Durban Website Designers

Apart from Michael Sutcliffe, my other whipping boy - “So Much Less”.

A few months ago I stopped DsTV and we managed a whole ten days before we removed our fingers from each others’ throats and reinstated the damn thing. Since then its been the usual evening catatonia. The only programme we know well is the programme guide. Up & down all bloody night - the programme guide, that is.

Before I carry on, a question. ‘How much actual programme viewing is there in an hour of DsTV??’ Answer at the end.

One thing I did not revert to when it was reinstated was the debit order. So I have been getting SMSs from Multichoice for the monthly - simply to remind me each month how much it is I am paying. And, it’s been getting more difficult to pay this for the relatively few channels we watch.

So, as an experiment, I have downgraded to DsTV Compact with about 45 channels for R230. Of these, I would say that no more than 16 have any real interest. I am increasingly sick and tired of

1. Dinosaurs
2. Sharks
3. Snakes
4. American narrators who cannot help but run off at the mouth for 60 minutes and are in every shot
5. Gratuitous computer graphics - history is being rewritten by Pixar
6. Survivor specialists (what about the poor bloody cameraman/sound tech and their gear??)
7. Endless ‘potboiled’ documentaries with the same content as the last series but with new CGI
8. Sky News with 48 hour old stories and what they think is ‘news’.
9. Endless repeats - about a hundred transmissions - to be repeated in a year or so
10. Mind numbing, contemptuous commercials and promos
11. Twerps who want to get real close to real dangerous creatures (not close enough for me)
12. etc.

For several years I have had a wired network in the house. The office has two  connections, the stoep, the lounge and the bedroom each have an Ethernet connection. The problem has been that a cable has to be dug out every time the Internet is accessed. The two computers that are carted around the network are the eMachines laptop and the LG netbook.

So, I got hold of a Telkom wireless DSL modem and 4 port router. I connected it up, got the DSl connection and then set about configuring the wireless.

Every so often, computers present a problem that defies the logic of elimination and such a problem now occurred. The laptop connected to the wireless access point easily. The netbook on the other hand absolutely refused to. I spent two evenings and part of a day wrestling with this. Poking about Google revealed considerable hostility to Windows 7 Starter which most netbooks come with. Also with wireless connectivity problems associated with Win 7 Starter. None explained why Win Home Premium on the laptop would connect and Win Starter would not.

Configured up at the neighbours - it worked. So, the problem was not the netbook but the DSL modem. I got one identical to the neighbours and everything was up and running in 15 minutes. Were there any differences between the two modems?? Couldn’t see a single one.

So, those who have Win Starter and want to go wireless (which is the point of a netbook) - make sure that it will connect and get a money back guarantee if it doesn’t. I like the big 17″ laptop a great deal but I have grown attached to the LG. Win 7 Starter works fine for me as it’s not my main machine but if it was, I would start to complain.

I’m putting a website together for the local suppliers of a Korean water pump.  They need to sort out their Engrish.

The Header: ‘Success of Constant Improvement and Spring’

First paragraph: ‘In order to supply places that need service water or building with water with proper pressure, reduce operation energy through making several pumps control the number of rotations and floods in accordance with the quantity of water use, and automatic supply water equipment supplying using places directly with water with pressure for need. ‘

Warm water supply Main application Center heating system Local heating system Equipment for industry Cooling system equipment Cooperation equipment

I’m leaving the editing to the client.

search-optimizers.co.za is a domain that’s been lying around for a couple of years with nothing in it. But, like the other recent websites: durban-website-designers.co.za, webpage-designers.co.za and warthog.co.za, it is an excuse to try some new stuff without clients having to act as guinea pigs.

CSS3 has been out for a while but I haven’t used it simply to let it settle down and also because I don’t have the time to play so search-optimizers was a good excuse. I’m not completely happy with it but the changes will only be small.

I came across css3pie.com which encourages IE 7 & 8 to emulate some of the CSS3 properties and I’m quite impressed with it. It supports the shorthand properties for radius, gradient, opacity and box-shadow. It uses only CSS to do this with no Javascript. The top screendump is IE 6’s version of the home page. No radiusses, gradients etc. and the transparent png at bottom right is not supported.

Underneath is IE 7’s rendition with radiusses, linear gradients, and drop shadows. Strangely, I have not been able to give the <body> a colour in this version. The transparent png is supported.

Thirdly is the IE 8 version, identical to IE 7 except that there is no problem with the <body> colour which is a plain colour with no gradients. The gradients in IE8 are still linear gradients.

Finally, down here is the full singing/dancing Chrome version with radial gradients, radiusses, drop shadows and opacity with no images. The photo is a simple CSS class that gives it a white radiussed border with drop shadow.

I need to do a lot more experimentation but the nice thing about this is the fact that is no Javascript and no images so the entire colour scheme can be changed by altering a few hex values.

Right at the bottom is Firefox 3.6, identical to Chrome except that the <body> radial gradient is different as it is impossible to replicate the Chrome version of it.

I also came across free-css3-menu.com which offers a downloadable wizard to create multilevel CSS3 menus with radiusses etc etc. The CSS is interesting in that a single colour is applied to a menu item and then overlaid with white of varying opacity to achieve the gradient effect. The HTML produced is super clean.

It does not wok in IE6 so I had to put in the old fashioned menu page together with a ‘Get a Life’ statement for IE6 owners. One thing that does give really strange results is trying to apply the css3pie property to the menu. Very weird!

As I said, I am not totally happy with he ‘porno’ colour scheme but I’ll think about it for a while before I change it. In the meantime, I will experiment with these techniques to slim down the MSIE conditional statements and understand how radial gradients vary from one browser to another.