text:
the daily report
web design news since the 14.4 modem was hot
28 March 2003 :::
3 pm | 2 pm EST
Iraq Body Count
Iraq Body Count documents reported civilian casualties in Iraq and provides variously sized casualty counters you can add to your site. Counter figures are updated in real time via JavaScript. As non-combatant children and adults are reported to have been killed, the counters on your site will roll over to reflect the latest figures.
"Civilian casualties are the most unacceptable consequence of all wars," say the site's founders. "Each civilian death is a tragedy and should never be regarded as the 'cost' of achieving our countries' war aims, because it is not we who are paying this price." :::
NYC Wireless has a simple mission: to "provide free public wireless internet service to mobile users in public spaces throughout the New York City metro area." :::
Pretty standard
Antipixel presents "Steal These Buttons:" attractive, low-bandwidth badges to indicate compliance with CSS and XHTML, XML/RSS feed availability, and more. Raging Platypus carries the button fest to its logical conclusion with buttons for everything.
In "I Scream, 'Floats!'" (27 March) Brian Alvey of Meet the Makers documents browser problems with a table-free CSS redesign. Short, to the point, and easy to follow, the write-up includes effective visual aids.
"Inclusive Web Design for the Future" – outline of a presentation by Steven Champeon of The WaSP and Nick Finck of Digital Web Magazine. :::
Penn in hand
Requiem for Penn Station. The old Penn Station. "Moynihan to Help Recreate NYC Pennsylvania Station" (28 August 2002). The proposed new Penn Station. Pixel By Pixel original renderings of the proposed new Penn Station. :::
How the west was hated
On the Diane Rehm Show, a panel discusses Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian Muslim philosopher mentioned in Wednesday's Report. Hat tip: Jeff Wilkinson. :::
26 March 2003 :::
noon EST
Over a half billion served
CSS poster boy Eric Meyer conducts an illuminating interview with Mike Davidson of ESPN on the subject of web standards and CSS layout as used on a site that gets over a half billion page views per month. What is the justification for using web standards? How do you sell them to your boss? Mike's answers make worthwhile reading. :::
How did we get here?
Frontline's "The War Behind Closed Doors," based on the television documentary of the same name, provides background information on the Bush administration's march to war with Iraq. The entire 52-minute program is streamed in six consecutive segments.
"The Philosopher of Islamic Terror" in Sunday's New York Times Magazine tells the story of Sayyid Qutb, a Koranic scholar whose radical assessment of a believer's religious duties in a secular world shaped Al Qaeda. If you can get hold of a printed copy of the past Sunday's Times, do it. (Access to content on The New York Times site requires free signup.) :::
25 March 2003 :::
10 am | 9 am EST
MTM rethinks, relaunches
Meet the Makers, the free web conference featuring interviews with and for "creative people in a technical world," has retooled its site using CSS for layout, XHTML for structure. Meet the Makers has also begun providing worthwhile online content rather than simply listing information about its upcoming events. The site now features front page news and weekly conversations with designers, writers, and other creative thinkers.
This week, MTM host Brian Alvey talks to John Lenker, author of Train of Thoughts and founder of Invioni, about "designing effective web experiences, the battle between creativity and blind usability, and what all web designers can learn from beer commercials."
The site's CSS layout works nearly as well in Netscape 4 as it does in IE6/Windows, Safari, and Opera 7. Interestingly, it is less coherent in Mozilla and IE5/Mac, whose CSS support is arguably more accurate than that of the browsers previously mentioned. :::
Free screen reader
Independent designers striving to make their sites more accessible often cannot afford to buy JAWS or Window-Eyes, the two leading screen readers, and thus cannot properly test their work. Tighe Lory, who attended our lecture in Albany last week, has pointed us to EMACSpeak, T. V. Raman's open source audio desktop for Linux that is available free of charge. :::
Free site optimization tool
Andrew B. King, author of Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization (New Riders: 2003) and founder of Webreference.com, announces a free new service for web designers. Submit your URL to the Web Page Analyzer and it will tally the weight of your markup, images, CSS and JavaScript, then offer advice on how to improve your download and display time.
The new service is not perfect. It occasionally includes messages like this one:
Caution. The total size of this HTML file is $$ HTML_SIZE bytes, which is below 100K, but above 20K.
Despite glitches of this sort, overall, the Web Page Analyzer does an extraordinary job and, as we may have mentioned, it is free. Andrew's book, Speed Up Your Site, was reviewed in The Daily Report of 31 January 2003. A sample chapter is available online for your reading pleasure. :::
Oh! you pretty things
We recently came across the beautiful and impressive portfolio site of designer, illustrator, and Flash artist Bill Safsel. His work is inspiring, elegant, and playful. ::: Heather Champ's The Mirror Project is running a funding drive to help cope with the cost of serving over 14,000 contributions from photographers all over the world. Give 'til it hurts. ::: Dave Shea's Mezzoblue has a pretty surface enlivened by subtle design details and is filled with interesting bits of content. :::
Dingbats of war and peace
Hanan Cohen has informed us of No War, an open source font project offering dingbat fonts and EPS illustrations on the themes of war, peace, and terrorism. The illustrations, which can be used without attribution in any non-commercial project, include outlines of European nations; dingbats of soldiers, choppers, and tanks; and EPS images ranging from bin Laden to the Buddha. The site may offend some viewers. :::
19 March 2003 :::
4 pm | 3 pm EST
Talk is
cheap free
This Friday in Albany, NY, we'll deliver a half-day talk on designing with web standards. The session is free, but you must register in advance – i.e., today or tomorrow. The talk is part of a Continuing Education Series by The New York State Forum for Information Resource Management's Webmaster's Guild, with support from The Governor's Office of Employee Relations. Try saying that with a mouthful of peanut butter. :::
New blog app runs on your computer
Hivelogic presents notes about Soapbox, a new weblog application you can download an install on your computer. It sounds great. (We continue to hand code zeldman.com, but don't mind us.) :::
Where in the world is CSS 2.1?
Here's a fun game for geeks. Go to the W3C's CSS page and try to find a link to the CSS 2.1 specification. Go ahead, try.
In an emergency meeting at the United Nations, Hans Blix said: "We are certain that the W3C has created a CSS 2.1 specification. We've had dialogues with academics and engineers who helped develop it. But the W3C's website has not made an effort to help us find the CSS 2.1 specification."
(For what it's worth, the spec is hidden here.) :::
Macromedia redesign
Todd Dominey in "Macromedia.com Progress Report" and Douglas Bowman in "Designing in Public" discuss Macromedia's ongoing public redesign in terms of what it gets right: namely, a lowering of the barrier between creator and user. Traditionally, companies push out product and then fire a scapegoat when problems are revealed. Instead of that, Macromedia is rolling out its redesign in phases and inviting and responding to public comment. In this they may be taking a cue from Mozilla, which publicly reveals reported bugs and the steps taken to fix them, and Safari, which does the same thing semi-officially via browser engineer Dave Hyatt's weblog.
The first version of the site suffered from accessibility problems that revealed limitations in Flash MX and Microsoft's reportedly sketchily documented active accessibility technology. The designers were in a tough spot. Converting inaccessible site components such as the Macromedia Worldwide Store to HTML would look like an admission that even the MX version of Flash can't deliver true accessibility. But sticking with Flash would prove that the developers had been unable to deliver Flash-based accessibility (at least, within their production timeframe) and would also prevent some visitors from using the store. Macromedia switched to HTML backed by middleware.
The site has also been criticized for its poor performance in Opera and Safari, and again, Macromedia appears to be trying to fix those problems. There are font size problems in Camino as well, but Camino (and Safari) must share the blame. Since March 2000, most modern browsers have specified 16px/96ppi as a standard default text size. But Camino and Safari do not do that.
The default size on Camino and Safari is 14px – neither the cross-browser, cross-platform default nor the old 12px Macintosh default. And neither browser makes it easy to switch to 16px. As a result, percentage based text sizes (such as those used on footers at Macromedia.com) are illegibly small in Camino. They are small but legible in Safari, but only if you specify a legible minimum font size using the freeware Safari Enhancer. :::
18 March 2003 :::
1 pm | 11 am EST
Somehow, even here in NYC, it did not feel like Saint Patrick's Day. Nor did it feel like a day when web design mattered much. Hence yesterday's silence.
Happy little clouds
When in doubt, reload: We've added a rough draft cloud pattern to the top of this site's white layout (it's just a quick sketch to see if we like the idea), and removed the American Typewriter face from both layouts to work around a bug in Apple's Safari browser, which consistently inserts American Typewriter Light instead of the specified Roman weight. (When more than one variant of a face is present on your system, Safari inserts the wrong one. The Safari team has been informed of the bug.) :::
Cynthia tops Bobby?
Cynthia Says™ is a "web content accessibility validation solution ... designed to identify errors in design related to Section 508 standards and the WCAG guidelines." Cynthia runs more tests than Bobby and is free. Cynthia is prettier than Bobby. Cynthia wears clean undies. Alas, like Bobby, Cynthia goes down every 60 seconds. Still. :::
A tool to view the structure of web pages
Ian Lloyd, who we finally met at SXSW last week, has created a free bookmarklet that exposes the underlying structure of a web page without requiring you to view source. "Show and label divs with ids" outlines all div elements with a red border and prints their id labels. Add it to your Bookmarks or Favorites tool bar, and you can deconstruct most websites with a click of the mouse. :::
SXSW Blog
SXSWblog's Notes Exchange is collecting comments on the panels, presentations, and other events at SXSW 2003. Notes are released under a Creative Commons license of your choice. If you've already written about SXSW on your personal site, you can add a link to your site in the appropriate Notes Exchange category. :::
15–16 March 2003 :::
weekend edition
From the JAWS of defeat
Refer to the past two days' discussion of CSS backgrounds, Skip Navigation, and the JAWS screen reader. Edward Cossette informs us that if you import your default style sheet rather than linking to it with
link rel, JAWS will no longer render the style sheet. Thus, Skip Navigation and other access enhancements will no longer be hidden from the people who need them. Edward's company has used this technique successfully in Section 508 compliant online textbook projects. We've made the switch here and will see how it goes. :::
CSS eats the web
It started with personal and indie sites. Then public sector sites like the homepage of Juneau, Alaska climbed aboard the CSS train. Next came big tech sites like Wired.com and Netscape DevEdge; then mainstream, high-traffic, commercial sites like ESPN. Now the floodgates are open.
Recent CSS sites brought to our attention include the Alfa Laval International Customer Magazine produced by Lars Johansson and his team at Swedish design bureau Zeitung, and Berlingske Tidende, the oldest daily broadsheet on earth, produced by David V. Kerns and his group at Metropol Online. Says David: "We have used the same style sheet to make it work in the following browsers and platforms (Windows: IE5, IE6, NS6, Mozilla, Opera6/7; Mac: IE 5.1, NS6, Mozilla), proving 'industrial strength' sites, not just weblogs, can be built using divs and CSS."
Not every CSS site is perfectly standards compliant, nor is every CSS site intended to win graphic design awards, though some may. What unites most of these sites is a desire to better serve readers by loading faster than table-driven sites and delivering content to more types of devices – and thus, to greater numbers of users. CSS sites are also easier and less costly to maintain, easier to redesign and customize, and – by separating structure from presentation – easier to incorporate in advanced publishing workflows.
Dozens of CSS site announcements line our email in-box; trouble is, we're months behind in email and fearful that we may never catch up with it all. Later this weekend or Monday, we expect to announce the (beautiful) CSS conversion of another mainstream site. :::
Is that a gun in your Pocket PC?
Glenn Davis informs us that our Skip Navigation link fails in Pocket Internet Explorer on his Pocket PC. Like Netscape 4, the Pocket PC browser apparently does not understand anchor links identified by the
id attribute, which was introduced in HTML 4 way back in 1997. When user agents don't support 1997-era HTML, you can sometimes work around the problem by assigning a deprecated
name attribute to the anchor, using the same attribute value for both id and name:
id="xyz" name="xyz"
Alas, under XHTML 1.0, the name attribute is invalid when applied to a div element. It is only valid when applied to a linked element. (The same is true of
tabindex.) We are thus presented with three choices:
- Insert gratuitous linked elements on every page.
- Write deliberately invalid markup.
- Wait for Pocket PC to improve its support for HTML 4 – and thus also for XHTML 1.0, which is based on HTML 4.01.
