eStudios bares all!

I’ve always been a fan of the open source mindset. The idea of knowing you can freely obtain and view the inner workings of your favorite applications–interact with what makes them tick. Why live in a world where everything is veiled by cloud of secrecy? Which is why I have decided to make eStudios open source.

Every page and file on my website is completely open to viewing through the directory listing. Even the source of my page, which displays the source of a file is open source! In the footer of every page you will now see a little icon: Clicking this icon will show you the source of the page you are currently viewing.

My goal here is not to enable people to just blindly copy everything. I want to enable and encourage people to learn from my code. To better their own abilities. This however is just the beginning. An idea sparked from something so simple; a project is currently underway to bring that level of understanding and learning to a whole new level and I cannot wait to reveal more about it.

Click here to learn more!

Communism or dirty capitalism. Call it what you wish but 2008 has surely brewed up quite the storm in regards to Canada’s Internet access and the providers we use.

Let’s face it. In this day and age torrents are not a means of sharing personal family photos or videos. While I’m sure there are many concerned people out their who choose not to partake in illegal copyright activities, the fact remains, when you mention torrents you think pirated movies, free games and complete discographies of your favourite bands. Of course, using BitTorrent technology to download any of the aforementioned is illegal activity and places you in sights of the long arm of the law, so instead, I suggest you support the various industries by purchasing your movies, games or music from authorized retailers.

This is essentially the root of the problem. Or so many seem to think. Major telecommunications companies, like Rogers or Bell Canada, are actively taking a roll in their customers use of this BitTorrent technology and overstepping their bounds as a service providers. They do this by using what is known as bit-shaping, (or traffic shaping), applications on their networks. These bit-shaping applications monitor the network traffic through the packets of data which are being sent and recieved–both encrypted and unencrypted–and analyze the data for BitTorrent behavior. Your BitTorrent traffic is then restricted resulting in extremely slow download rates; far below what your ISP sells you and what is expected. This type of active BitTorrent traffic shaping is what is commonly referred to as (torrent) or (bandwidth) throttling. Kind of makes you wonder where their idea of “for sharing large files and much more” comes into play.

But that is only half of the story. In addition to torrent or bandwidth throttling, these major telecommunications companies are beginning to make use of deep packet inspection (DPI) and deep packet capture (DPC) technologies. The problem isn’t so much with the use of these technologies, its with what companies CAN or are doing with it. While I’m sure it will help to thwart virus’ and Trojans from spreading along their networks, it can also be used for much more devious intentions. Like collecting, storing and selling personal or sensitive information. Your name, websites you visit, images you view, searches you complete on Google, videos you download, podcasts you listen to. You name it. And what can companies use this information for? They can use it to inject targeted ads directly related to your internet behavioral patterns into your browser. Watching and tracking your every click and key stroke. Rogers alone, since early December of 2007, has been injecting their own content into other company’s websites without permission. With the introduction of bandwidth caps, Rogers users who are close to the maximum bandwidth limit are subject to seeing red text appear above the content of every website they visit. The notice continues to appear on every page until the user either clicks a link acknowledging that they have seen the message or chooses to opt out of the notification (which will only last for that one given month). But no, it doesn’t stop there. What next? The technology being used (and may already be, who knows?) by law enforcement agencies? Projects and companies like NebuAd and Phorm are very real examples of these types of technologies being used for financial gain and corporate money making.

Let me go back to the first statement I had made in respect to communism or dirty capitalism. Why do I call what these companies are doing, communism or dirty capitalism? Because these companies are not throttling torrents or traffic simply to put an end to piracy. No, they are trying to control the internet. They are attempting to put boundaries on something which should be limitless, free and open. They do it for greed; they do it for the money. Think about it. These companies place bandwidth limits on users claiming that technologies like that of the BitTorrent protocol, places their network at risk and generates a lot of stress. This is far from the truth and they only use it as a front. A front for what you ask? The real reason they cap your bandwidth. These companies have to pay for ever gigabyte of bandwidth you consume so why not throttle your bandwidth and your torrent and place caps or limits on you. The less you can consume, the more money they keep in their pockets. That is why they seek to control the internet and what you do on it–because its an open place where people can make their own decisions as to what is true and false; where people can do as they please and are not subject to the corporate grasp of everyday life. Thats the only power a government really has. Fear; you keep the people afraid and they will buy anything you dish out. All of which can be tied into Net Neutrality, but I am going a bit off topic and is something which I may discuss further some other day.

