Metoda aceasta ajută la formarea unei generaţii de consumatori.

Generaţiile actuale sunt nemulţumite deja de UE, şi vor fi tot mai nemulţumite. Anul următor va fi greu pentru generaţia actuală, din motive financiare. Adulţii se adaptează cam greu la orice e nou, fie că e bine, fie că e rău. Tinerii ignoră aproape tot. Tinerilor nu le pasă, ei nu se îngrijesc de nimic. Oricum, ei sunt "super" ocupaţi cu noile baruri, discoteci, halucinogene, telefoane mobile, maşini, super marketuri, şi cu alte chestii "naşpa". Ce să facem? Trendurile astea :smile:.

Pentru români căderea comunismului ar trebui să fie de o importanţă nemăsurabilă, deşii unii uită de neplăcerile de pe vremea comunismului, uită de frica zilnică de securitate, frica de exprimare a opiniei, frica de tortură, şi de lipsa accesului la informaţie. Uită de rudele, de prietenii care au fost torturaţi sau omorâţi de comunişti, şi îşi aduc aminte cu nostalgie numai de falsa „bunăstare” a acelor vremuri (probabil ceva "paradis pierdut"). Eu nu am trăit pe vremea comunismului, însă sunt oarecum "revoltat" de nostalgia unora, pentru că mai ales cei ce au trăit în vremea comunismului ar trebui să nu uite cât de rău a fost. Multe din argumentele actuale "pro-comunism" sunt legate de salariul mare cu care se putea întreţine o familie, şi "avantajului" furtului din fabrici ("acum nu mai poţi fura, acum te bagă la puşcărie"). Aceste "avantaje" ale comunismului sunt cel puţin revoltătoare, ţinând cont că atunci nu aveam dreptul la opinie, la exprimare liberă, şi alte neplăceri. Atunci aveai bani, şi tot nu aveai de unde să cumperi pâine.

Astăzi, în Uniunea Europeană orice persoană are accesul la informaţie, însă numai cei ce o ştiu filtra şi utiliza au cel mai mare succes. Mâine omul competitiv este cel ce cunoaşte. Degeaba ne abonăm la sute de bloguri, la sute de site-uri de ştiri, degeaba avem accesul la toată informaţia din lume, dacă nu le ştim filtra. Acum individul este "inundat" de informaţii. Cel mai dezinformat om este cel ce se abonează la cele mai multe fluxuri RSS. Nu mai avem timp să gândim, să producem propria informaţie, ci o citim pe a altora.

Libera circulaţie este de asemenea un avantaj important pentru români, din 2007. Nu trebuie uitat şi accesul la produse ce nu sunt la ora actuală importate în România, pansamente, medicamente rare/scumpe, sau tehnologie avansată.

După părerea mea, Uniunea Europeană nu aduce numai lucruri bune, însă aduce mult mai multe lucruri bune decât rele. Viziunea mea este optimistă.

Concluzia despre integrarea în UE o putem scrie numai după vreo 10-20 de ani de la integrare – să vedem şi cât durează. Însă putem spera că globalizarea va face bine poporului român. Da, globalizare.

Fratele meu a participat la concursul menţionat mai sus cu imaginea următoare:

Cred că după evenimentele petrecute ieri (18 decembrie, 2006) în Parlamentul României, imaginea este cu atât mai potrivită. Cei ce au tolerat scandalul sunt la fel.

Una din ideile ce le-am avut amândoi a fost introducerea unei plăcuţe de înmatriculare la căruţă, cu textul "i'll be back". Ne-am abţinut, fiind un concurs "de optimism". :smile: Ideea noastră fiind în directă legătură cu opinia că istoria se repetă (Imperiul Roman), şi că ne vom întoarce la ce a fost. Plus latura amuzantă. Plus uitarea limbii ... plus ...

Imaginea nu este desenată 2D, ci este rendered 3D.

Am câştigat libertatea de a crede că suntem liberi.

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Capsula Timpului - blogosfera românească

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Astăzi am aflat de Capsula Timpului, chiar de la doamna Carmen Holotescu, care m-a invitat să particip şi eu. Ca titlu, ca idee, ca scop, proiectul mi se pare cunoscut (vezi Yahoo Time Capsule). Acest proiect este mai interesant deoarece e pur românesc - din câte am observat.

Vă invit să vedeţi şi voi, şi să participaţi: Invitatie de participare la Proiectul Zestre pentru Europa – Capsula Timpului.