Guess which one we're going to do.
Folks, if your browser or Internet device does not fully or correctly support web standards, consider writing a friendly, respectful note to the manufacturers asking when they plan to improve the compliance of their otherwise totally excellent product that you use every day. :::
Tears of glass
We sadly note the passing of Glasshaus, a "web professional to web professional" publishing house run by the passionately dedicated Bruce Lawson. Glasshaus published fine books such as Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation (2002: Owen Briggs, Steven Champeon, Eric Costello, Matt Patterson) and Constructing Accessible Web Sites (2002: Jim Thatcher, Michael Burks, Sarah Swierenga, Cynthia Waddell, Bob Regan, Paul Bohman, Shawn Lawton Henry, Mark Urban) among many others.
In a time of tragic upheaval and massive calamity, the collapse of a small UK publishing firm might easily go unnoticed. So let us observe it with respect. We never wrote for Glasshaus, but we liked them and we liked their books. All gone now. :::
14 March 2003 :::
11 am EST
New Riders has fast-tracked Designing With Web Standards. Our new book should hit stores in April or May.
CSS backgrounds and transparency
In yesterday's Report, we began talking about the Fahrner Image Replacement (FIR) technique that uses the CSS background property instead of the
img element to insert images on web pages. In this section we'll discuss a tremendous advantage of using this technique – namely, the ability to compensate for lack of true transparency on the web. After that, we'll discuss two unexpected drawbacks.
The Daily Report identifier at the top of this page is an h1 headline. The slug below it is a paragraph. (Arguably, the unit might make more sense as a definition list, with The Daily Report as a definition title and "Web design news ..." as definition data, but that's not the point we're making today, and frankly, semantic navel-gazing gives us hives.) The two components, headline and slug, are followed by an old-school rectangular image with no transparency.
As part of our ongoing redesign, we've long intended to replace the three components with a single, appropriately branded image. The image would use transparency so as to sit in the page instead of on top of it, while offsetting the boxiness of our CSS layout.
But transparency presents a seeming impasse. Among other things, this site's style switcher lets readers choose a white or a dark orange background. It is impossible to create a transparent GIF image that will work against such widely different background colors. We could do it with PNG, if all browsers fully supported that non-proprietary image format, but they don't.
The FIR CSS background technique could solve the problem. Instead of using
img to insert a transparent GIF that works against one background color and looks hideous against the other, we might create two versions of our transparent GIF image – one antialiased against white, the other against dark orange. We could then insert the "white" image as a header background on the "white" style sheet, and insert the "orange" image on the "orange" style sheet.
This would work and we have long planned to do it. But two problems with this method, discussed next, have come to our attention. :::
CSS background problems
The FIR method was designed to deliver images to those who can see them and text content to those who can't. In nearly all cases, it does exactly that. It works in Palm Pilots and web-enabled cell phones. It works in modern browsers under ordinary usage conditions. But it does not work in two situations:
- If readers turn off images but leave CSS on, they will not see the replacement text because our style rules hide that text from CSS-capable browsers. A reader called this problem to our attention yesterday. We asked why he left CSS on; he told us the version of Mozilla on his operating system would not let him turn it off.
- Douglas Bowman discovered that the JAWS screen reader renders web pages with screen media styles applied, even though those styles are meaningless to the visually disabled people who use JAWS. Thus, in this leading screen reader, text hidden by CSS is also hidden from the very people it was intended to serve. (For details, see Bowman's write-up.) This flaw in JAWS also means that Skip Navigation links and other access enhancements will fail if you use CSS to hide them from ordinary browser users. We of course use CSS to hide such access enhancements from those who don't need them, as do most designers who provide "Skip Navigation" and similar features. These enhancements still work in Palm Pilots and such, and as far as we know they also work in other screen readers. We would encourage the makers of JAWS to reconsider the value of observing CSS rules from which their users cannot possibly benefit short of divine intervention in the form of a miraculous restoration of sight (in which case, they would no longer need JAWS).
Any designer who wishes to use modern techniques to provide both design and accessibility must ask the question, should the two drawbacks described above prevent you from using the FIR method? Presently we use it on this site's banner. But that banner's function is duplicated by a sidebar Daily Report link that is accessible to any visitor – so no problem there.
We also use it to create the three sidebar banners linking to A List Apart, Happy Cog, and the WthRemix contest. Those who turn off images but can't turn off CSS in conventional browsers – and those who use JAWS – will not see these banners or their associated link text. Is that okay? It's a judgement call. What may make it okay is the fact that, when there is fresh content at Happy Cog, A List Apart, or the WThRemix contest, we will link to it in the body of this page, where everyone can see it.
Still unanswered is the question of whether it makes sense to replace our h1 headline with a CSS background image as discussed earlier in today's Report, given that a tiny percentage of our visitors will not see either that background image or its textual equivalent. We're leaning toward "yes," because the page will work as pure content and because the Daily Report "button" in the sidebar indicates, however subtly, that the name of this page is The Daily Report. Leaning toward "yes" also because this site is for designers, few of whom are blind, and few of whom surf with images turned off. Leaning toward "yes," but still thinking.
And naturally, the decision is easier on a personal site than it would be on a large, commercial project. :::
13 March 2003 :::
3 pm | 11 am EST
Pictures for some, text for others
Based on a method proposed by Todd Fahrner, zeldman.com uses the CSS background property to insert images and create rollover effects while sending text instead of images to Lynx, screen readers, Palm Pilots, web-enabled cell phones, and so on. The benefit in a nutshell: total design control plus pure accessibility.
We've written about the technique in Designing With Web Standards (New Riders: 2003), which should hit book stores around August. Meanwhile, Douglas Bowman has written an excellent mini-tutorial on the subject. But wait, there's more... :::
Preloading hover states in CSS rollovers
During the "CSS: Between the (Style) Sheets" panel we presented at SXSW with Eric Meyer and Tantek Çelik, the question arose: is it possible to preload the hover (rollover) state of an image? It sure is, and you don't need to write non-semantic junk markup to do so.
Here's the trick: first, use the hover state image as the background image on the containing element. Doing so will cause the hover state image to load while the page itself is loading. For instance:
#bannerwrap { background: url(/i/hoverstate.gif) no-repeat; }
Next, use the default state of the image as the background on the banner element:
#banner { display: block; background: url(/i/default.gif) no-repeat; }
Lastly, use the hover state again as the background on the
a:hover pseudo-class rule for the element:
a#banner:hover { background: url(/i/hoverstate.gif) no-repeat; }
You may also be able to skip the containing element if you're not doing the image/text mambo used here and described by Bowman. In theory you could apply the hover background to the element itself, apply the default background to the element's
a: linked state, and apply the hover background to the element's
a:hover pseudo-class state.
Additional resources: Tantek's mini-presentation for the panel, which he began writing and formatting at 1:00 am the night before the panel (the man is a rock); our mini-presentation (1.4 MB zip) for the panel, which consists entirely of images (view in Photoshop, Preview, etc.); PhotoMatt's notes from the panel; and the orange and white style sheets here that show the CSS preload in action. (Scroll down to the section of each style sheet labeled "Image-free logo banner with rollover.")
We hope to be able to link to Eric Meyer's mini-presentation soon. The three mini-presentations set the stage for a discussion of CSS in the context for which it was intended — namely, the context of clean, minimal, structural markup. :::
If we are concerned about protecting our civilization from those who would destroy it, we should scrutinize some of our own lawyers, who by extending copyright have made it far more difficult for libraries and museums to preserve cultural materials. Copyright extension makes it illegal for publishers to reprint formerly out-of-copyright books that are falling apart on shelves, and for museums and film organizations to preserve movies that are deteriorating in vaults. At SXSW, Cory Doctorow of Creative Commons encapsulated the problem as "the slow motion burning of the library of Alexandria."
In an interview in The Guardian, Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons and author of The Future of Ideas, says: "The reason why it was so devastating to extend the term of existing copyrights is the huge amount of material that is basically unavailable right now because it's out of print. It is simply material that's locked up, unavailable, and ... extending the term of copyright for 20 more years means that for 20 more years it's going to be unavailable."
But as Doctorow points out, it's not even that simple. By the time the material is legally available for reprinting or preservation, the source materials may be physically unavailable due to deterioration. Books, films, music: we may lose some of them forever. And why was U.S. copyright law changed? So Disney could keep Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain. :::
Why we still use copyright
We wholeheartedly support the mission of Creative Commons, who are performing some of the most important work being done in the arena of creative and intellectual freedom. CC is leading the fight to share information, collaborate with others, and preserve our cultural heritage. But we do not use a Creative Common license on this site or A List Apart because the existing CC license structure does not yet support what we do.
Specifically, it is perfectly okay for you to copy, modify, and use any CSS or JavaScript on this site, and any code at all on A List Apart. You may copy, modify, and use these files without attribution, on commercial or non-commercial sites, and need not ask permission to do so. A Creative Commons public domain license would seem to cover that aspect of ALA and zeldman.com's content.
But you cannot reprint without permission ALA articles or the writing at zeldman.com, and you cannot claim to have written it yourself, as several third-party sites and print publications have done over the years. Copyright protects us and protects ALA's authors from that kind of infringement.
It's a tricky situation. Because of our copyright notice, some honest people are afraid to use the open source code here and at A List Apart, even though it is meant to be used by anyone. But without copyright protection, unscrupulous people might, for instance, submit Curt Cloninger's "Usability Experts are From Mars, Graphic Designers are From Venus" to a magazine, pretending it was their own work.
We hope CC will create a hybrid license covering the kind of work we and many others, as diverse as Josh Davis and Porter Glendinning, do on the web. :::
Red Elvis
@NYTimes.com: Accusations of Theft Envelop Warhol Work – the strange saga of "Red Elvis." (Free subscription required to log in.) :::
12 March 2003 :::
11 am EST
Fish not dead
Some years after Barney Miller went off the air, Abe Vigoda, the actor who'd played Fish on the show, placed an ad in Variety stating that he was not dead. This morning's post serves a similar purpose. Last week, we helped judge the 82nd annual Art Director's Club awards ("What is the ADC?"), then flew to Austin for SXSW. We did not update The Daily Report while engaged in these activities. We're back now, and normal updates will resume shortly. :::
5 March 2003 :::
9 pm EST
The topic of browser differences is as interesting as lint. But as web designers, we need to know about these differences in the same way that photographers need to know about lenses, lights, and film.
Open the file, "Safari vs. Chimera" (360K PDF) and you'll observe:
- Their line-height (leading) differs significantly.
- Their gamma (brightness) differs subtly.
- Safari displays title text, but not the way any other modern browser does it.
- The display of the non-standard – but popular – address window icon (.ico) differs greatly.
Differences in line-height
Look at the screen shot. This site's CSS sets paragraph text at 11px/1.5, meaning 11px text size over leading of [ 1.5 x 11px = ] 16.5px. Safari's line-height matches that of Opera 7/Win and IE5/Mac (not shown in the screen shot) and appears to be either the correct value (16.5px) or slightly less (16px). The line-height in IE6/Win is slightly more open than that; it may have been rounded up to 17px. But essentially, Safari, Opera, IE/Mac and IE/Win understand 11px/1.5 the same way.
Gecko browsers like Camino (formerly Chimera) and Netscape 7 interpret the rule differently. In Gecko, the line-height is over 20px (see screen shot). There may be a valid reason for Gecko's line-height calculation, but it seems wrong.
We could force all browsers to display the same amount of leading by specifying the line-height value in px rather than as a percentage of the font size, but doing so might create problems in browsers that let users scale font sizes. :::
