What a Day

Just like i said yesterday, i had to attend three class today, but i was wrong. My embedded class will be held next monday, so i have to attend only two class today and i became the assistance for today class (Database and Advanced Database lab class). It was enough to make my leg feel so tired, because i have to stay at my campus from mourning until 4.30 PM because it was raining at the noon, so i can't back to my home, so i entered the Internet lab and see anything new.

I can't download anything, because i didn't bring any USB flash drive, so i just recorded what should i download when i got home, and there is only one application, WinSCP, which is a secure ftp-like application that can be used to upload or download files from other server. I used this when i want to update my personal page or Jogja LUG page or any other pages that i have access to.

Today's class is quite good and they can understand things fast, so i didn't waste too many time to explain the basic of MySQL application. Let's hope next class will be as good or even better then today's class :)

Long Meeting

Today is the day when MUBES for Jogja Linux User Group is held and i went there at 8.30 and arrived at 8.55 and met Jaya and Afnindar there, while some of the members have arrived before me and they were on the third floor, where the meeting will took place. We started the meeting on 9.20 because we have to wait for several members. We discussed a lot of material and one of the is the structure of the organization. I was placed on the Research and Development division, since i have my own project with the OOo Documentation Project and also Mandrakelinux Translation Project.

The meeting was held for about six hours (and also kindda boring when it comes at the final section that discussed whether the Jogja LUG should be an organization or not). In my personal opinion, i disagree with the idea, but it was postponed until next month.

I got to have a good rest tonight, since tomorrow, i have three class to attend (two lab class and one embedded system class). The embedded system class should be held on Friday, but the lecturer wasn't there and he gave a substitution class on next monday.

CCNA and Oracle Sertificates

Today i received my CCNA 1 sertificates due to my completion in the CCNA 1 class last semester with an A grade. I didn't know that the sertificates have come out and can be taken out today. My friend took it and i saw it, and we both took the sertificates in the same time, but unfortunately, it hasn't been printed yet, so we have to wait for the lecturer to print my sertificates. After that, i have to get a signature from my official lecturer, Joko Purwadi, but he was in a busy meeting, and i have waited for a long time, after i finally gave up and back home at 2 PM.

Meanwhile, i haven't got my Oracle sertification since last year, because last year, the sertification issue was canceled and this year, the sertificate issue is raised up again and finally the design of the sertification is being sent to Oracle Indonesia to be discussed by the Oracle Corporation. In the end of the semester, i will have my sertificates.

New Friendster's Features

Today (or just a few minutes ago), i received an email from Friendster, reporting some great changes to start 2005. Updates include a newweb site design, a new submit photo for a
friend feature, a new profile counter and improved search. They also reported my friend's activity, such as new photo uploaded, updated profiles, and more to come. Here are the new features on Friendster in the new year :

WHO'S ALREADY ON FRIENDSTER?
See which of your friends are already on Friendster and add them
to your network by importing your friends' email addresses from
Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Hotmail, Outlook, MSN Mail, MSN
Messenger. You can also quickly invite friends who aren't on
Friendster yet.

NEW SUBMIT PHOTO FOR A FRIEND
Now you can submit photos to your friend's Friendster profile.
Visit a friend's profile page and click on the "submit photo"
button. Your friend will have the option to post your photo on
their photo page.

NEW PROFILE VIEW COUNTER
Check out how many times your profile has been viewed. Visit
your home page to see this new feature.

NEW EASIER-TO-USE SITE DESIGN
Come back and see the new web site design. It makes Friendster
easier and more fun to use!

NEW IMPROVED SEARCH
Find friends by name, hometown, company, favorite
music and more.
* Don't forget to add your own hometown info so
your friends can find you!

WHO HAS A BIRTHDAY COMING UP?
Now it's easy to remember birthdays! You'll see a birthday cake
appear below photos of your friends with upcoming birthdays.
Scroll over the cake to view their birthday. Check to see who
has a birthday coming up.

Do you have your Friendster account? If you don't, then sign up now!!

Request CVS Access

Today i asked Pablo Saratxaga about CVS Access to Indonesian Translation project after discussing it with Erwien Samantha, the new Indonesian translator. I don't if there is any CVS access to it, but i hope there is and we can have access to it, so we can update the Indonesian page without having to send the attachment to Pablo again.

Meanwhile, i was also requested to become the Indonesian coordinator for the Indonesian Translation project, since Budi Raharjo, the previous coordinator has been inactive for quite a long time and Indonesian's progress has stopped until i joined with this project and start to maintain the Mandrakelinux's packages.

