Nick Bradbury

TopStyle 3.12 Status

Last month I mentioned that I'm working on TopStyle 3.12, which will be a free upgrade from version 3.x. I don't have a release date yet, but here's a teaser on what it will include:

One of the TopStyle's most popular features is class hyperlinking, which enables one-click navigation to the declaration of a CSS class. However, this feature doesn't currently support the use of multiple classes (ex: <p class="class1 class2">), nor does it support id attributes - and both of these items have been requested many, many times.

I'm happy to report that over the weekend I completed work on both of these features, and they will be included in TopStyle 3.12.

PS: I'll announce the new version here when it's available.

My Favorite TopStyle Tips

The TopStyle Tips Blog is also packed with useful posts. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Core Web Fonts + A Speed Tweak
• Double-click to enlarge a thumbnail
• Get help for any CSS1 property
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Related Styles
• Replacement Tokens
• Right-click to edit a color
• Site-wide search in TopStyle
• Speed Up Your Site's CSS
• Specificity in TopStyle's CSS selector panel
• Stacked or Tabbed
• Use Find in Files for negative matches
• Using Tab & Shift+Tab to control indenting
• Validate XML in TopStyle

My Favorite FeedDemon Tips

I just added a new entry to the FeedDemon Tips Blog, and I spent a few minutes re-reading all the great tips that have been posted there. Here's a list of some of my favorites:

• Add some XP eye candy to the channel bar
• Disable FeedDemon's popup blocker
• Drag-and-drop feed subscription
• Flags and Newspapers
• Get Technorati links for any FeedDemon news item
• Hidden feature: use Mozilla inside FeedDemon!
• Let FeedDemon automatically mark items as read
• Make FeedDemon look like a Usenet newsreader
• MSN Search Channels
• Options in FeedDemon
• Post to del.icio.us from FeedDemon
• Previous as well as Next

HOWTO Spot a Wannabe Web Standards Advocate

It bothers me that I laughed at this.

MSN Spaces Supports Feed URI Scheme

Dare Obasanjo reports that MSN Spaces now supports "one-click subscription" via the feed URI scheme (aka: "feed:// protocol"). According to Mike Torres:

"Clicking on the orange RSS button or the "Syndicate" link above will no longer spit out raw XML to your readers using a modern browser. Instead, they will see a "pretty printed" RSS feed with a link to learn more, subscribe in My MSN, or subscribe in an aggregator supporting one-click subscription (feed://)."

In other words, readers of any of the 4.5 million MSN Spaces blogs can now simply click a feed link to subscribe to the feed in FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, NewsGator, Shrook, RSS Bandit, NewzCrawler, Sharpreader or any other RSS reader which support the feed URI scheme. Very nice!

Dexter Cartoon for April 8, 2005: "Sue Yourself"

This week's "Dexter" is a six-part series I created in the strip's early days, when the title character always wore sunglasses. I was going to post these as separate cartoons over the next six weeks, but for the sake of continuity I'm posting all six parts at the same time.

Click here to read all six strips.

Email Backlog

First, a confession: I lied in this post when I said that I'd be slower than usual to respond to email this week because I'd be running around in the backyard with my kids. We actually spent the week visiting my parents near Washington, DC, but I didn't think it wise to advertise the fact that my house would be unoccupied.

I thought connectivity wouldn't be an issue, but it turned out that I was unable to access the net from my parent's place. I was able to find connectivity at various places around DC which enabled me to answer the most pressing customer emails, but I've still got a ton of email to catch up with. If you're waiting to hear from me, I ask for your patience - I'm back home now, so you should receive a reply soon.

Light Blogging this Week

My kids are on Spring Break this week, and although I'll still be working, I'm cutting down on my workload so I can spend more time with them. So, chances are I won't be blogging much - if at all - this week.

If I take a little longer to reply to forum posts or email this week, most likely it's because I'm running around in the backyard with my kids, making a fool of myself for their enjoyment :)

Spyware purveyors looking into RSS

I just received this email from a well-known purveyor of spyware who is seeking to enter the world of RSS:

"We are interested in any co-distribution and/or co-marketing opportunities with FeedDemon. I represent [company name omitted since I don't need the legal hassle], a free content and application network that represents a current user base of 30 million plus subscribers. Should we explore a possible syndication opportunity, this would possibly gain exposure of your application to our user network. If you are interested in discussing further, if you could please contact me offline, I would be happy to chat more about this with you in detail."

I immediately replied that I wasn't interested in doing business with them, but I'm sure I'm not the only one they've contacted. If you're involved in developing an RSS reader, be sure to research any company seeking to do business with you before replying to their request. The last thing RSS needs is affiliation with spyware.

Interview with Håkon Wium Lie

The WaSP has an interview with Håkon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Software and father of CSS.