How bad *is* Vista, anyway?

As a "what the heck", I added myself as a Zolved.com guru, thinking I might be able to help one thing or another. I get notified of one to five questions per day posted.

The questions vary, but can be summed up thusly:

I just installed/upgraded Vista. I can't get __X__ to work.

Mostly, X is Mail from Yahoo and/or Earthlink or X is Sound. SOUND?

Well, to be fair, (or not), the Sound issue is likely either driver incompatibility or it's because Microsoft Vista *starts* with digital output, and there is a configuration change necessary to make the audio-out be analog.

I am not running Vista myself, but I may have to do so in order to support the legions of people who have done-it (in?) themselves. XP works, people. If you want Vista eyecandy on XP, there are ways to do it.

Dude, Dell's back with XP.

Whether it makes a difference to me or not is immaterial. However, for full disclosure, Dell went back to offering XP on select models of PCs. Still, Microsoft's going to force no new sales of XP in January 2008.

Apparently, though, owners of Vista Business and Vista Ultimate (at least Volume License purchasers) continue to have downgrade rights to XP Pro, so there *is* hope if you're delaying. Now, finding the XP Pro install media might be a bit harder.

AboutUs.org silently creeping up as the Next Big Thing?

http://www.aboutus.org/AboutUs is to Google what Wikipedia is to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Before the vandals come out in full force, I'm seriously believing that AboutUs.org could actually be a better Google than Google. That is, if you believe that wiki searches would produce better results than Google searches, and if you believe that you could tag your way to the top of competitive lists...

We'll see. OTOH, AboutUs.org is an elegant and quick (IMO) way to add wiki to your site. Here's hoping!

Also, here's hoping for Secondary Level Domain and Folder level support. Then again, when all the bogus google-search-criteria-tags.dom domains start being added, the value of AboutUs.org may be diluted.

Gaim is now Pidgin. Gaim is dead. Long live Pidgin!

With the announcement yesterday evening, I wish the new gaimPidgin team the best. And I’m looking forward to video added to the client (please?)!

From the site (April 6th, 2007 - 6:19PM EST):

---

Now that the settlement is signed, we hope to have the final Pidgin 2.0.0 release late this week or early next.

We are going to release it with a 2.0.0 version number, and an API compatibility layer for plugin authors. The project has not changed; this is our 2.0.0 release, not some new program that requires new version numbering.

---

Plug-in form authentication

http://laurentszyster.be/jsonr/index.html

It’s late, and I stumbled this. The repercussions of what it means to my future codes for forms boggles my mind. Perhaps I will have a chance to consider it when I return. This pretty well summed the whole thing up for me:

In a web controller JSONR is usefull [sic] to validate
network input against the application’s model instead of an ad-hoc program.

Another 3D Desktop for Windows

http://www.tutorial5.com/content/view/60/

From a picture, choose a color scheme.

The idea: Based upon a picture, get colors for your site.

This much has been done: http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

Augment: Make it automatically change your css Style.
Start with:

Hey Developers:
Want to automate color palette queries? Try out the new color palette generator web service BETA. Get an XML response to requests sent to:
http://www.degraeve.org/cgi-bin/color-palette.cgi?url=http://url.to.your.image

Which converts to .XML as (example)...

<colorpalette>

<imageurl>http://www.degraeve.com/images/beach.jpg</imageurl>

<status>success</status>

<message>color palette created successfully</message>

<dullcolors>

<color>304035</color>
<color>6B9FA3</color>
<color>90AEAD</color>
<color>B1C5CB</color>
<color
>43729C</color>

</dullcolors>

<vibrantcolors>


<color>285135</color>
<color>40C2CC</color>
<color>8EDAD6</color>
<color>BEEEFE</color>
<color>005AC3</color>
</vibrantcolors>

</colorpalette>

Augment: Choose some colors that will be working for text (Contrast-Wise). Hey, I get it that you shouldn’t force colors on your visitors. OTOH, this is a really cool effect.

Hmm... searching ... http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html has an interactive Contrast checker. The nitty gritty:

function updateColours(){
 var brightnessThreshold = 125;
 var colorThreshold = 500;

 var bY=((br.getValue() * 299) + (bg.getValue() * 587) + (bb.getValue() * 114)) / 1000;
 var fY=((fr.getValue() * 299) + (fg.getValue() * 587) + (fb.getValue() * 114)) / 1000;
 var brightnessDifference = Math.abs(bY-fY);

    var colorDifference = (Math.max (fr.getValue(), br.getValue()) - Math.min (fr.getValue(), br.getValue())) +
                          (Math.max (fg.getValue(), bg.getValue()) - Math.min (fg.getValue(), bg.getValue())) +
                          (Math.max (fb.getValue(), bb.getValue()) - Math.min (fb.getValue(), bb.getValue()));

 document.getElementById("bDiff").value = brightnessDifference;
 document.getElementById("cDiff").value = colorDifference;

 if ((brightnessDifference >= brightnessThreshold) && (colorDifference >= colorThreshold)) {
     document.getElementById("cResult").value = "YES!"; // compliant
 }else if ((brightnessDifference >= brightnessThreshold) || (colorDifference >= colorThreshold)){
  document.getElementById("cResult").value = "sort of..."; // sort of compliant
 }else{
  document.getElementById("cResult").value = "NO!"; // not compliant "Poor visibility between text and background colors."
 }
}

Juicy Studio has code to check on the fly. http://juicystudio.com/article/javascript-contrast-class.php

Augment: Mash it all together based upon one picture... from a gallery or based upon an image for a review for a blog/CMS.

I shall come back to this. Essentially, I’d want, based upon the main picture on a page, to be able to change the look for the page based upon that picture, and yet the text be still readable. I’m sure there’s a reason *not* to do this, but until that time, just think of it as a way to change your CMS design on a whim. You don’t even have to show the picture that the color scheme is based upon. All you’d need is an idea... "OOH, I like that picture’s scheme. Will it look good on my site?

I should probably point myself to http://xmljs.sourceforge.net/index.html to parse the xml if I come back to this.