No standard gamma
Look at the screen shot again. Safari is darker than Camino. Camino, in turn, is darker than IE5/Mac (not shown in the screen shot). And even though PCs are generally darker than Macs, the colors are actually lighter in IE6/Win and Opera 7/Win when viewed in Virtual PC. Why is this? All browsers adjust gamma before displaying web pages; no two browsers adjust it the same way; and all browsers darken web pages before displaying them on Macs. How much they darken them and with reference to which standard is anybody's guess.
Browsers' deliberate and non-standardized recalculation of color space is one reason it is impossible to precisely match colors on the web. For instance, if you create a color field in CSS, input the RGB value into Photoshop's color picker, and export the result as a GIF image, the CSS color and GIF color will differ significantly. (They may not even resemble each other except as distant members of the same family.) :::
Title text in Safari
Look at the screen shot again. You may notice that Safari now displays title attribute text, though it places that text in the status bar at the bottom of the screen, instead of showing it in context as a floating tool tip, the way other modern browsers do:
Open "Title text is inserted here." <url is inserted here> in a new window.
Though it is probably meant to be helpful to novice web users, the result is somewhat awkward. Among other things, Safari's attempt to blend its own text with title text and the URL reads like a misfired translation from the owner's manual of a Japanese VCR.
Safari's treatment of title text is reminiscent of 1997 JavaScript status bar text hacks, though it avoids a usability problem associated with status bar hacks by displaying the URL in addition to the text. A bigger usability problem is the visual disconnect between the location of the link (which might be anywhere on the page) and the location of the tool tip (way down in the status bar, where the reader may never think to look for it).
On a more positive note, it's great that Safari now supports
title. :::
The address bar icon (.ico)
Lastly, in viewing the screen shot, you may notice that Safari displays the site's address window icon (.ico) in limited 8-bit color whereas Camino displays it in 32-bit full color. Oddly enough, instead of matching its Gecko sibling Camino, Netscape 7 also displays the icon in limited 8-bit color. IE6/Win displays it in full 32-bit color, but only if you first bookmark the site. If you do not add the site to your bookmarks, IE6/Win will not display the icon at all.
IE5/Mac does not display the .ico file no matter what you do. This is not a huge deal (.ico is not a standard) but once you get used to seeing .ico files, it becomes hard to do without them. Opera 7 does not display it by default, but will do so if you explictly link to it via meta tag (thanks: Rijk van Geijtenbeek and Jeremy White):
<link rel="Shortcut Icon" type="image/ico" href="/path/favicon.ico">
We don't know why some browsers display the .icos in limited 8-bit color whereas others display them in full 32-bit color. The issue has nothing to do with the browser's underlying rendering engine. :::
4 March 2003 :::
6 pm EST
Frames fiasco, part two
Douglas Bowman's spankin' new frame border/spacing test demonstrates how many pixels each browser inserts between frames with various (essentially useless) attributes applied to the frameset element. Be sure to read his commentary as well. You may reach the conclusions Douglas did:
- The W3C's frameset specifications do not provide sufficient control over the display of frames.
- If you need to use frames and you need to control your design (and every designer needs to do that), your site cannot validate.
Admittedly, like Vanilla Ice, frames reek embarrassingly of the 1990s – but some designs (and some web applications) need them. The problem is reminiscent of attempts to embed Flash or Quicktime content using only valid (X)HTML elements and attributes. It is possible to do so – but it's not guaranteed to work in every browser, not even in mighty Mozilla. :::
3 March 2003 :::
10 am EST
In two days it will be two years since we met and the universe realigned.
Boys on the side
Added to the "Relevant Externals" department of our sidebar:
EasyRGB's Color Harmonizer does a remarkable job of creating complements and harmonies for any RGB color you input. (Hat tip: Jeff Wilkinson.) It can't take the place of a designer's eye, but it can show you complementary colors you might not have come up with on your own.
Flyguy is a remarkable, Flash-based interactive artwork that breathes life into Trevor Van Meter's stylishly whimsical black and white illustrations. It's embarrassing to admit that we were unaware of Van Meter's wonderful work until we spotted his site among the SXSW Website Competition Finalists.
Other overdue sidebar additions include Stonefishspine, Anil Dash, Oblivio, and Scene 360 ("Film. Art. Music. Literature."). :::
Frames! They're gonna live forever!
Neither CSS nor standard (X)HTML allows designers to control frame display and positioning. Designers who must use frames face an ugly choice: submit your layout to the random variations of each browser (no designer wants to do that – and few clients would pay for such sloppiness), or control the display via browser-specific, non-standard attributes (fewer and fewer designers feel comfortable doing that, either). Douglas Bowman of Wired redesign fame laments the needless woe of frame frustration. :::
More to come. Watch this space.
28 February 2003 :::
12 noon EST
Missed Manners
Like disclosing how much money you earn, it is in bad taste to talk about how many daily readers your site enjoys or how well it's doing on Daypop or Blogwatch or wherever the self-publisher is measuring his popularity this week. When you brag about your site's traffic, you make people with fewer visitors feel inferior and those with greater traffic chuckle at your misguided assumption of self-importance.
There are legitimate business reasons to trumpet your work's reach and significance, but such notes should be played on your business site or on an About or Bio page of your personal site. When you fire a self-promotional volley in the context of providing information, you cast doubt on that information's neutrality. You also break a contract with the reader by yanking her abruptly out of the experience your site was providing. It is like flashing "For your consideration" during a movie scene in hopes of garnering a nod from the Academy Awards.
You don't have to sell your readers: they are already there. Out of millions of sites, they found yours, and they return to it because they value what you provide. The lily is a perfect flower; it does not need paint. Such is our opinion, and our 40 billion daily readers agree. :::
26 February 2003 :::
10 am | 9 am EST
Flash city rockers
Digital cameras, Canadian new media designers, and found sound: the Escalate project at Art Directors Anonymous combines these elements into fifteen Flash movies, several of which are beautiful to behold. The overall interface is also lovely and clean. Projects take time to load but they're worth it. (Do yourself a favor: load Escalate in a new window, not in a tab, as the project enlarges to fill your whole monitor.) :::
No tables for Pixeltable
Pixeltable Communication Design is a new and fine-looking site. It's also a table-free site built with valid CSS and HTML. From those wonderful people who brought you Netdiver. :::
Enkoder turns 2.0.4
Hiveware's Email Address Enkoder 2.0.4 is a free application for Mac OS X 10.2+ (Jaguar) that does a better job of protecting your email address from spam than any other product we know. "Instead of merely breaking up and printing out a standard
mailto: tag, the Enkoder generates a unique and random key and ties [it] to an encrypted array containing your address."
A live web version is available for all operating systems, and a command line version is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X in its Unix mode. And as we may have mentioned, all versions are free. We used the Enkoder yesterday to protect a client email address on a quickie mini-site. It is easy to use and it works. :::
Sports section
Last week we reported on ESPN.com's redesign using CSS layout. Additional comments on same are available at Todd Dominey's What Do I Know (focus there: the ESPN CSS design works better in Safari than in any other tested browser) and 37signals (focus there: does the copy on the upgrade page really help users understand?). :::
So much for lingerie.js
We've changed the name of our default style sheet to stop corporate firewalls from blocking access to this site. The original name was "nu (as in new) default." Blank spaces are illegal in CSS file names, so the two words were shoved together; the first four letters formed an unintended synonym for unclothed. Some companies block access to inappropriate sites, but this is the first we've heard of corporate web software scanning the names of external style sheets and blocking any site whose file names contain naughty character sequences. We wonder if they also have a problem with standard XHTML elements like
title and
button. :::
Waferbaby turns eight
On 23 February, Waferbaby, one of the web's longest-running indie sites, celebrated its eighth anniversary online – or would have, if Daniel, the site's creator, had been paying attention. Congratulations, boychick. :::
Macromedia and A List Apart
Macromedia has republished Drew McLellan's Flash Satay in their DreamweaverMX Center. The article first appeared in A List Apart Issue 154. It describes a method of embedding Flash content in web pages that is standards-compliant and weighs about 80% less than markup generated by the normative technique of pushing a Publish button in Flash. :::
About face
Veer has updated its extensive library of typefaces, including the entire libraries of Adobe, Letraset Fontek, and the Atomic Media pixel font collection. :::
Better search
Search results here at zeldman.com have improved thanks to tweaks in an intermediate version of the Atomz search engine. We love this product and recommend it unconditionally. :::
25 February 2003 :::
9 am
Eating their own dog food 3.0
Now online for the third time, Marko Karppinen's biannual standards compliancy test checks to see how many W3C member sites are actually using the standards the body develops and advocates.
The latest results show an increase of 75.7% from the initial test of February 2002. It sounds better than it is. In the initial tests, a mere 3.7% of W3C member sites used valid markup and (optionally) valid CSS. Today the number is up to 6.5% of member sites – still low.
"It is easy to see this as being somewhat representative of how the big businesses and leading academic institutions are adopting web standards," says Marko. :::
From our Swedish connection
Our Swedish pal Peyo Almqvist shares some of the work he's been doing lately. Pensum (Swedish language) is the good looking site of a banking co. – and it validates as XHTML 1.0 Frameset. Falcon.se (Swedish language) is a fancy-pants multimedia site that lets you bet on hockey games rendered as Flash movies. (Choose "Ja" to enter.) Port Elizabeth is a destination site with smart features and heavy front page image load times. Some of its subtler features don't yet work in Mozilla or Kmeleon based browsers but they will. The site displays fine in these browsers, it's just missing a few tricks due to scripting based on document.all and document.layers instead of document.getelementbyid. :::
24 February 2003 :::
11 am
A new look for an old dotcom
Fray.com has received its first facelift in six and a half years and is looking good. The Fray is a personal storytelling site and one of the web's longest-running independent content sites. But you know that. The redesign retains familiar, lovable elements from the long running original designed in the mid 1990s, while successfully recasting them in a modern format. :::
Designing with standards
The first draft of Designing with Web Standards is finished, and all but six chapters have gone through final revision. A book like this must benefit designers who've worked with standards for years, but it must also speak to those who know lots about ASP or PHP or Flash and less about structured markup and logical CSS. Finding the right balance is tricky. Consider DOCTYPE switching.
Some of us assume that everyone knows about DOCTYPE switching by now, but this is not so. Many designers and content people I've spoken with recently had never heard of DOCTYPE switching, which is a toggling mechanism invented by Todd Fahrner in 1998 that lets browser makers support standards without breaking sites built the old-fashioned way.
Though the premise of DOCTYPE switching is simple, IE's Standards mode differs from that of Gecko browsers like Mozilla, Netscape, and the user agent formerly known as Chimera. In true Standards mode, Gecko browsers assume an inline model for images, which can have unexpected consequences for some hybrid (CSS + table) layouts. To make things easier for designers, later Gecko browsers (Netscape 7, Mozilla 1.01+) added an "Almost Standards" mode that works like IE's Standards mode. Of course there is more to it than that. There is an entire chapter's worth of more to it than that.
It is necessary to explain it all without scaring standards novices by making it seem as confusing as, well, as it actually is. Yet it must be covered in sufficient detail to serve designers who are familiar with DOCTYPE switching but unaware of some nuance or other. Many such issues must be discussed without bogging down in tangents or losing focus. The book must be clear, precise, design- and results-oriented, and it must be fun to read. Time and readers will tell. :::
Candies for you
Dinc Type has always made great fonts "for people with computers." Now they are all free. ::: Pixelgirl Presents OS X icons and desktop pix. ::: Chmork.net is pretty and campy. ::: Yesterme: pinup pix. :::
Bits from all over
Using Apache to serve XHTML as application/xhtml+xml for XHTML aware browsers, text/html for others. ::: How accessible is Safari? ::: Websites mit dem richtigen Doctype versehen (ALA article in translation). ::: Zeldman goes mobile. :::