Documentându-mă despre ce au scris şi alţii, am găsit interesante nişte articole de pe blogul lui Sorel Mihai. M-a mirat maturitatea articolelor, chiar dacă are numai 14 ani.

Personal, eu nu am considerat că sunt parte "integrantă" a "blogosferei" româneşti. După cum se observă articolele ce le public au o orientare puternică spre tehnologie, cu precădere Linux, programare web, şi browsere web. Însă, sunt şi eu român, deci fac parte din blogosfera românească :smile:.

Nu încerc să influenţez pe nimeni cu părerile mele, nici să adun vizitatori mulţi, nici să ajung "cel mai mare blogăr român". Eu consider că nu toţi românii trebuie să aibă blog, prin extensie, nici toată populaţia planetei nu trebuie să aibă aşa ceva. Cine vrea îşi face; cine are ceva de spus, spune. Sunt oameni cărora nu le plac blogurile în sine. Nici eu nu sunt mare "fan". Motiv pentru care nu încerc să conving pe nimeni să-şi facă unul. Cu ce-l ajută? Cu ce mă ajută? Cu ce ne ajută? Asta e o alegere personală, fiecare îşi face dacă vrea, când vrea, cum vrea.

Eu nu citesc bloguri în mod regular. Sunt abonat la fluxuri de ştiri (news feeds: Slashdot, Planet Opera, OSNews, IEBlog, Ars Technica, A List Apart, The Web Standards Project, Planet Mozilla, etc). Da, acestea sunt bloguri, însă unele sunt doar fluxuri de ştiri (gen Slashdot), nu sunt jurnale a unor persoane, unde se pot citi păreri personale. Altele sunt 100% orientate spre domeniile care mă interesează. Primesc tot ce e nou, dar nu înseamnă că le citesc: le scanez titlul. Dacă titlul pare interesant dau click. Dacă sumarul articolului e interesant, încarc întregul articol.

Cel mai aproape de "citit blogul cuiva" în cazul meu este cel al lui Claudio Santambrogio şi al lui Jonny Axelsson. Le "citesc" pentru că-i cunosc şi au orientare tehnică, uneori chiar filozofică, la jax.

Din "blogosfera" românească vizitez rar site-ul lui Lucian Marin - iarăşi pentru că-l cunosc. Merită să menţionez şi blogul despre Linux al lui Marius Ducea - de nota 10, cu multe informaţii despre configurarea Linux. Îl citesc doar când am nevoie să configurez ceva la Linux :smile:.

Din curiozitate, am mai citit şi articole de pe alte site-uri: să văd despre ce scriu românii. Majoritatea nu-mi plac. Unele sunt irelevante, despre viaţa monotonă a persoanei, altele sunt vulgare. În prima categorie nu se găsesc numai românii, însă în categoria celor vulgare ... nu am văzut nici unul străin. Legăturile nu merită menţionate (cine-şi petrece cel puţin 60-70% din timp la calculator a văzut astfel de bloguri). Autorii? Nişte nimicuri, la fel ca "părerile" lor.

Spre deosebire de nimicurile menţionate, apreciez proiectele gen Capsula Timpului. Acestea ajută într-adevăr dezvoltarea blogosferei româneşti. Felicitări iniţiatorilor!

Cam atât cu opinia despre bloguri, şi blogosferă. :smile:

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Continuare: Integrarea în UE.

Ubuntu Edgy

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Hello!

Some time ago I upgraded to Ubuntu Edgy. Due to many complaints about failed upgrades, I've decided to upgrade as safely as possible.

My definition of safe upgrade meant doing it "sandboxed" once, and if there no serious problems, I do it on my live/real system. Therefore, I copied all my current system to a secondary HDD, I created a new virtual machine in VMWare Server which uses the physical HDD to boot. Once the system booted I ran the normal upgrade procedure. Doing this I've learned that the same Linux installation can boot on completely different machines (different drives/hardware, same architecture).

Of course this didn't work as easy & quick as wanted.

I used the Damn Small Linux distribution (LiveDistro) to install GRUB within the virtual machine. I didn't use Ubuntu itself as a LiveDistro - too graphical for administration purposes :smile:, and rather slow in VM.

I used tar to create a big uncompressed file of the entire root. From /home I excluded some big files & folders manually.

Before booting the snapshot of my system in VMWare I had to edit /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst to manually remap the mount points.

The system booted properly without any problems. I just had to run sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg because VMWare has a different video card. Then xorg also worked. It's really interesting to see your entire system running sandboxed, in the same system :smile:.