If the access granted, i will hold two CVS access, one for OpenOffice.org Documentation Project and the other will be Mandrakelinux Translation Project. We will have to wait for few days to find out the answers.

Buying Gift

Today i went somewhere to buy a gift for my girlfriend for the next valentine day, even though it is still three weeks from now, but i don't want to be in a rush and finally got a bad present, so i decided to look for the present today and i got it, but unfortunately, i haven't got the perfect card. I will keep looking and i hope one week before valentine day, card producer will bring the good card on the book store or any store that sell the valentine card.

I hope that she likes my present, since it is cute and also funny. What is it? Well.. it is a secret until the day has come :)

First Meeting

I had my first meeting as a database assistance today along with the other ten assistances (one person is absent today because she was on her way to Jogja by car). We discussed the schedule for this semester, materials, modules, and some talks about the final project. Ohh.. do i mentioned an assistance coordinator? if not, then add that too. It was Alphone Roswanto who become the coordinator of all the assistance. At first, there was two candidates, me and Alphone, but i insist that he should be the coordinator, because he has more time than i do, since he don't take many class this semester (only UML class), while i am taking three class (Embedded System, Distributed System, and Internet and Multimedia).

The meeting stated at 9 AM and we finished about 11 AM. Next, we took our end of the year gift from the faculty. It was a calendar, a notes, and a wallet with our campuss logo on it. It was quite good, but a little bit huge for a normal wallet :)

Network Problems

I started my task as an assistant for Advanced Database (using Oracle 9.2i as it's topic) today and it was one of the bad day to start a lab class. The networks were so badly configured (because the Puskom guys have no time to reinstall the operating system and reconfigure the networks, so it is the same computer that we use last semester). The results is a messed up class.

We used a Net Support School to support our class and one of it's feature is to show the server's view to all client, but when i did that, it hung and couldn't be restored until i restarted the computer. Finally we decided not to use the application before we do more investigation on the networks.

After class, i checked the networks with the other assistant and find out that some of the NIC is broken and that was enough to freeze the entire networks when used with Net Support School because it's view was broadcasted to the entire clients connected to it. We changed the NIC and the problem was fixed in no time. Let's hope that there will be no more problem like this in the next class (on Wednesday).

Pine 4.62

PINE, one of the most well known text-based email client that was developed by Washington University has launched another release version, called 4.62 and it has been officially announced on it's website. Below is the changes from 4.61 to 4.62 :

Version 4.62 addresses bugs found in previous releases and has a few additions as well.

Additions include:

* Enable-Newmail-in-Xterm-Icon now also sets the title bar text to indicate new mail
* New feature Enable-Newmail-Short-Text-in-Icon
* New UNIX Pine feature NewMail-FIFO-Path
* New feature NewMail-Window-Width
* Select command may use the pattern from an existing Rule (for example, an Indexcolor Rule) for its selection criteria
* Beginning of Month and Beginning of Year options in Rules
* Some additional tokens having to do with the current date may be used in the folder name that is used as a target in a Filter Rule. For example, you may filter messages to a folder named for the current month by using the _CURYEAR_ and _CURMONTH_ tokens in the folder name. The (long) list of all such tokens is here.
* Three additional tokens for use with Keywords may be used in the Index-Format. They are SUBJKEYINIT, KEY, and KEYINIT (in addition to the old SUBJKEY).
* Keywords may be displayed in color using Keyword Colors, available from the Setup/Kolor screen
* The Keyword-Surrounding-Chars option may be used to slightly modify the display of SUBJKEYINIT and SUBJKEY tokens.
* The Enable-Flag-Screen-Keyword-Shortcut option adds a shortcut method of setting keywords
* When performing an aggregate reply (or forward), if the Role that would be selected when replying (or forwarding) to each individual message in the set is the same for all the messages, then that role is used just like it would be when replying (or forwarding) to any one of those messages.
* Delete/No Delete prompt added to Save command so that the source message may be deleted or not on a Save-by-Save basis
* Status-Message-Delay option now allows reducing the status message delays Pine sometimes adds
* New feature Save-Partial-Msg-Without-Confirm
* New feature Disable-Take-Fullname-in-Addresses
* New feature Sort-Default-FCC-Alpha
* New feature Sort-Default-Save-Alpha
* For selecting messages by Status, add the possibility of selecting based on Recent or Unseen status
* Allow Take command to take addresses from html and enriched text subtypes, as well as from plain text