So why is this such a sad day for Canada and in fact the world? I will tell you why. Because this is the beginning of the end of the Internet as we know it. Targeted ads, traffic manipulation—all small parts to play in a larger global movement my major telecommunications companies to further extend their grasp on society and its customers. To squeeze us for every penny we have. You are probably thinking to yourself this probably seems like some big conspiracy theory and I’ve simply forgotten my medication which in fact people “like me”, often seem to be on. I assure you, this threat is real. It is happening.

But what can you do to stop it? Spread the word. Voice your opinion. Show these companies you won’t stand for what they are doing. Write formal letters to the president of your internet service provider. Email your local MP’s and let them know the importance of what these companies are trying to do. Educate your friends and family. Take a moment to mail your ISP and voice your concerns. If you are unhappy with Rogers, Bell or any other service provider, forward your complaints about the performance issues as well as any other problems or concerns. Just remember, in order to ensure they take your concerns seriously, when writing, explain your issue carefully, directly and as simply as you can. Here is the address for Rogers Cable.

The Office of the President
Rogers Cablesystems - Rogers Yahoo! HiSpeed Internet
855 York Mills Rd
Don Mills, Ontario
M3B 1Z1

On that note, just remember, knowledge is power.

For the longest of times, I’ve always considered Adobe’s, (previously Macromedia), Dreamweaver a beginners tool to web development. I always thought of it as a sub-par way of designing and developing websites. In all honestly, I still feel the same way.

But things have changed. I recently learned of a feature within Dreamweaver that allowed you to setup a “Dreamweaver Site.” This Dreamweaver function allows you to remotely connect to your server hosting your website, locally edit those pages and just as easily update them.

I had always found myself logging into cPanel and using its file editor to do my work. It was faster then downloading everything to my local test machine and then uploading it again. Yet, it was still slow and there were, (and still are), some rather irritating bugs within cPanel that made working with files all that much harder.

It wasn’t until a friend of mine mentioned Dreamweaver had the capability to allow you to connect and manage your websites in the way it does that I had decided to rethink my previous opinions on Dreamweaver. With a click of a button, I can quite literally edit my pages and as soon as I save it, those changes are made remotely on my server as well as locally. This kind of website management is extremely efficient combined with a popular FTP program such as FileZilla.

But that is just the beginning. Dreamweaver offers a check in and check out function which allows you to temporarily lock any files on your server while you are working on them. This is great in a multi-user situation where more then one person has access at any time to your server and your website. With this check in and out system, you can rest assured no one is editing your file at the same time you are, potentially overwriting your recent changes. Aside from that, another feature I found extremely useful, was the ability to load all dependent files. So lets assume you have your index.php page and on that page you include your header, footer and a configuration file. When you open the index.php file off of the server, Dreamweaver will actually detect these included or dependent files and open them along with index.php. This makes editing various parts extremely easy.

Not to mention, I have a terrible problem with making backups of my work. On too many occasions have I lost everything due to server rollbacks or crashes. Considering Dreamweaver saves your work both locally and remotely, losing something on my server is no longer a problem.

With that in mind, I will leave the rest up to you to discover. While I still feel Dreamweaver is a bad method of designing and developing a website, Dreamweaver, to this date, has offered me a means of managing my websites with extreme efficiency and organization.

Solely for this feature withing Dreamweaver, I highly suggest to other developers to take the time and look into Adobe’s Dreamweaver.

I myself have had a lot of debates and discussions over this topic. But I’m going to try and keep it sweet and simple in another last ditch effort to promote Firefox. Firefox at the end of the day is the better browser. Lets break it down shall we; a look at some of the reasons why you should switch to Firefox.

• Secure
• Faster
• Customizable

Sure, everybody says that, but really, what does it all mean and how does it effect me directly? Let me explain.

Security
Well, lets look at one of the key factors in keeping yourself safe on the internet. We all know that Macs are virtually virus free and a lot safer then machines running Microsoft. And for one explicit reason. Not necessarily because Mac OS X, or whichever OS you may be running, was coded better then Windows. No, its simply because the majority of the world uses Microsoft’s Windows products. Now obviously, just as a consumer looks to get more bang for their buck, so to do our “attackers.” Those who are responsible for writing all those malicious virus’ and Trojans, aim to effect as many people as they possibly can with one virus. With a consumer base which runs primarily on Windows, that task is 10x’s easier. Virus’ do in fact exist for Macs, but seeing as so few use Macs, by the time a fix/patch is released, the attacker would have gained far less then if he or she were to write a virus for a Windows machine.