As a measure of protection I edited /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts. In the first file I changed the host name of the virtual machine, to avoid conflicts with mine. In the second file I made the host name of the host system to point to localhost (127.0.0.1). I didn't need network access to the host from the guest. Also, this change still allowed me to access the host, by IP.

I mounted the alternate CD image of Ubuntu 6.10 and I started the upgrade. I had very bad luck since for no specific reasons xorg crashed in the host OS, taking VMWare down. That was my first xorg crash :smile:. I rebooted the host, I rebooted the guest and resumed the upgrade. Xorg crashed again. And again. And again. After several restarts, after several crashes upgrade finished. WOW :smile:.

I edited the /boot/grub/menu.lst on the host system, and I edited /etc/fstab on the guest system for the purpose of booting the newly upgraded system natively. It worked properly :smile: - after reconfiguring xorg, of course.

Due to the crashes keyboard layouts were completely damaged (almost unusable keyboard in Xorg). Other than this and several small issues, not worth reminding, everything was "fine".

I was pretty much surprised Xorg crashed due to VMWare. I have used VMWare with Windows in my Ubuntu installation for quite long. I had no problems. I noticed my xorg crashes when I start xorg in the guest OS.

I have tested Beryl+XGL. Quite nice :smile:, but slow. I couldn't install compiz (problems with their packages in that day), neither AIXGL (my Nvidia Geforce 4 is too old).

Being glad the upgrade went "smooth" overall, given Xorg crashes, I decided to upgrade my real system.

So I did. No crashes. Everything went rather well. No keyboard layout problems, maybe because I did switch my system back to english, english keyboard, before I started, so the upgrade tool won't be confused. I also did set LC_ALL environment variable manually (in VMware dpkg complained about missing LC_ALL for many packages).

First thing I didn't like about Edgy was the boot splash. It looks good, but it hides all information - quite annoying. The solution was to uninstall usplash, and remove "quiet" from the kernel arguments list in my GRUB menu.lst.

Another problem I had was Firefox 2: no extension wanted to install. The solution was to remove my profile folder, eh. Then the DOM Inspector disappeared :smile:. I had to manually add the extension to some INI files.

Another thing I disliked is that GRUB menu.lst now uses UUIDs instead of the human-readable /dev/hd*. Why?...

I don't know why, but Xorg in Ubuntu Edgy is less stable. I got several crashes - I didn't notice what's causing them.

Quanta doesn't want to start in french. It's always english, and I have all the french language support packages. I've been told I should have quanta.mo somewhere in my root - I don't. Yet, I have kdewebdev.mo which contains the Quanta french language strings.

The new apt-index-watcher package used 100% of my CPU every 10 seconds, until I removed it :smile:.

Was the upgrade worth it? The answer is almost no. I don't like they don't include the latest gaim 2 beta. There's beta 5 now and they still have beta 3.1 (you can't convince me beta 3.1 is somehow better than beta 5).

Maybe I'll do a clean install next time. Debian...

My first tutorial: How to add voice to your site

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Hello guys!

Today Opera Software has released a new site: The Opera Developer community site. The purpose is great, and I like major web browsers having their own developer community sites.

As the title of this post announces ... the site already had published my first tutorial :smile:. If you've read my previous blog posts, it's not a big surprise my first tutorial is about voice interactivity. Currently, very few know about VoiceXML, and there are very few tutorials. Most of them reach only the level of "Hello world". Therefore, my tutorial goes much further, by actualling telling you how to really put voice to use in your site. I didn't write yet-another tutorial about AJAX, XHTML, CSS, DOM, or JavaScript. I wanted something different.

Go ahead and read the tutorial from dev.opera or from my own server (mirror).

Thanks very much to TarquinWJ and Jax. The tutorial has reached the level of maturity you are seeing thanks to both of them :smile:.

Any suggestions or comments are welcome.

IE and Linux

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Hello!

Doing web development under Linux requires to no longer use Internet Explorer. For web site testing the only available solutions are dual-boot, virtualization or WINE.

I have the feeling that picking to use dual-boot is like not actually switching to Linux. That's because you'd code everything in Windows, test everything in Windows, with all Windows browser: IE, Firefox and Opera. Not a true switch. You can't code everything in Linux then do a quick boot in Windows to see if the cool CSS layout renders properly in IE 6. You still need to have all your web development tools (your IDE, your FTP/SSH client, etc) in Windows.

Virtualization is a nicer solution: you can do all coding and testing in Linux. Once you've booted Windows in VMWare Server (insert your favourite virtualization software) you can simply load the page and refresh it when you need to test something. Quite nice. I use this for "complex web applications" and for final testing of any web site. You only need a clean install of Windows.

