Net Relief's Web News Blog

The gurus at Mozilla have put the fruits of their labors up for download and are attempting to set a world record. Download Day as they dubbed it began on June 17, 2008. With projections of at least 2 million people speaking out to download the product I'm sure they will confidently set a high record.

Join in the fun and download firefox yourself.

Labels: news

We've all heard of dangerous websites; ones that infect your computer with spyware, viruses, and other malware; ones that provide seemingly honest information, but really lure you to present personal information so it can be collected.

It appears that certain top level domains are more likely to be flagged as dangerous. A study by McAfee found .cn (china) , .ro (Romania), .info (information), and .hk (Hong Kong) to be the more common dangerous websites.

It is likely that the high rate of mal-activity is due to the lax registration restrictions on these domains. For example, to register a .ca domain you must be able to prove that you are in some way, a Canadian entity. The same is not true for the above mentioned top level domains. To top off the missing restrictions, these TLDs are relatively cheaper than the more common .com, .net, and .org ones.

As a word of caution next time you see emails involving those TLDs just move the message into the junk bin and carry on.

Labels: news

Browsing the Yahoo! news feeds today yielded an interesting article. The electronics makers of the world are now aware that home networking devices can be a hassle. The article mentions a new attempt to create a worldwide standard for these devices to communicate on. Finally the fridge will be able to tell the TV that you left the milk on the counter. Okay, well maybe not that futuristic, but allowing your mobile phone, pc, Mac, printer, phone and game consoles to use a single standard will eliminate the number of technologies required to connect them all: 802.11G/N, blue tooth, Wi-Fi. The list of effected devices is not mentioned in the article; however, the concept is still young this is no surprise, but it leaves the imagination open to what will happen with a unified standard.

Think of what happens when competitors work together on a single standard, or worse, when they don’t. When two standards are set forth it almost always costs the consumer more. Examine the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray format war. Everyone that bought those HD-DVD players is out of luck because the standard is now Blu-Ray. Now that the format war is over the industry will focus on 1 technology. This focus will hopefully help improve the technology that was rushed out the door during the format war.

Just because we have standards defined or a single format in use does not mean we are in for a monopoly price hike. This is because the companies that produce the equipment to meet the standards will still compete with each other. A home networking standard will ideally simplify the life of the consumer so they don’t have to deal with the technology. Hopefully there is a similar outcome as the advent of the universal remote control.

Labels: news

Reading around the web you can find people exclaiming that they have web standard services. They show off their CSS skills and valid source code. Just because the files pass validation and you are using CSS does not mean the site meets standards, nor does it mean it's efficient or practical source code. Stop for a second and think about this.

Let us compare this to plumbing. You can put different pieces of pipe together (straight, elbow, p-trap, etc) with the right diameters, seals, and techniques. But, just because followed the correct procedure for joints and pipe diameters does not mean you have met any standards. You might unknowingly connect the hot and cold lines together, or loop the drain pipe back to the sink. You could cap off a breather pipe. Quite simply the plumbing in procedure was done correctly but the overall picture is functionless and fails to meet any standard for household plumbing.

The same idea holds true for a website. You might have all your code tags closed properly and the CSS styles are implemented correctly. Perhaps you have used CSS to position all of the elements of your website. Happy with your work you verify the HTML is valid and the CSS is valid. When you take a step back and look at what has happened. You might notice your CSS file is 200k and your HTML page takes a while to load because of all those image files you used. The code looks messy because it's not formatted to be read correctly. Your source code could be bloated with comment lines. This fictitious example is completely valid; however it is not to standards of any kind. The truth is this is not only fictitious; it is all over the internet.

Maybe it's time to go and review that website code, or better yet bring it to us!

Labels: validation, web standards