text: 3488 Published September 25, 2015 at 1280 × 960 in #PatrikAt25: My eight-day solo budget travel in Thailand — and why I almost died in Phuket! Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to add me on Facebook for updates on this blog OR hit my little cute bird flying in here to follow me on Twitter!Powered by WP Greet Box WordPress PluginComments comments ← Previous Next →

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Wed, 7 December 2005
Noam's Listening… and we are, too! The N1L crew bravely soldiers on as the studio crumbles around us. Irene talks with Noam Chomsky about fake news and other societal woes; Gary Ruskin from Commercial Alert enlightens us on the Channel One high school program and other advertising hijinks; Steve the Drummer brings our glitchiest show to a close fittingly enough… by getting cut off. Part 3 of 3.
Direct download: n1l_show9_part3.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 4:26am EDT


text:
If you think about it, the battle for control over the lands of Westeros would totally still make sense if it were set in the 1980s. It now even has an appropriate remix of its theme song as written and performed by Steve Duzz.
No seriously, think about it. You've got two primary superpowers jockeying for dominance by leveraging the resources of a number of smaller allied factions—plus a wildcard faction that has recently come into its own desert city-state (Daenerys Targaryen is so Weteros' benevolent Muammar Gaddafi)—using constant acts of subterfuge, assassination, and spying to achieve their ends.
And this all occurs under the overarching threat of global calamity—what was once a nuclear holocaust is now a mass invasion of the White Walkers. Just give John Snow a Magnum PI moustache and some tennis shorts and the transformation is complete.


text:
Friday, January 7, 2011
Art That Inspires
11 comments:
- Carrie Waller Watercolors said...
Awesome post,and certainly inspiring:)
- January 7, 2011 at 6:46 PM
- Unknown said...
Great stuff! I think I'll just take your inspiration. ;)
- January 7, 2011 at 7:20 PM
- Lindsay said...
The last one is one of my favorite pastel portraits. It is "Maria Frederike van Reede-Athlone at Seven" by Jean-Étienne Liotard and it lives at the Getty in Los Angeles. I loved it so much I have a magnet at home.
- January 7, 2011 at 7:46 PM
- The Art of Kim Kincaid said...
My thanks to each of you.
Thank you Lindsay for the title and artist. I can't believe it's pastel. Makes it all the more...inspiring.
- January 7, 2011 at 8:53 PM
- Kristopher A. Denby said...
Wow! Not sure I've seen any of these, and I found each of them very interesting in their own way. Some spoke more to me than others, but thanks for sharing them.
By the way, Kim, I posted my review of Sabriel not too long ago. I think you said you wanted to know what I thought of it. I'd love for you to throw your comments in with mine when you get a chance.
The Sound and Fury of Kristopher A. Denby
- January 8, 2011 at 12:33 PM
- The Art of Kim Kincaid said...
Kris, it was an excellent review. I read it when you posted it. You do such a wonderful job expressing yourself, sometimes I'm so intimidated, I don't comment. Plus it has been several years since I've read the trilogy, I didn't trust my memory.
Have you seen the Star Wars' "Vision" book yet? Arantzazu Martinez is from that book. Amazing. My favorite though was Peter de Seve's poignant painting of Kermit and Yoda together. Check it out.
Thanks for stopping by, Kris.
- January 8, 2011 at 10:15 PM
- Tammie Lee said...
I love that you suggest not over-analyzing why we are drawn to art.
Wonderful pieces here, I also find inspiration in them. Thank you.
- January 9, 2011 at 1:33 PM
- Ruthie Redden said...
Kim, i agree, when a painting speaks to me, its straight to my heart & takes my breath away. I keep a file of inspiration on my comp too, and needless to say its visited very often for inspiration when im lagging!I shall be adding one or two of these, Nate Fizzell & AranteZazu Martinez. Thanks for the inro.
- January 14, 2011 at 8:32 AM
so many wonderful artists of whom I've never heard of, thank you for this! My world just got a little more interesting ;-)
- January 16, 2011 at 10:22 AM
- Barbara Wells Sarudy said...
Kim, I think the woman with the hat which you have attributed to Abbott Thayer is actually a detail of a painting at the Indianapolis Museum of Art by Edmund Tarbell (American painter, 1862-1938)called Preparing for the Matinee 1907. I am enjoying watching your creativity in this blog & the comments of your readers as well.
- November 18, 2011 at 3:49 PM
- The Art of Kim Kincaid said...
Thank you Barbara,
You are correct. I got this image off a Thayer flickr page so I appreciate you clarifying. Have you ever participated in Matthew Innis's "Guess the Artist" contest over on his blog at Underpaintings? I bet you would be good at it. Thanks again for your help.
- November 18, 2011 at 4:56 PM


text:
The brand new Pokémon Black & White Plasma Storm cards don't hit store shelves until February, but you can get your first look at three of the new cards right now! In keeping with the Plasma Storm theme, all cards have blue borders, blue tints and the Team Plasma shield. There is something for everyone in this 130 card expansion.
In addition to the new Team Plasma cards, you'll get 14 new Trainer cards including three new ACE SPEC cards that are so powerful that players can only bring one into battle at a time. There are eight new Pokémon-EX like Victini-EX, Cobalion-EX, and Lugia-EX and four full-art Pokémon-EX rare Ultra cards.
Every theme deck and booster pack also includes a code card that unlocks virtual cards from the expansion that can by used in the Pokémon Trading Card Game Online. It's only a few months until the release on February 6th, but with all these great new cards, it's going to feel like a lot longer.