So what does all this mean? Anonymity; keeping a low profile. Just as there are hardly any virus’ for Macs, the same idea can be applied to Firefox and Internet Explorer respectively. Attackers know most people choose to use Internet Explorer, so they will write malicious software targeted towards the many flaws and bugs in Internet Explorer. Mind you, with Microsoft’s product being the target of most attackers, it becomes doubly difficult to prevent such attacks before they happen. Consequently, drawing Microsoft’s attention away from the user experience and directing their focus on fixing the always arising problems and potential exploits.

Faster
Firefox provides a faster browsing experience. A perfect reason to use it. Aside from the many tweaks and addons you can install for Firefox, the results come from the development of Firefox. Its rendering engine works faster then Internet Explorer’s and as a result, represents about an average of a 1-2 second load time reduction, (or at least that is what I have noticed on most websites). In all honesty, for the average user, they probably wouldn’t notice much of a difference mainly because that is not something which concerns them. But the fact still remains, Firefox is indeed a faster browser.

Customizable
Themes, addons (formally known as Extensions) and tweaks, you name it, you can do it. Not only does Firefox allow users to pick and choose from a wide variety of themes, but it also allows you to install addons which greatly improve your browsing experience or the functionality of your browser. Not to mention the security benefits which comes from a lot of great addons, all of which are freely available through Mozilla’s website. Extensions such as NoScript or AdBlock Plus serve to provide another layer of protection.

Standards
Last but not least, lets not forget about the fact that Firefox adheres and complies to much of the currently established World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for the web. Which in short means, when your using Firefox, so long as the developer of the website adhered to these standards, you know you will be viewing a website the proper way it was meant to be viewed.

All in all, when you look at each browser as whole, one stands out from the crowd. So do the right thing. Make the switch now. If not for yourself, do it for her. Get Firefox.

Has Microsoft finally came to the cold, harsh realization that their browser is in fact terrible? I certainly hope so, and the announcement of Internet Explorer 8 was more then thrilling. When I first found out about IE8 and Microsoft’s decision to finally throw us designers and developers a bone, I was overwhelmed.

Internet Explorer and standards complaint where two terms I thought I would never hear my self utter in the same sentence. But it is in fact true. This new Internet Explorer now complies with CSS 2.1 and has fixed a lot of the HTML inconsistencies present in older versions of IE.

Cascading style sheets 2.1 compliance
The Internet Explorer 8 layout engine is built to be cascading style sheets 2.1 compliant, enabling web developers and designers to write their pages once and have them render properly across all cascading style sheets 2.1 compatible browsers. However, Microsoft is not finished—hence, Microsoft is seeking feedback from developers working with Internet Explorer 8 Developer Beta 1.

HTML improvements
Many cross-browser inconsistencies have been fixed in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, including:

* Separate URL handing for attributes
* The get/set/remove attribute implementations are now compatible with those of other browsers
* Default attributes for HTML are supported so that they always exist on elements whether specified in the markup or not

One key thing to note is that Microsoft, for some strange reasons I have yet to understand fully, has decided with this release of IE8, users will be able to choose from 3 different layout engines. The IE 8 “Standards” mode, “Strict” mode, which essentially replicates the behavior of IE7, and lastly “Quirks” mode, which is pretty much an emulation of IE6 and below.

But ask yourself this, if Microsoft is finally developing their browser to comply with long since established internet standards, why on earth would they give you the option to pretty much continue to use the old, buggy IE7? If Microsoft gives to users the ability to stick with the old IE7, then are they really solving anything? There is still going to be a need for developers to design their websites with those, I will be frank, morons, who choose to stick with the IE7 layout engine. I for one do not see any rhyme nor reason to that decision. Hopefully, Microsoft will eventually force upon the world, a browser that is finally one day, truly complaint to standards and actually works. Until then, viva la Firefox!

Choice of layout engine
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 will ship in standards mode by default. However, three different rendering modes that may be set using the X-UA-Compatible header:

* Quirks mode which supports Internet Explorer 5 and legacy browsers
* Strict mode which supports Internet Explorer 7 and is accessed through the emulate Internet Explorer 7 button
* Internet Explorer 8 standards mode