Bugs that have been addressed in this release include:
* Crash when sending a message with a Role that sets the To header if the Empty-Header-Message is set to
* Pine hangs in composer after alternate editor or speller is run and new mail arrives that causes an External Categorizer command to be executed
* Crash in MESSAGE INDEX when using a threaded sort. The crash is most common when the sort is Reversed.
* Pine could crash or hang when the window was resized down to 3 lines or fewer while in the composer
* In the Role editor the "To Folders" command for the "Set Fcc" action did not work
* After running Pine for a long time, it would slow down until restarted
* Export command in FOLDER LIST did not work with dual-use folders
* When the Send-Without-Confirm option was turned on, flowed text was not produced and the Fcc-Without-Attachments feature did not work
* Display bug, folder was not un-highlighted
* When viewing a message from the separate thread index, new mail arrival could cause Pine to leave the MESSAGE TEXT screen and drop back to the MESSAGE INDEX screen on its own
* When the UnDelete command was typed in the composer with the cursor in the middle of a header line, the text was inserted at the beginning of the line instead of at the location of the cursor
* When some messages from a thread were selected (not including the top of the thread), the view was Zoomed, and the feature Slash-Collapses-Entire-Thread was turned on; the collapse command caused messages to disappear from the view entirely
* Incorrect character conversions were possible when going from ISO-8859-X to ISO-8859-1
* Quell-Charset-Warning will now also quell the short comment included in header lines about the charset being different from yours in addition to quelling the editorial comment at the top of a message. This is the stuff that looks like "[ISO-8859-2]" in a header line.
* If the Down Arrow key was held down it caused Pine to do a new mail check for each repeated character, which caused a delay when the key was held down by mistake. Changed that so that it does at most one check per second.
* An unnecessary sort of the folder (causing a delay) was happening when closing if a filter rule depended on message state
* Mouse in xterm failed when clicking in the folder screen
* Enable-Dot-Folders feature did not allow adding folders with names beginning with dot
* When replying to a TEXT/ENRICHED message Pine was failing to filter out the ENRICHED markup
* Crash caused by malformed ISO-2022-JP in header
* Crash when changing Inbox-Path if INBOX was not the current folder
* Adding a collection on a Cyrus server did not work if the folder already existed (Pine tried to create it and failed)
* Pine gave incorrect messages when deleting dual-use folders/directories
* Saving an attached message to INBOX from another collection did not work correctly (it tried to create INBOX in the collection instead)
* In some circumstances, Pine could announce "No messages expunged from folder " after an expunge command that actually worked correctly
* Allow alternate editor to use quoted arguments
* News drop folders weren't using the correct newsrc with Enable-Multiple-Newsrcs enabled
* Error decoding some 8-bit headers, typically showing up as a garbage character at the end of a name

Checking Lab

I went to my campus today to get my payment notes, but i met my lecturer and i finally do something else first, which was checking my lab for next monday's lab class for Advanced Database class and i become the assistant again (for the second time). It uses Oracle 9.2i for it's topics and i have to manage the users and the grants allocated for them. Also exporting and importing tables to each users on the class.

There are three class and each class contains 30 students, so generally i have made ninety users plus three lecturer account and a backup users. Some of them have been made by another assistant, but finally i take charge and done it using a batch file. I opened a text editor and doing some copy paste and it will work automatically.

Well, next monday i will start working as an assistant again :)

Intel lets Linux into Centrino camp

SAN FRANCISCO--Improvements to Linux have led Intel to permit Linux laptops to sport the Centrino brand for the first time.

Centrino is the chipmaker's brand name for a three-part package for mobile computers: the Pentium M processor, a supporting chipset and a wireless chip. Although Linux can run on existing Centrino notebooks, Intel until now wouldn't permit companies to sell Linux laptops using the Centrino logo.

The reason for the change: With the release of the 2.6.8 Linux kernel, the open-source operating system's power management abilities now meet Intel's requirements for Centrino notebook battery life, said Karen Regis, manager of mobile programs and promotions at the chipmaker.

"It was important to deliver what people expect out of the brand," Regis said, speaking at the launch of the new Sonoma version of the Centrino technology.

Linux isn't widely used on mainstream desktop and laptop computers, but Intel has joined Red Hat, Novell, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and others in trying to boost the open-source operating system in the market.

That's something of a turnaround for a company that took a year after the initial Centrino launch to release prototype Linux support for the wireless network chip. Microsoft Windows was able to use Centrino's wireless networking immediately after its release.