text:
UI customization on Wayland
Let's forget for a second about video drivers, whether it has acceleration or not, and all the related issues with hardware support on Wayland. This is all solved. Let's talk about the user interface (UI) and ways to customize it all over the computing continuum – from phones, tablets and TV box to desktop PCs, Invehicle Infotainment (IVI), aeroplane systems, among others.
(I've made a cheat sheet here also – Creative Commons Legal Code Attribution 2.0. for both figures)
On customization, the shell plugin comes first: changes in there will impact directly which UI paradigm will be used. Specifically, one implementing the plugin protocol will be defining whether the UI is meant for phones, IVI, desktops, etc.
Probably the most important characteristic of the shell plugin is to give "roles" for surfaces, i.e. define where and how they will be mapped on the screen. For example, if a client wants its surface mapped as a top-level window, or say to resize the dimensions of it, then it's up to the shell to expose these different surfaces roles, all according the UI paradigm the shell itself is providing.
Worth to note that the shell plugin doesn't need to rely on any drawing library or graphics toolkit because it doesn't tackle directly drawing aspects. Also, conceptually it's mandatory to give roles for surfaces and therefore a shell plugin is a must (or at least a simple implementation of surface::configure).
An special shell client through an special "private" protocol can be used for setting up basic UI elements that require special treatment. For example in the desktop UI, widget elements such as panel, dock, lockscreen and cursors will need special treatments for their positioning, grabbing semantics and so forth.
On customization, different shell clients, exposing different UI elements can be implemented using the same shell plugin. Some architectures will rather be using one overlay simple client that will take care of spawning and controlling other UI basics applications also.
The special client will probably want to rely on graphics toolkits.
Wayland clients use the Wayland core protocol and the protocol that shell plugin has defined. The corollary is that one client will always know the UI paradigm (due shell plugin) and will not work across different paradigms. Though, that doesn't mean applications will need to know their paradigm necessarily but only the middleware software is connecting to Wayland (like the graphics toolkits).
A footnote about Canonical's Mir
Canonical announced their new display manager yesterday. There's a section "Why Not Wayland / Weston?" where they claim:
"we consider the shell integration parts of the protocol as privileged and we'd rather avoid having any sort of shell behavior defined in the client facing protocol."
and something similar was written here also:
" Wayland .. exposes privileged sections like the shell integration that we planned to handle differently, both for security reasons and as we wanted to decouple the way the shell works on top of the display server from the application-facing protocol"
so they would rather have:
"An outer-shell together with a frontend-firewall that allow us to port our display server to arbitrary graphics stacks and bind it to multiple protocols."
First of all, there's nothing privileged about the shell protocol Wayland is exposing. wl_shell and wl_shell_surface (the "shell protocols") are part of the Wayland core protocol, yes, but as I've explained on this post, it's all customizable for whatever UI needs. Nevertheless, their usage is completely optional and anyone can build a different shell and stack with the rest of Wayland, just like tablet-shell protocol for instance does. Still, this will be Wayland and use the shiny libwayland for IPC.
Therefore I don't think Canonical should justify their new project because Wayland "does not fulfill .. requirements completely". There are no technical reasons Ubuntu cannot use Wayland in principle. What they wrote there is a very very mean excuse instead.


text:
A Simple Birthday
Again, I do have a husband. :o) He was very much involved that day, he just prefers not to see his face on the craft blog. So that was Paige's day!
How sweet...Happy Birthday dear Paige..ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday to the pretty one :)ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday Paige. My gosh, she is such a cutie. I think that anytime I see her on your blog.ReplyDelete
Thank you, June. I think the same thing all the time. Sometimes I just think "seriously? this little girl is mine??"ReplyDelete
happy birthday and all the best to Paige!:DReplyDelete
Aww, Happy Birthday!! I did a similar balloon filling, banner hanging for my son's 3rd birthday and he did not notice it either. He came in our room and ate breakfast before he realized the festivities in his bedroom. They are too unpredictable!ReplyDelete
She is my daughter's age and she's seems to have a big personality like her. Isn't it fun to look back at the photos of her when you first started to blog? Happy birthday 5 year old.ReplyDelete
Cute idea! I'll try it sometime!ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday Paige! Disney, I love her dress. Did you make or buy it? I would love that fabric if it is available somewhere, I collect Hello Kitty(hello kitty fabric in particular).
Your daughter gets more beautiful everytime I see a new photo.
What a beautiful bit of love to put that sign above her bed! She may not have seen it first thing when she woke up, but it will not be part of her story, how Mommy loved her enough that she carried her around sound asleep in the middle of the night and how mommy tired out her arms to put up a Happy Birthday sign above her bed! Lovely!
Happy birthday Paige! :) Looks like a fun day!ReplyDelete
Happy birthday, Paige! It looks like you had a wonderful day.
Disney - I love the quilt on Paige's bed. Did you make it? We're thinking about moving our little girl to a big girl bed soon so I'm trying to come up with a fun new theme for her room.
Gorgeous photos as always!
Happy Birthday Paige!! She's growing so quick! It's just crazy how fast kids grow up!! I think that every time I look at my kids. Where has the time gone?
This idea is so fun!! I'm going to try it on our next birthday. :) Between, where did all the pink go, from Paige's room? I just loved the space! It's my inspiration for my 2 youngest girls' room.
Thanks, Maggie! We actually switched Paie's room with another one recently, so it changed a little. There is still lts of pink though!ReplyDelete
haha, we hung crepe paper flowers all over my daughter's room last weekend (she was turning 4). it was BEAUTIFUL and so fun... and you know what? she didn't see it either! i said "do you open your eyes before you come running in to snuggle?" and she said "no, the sun is too bright on my eyes!" so there you have it. she still got a lot of enjoyment from the decorations after the fact though. happy birthday paige!ReplyDelete
What a fun day! :) You seem like such a great mom! She is so lucky to have you as a mom. :) I love the dimple on her cheek/smile. So cute! I also love the bow/clip in her hair. I love the dresses she wore from the last 2 flashback photos at the end when you she was five years old when you first started blogging. Did you sew/make those dresses/coats yourself? They are adorable and your photography is adorable with the umbrella. Such a great nostalgic style. I love her pig tails too. So cute! My mother used-to put me in pig tails for my hair as well! :) Be encouraged. :) Have a great day. :)ReplyDelete


text:
Mechanical Squirrel
Binds when used
Use: Teaches you how to summon this companion.
Grooms face and sniffs air.
» Video
Vocalizations (on-click)
Mechanical Squirrel Box
Item Level 15
Binds when used
Use: Creates a Mechanical Squirrel that follows you around. Right Click to summon and dismiss your Squirrel.
Sell Price: 1
This pet may be used by non-engineers. The recipe is an uncommon BoU world drop found on random [6-20] mobs.
First pet, first to level 25. great starter pet as the speed boost does low damage and helps you get a trap off before the other pet attacks.
This was the pet that got me started. I almost chose the Mana Wyrmling, because I love its appearance. I soon learned that a battle pet's appearance doesn't really matter; it's the abilities and stats that really count. Anyway, I've always used Metal Fist/Extra Plating/Wind-Up on this pet at 25.
Known as Species 4401 as this is the designated ID of the planet "Mechanical Squirrel Box" which this nut eater originally claimed home to. Located in the Delta Quadrant, this species was valued by the Borg for their maneuverability and are now used for infiltration missions.
Battle Info says that he's only an uncommon, and that might be true but don't let that deter you--This little guy has saved my battles on more than one occasion with great defense and the Repair ability. 5/5
Don`t let his cute looks fool you, the little fellow packs a MEAN punch with the wind-up ability.
2 Malachite
5 Copper Bar
2 Linen Cloth
Notice how you need 2 Malachite (green gems) to make this squirrel, and that the squirrel has two green eyes.
/s We can rebuild Squirrel. We have the technology. We can make him better, stronger, faster.
/cast Mechanical Squirrel


