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.

Camino 1.0b2

Camino 1.0b2 is out. Lots of great bugfixes, interface improvements, and new functionality. SVG support. Java Embedding Plugin support.

I'd like to pick out one really tiny thing from the release notes that exemplifies the kind of attention to interface detail that the Camino team is applying:

Allow shift modifier key to reverse the sense of the "load in background" preference when loading a url with Command-Return.

I would guess that the average user probably didn't know:

  1. That command-return loaded a typed URL in a new window/tab, just like command-clicking
  2. That the shift key reversed the "load in background" preference when command-clicking

And yet here we have a bugfix implementing a logical consequence of those two features.

Remember, there's more to life than Firefox.

Friday, December 30th, 2005
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Some related posts: Someday my bugfix will come • WebKit screen-grabbers • Camino

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