This time, Intel is moving faster. The company will support Sonoma's wireless networking with Linux within 30 days, Regis said. That support will cover both the dual-band Intel Pro/Wireless 2200 networking chip for 802.11b/g wireless networks and the tri-band Pro/Wireless 2915 chip for 802.11a/b/g networks.

IBM is a major Linux backer, but it sees only pockets of customers such as engineers and programmers with interest in Linux laptops, said Rob Herman, a program manager with the company's ThinkPad division. IBM supports Linux from Red Hat, Novell and Turbolinux in its PCs.

For mainstream users, the Centrino branding for Linux doesn't make much difference, but for those niches, it's very important, Herman said.

Introduction to Browser-Specific CSS Hacks

More and more Web developers are ditching tables and coming round to the idea of using CSS to control the layouts of sites. And, given the many benefits of using CSS, such as quicker download time, improved accessibility and easier site management, why not?

The Problem with CSS

Historically, the main problem with using CSS has been a lack of browser support. This is no longer the case, as version 5 browsers, which all provide good support for CSS, now account for over 99% of the browsers in use.

The problem that remains is that browsers can sometimes interpret CSS commands in different ways, which fact alone causes many developers to throw their arms up in the air and switch back to pixel-perfect table layouts. Fear not, though! As you learn more about CSS, you'll gradually start to understand the different browser interpretations and realise that there aren't really that many -- and that, where necessary, their idiosyncrasies can be catered to using various workarounds or hacks.

How CSS Hacks Work

The way CSS hacks works is to send one CSS rule to the browser(s) you're trying to trick, and a second CSS rule that overrides the first command to the other browsers. If you have two CSS rules with identical selectors, the second CSS rule will almost always take precedence.
Say, for example, you want the space between a page's header area and its content to total 25px in Internet Explorer. This gap might look good in IE, but in Firefox, Opera and Safari the gap is huge -- you decide that a 10px gap looks far better. To achieve this perfect look in all browsers, you could use the following two CSS rules:

#header {margin-bottom:25px}
#header {margin-bottom:10px}

The first command is intended for IE, the second for all other browsers. How does this work? Well, it won't at the moment because all browsers can understand both CSS rules. As such, they'll all use the second CSS rule because it comes after the first.

By inserting a CSS hack, we can perform browser detection by hiding the second CSS rule from IE. This means that IE won't even know that rule exists, and will therefore use the first CSS rule. How do we do this? Read on to find out!

Browser Detection for Internet Explorer

To send different CSS rules to IE, we can use the child selector command, which IE can't understand. The child selector command involves two elements, one of which is the child of the other. So, html>body refers to the child, body, contained within the parent, html.

Using the example of the header margin, our CSS command would be:

#header {margin-bottom:3em}
html>body/#eb3/ #header {margin-bottom:1em}

IE can't understand the second CSS rule, due to the html>body CSS command, so it will ignore it and use the first rule. All other browsers will use the second rule.

Browser Detection for Internet Explorer 5

It may seem strange at first to send different CSS rules to different versions of a browser, but in the case of IE5 it's very necessary. The problem lies in IE5's misinterpretation of the box model. When we specify the width of an element in CSS, padding and borders aren't included in this value. IE5, however, incorporates these values into the width value, which causes element widths to become smaller in this browser.

The following CSS rule would result in a width of 10em for all browsers, except IE5, which would give it a width of just 5em (IE5 would incorporate two sets of padding and border, on both the left and right, when calculating the width):

#header {padding: 2em; border: 0.5em; width: 10em}

The solution to this problem? The box model hack, invented by Tantek Çelik, who has become quite famous in the CSS world as a result of this hack -- and rightly so. To perform browser detection, and send a different CSS rule to IE5 you would use the following:

#header {padding: 2em; border: 0.5em; width: 15em; voice-family: "\"}\""; voice-family:inherit; width: 10em}

How Mr. Celik worked out how to do this is anyone's guess! The important thing is that it works: IE5 will use the first width value of 15em, 5em of which will be taken up by the two sets of padding and border (one each for the left and for the right). This would ultimately give the element a width of 10em in IE5.

The 15em value will then be overridden by the second width value of 10em by all browsers except IE5, which, for some reason, can't understand the CSS command that comes immediately after all those squiggles. It doesn't look pretty, but it does work!

There is a slight problem with the box model hack, as it can often 'kill' the next CSS rule in IE5.0. However, there are plenty of other box model hacks that you could implement instead.