text:
Eames Soft Pad Chair, Executive Height
Eames Soft Pad Chair, Executive Height
All Grain Leather -View Swatch Details
Messenger Fabric -View Swatch Details
Mode -View Swatch Details
Pebble Weave -View Swatch Details
Vicenza Leather -View Swatch Details
Pecora -View Swatch Details
Prone Leather -View Swatch Details
Beck -View Swatch Details
2100 Series Leather -View Swatch Details
Stow Leather -View Swatch Details
- Constructed of 67% recycled materials and is 90% recyclable
- Smooth swivel seat
- Height-adjustable with pneumatic or manual lift
Shipping Options
- Threshold Delivery, In-Home Delivery
Return Options
You May Also Need
Item Number:2517916
- Constructed of 67% recycled materials and is 90% recyclable
- Smooth swivel seat
- Height-adjustable with pneumatic or manual lift
- Five-star base with casters
- Brand
- Herman Miller
- General Dimensions
- Product Weight
- 40 lbs
- Assembly
- Comes fully assembled
- Warranty
- 12-year warranty (terms and conditions may vary)
- Height (in): 33¾
- Width (in): 23
- Depth (in): 17¾
- Weight (lbs): 40
- Seat Height (in): 22¼
- Seat Height Min (in): 20¼
- Seat Depth (in): 16½
- Weight Capacity (lbs): 300
- #of Wheels: 5
- Height (in): 41¾
- Width (in): 23
- Depth (in): 15½
- Weight (lbs): 40
- Seat Height (in): 22¼
- Seat Height Min (in): 20¼
- Seat Depth (in): 16½
- Weight Capacity (lbs): 300
- #of Wheels: 5
- Polished or powder-coated die-cast aluminum frame and base
- Tubular steel column
- Urethane foam cushions with polyester fiber batting
- Fabric or leather upholstery
- Black nylon casters with chrome hoods
Charles and Ray Eames
Design is for living. That maxim shaped a widespread shift in design during the 1940s and '50s. It was a revolution of form, an exciting visual language that signaled a new age and a fresh start – and two of its prime movers were Charles and Ray Eames. This husband-and-wife team's unique synergy led to a whole new look in furniture. Lean and modern. Sleek and simple. Beautifully functional.More on Charles and Ray Eames
Care & MaintenanceWith regular care and maintenance, your Herman Miller product will provide many years of superior performance and satisfaction. To maintain quality, please follow the cleaning procedures outlined here.
The instructions for the care and maintenance of Herman Miller products are provided to you as a service. No warranty is implied since results may vary.
Polished Aluminum
For normal cleaning, apply a pre-softened paste wax to polished aluminum components following the manufacturer's instructions. In humid atmospheres near salt water, apply the wax once a month. In other areas, apply wax every three months to maintain the appearance of the aluminum.
Coated Metal
For normal cleaning, wash coated metal surfaces with a soft cloth soaked in detergent and warm water; rinse thoroughly and dry. Remove scuff marks from low-gloss coatings with pre-softened paste wax, following the manufacturer's instructions. Remove scuff marks and scratches from high-gloss coatings using automotive polishing compounds, either liquid or paste. After polishing, apply a pre-softened automotive paste wax to restore original sheen. For assistance in determining the appropriate color and gloss for Herman Miller touch-up paint, contact your Herman Miller Customer Service Representative.
For normal cleaning, vacuum upholstery fabric using an upholstery attachment. If further cleaning is needed, dry-clean or spot clean fabric with solvent cleaner.
Do not brush fabric or use a vacuum attachment with a rotary brush. Brushing may permanently damage the nap or change the character of the fabric.
Do not apply water or any liquid solution. Wetting the fabric with any liquid solution may result in permanent damage.
Vinyl Upholstery
For normal cleaning, wash vinyl upholstery with a soft cloth or soft-bristled brush lathered with mild, nonabrasive soap and lukewarm water. Before the surface dries, wipe with a clean, dry cloth to remove any residue. This procedure may be repeated to remove stubborn dirt or stains.
Ink spots can sometimes be removed by washing with soap and water followed by isopropyl alcohol.
Do not use any cleaning method that is not listed above, as other methods may attack the vinyl and cause eventual degradation.
For normal cleaning, vacuum or dust frequently with a clean, dry cloth. If leather is soiled, it can be wiped with a damp soft cloth and a lather of any mild soap and a minimum amount of lukewarm water. Do not spot clean leather; clean the entire surface. Wipe clean with a damp cloth and dry with a clean, soft cloth.
For spots and spills, wipe excess liquid immediately with a clean cloth or sponge; let the leather air dry. If the spot is still visible, further cleaning may be necessary. Sponge the entire surface—seat, back, or chair arm—with clean, lukewarm water. Let the leather air dry; never use a hair dryer or other heat source to dry leather.
For stubborn spots and stains, apply a mild, nonabrasive soap solution with a clean, wet sponge. Rinse well and let air dry. For butter, oil, or grease, wipe the leather with a clean, dry cloth and let the remainder of the oil dissipate into the leather. Do not apply water or try to wash a grease spot.
Do not use saddle soap, cleaning solvents, oils, furniture polishes, varnishes, abrasive cleaners, detergents, or ammonia on leather; they will ruin the finish, causing it to become sticky and cracked.
You may also like
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All reviews are subject to Design Within Reach's Terms of Use.


text:
المغرب al-Maġhrib
People's Democratic Federal Islamic Socialist Communist Juche Republic of Mörøccó
Morah Co.
|Motto: "Here's looking at you, Allah."
|Anthem: I wish I was European by Flock of Seagulls
|Largest city
|Official language(s)
|Some Arab dialect
|Mohammed version 6.0
|National Hero(es)
|Humphrey Bogart (Rick Blaine), Jean Reno, Morocco Mole
of Independence
|1956 from France and Spain
|MAD Money
|Muslim (98%), Christians (1%), Jewish (token%), Hindus (Yeah right%).
"I do love a nice pair of Moroccos. Nice and round and smooth to the touch. My own instrument goes very well with Moroccos. When I meet a lady with quality Moroccos, I gladly share with her my glass harmonica. It really gets the party started!"
"Can I borrow your pen?"
Morocco is a nation located in northwest Africa (disputed).
Imagine, if you will, a world without murder or theft. This would drive me mad.
Morocco is a major non-NATO ally of the United States, which means that although Morocco is an Islamic country, the US can be friends with it. Morocco is also the only African country that is not currently a member of the African Union, meaning that Morocco hates Africa and wants to be considered European. Who wouldn't?
Before Morocco was even officially a nation, early visitors would arrive home describing the lovely women, and their large moroccos. To promote tourism, they formed national borders, and called themselves Morocco. Shortly thereafter, National Geographic photographers arrived, to the pleasure of many young readers at home.
Ancient Morocco[edit]
The area of modern Morocco has been inhabited since over 9,000 years ago, or pre-Arab times (now referred to as the Good Ol' Days).
Neolithic cavemen first arrived to farm the area. Later on, the Romans arrived, and celebrated by lighting their infamous roman candles. As usual, this "accidentally" burned the crops to the ground, causing famine in the area. But it was soooooo worth it - as it was quite a show!
In the 5th century, as the Roman Empire declined, Morocco fell to Vandals.
Medieval Morocco[edit]
In 670 AD, it was the Arabs' turn to invade Morocco. There was heavy promotion of the Islamic faith, with intervals of beachgoing. Of course, with the women covered from head to toe, the morocco-watching on the beaches was in large decline. Tourism suffered. Sadly, Morocco instead became a center of learning and a major regional power.
Alaouite Dynasty[edit]
Morocco was the first nation, in 1777, to recognize the United States as an independent nation. Thus, everyone in the world who has learned this, now hates Morocco. Admit it, you do now too.
American merchant ships were subject to attack by the Barbary pirates while sailing the Atlantic Ocean, until on 20 December 1777, Morocco's Sultan Mohammed version 3.0 began protecting them. To pay back Morocco for their favour, Benjamin Franklin would visit Morocco, play his glass harmonica, and share it with others.
The United States consulate in "Tangiers" (detached from Europe and attached to Morocco in 1684) is the first property the American government ever owned abroad, ever. Thus began the expansionism that continues today.
Modern Morocco[edit]
Newly declassified documents have revealed a colossal and complex intelligence program within Morocco dating from the 1960s. Crack secret agent Morocco Mole coordinated with world-famous agent Secret Squirrel to take down enemies of world peril. Due to their top-secret status, their exploits were trivialized into cartoon form, but their epic struggles will not be forgotten.
As of its 2001 release date, the first person shooter known as TWAT includes side missions taking place in Northern Africa. The 'Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat' is allied with Al-Qaeda, and has been creating an insurgency against Morocco.
Sales of this game were initially high in Morocco, but unfortunately returns for store credit were equally high because the Internet rumours proved false: Morocco Mole is NOT an unlockable character in the game.
Morocco is among the top 100 largest countries in the world; comparable to Maldives, and is somewhat larger than the US state of Rhode Island.
The most notable structures are located in Casablanka (shown right). Blanka himself has informed us that his house is Green, as it is completely self-powered! Blanka also owns a summer home in southern Brazil.
Africa Dispute[edit]
Morocco officially disputes being part of Africa at all.
Morocco declares that Morocco is a Mediterranean island temporarily attached to the tip of Africa. Morocco argues that if England, which is an island, can be part of Europe, then it can be part of the Mediterranean.
All attempts by the United Nations to convince Morocco that they are not an island, have failed.
"A king with weed is a king indeed!"
Morocco ranks among the world's largest producers and exporters of cannabis, and its cultivation and sale provide the economic base for much of the population of northern Morocco. The cannabis is typically processed into hashish. An ancient law (excerpted above) gives the king permission to grow marijuana in a specific region of Morocco.
When Morocco recently was swollen and had a fever, the King (Mohamed Ali Semlali) ordered a throat culture, which has shown that Morocco was positive for Group A streptococcus. It appears as though Morocco has strep throat, which is the King's fault due to his extremely long neck. Antibiotics are being administered, and he is expected to make a full recovery, but tourists are asked to avoid Morocco for several weeks during its contagious period.
Morocco leads the world in the consumption of munchies. It is the primary import. This is because Morocco leads the world in cannabis production.
Chicken is the most widely eaten meat in Morocco. The blacks love the chicken. KFC attempted to open a franchise in Morocco once, but all of the employees got high and ate the chicken. It was a disaster.
Couscous is the most famous Moroccan dish. Couscous is a pasta consisting of spherical granules made by rolling and shaping moistened semolina wheat and then coating them with finely ground wheat flour.
Apart from that the people in morocco actively take part in Snail eating competitions. Snails are a favorite snack for the moroccans like Cheetos for the rest of the world, a moroccan would rather pop in a snail and much on 'em
Since 1827, the modern history of Moroccan literature is evidenced in photographic form, the most historically popular of which was eventually carried to the Casbah and turned into a public library. If you do not have the funds to travel to Morocco to visit, you can instead purchase an issue of BraBuster Magazine, and have a friend sign the pages before you view them.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Morocco was a refuge and artistic center and attracted writers as Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and William S. Burroughs.
With the recent invention of Gigantic Breast implants, Moroccan literature flourished, with novelists such as Mohamed Choukri, who wrote in Arabic, and Driss Chraïbi who wrote in French. Other important Moroccan authors include Tahar ben Jelloun, Fouad Laroui, Mohammed Berrada and Leila Abouzeid.
Moroccan music is predominantly of Arab origins. Therefore, popular Western forms of music are becoming increasingly popular in Morocco, such as fusion, rock, metal, country and lately hip hop and Zanga Zanga.
Dancing to Western music is legal, but it is currently illegal to dance to music of Arab origin, due to the fear that this will increase the spread of Belly dancing.
|North Africa
|Algeria · Egypt · Libya · Morocco · Sudan · Tunisia · Western Sahara
|West Africa
|Burkina Faso · Côte d'Ivoire · Ghana · Guinea · Liberia · Mauritania · Niger · Nigeria ·
|Central Africa
|Angola · Cameroon · Belgium · Central African Republic · Chad · Democratic Republic of the Congo · Equatorial Guinea · Gabon · Republic of the Congo
|East Africa
|Burundi · Djibouti · Eritrea · Ethiopia · Madagascar · Malawi · Mauritius · Mozambique · Rwanda · Somalia · Tanzania · Uganda · West Kenya · Zambia · Rhodesia
|Southern Africa
|Botswana · Lesotho · People's Glorious Republic of Uukumbamabahalarata · South Africa · Swaziland · Zululand
|United Kingdom : Gibraltar · Isle of Wight · Welsh Congo (Pitcairn Islands)


