I’m going to talk about open source and proprietary software. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a breakdown:

Proprietary software is owned by a company, and usually, the source code is not shared with anyone. If you’re caught sharing this code, you’re usually in big trouble with the company, and fines and/or litigation ensue. On the nice side, since this company owns the software, they have full control over it, it is usually nicely packaged, and its component parts are consistent in style and functionality throughout. Also, they may have organized help/support for the product, and they usually have a physical office that can be seen on Google Maps.

Yet, this also means that the software itself sports a large price tag, meaning those who can afford it are fewer than those who actually need it. This, of course, has lead to mass downloads of cracked versions of proprietaries, and propagation of a lot of people who think that if the price went down a bit, they wouldn’t be forced into downloading it illegally.

Then, there is open source software. Instead of keeping the program’s source code to themselves, the coders actively encourage the sharing of and/or modification of the source code by all who use the product. So, in complete contrast to proprietary software, you’re actually expected to have the source code for the software somewhere on hand, and be in the process of modifying/tweaking it (if you’re a geek).

On the downside, however, there usually is no centralized support/help for the product. Also, there is no money in it, and overhead is managed solely on volunteer basis (unless another means of covering costs is devised). This usually leads to the inclusion of a PayPal donation link somewhere on the production team’s website. The team also can’t make any sort of living off of this business model.

Of course, even if there isn’t a support team, there are orders of magnitude more people seeing and improving the source code, so bugs aren’t really that much of a problem.

Now, there are those who think that everything should be open source, and there are a few who still think that all software should be proprietary. I feel there is something wrong with both of these views… For those who think that everything should be open source:

It is quite nice to get everything for free. I am a strong supporter of free software. But, as I have mentioned above, there is no money in it. I mean that you can’t live off of it. You can’t quit your job at, say, Microsoft, and work full-time on your own basement open-source file sharer. Of course, there is a simple answer to this: you need to generate the income from something else that you do or provide; you can’t be a programmer all the time. That, of course, brings us back to the time-sharing thing. However, another option is clickable ads on websites. The funny thing is, those of us who think free software is the best thing on the planet, also think that ads are the worst thing on the planet. So, it really is about picking the lesser of two evils at this point.

As for those who think that all software should be proprietary, they are simply uninformed.

Thanks for reading.

Here at Creative Unity, we’re moving in a new direction. Actually, we’re moving in several new directions at once. It has been a great experience being at the company so far, and I feel this year will be the same, if not better. Of these forthcoming areas of web design we’re moving into is databasing (I’m sure that’s a word).

In other words, I’ve discovered the joys of database programming. I’m speaking, of course, of the famous MySQL flavour of databases (since we’re on a Linux-variant server - long live GPL and the geek). Strangely enough, I haven’t been exposed to the server-side of website design for the longest time (stranger still, I had done Perl in college).

Yes, I have finally made the transition into the world of dynamic web sites. I believe I can finally call myself a web wizard!

Anything that minimizes tedium by even one iota is exciting to a programmer like myself (I’m a little obsessed). Especially when you can make one page display in 20 different ways, as opposed to making 20 separate pages. Now that I have tasted this power, I will never (or at least begrudgingly) relinquish it.

Okay, okay - to put a long story short - I made this small auction site that, before I came along, contained about 150 pages. Now it contains 8. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Cheers.

I sometimes wonder why different browsers see HTML, CSS and JavaScript in different ways. It frequently makes my life that much more interesting as a web developer. What works in one browser, won’t work, or won’t even exist in another one. Luckily, these aren’t usually large issues.

One of those peculiar discrepancies is the margin and padding of the paragraph and header tags. In IE there is no difference between using margin and padding for the spacing between paragraphs (and in Firefox, for the most part, there isn’t a difference there either). However, the interesting thing happens when the div containing the paragraph or header has a background. Firefox makes margins tear large holes in the background, forming unsightly gaps in the website layout that shouldn’t otherwise be there. That was the most interesting bug so far, since Firefox doesn’t usually have such issues. The only fix for this problem was to set margins to nothing, and use padding instead.

Also, you might know about the infamous line break bug in IE… Where IE reads the file’s line feed and carriage returns and uses them to make gaps in certain places on web pages (which is quite odd since all browsers are supposed to ignore whitespace altogether – the only thing they’re supposed to do with it is make single space between words in the content of the page). If you’ve used tables with cells that contain images, you’ll know what I mean (actually, you’ll only see this happen if the closing table data tag is on another line than its content).

I find it quite interesting to have found a bug in Firefox, as I’m sure most geeks know that Firefox is supposed to be standards compliant. And I’m calling it a bug because a margin isn’t supposed to mess up the background of its container div. Because if that was part of the standard, I would say it’s really weird.

I’m finished my rant (many of you may be exhaling in relief at this very moment). Thank you for your time. You may continue your regularly scheduled day.

I believe the time of the PNG has finally come to the IE user base. We recently checked our site usage statistics, and found that a little over 75% of users now view the internet through IE7. The reason these two facts are connected, as you may already know, is that IE6 ignored the PNG’s transparency. The only workaround offered was impractical, required JavaScript to be enabled, IE-specific conditional CSS, and the use of Microsoft’s filter library in order to make IE behave properly. Thankfully, that is all behind us now. I have also made it all official (at least to myself) by using my first PNGs’ in one of our new client sites.

The reason this issue is one of those in contention within the greater scope of the great internet browser debacle is the fact that IE, being the most popular browser by far, was the last browser to adopt the PNG standard. The geeks knew that this was unacceptable, and the general user demographic simply shrugged and continued to wonder why certain funky websites didn’t quite look right. I have no reason to offer for this apparent blunder, but someone at Microsoft might know.

This is just a sign that Microsoft has spent the last few years attempting to re-envigorate their look and get themselves into the 21^st century market. Just excuse them the error of Vista, and you might just finally have an operating system that makes sense (but this is being optimistic). I am not going to bash any one developer, as that has never gotten anyone anywhere. Also, there is enough bashing in progress across the myriad websites devoted to the subject that I don’t need to add my 2 cents to it. To indicate my solidarity, the only browser I’ve used consistently is IE.

I’m the web developer at Creative Unity, and have been for little over a year now. In that short space of time, I’ve learned more about website creation and maintenance than I have during the previous  4 years of college I subjected myself to (imagine that). It makes me fairly new to the workforce, and a budding guru in the field of web development (yes, I still have a lot to learn).