Browser Detection for Internet Explorer on the Mac

Quite simply, IE on the Mac does strange things with CSS. The browser's become somewhat obsolete since Microsoft announced it's not going to release an updated version. As such, many Web developers code their CSS-driven sites so that the site works in IE/Mac, although it may not offer the same level of advanced functionality or design that's offered to users of other platform and browser combinations. Provided IE/Mac users can access all areas of the site, this is seen as a suitable way to do things.

To hide a command using the IE/Mac CSS hack is simple. It involves wrapping a set of dashes and stars around as many CSS rules as you like:

/* Hide from IE-Mac \*/
#header {margin-bottom:3em}
#footer {margin-top:1.5em}
/* End hide */

IE/Mac will simply ignore all these commands. This CSS hack can actually be quite useful if there's a certain area of the site that doesn't work properly in IE/Mac. If that section isn't fundamental to visitors' use of the site, you can simply hide it from IE/Mac like so:

#noiemac {display: none}

/* Hide from IE-Mac \*/
#noiemac {display: block}
/* End hide */

The first CSS rule hides the entire section assigned the noiemac id (i.e. <div id="noiemac">). The second CSS rule, which IE/Mac can't see, displays this section.

Browser Detection for Netscape 4

Netscape 4 has limited and somewhat erratic support for CSS. Making a CSS layout for this browser, whose market share has now slipped well below 1%, can be extremely challenging. It's become common practice nowadays to completely hide the CSS file from this browser. This can be achieved using the @import directive to call up the CSS document:

<style type="text/css">@import url(cssfile.css);</style>

Netscape 4 will display a non-styled version of the site, as it can't understand this @import directive.

Checking your Site in the Different Browsers

At the time of writing, the major Internet browsers include IE5, IE6, Firefox, Opera and Safari. (Check out TheCounter.com for up-to-date browser statistics.) You can download all these browsers, and a number of more obscure ones, at the Evolt browser archive. If you're not sure how, find out how to install multiple versions of IE on your PC.

Ideally, you should check your site in all these browsers, on both PC and Mac (except IE6 and Safari, which are only available on PC and Mac respectively). If you don't have access to a Mac you can get a screenshot of your site on Safari by running it through Dan Vine's iCapture, or you can pay to use Browsercam, which offers a more extensive screen capturing service.

Conclusion

On the whole, modern browsers have very good support for CSS -- it's certainly good enough for you to use CSS to control layout and presentation. Sometimes however, certain page elements will appear differently in different browsers.

Don't worry too much if you don't know the reason why: play around with the CSS rules and make some trial-and-error changes, such as perhaps changing a padding value to a margin. If that doesn't work, you can fix it up with these CSS hacks and your Web pages should look great across all browsers!

Access Granted

Finally, after a long wait, my access to OOo documentation page is granted and now, my status is not only an observer, but also a developer, that means i can update the Indonesian Documentation Page. Thank you to Louis who has helped me uploading the public key to Support team and all of the other OOo documentation developers (Scott Carr, G.R. Singleton, and Diane Mackmoon). They have helped me so much on the access and the CVS as well.

Right now, i'm learning how to work with CVS. It's a new thing to me, so i should learn from the scratch. I have download the manual from CVSHOME and studied them. I also download some manuals from the WinCVS documentation. It's quite fun to study new things, especially when related to Open Source and community.

A Sneak Peek at GNOME 2.10

GNOME 2.10 is going to be the latest and greatest thing from the GNOME Desktop Project this March 9th. This Work is in Progress

For those who like to see a sneak preview of the next Gnome 2.10, here is the link which shows some of the things that are currently in the GNOME 2.9 development snapshot : http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-10/.

You will see some updates on the Yelp, Evolution, Gedit, and other application, but you will not see much updates on the graphical accessories. It focuses on functionality updates as far as i see.

FC4 Schedule

Fedora project has released a preliminary schedule for the next Fedora Core 4

Test users should continue to file bug reports against each test release even after we have frozen for the next test release; all feedback is helpful.

You can subscribe to this calendar or download it.

21 Feb : test1
9 March : String change deadline (data provided)
21 March : test2, string build freeze (builds completed)
6 April : Translation deadline (data provided) test3 devel freeze
18 April : test3, translation build freeze (builds completed) … Continual freeze, only critical bugs fixed until release
2 May : Absolute devel freeze
16 May : Release open, announced

I hope the next FC will bring better distro than the previous one