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CHAPEL HILL — Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have uncovered the genetic architecture controlling the growth of the collateral circulation — the "back-up" blood vessels that can provide oxygen to starved tissues in the event of a heart attack or stroke.
The new knowledge could help inform the current development of what are called collaterogenic therapies — drugs or procedures that can cause new collaterals to form and enlarge before or after a person suffers tissue damage from a blocked artery in the heart, brain, or peripheral tissues.
"This has really been the holy grail in our field, how to get new collaterals to form in a tissue with few in the first place" said senior study author James E. Faber, PhD, professor of cell and molecular physiology at UNC. "Our thesis has been that if we can figure out how these endogenous bypasses are formed in the first place in healthy tissues, what mechanisms and genetic pathways drive this, and collaterals abundance varies so widely in healthy individuals, then we may have our answer."
The results of the research, published in the August 20, 2010, issue of the journal Circulation Research, is the first to pinpoint a portion of the genome associated with variation in the density and diameter of collateral vessels.
"This may well be the seminal paper in one of the most important mysteries in vascular biology: the mechanisms controlling collateral formation in the arterial tree," wrote Stephen Schwartz, a professor of physiology at the University of Washington, in a review of the study for Faculty 1000.
The UNC research, conducted in animal models, combined classical genetic mouse crosses with a new genomic technology called association mapping to identify the section of DNA involved, starting with the whole genome, narrowing it down to several hundreds of genes and finally landing on nine candidates on mouse chromosome 7.
The researchers are now looking at these genes to see if any one of them is responsible for variation in collateral formation. Faber says they also cannot discount the possibility that it is not genes that are the deciding factor, but rather regulatory DNA or RNA elements that also reside in that same section of the genome. Either way, Faber hopes they can discover a sequence that could one day be used to predict who is most likely to develop a severe heart attack, stroke, or peripheral limb disease so those individuals can either modify their lifestyle or receive collaterogenic drugs to acquire new and potentially life-saving collateral vessels.
The UNC research was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Study co-authors from UNC include Shiliang Wang, Hua Zhang, Xuming Dai and Robert Sealock.


text:
In an effort to undermine Iran by overthrowing its strategic ally, Syria, western nations are using their Middle East client states to conduct a multi-pronged attack against Syria through the media, the Arab League, the United Nations and now through military proxy forces. This fact is widely recognized by many mainstream western media sources. For example, the well-connected pro-western magazine, the Economist, casually states:
"Iran and Russia aide the [Syrian government] regime; Saudi Arabia and Turkey favor the rebels… Left alone, the rival camps will fuel a worsening conflict that could destabilize the entire region." (January 28, 2012).
Of course Saudi Arabia and Turkey are key U.S. allies. Saudi Arabia doesn't sneeze until first consulting its U.S. ambassador.
A grouping of U.S. client states known as the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain — recently dealt a death blow to the Arab League's monitoring mission in Syria and are now demanding that the UN Security Council take all "necessary measures" — presumably including an invasion — to ensure regime change in Syria, the same diplomatic maneuver that the U.S. and its European partners in NATO used to justify its mass bombing campaign of Libya.
The Gulf Cooperation Council — a grouping of nations with totalitarian monarchies — appears to be pursuing a serious campaign to overthrow the Syrian government. According to The Times of London:
"Saudi Arabia and Qatar have agreed to fund the Syrian opposition, which is struggling to afford weapons in its fight against President Bashar al-Assad, a Syrian dissident has told The Times… [Syrian] opposition figures held a secret meeting with Saudi and Qatar officials after an Arab League meeting in Cairo last weekend. All the Gulf countries [Cooperation Council] decided then to pull their observers from a monitoring mission that has been widely criticized for being toothless." (January 27, 2012).
When it comes to the so-called Syrian Free Army — the various armed groups inside Syria attacking the Syrian government — U.S. allies are instrumental in arming, funding, and shielding the fighters. It is no coincidence that the Syrian Free Army is strongest on the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Northern Lebanon, and Jordan — areas with strong U.S. alliances. The Asian Times reports:
"In spite of Turkish denials of support, FSA [Free Syrian Army] fighters are exploiting the relative safety they enjoy in southern Turkey to mount attacks against Syrian forces. The FSA is also alleged to have established bases in northern Lebanon and northern Jordan, regions that have similarly witnessed an influx in Syrian refugees." (December 20, 2011).
In fact, Turkey hosted the initial meetings of the pro-western, anti-Syria government opposition group, The Syrian National Council, which enjoys tremendous support by the United States but very little inside of Syria.
Another military proxy force was flown in from the U.S.' new ally, Libya, as reported by the London Telegraph:
"At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians [opposition] requested "assistance" from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers."
"There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria," said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see." (January 29, 2012).
Indeed we have seen!
This is confirmed by the Wall Street Journal: "… [It is] estimated that 300 to 400 Libyans have based themselves in southern Turkey and crossed the border to join Syrians in skirmishes against government forces… Once inside Syria, they [Libyan fighters] fought in two separate skirmishes in an area they said they believed was in Idlib." (December 20, 2011).
It is widely rumored that the Libyan fighters are the same Islamic extremists that NATO admits it used to attack the Libyan government.
U.S. allies are enlisting the help of Islamic extremists who fight either for cash or for Jihad. Sunni extremists are enlisted in this fight because the Syrian government relies on Shia Muslim support domestically and also externally, since Iran's regime is largely Shia Muslim and is a key Syrian Ally.
The majority of Muslims in the world care very little about the small differences between Shia and Sunni Islam; only small groups of extremist sects are willing to kill for their unique vision of Islam. But it is precisely these sects that the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies rely upon as a military and political force in the region. These sects are powerful only because of years of immense financial and military support by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
Dating back before the U.S.' support of Islamic extremists later known as the Taliban against the USSR in Afghanistan, the U.S. and its ally, Saudi Arabia (a Sunni Islam extremist dictatorship), have used extremist proxy forces all over the Middle East as pawns in their geo-political chessboard (Vijay Prashad documents Saudi Arabia's exporting of Sunni extremism in a chapter of his excellent book, The Darker Nations).
One recent example of U.S. backed Sunni extremism is in Iraq, where the United States armed and funded the now-powerful Sunni extremist "Awakening Council" in order to hunt down any Iraqi opposition to the U.S.' military presence. Now the Awakening Council is being discarded by the Shia majority in Iraq, but the 80,000 plus armed members will not go silently; many of them are rumored to have gone into Syria to further serve their Saudi and U.S. masters.
The New York Times reported about the recent Sunni extremist trend in Syria:
"In interviews last week, some residents of Homs, including several Christians and Alawites [Shia Muslims], expressed fears that hard-line Sunnis known as Salafis were forming armed groups and stoking violence. Those fears… reflected mounting concerns among secular activists that as the conflict drags on, an Islamist [extremist] presence in some militias was giving the uprising an increasingly sectarian character. The tensions played out this week between secular and Islamist activists, with the Islamists pushing to name the weekly Friday protests "Al Jihad," …" (January 28, 2012).
The article also explains that much of the violence in Syria is not due to the Syrian government gunning down un-armed protesters, but responding instead to the violent attacks from these armed groups.
The above Asian Times article also commented on the Sunni extremist trend mounting against the Syrian government from northern Lebanon, a country which contains some key U.S. allies:
"Prominent radical Salafist [Sunni] clerics in Tripoli [Lebanon], including Dai al-Islam al-Shahhal, have called on Syrian Sunnis to join the uprising against the Ba'athist [Syrian] regime… Lebanon's US- and Saudi-aligned "March 14 Alliance" (which includes former Lebanese Prime Minster Saad Hariri's Sunni-dominated Future Movement) is in the forefront of organizing anti-Syrian [government] activities in Lebanon."
Fanning sectarian flames in Syria is especially dangerous. Like Iraq, Syria has a complex make-up of ethnic and religious groups that, if armed and manipulated, could easily lead to another Iraqi-style humanitarian tragedy. But the U.S. and its allies know no other form of intervention; divide and rule is a very effective way to overthrow a government. What the U.S. and its allies have not fully considered is whether they can confine the potential devastation to Syria.
Iran and Russia have a huge stake in the Syrian government's survival; Russia has freely admitted to recently sending $550 million worth of fighter jets to Syria, while also sending Russian battle ships as a deterrent to a foreign invasion. As the proxy war lumbers on, further foreign intervention — money and arms — on both sides will increase; the interfering nations will thus become more "invested" in the conflict, increasing the urge to protect their investments, possibly pulling them directly into the war.
Tensions in the Middle East have already reached explosive levels. The U.S. and its allies careless attitude in provoking a possible regional war seems more than a little mad. But this insanity has a logical basis; the declining economic power of the United States has forced it to rely on its military might as it battles China and Russia for global economic/political supremacy. The U.S.' activity in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya is pushing Russia and Iran to take a more confrontational stance in stopping the spread of U.S. client states in the region. Syria is thus a global proxy battleground in a larger series of events that now directly threatens the entire Middle East, and possibly beyond.
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Previous: Interrupt Input, Up: Low-Level I/O
The GNU system can handle most input/output operations on many different
devices and objects in terms of a few file primitives -
write and
lseek. However, most devices also have a few
peculiar operations which do not fit into this model. Such as:
lseek is inapplicable).
Although some such objects such as sockets and terminals 1 have special functions of their own, it would not be practical to create functions for all these cases.
Instead these minor operations, known as IOCTLs, are assigned code
numbers and multiplexed through the
ioctl function, defined in
sys/ioctl.h. The code numbers themselves are defined in many
different headers.
ioctlfunction performs the generic I/O operation command on filedes.
A third argument is usually present, either a single number or a pointer to a structure. The meaning of this argument, the returned value, and any error codes depends upon the command used. Often -1 is returned for a failure.
On some systems, IOCTLs used by different devices share the same numbers. Thus, although use of an inappropriate IOCTL usually only produces an error, you should not attempt to use device-specific IOCTLs on an unknown device.
Most IOCTLs are OS-specific and/or only used in special system utilities, and are thus beyond the scope of this document. For an example of the use of an IOCTL, see Out-of-Band Data.
[1] Actually, the terminal-specific functions are implemented with IOCTLs on many platforms.


