Simon Willison’s Weblog

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Saturday, 31st August 2002

RDF is dead

Peter provides an interesting perspective:

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External link icons in CSS

Stuart has put together a nice demonstration of how Mozilla’s CSS3 selectors can be used to automatically add icons to external links, in response to Mark Pilgrim’s guide to achieving the same effect using Moveable Type macros.

How the wayback machine works

How the Wayback Machine Works is a must read for anyone geeky enough to be interested in cheap clustered databases on a huge scale. The interview includes some fascinating details on the cost effectiveness of Linux clusters:

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ICANN schmicann

IMS/ISC out of the ICANN Running, apparently because their proposal didn’t include enough block diagrams. ICANNWatch have some great conspiracy theories as to the real reason.

PHP generated PDFs

R&OS PDF PHP classes (via tidak ada). This is the most useful PHP library I’ve seen in a long time. It allows dynamic generation of PDF files without needing any additional modules installed on the server (although GD is required if you want to add images to your PDFs). It is extremely easy to use and has an impressive set of features, including PDF drawing tools, built in page number support and excellent documentation. On the topic of PDFs, Yes You Can advocates their use for presentations and touches on a method of generating them using Python.

Semantic web 1-2-3

The Semantic Web: 1-2-3 is an invaluable collection of links to semantic web resources, compiled by Morbus Iff. Morbis is the author of Amphetadesk, an excellent news aggregator which was reviewed favourably by Ben Hammersley in the Gaurdian just the other day.

Vim guide

Free book: Vi IMproved.

File naming conventions

What Do I Know is hosting an interesting discussion on File Naming and Organization Methods for helping manage web development clients.

30 days to becoming an Opera Lover

Tim Luoma: 30 Days to becoming an Opera Lover. Advocacy doesn’t get much more serious than this :) The series has reached day 5 and so far Tim has covered reasons you should try Opera, how to install it and touched on customisation. I’ve been meaning to write a Mozilla advocacy/tutorial piece for some time now and I am sorely tempted to steal Tim’s format (which he himself borrowed from Mark Pilgrim).

2002 » August

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