E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

ajax apple blogs browsers business design django ebay fp fun google hardware haskell intellectual property iphone javascript linux media mercurial mobile open source os x oscon oscon2007 palm php programming python rails rants reading risks ruby site spam textmate the well tips tools unix vcs web development web frameworks webservers wmassdevs writing

Stuff I Use

Akismet, bitbucket, del.icio.us, Django, Emacs, FreeBSD, Git, jQuery, LaunchBar, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, Review Board, S3, SQLite, TextMate, Ubuntu Linux

Spam Report

At least 96060 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Windows Live Local

Another Update, 2005-12-15: MS has fixed the incompatibility with Gecko-based browsers as of today.
Update: A connection at Microsoft has said that this should at least work on Firefox, and that he's passed along my report. Hopefully fixes will be forthcoming.

Windows Live Local has potential, but it's a total strikeout on the Mac.

(Perhaps the "Windows" part of the name should have been a clue. But if it's really not supposed to work on the Mac, why not do some browser sniffing and send a helpful message -- like "Go away"?)

Anyway... in Camino, when you click and drag, you get the outline of a tile but the map doesn't move -- until you release the mouse button, at which point the map follows the pointer around, even though the mouse button is up. A final click toggles things back to the initial state.

Firefox 1.5 behavior is similar, except it never goes into drag mode at all -- but it moves a litle bit when you try the initial drag.

Safari (2.0.2) shows no map at all.

I was left with no other option but to try IE 5.2 -- but of course that doesn't work either. Not even Microsoft cares about that browser anymore!

Thursday, December 8th, 2005
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2 comments

Some related posts: An embarrassment of RichIAs • Meta-roundup of Javascript libraries • STFU • Baby steps with Ajax • The MySpace worm
• Comment from Andrew , 1 day later

This was my experience as well. Firefox works except for dragging. And it's very slow.

• Comment from doug r , 14 weeks later

It works pretty good in Firefox-for about 10 minutes! Then it either freezes up Firefox so bad I have to use Gnome to shut the window or reboot; or it actually crashes Firefox-ordinarily hard to do with 1.5.0.1

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