Rob Eberhardt

A comment I just posted at http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/attensa/ :

I've been using intraVnews for several years, liking Outlook's sorting power to manage info, but I'm not at one machine long enough lately to keep current. So I went shopping for an online reader, and found your post and the RSS Reader Survey.

Based on those, I tried (or at least looked at) Bloglines, Rojo, NetNewsWire and Great News. I mostly didn't like the UIs (too weak or clunky compared to Outlook), and most just didn't work on my Windows Mobile phone' Pocket IE.

I ended up using Google Reader instead -- sure it's not as powerful as intraVnews/Outlook (no search folders, no deactivating feeds), but I don't think I need that power since the "reading flow" is so smooth (aka "UX", or User Experience in Microsoft's new lingo). I don't Need to filter out the "junk" since it's easy to just ignore it.

Granted, it's only been 2 weeks, but I've been successfully keeping up on 296 feeds pretty easily.

I should mention I was actually looking for an Outlook/online combo.  Apparently Newsgator and Attensa both do this, but Newsgator ain't free (and I'm a tightwad), and I couldn't find Attensa's supposed free service...  I've tried the Outlook addins for both in the past, tho, and they're fine (since it's Outlook).

Hm, should I post my 296 feed OPML?  ..or I guess Google Reader has a sharing feature -- maybe that's something to try out.

Busy?  Oh yeah.

• TRAFFIC WAVE EXPERIMENTS -- I've been wanting to write this article for a very long time.  Someone finally did it for me (tho' at much greater length).
  
• You can improve IE.next - The Web Standards Project -- cool this is being done, uh, again.
  
• And interesting variations on a theme -- also interesting is that you'll never see anything like this on Slashdot or Digg (which is their fanboyism):
  • Seven reasons IE is better than Firefox (from a developer's point of view)
  • Firefox Myths
  • Firefox - A New Religion
    

For those in a similar tight place...

Alright, I shouldn't have experimented with the BIOS settings so flippantly, but all my other current hardware either has an internal "reset" jumper, or it automatically detects problems and resets itself, so I assumed I was safe...

Well imagine my surprise that powering on gave me an utterly blank screen, and no combination of keys would fix it.  Opening the case showed no reset mechanism either.  And Sager's website showed no support options except an RMA form...

Fortunately I found (elsewhere) an email address for support: websupport@sagernotebook.com.  I emailed and got a response within 24 hours asking for a serial number.  Knowing it was out of warranty (and expecting a "sorry about your luck" response), I gritted my teeth & answered.

Glory be, 12 hours later I received these instructions from Daniel on how to reset the BIOS to factory settings:

Bob,

If you feel comfortable, Try this, 1st unplug all the power remove the AC Adapter and the Battery. And open the bottom cover(see attachment picture) and unplug the Cmos-Battery’s wire(red&black crop by Green Color) for like 15sec. Then reconnect it back the wire then everything ACA and the Big Battery. See that will help.

*** We don't hold any responsibility ***

Daniel
Sager computer
18005 Cortney Ct
City of Industry, CA 91748
Tel# 1-800-741-2219 626 964 4849
Fax# 626-964-2381

Despite Bob-ifying me, it made enough sense that I was booting normally in 5 minutes (and mostly time for the tiny screws).

It's good info, Sager just needs to share it more easily.  I wrote back to thank Daniel, and suggested they put this kind of info in a public knowledgebase.

IE7 now requires the same trick to be like so:
SELECT {
min-width:11em;
_width:expression(this.currentStyle.getAttribute('minWidth'));
}

Unfortunately, forking logic inside CSS expressions is a bit of a pain.  That, combined with the limitations of this technique (IE6 treats width as min-width only when the contained elements can't be wrapped), prompted me to write a solution script.  Here it is:

It uses a shim technique to fix it only for IE (other browsers don't support currentStyle).  The remaining limitation here is that it only works on elements which canHaveChildren, so it does not work on childless elements, like form INPUTs or SELECTs.  Any suggestions for this case are welcome!

To use it, just call fixMinWidthForIE() in the window.onload, or better yet when the DOM has loaded, and you're set.

2006-11-20: I updated the script for better standards-mode compatibility (it was causing extra blank lines).  I had missed the doctype switch in my current project.  The good news is that IE7 in standards mode does do min-width.  (I wish I'd noticed that sooner!)  However, I still have a lot of IE6 miles to go before I can put it to sleep...

Windows XP Professional?  Check.

But what about 64-bit?  Apparently it's actually not supported on 64-bit Windows XP Professional.