text:
High turnover of (good) employees often means financial, time and productivity losses for your business. Employees also often leave for reasons you would not expect. According to the HR management consultancy Leigh Branham, 89% of managers think that their employees leave for higher salaries when 80-90% of employees actually leave for non-financial reasons.
Employee retention hinges on your work culture. In a 2017 Korn Ferry Executive study, nearly three-quarters of respondents reported that culture was the key to retaining employees and to the success of organizational financial performance.
If you're serious about retention, make sure then that your company culture includes these dimensions:
1. Provide a meaning and purpose
Communicating an inspiring vision can go a long way to help employees feel emotionally connected and committed to the company. In another Korn Ferry Executive study, 73 percent of respondents said that their first driver at work was doing a job that had meaning and purpose, while for only 3 percent pay was the main driver.
2. Give trust and confidence in the leadership
People leave bosses, not always the company. A 2015 Gallup study found that managers account for 70 percent of employee engagement variance, and one in two employees had left their job to get away from their manager to improve their overall life at some point in their career. Engaged employees quote regular and safe communication with their managers, clarity about responsibilities and progress expectations, fair treatment and respect from their managers and ability of those to fight for them when needed, as key to their trust and confidence in the leadership and to their engagement.
3. Recognize achievements
Communicating and rewarding achievements, providing career advancement, merit-based promotions and bonuses are important for your best employees to feel rewarded and gratified. When your company grows and where relevant, providing also support for key life events, college tuitions, health insurance and retirement enhancements or saving plans can also be key to retaining your employees.
4. Provide the ability to grow and advance
Make sure employees can see a clear path of advancement through regular feedback and constructive performance evaluations. Coaching, skills development, exposure to new networks and responsibilities can then help you mobilize and retain your employees at the right place, as they evolve in your company.
Internal mobility can be key to that extend. In a recent article about why people quit their jobs, Harvard Business Review quotes the example of Credit Suisse. The bank estimated that it saved $75 million to $100 million in a year in rehiring and training costs and reduced attrition by 1% after it moved 300 employees into new positions. Those employees were identified as about to leave the company and were consequently alerted over cold calls about openings inside the company.
5. Give flexibility
Improve retention through a culture encouraging flexible work arrangements: flexible work location or ability to work remotely at least part time, flextime with adapted working hours, flexible roles and job sharing to leverage the unique skills set of your talent base. This will not only help you improve retention but also productivity, creativity, while supporting work-life balance and satisfaction, which are keys to your business success!
Further resources:
- Where do you stand on your Employee Engagement Index (EEI)? Ask employees how closely they agree with the following four items: (a) pride: I am proud to tell people I work for my organization; (b) satisfaction: Overall, I am extremely satisfied with my organization as a place to work; (c) advocacy: I would gladly refer a good friend or family member to my organization for employment, (d) commitment: I rarely think about looking for a new job with another organization.
- Get a sense of your employees satisfaction before they decide to leave you with the 'sample script for employee job satisfaction feedback'
- Analyze feedback about your company gathered during exit interviews with employees leaving the company. See a sample exit interview questionnaire
- Retention starts at onboarding. Consult 5 tips to onboard employees effectively
- Retain employees by recognizing their achievements and helping them grow through constructive feedback
- Smooth termination with employees leaving the company following those tips
- Learn more about managing employees in general
For more information about the studies referenced in the article:
- Korn Ferry, '2017 Talent Trend Predictions', December 2016,
- Gallup, 'State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for leaders', April 2015. This is a study of 2.5 million manager-led teams in 195 countries, featuring analysis that measures the engagement of 27 million employees. The report examines the crucial link among talent, engagement and vital business outcomes, including profitability and productivity.
- Harvard Business Review, 'Why people quit their jobs', September 2016
Copyright © 2000 – 2017, International Finance Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
The material in this work is copyrighted. Copying and/or transmitting portions or all of this work without permission may be a violation of applicable law. IFC does not guarantee the accuracy, reliability or completeness of the content included in this work, or for the conclusions or judgments described herein, and accepts no responsibility or liability for any omissions or errors (including, without limitation, typographical errors and technical errors) in the content whatsoever or for reliance thereon.


text:
Willamette Valley Vineyards, I ate one of the best truffle dishes I've ever had: a Pinot Noir-braised pork belly with white truffle-onion jam, dried cherries, and a frisee with raspberry-black truffle vinaigrette (see below). It was a perfectly balanced blend of flavors and textures that was expertly knitted together by the truffle jam. This was proof that an Oregon truffle experience could be a culinary epiphany rather than a shrug.
Eating our home-grown truffles is not always so revelatory. Truffles get raked up too young, sold to retailers who don't know any better, and then passed on to customers who have no benchmark for comparison.
Fortunately this is not the case with the Oregon Truffle Festival, which aims to educate as well as nourish. The talks and lectures from truffle experts the world over were illuminating, and though not every single dish served over the course of eight different multi-course meals throughout the weekend was a resounding success, most of the dishes used generous amounts of ripe truffles in toothsome ways that showed off the fungi's singular qualities.
|Photo: Jen Reyneri
In addition to the guided forays and lectures, the festival included dog-training workshops, cooking classes, and a grower's forum for the brave cultivation set.
Oregon black truffles (Leucangium carthusianum). Three-hundred plates covered three long prep tables as the first course made its debut, each plate decorated with a square of Celery Root & Black Truffle Panna Cotta topped with Dungeness Crab Salad & Parisian Pears. The kitchen staff, armed with mandolines, roamed up and down the line, shaving away. The scent of black truffles hung in the air like a heavy fog. Indeed, it was nearly disorienting.


text:
The European Union (EU) needs to step up its innovation, according to Janez Potočnik, EU science and research commissioner. In an interview with EurActiv, Potočnik stressed the need for the EU to improve the speed with which it transforms research into commercial products.
Potočnik finds the transition from innovation to product to be a problem for the EU, noting in the report that while the EU is relatively strong in creating knowledge and in research itself, the transferral of this knowlege to products—while not weak or bad—could be better.
He could not pinpoint the reason for the gap from innovation to product creation. However, he suggested looking at the overall "innovation climate," to resolve the issue, which would entail examining the attractiveness of the EU market, how much uptake it gets, and what instruments it has from risk and venture capital.
According to Potočnik, some European countries are innovating more than others. For example, Nordic states are at the top of innovation while others are struggling to innovate. Potočnik also noted that Europe is receiving stronger competition from Asia, specifically from China, South Korea and India.
One way the EU is working to improve its innovation is through the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The institute was created in April 2008 and aimed to be a flagship research university for excellence in higher education, research and innovation. "First calls for proposals were launched. It still remains to be seen how the knowledge and innovation communities will work, but I have a lot of hope for these projects on the EU level," commented Potočnik in the report.
Potočnik also mentioned the European Research Council as a possible source of innovation, noting that this new instrument is breaking some of the barriers that existed in Europe and that these activities will change the EU's reality.
A recession is a good opportunity for change, according to Potočnik, who commented in the report that a crisis is the best time to do the things that are needed but could not be done before due to a lack in political will or courage, or interests in other areas.
Potočnik closed by maintaining that the EU should emerge from the recession prepared for future competition in innovation. He suggested considering what type of consumption and what type of innovation could relate to the climate change, energy, future pandemics and so on. Potočnik also believes the environmentally responsible market is a major market of opportunity.


text:
Leather Wallet Skull with a rose in his hand - Smyrnovleather
HomeGoods catalogSkullsWalletsWalletsLeather Wallet Skull with a rose in his hand
Strict, stylish leather wallet with a pattern, made of genuine Italian vegetable tanned leather, leather thickness 2 mm. Appliances drawing pyrography or burning with further painting. Wallet size when folded 9.5 * 12 cm. Two compartments for bills, coin box, 4 compartments for cards. 3 year warranty
Available on back-order
- Description
- Additional information
Handmade wallet made from 2-3 mm natural Italian leather with natural tanning. Art applied on by pyrography (carving)
Wallet coloring is made in several steps, firstly leather is soaked in different agents that prevent cracking of the leather and make it more elastic, then the coloring with antic past with patina effect. After coloring, wallet is covered with varnish for color and moisture protection. Saddle stitching is handmade with waxed thread . Only handmade stitching makes the item lasting and wear resistant. The ends are polished and treated.
Wallet size folded 9.5*12 cm.
Inside lining is made from elastic and lasting haberdashery leather. 2 sections for paper money, 4 sections for cards and 1 for coins. Wallet closes on the inner button ( if requested, we can change that). In our work we use only high quality materials and professional paints such as Fiebing and Eco-Flo.
We continuously upgrade our knowledge in order to improve our skills and produce high quality leather items. We give 3 year warranty. Smyrnovleather – is bright and quality items, items that bring joy.
Each item is packed in our branded packaging.
Items are varnished, that prevents items from getting dirty, but if it got rained upon, them just wipe it with soft material and let it dry naturally. Do not use hairdryer.
Additional information
|0.3 kg
|12 x 9.5 x 2 cm
|Wallet type
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