For occasional and quick web development testing I mostly like WINE. Yes, installing IE 6 in WINE is (very) annoying.

However, there's IEs4Linux - a script which automatically installs IE 6, IE 5.5 and IE 5. It's very easy to use and quick to install.

Also, very recently there's beta support for IE 7 installation - which is quite awesome.

Why is this better than virtualization *and* dual-boot? You can have a context menu item in Opera which opens your page in IE 6 and IE 7 in just a few seconds after clicking (I do, hehe). Nothing to boot, and it's faster than virtualization.

I even use WINE with Opera 9 + Voice enabled for web development. Installing Opera 9 in WINE is only a matter of running the installer in WINE :smile: - easy.

Bottom line is: are you a web developer who would like to switch to Linux but believes he can no longer test his web sites with IE? The complete answer is: you can test your sites in IE, quick and easy. There's no long answer. You do not have to drop compatibility with IE. You can make the switch™ :smile:.

The themes of (k)Ubuntu

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Hello!

One of the first steps, and most likely the easiest, in making KDE and GNOME seem consistent is getting both of them have the same themes.

I simply don't understand (somebody explain to me please) why is Kubuntu required to have a completely different theme than Ubuntu?

Seriously, guys, if you really want that, then no problem: Kubuntu blue and Ubuntu orange. BUT at least take the time and provide both of the themes so we can select the one we want in the theme managers of both DEs.

I personally favour Ubuntu's theme. I can't get get KDE apps to look exactly as those in GNOME. I switched to polyester, I applied my own color theme (the Ubuntu colors available on kde-look suck, and that's nicely said - I had to make mine). The biggest problem is changing the icons. I believed this should be easy: in kcontrol I find the icon set named Human. Yes, it changes most of the icons, but the most obvious ones are still the blue KDE Crystal: file icons - and some others :smile:. Again, KDE-Look provides amateurish Human iconsets for KDE which don't even properly work.

Oh and for those wondering: somebody cannot live in a GNOME-only box, or KDE-only box. It's not going to happen, not today, not tomorrow.

Hint: this is not a "job" that needs to be done by neither of the DE teams. It's the "job" of the distro guys.

Making the orange theme the default in Kubuntu would be awesome, not because of the theme itself - I'd say the same if Ubuntu would use by default the Kubuntu theme.

Bonus suggestion: while they are at it, they should configure the default behaviour of KDE to match the one of GNOME (or vice-versa).

Summary of the post: get the GNOME theme on KDE, and get the KDE theme on GNOME. It's easy, it's doable, both DEs are capable of it.

Good luck!

P.S. I don't like the purple theme in Kubuntu Edgy Eft.

What's interesting now

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Hello!

If you know me, you'll probably wonder what I find as interesting reading currently, what I find interesting that's happening now. So, here are a few links (no specific order):

- Server-Sent Events (Event Streaming) in Opera 9. This opens up a lot of possibilities.

- Web Forms 2. Which is now a W3C Working Draft too. Again, implemented in Opera 9.

- XBL2 (see latest version).

Just think of some cool web app to build with all these.

Interesting articles:

- Some W3C controversy. This post talks about many other complaints from W3C contributors. Interesting, for me, and for others too.

- Advocating for web standards, about the quality of courses in colleges and universities: "Back to school, back to reality" and "On quality education". No wonder why many self-proclaimed experts still use tables and frames for layouts.

- Again, advocating for web standards, old "news" for some, but surprisingly not many really know/care: "Web standards and the new professionalism" and "A web professional can never stop learning".

I dare you read all subsequent links on the above posts :smile:.

(Why) RSS is crap

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Hello!

<rant>
I'll try to keep this blog post short: RSS is crap.

1. RSS is not only one file format. RSS refers to multiple file formats which resemble each other.
2. Thus, various RSS versions are incompatible.
3. There are around 10 incompatible versions as of writing this. maybe I don't even know them all. By the time you read my post, there might be more.
4. RSS 2.0 is good, it serves its purpose.
5. RSS 2.0 is not crap.
6. Same goes for any of the versions you pick.
7. Problem is the entire RSS.
8. Thus implementation is suddenly hard, for a supposedly simple format.

Recommended reading: The myth of RSS compatibility by Mark Pilgrim. Thanks to his post, I can implement better RSS support.

Use Atom:

1. It's as easy as RSS 2.0, if you ignore all the other capabilities you don't need.
2. It's better documented.
3. It's easier to implement.
4. It's not crap.
</rant>

Thanks :smile:.