Which font is best supported across the main three operating systems (Linux, Mac and Windows)? A handy way to build a font stack for your website can be done with the Code Style Font Stack Builder.
Although I don’t think you have to pin yourself too much onto this numbers, it gives you some idea how widespread fonts like Arial, Verdana, Helvetica etc… are.
A new version of the Linux kernel is released. The full list of changes/features can be found here.
Well, well, well… Microsoft has released two new “things”…
First, you can all enjoy the official 1.0 release of ASP.NET MVC by downloading it from the Microsoft Download Center.
I must say that I’m not really thrilled about it, because I’m already enjoyng an excellent MVC framework for ASP.NET called ProMesh.NET. It’s lightweight, open source and a perfect match with the open source ORM CoolStorage.NET. Both projects will become part of the Vici Project collection of free tools.
Of course I’ll try out ASP.NET MVC, but I must say I expect it to be “too much, too heavy”. I like it to be no-nonsense and lightweight.
Second… The horror of Internet Explorer continues… Microsoft released the 8.0 version of their web browser. As a real opposer to Internet Explorer I will not install it to use as my daily web browser, but I need it to test my web applications. You want to download it and install it out of free will, please visit the Internet Explorer homepage.
I came across an article of Ars Technica about the release of GNOME Do 0.8.1. I’d never heard of it before, but after reading the article I decided to give it a spin.
After trying it out using a VM installation (Thank you, VirtualBox!) I’m convinced. I’ll drop Avant Window Manager (AVM) and install GNOME Do instead.
Because of the release of FFmpeg 0.5, Phoronix had an interview with three developer behind FFmpeg.
Check it out at the Phoronix website.
Hurray! Another stable release of FFmpeg. I can’t wait to compile me a new version for GarageTV.
For more information I shamelessly copied/pasted the news item from the FFmpeg website:
It has been a very long time since we last made a release and many did not think we would make one again but, back by popular demand, we are proud to announce a new release: FFmpeg 0.5. Check out the release notes and changelog.
It is codenamed “half-way to world domination A.K.A. the belligerent blue bike shed” to give an idea where we stand in the grand scheme of things and to commemorate the many fruitful discussions we had during its development.
This release includes a very extensive number of changes, but some of the highlights are:
- Significant work to support at least decoding of all widespread mainstream proprietary codecs, such as:
- decoders and encoders
- ALAC
- Flash Screen Video
- WMAv2 decoder fixed, WMAv1/v2 encoder
- decoders
- Atrac3
- MLP/TrueHD
- On2 VP3 improvements and VP5/VP6 support
- RealAudio Cooker and fixes for 14.4 and 28.8
- RealVideo RV30/40
- WMV3/WMV9/VC-1 and IntraX8 frame support for WMV2/VC-1
- Broad coverage of widespread non-proprietary codecs, including:
- decoders and encoders
- DNxHD
- DVCPRO50 (a.k.a. DV50)
- Floating point PCM
- GSM-MS
- Theora (and encoding via libtheora)
- Vorbis
- decoders
- AAC with ADTS support and >2x the speed of FAAD! (no HE AAC support yet)
- AC-3 that is faster than liba52 in 5.1, up to 2x faster in stereo and also supports E-AC-3! Hence liba52 is now obsolete.
- DCA
- DVCPRO HD (a.k.a. DV100)
- H.264 PAFF and CQM support, plus slice-based multithreaded decoding
- Monkey’s Audio
- MPEG-2 video support for intra VLC and 4:2:2
- Musepack
- QCELP
- Shorten
- True Audio (TTA)
- Wavpack including hybrid mode support
- Highlights among the newly supported container formats:
- demuxers and muxers
- GXF
- MXF
- demuxers
- NullSoft Video (NSV)
- muxers
- iPhone/iPod compatibility for MP4/MOV
- Matroska
- NUT
- Ogg (FLAC, Theora and Vorbis only)
- ShockWave Flash (SWF)
- libavdevice
- ffserver is working again.
- a shiny, new, completely revamped, non-recursive build system
- cleaner, more consistent code
- an all new metadata API
- and so much more!
Note: At the time of posting the Release Notes and Changelog gave a 404. Small hickup?
It’s always pain in the cock to get your (X)HTML/CSS design right in as many browsers as possible.
On the IEBlog, there is an article about IE8 and it’s Compatibility Mode. Main subject is of course the problems and differences it brings with it.
So, head over to the blog post and get your knowledge up to date. Spare yourself a few minutes/hours/days/… of frustration already!
Always nice to see positive stories about migrations from Windows to Linux. This time it’s the French police.
Read the full article on Ars Technica.
This one comes in handy when you’re CSSing: http://jontangerine.com/silo/css/pixels-to-ems/
Barre Vlucht by Slavomir Rawicz
LINQ in Action by Fabrice Marguerie, Steve Eichert, Jim Wooley
Illustrated WPF (Expert’s Voice in .Net) by Daniel Solis