20.02.09

When good tests go bad: Firefox on Acid(2)

Tags: , , , , , , , — Jeff @ 00:43

This is what the Acid2 test looks like in the very very super-duper-latest Firefox builds (slated for the version after 3.1, mind, not for 3.1):

Acid2 in bleeding-edge Mozilla, to be seen in the next Firefox release after 3.1; the chin is red whereas the reference image would have it yellow
Acid2 in bleeding-edge Mozilla, to be seen in the next Firefox release after 3.1

Bug, you say? No! The last test in row 13 tests that this CSS doesn’t apply:

.parser { background: red pink; }

Two colors for a background as valid CSS? Surely you jest!

Actually, we don’t. CSS3 says background-color takes two colors, one for normal use and one for use if a corresponding background-image doesn’t load. The red ends up getting used as the background color, and the yellow that would have been present if the property hadn’t applied no longer shows. CSS3 makes previously-invalid CSS valid, and that’s okay, because CSS error handling is explicitly designed to allow it.

So no, “failing” Acid2 for now isn’t fail, it’s WIN. Hopefully the test will be updated soon so that that particular rule is invalid again.

Incidentally, the specification for this changed recently, which I presume is why WebKit/Safari/Chrome et al. don’t fail. I don’t know whether they implement the fallback color process or not, presumably not given how they handle this testcase, which should show a green square if CSS3 background colors are implemented to latest spec, but in any case they won’t trigger it even tho they’ve implemented a bunch of other parts of the CSS3 backgrounds spec.

Update: As Dan notes in comments, the once-invalid syntax is now invalid again, as fallback color support has been removed from CSS3 partially over syntax concerns and partially over its lack of generalizability to other cases in CSS. Now that support for fallback colors has been removed from trunk, Acid2 in bleeding-edge Firefox now displays as it was intended to display.

25.05.04

WordPress

Tags: — Jeff @ 01:10

This site now runs on WordPress. As I mentioned in my first post, Blogger was intended only as a step between nothing and a more full-featured solution. At the time that was MT; after the recent brouhaha over licensing I decided to look elsewhere to avoid any possible hassles. For whatever reason, WordPress came up quite a bit, so I figured I’d give it a try. It seems to work quite well for what I do, and as it’s PHP-based, getting set up is simple (no file attribute tweaking, etc.).

I’ve also spent a little time reading about the development efforts behind it. The UI changes definitely are a good thing, though there are still a few places that need to be converted. Overall, the admin interface strikes me as very clean, although it’s rather difficult to get to certain settings without searching to find out for sure where a feature is located.

I’ve also submitted my first feature request. It’s a simple feature I’ve already hacked into this blog installation, but I’m reasonably sure my method isn’t good enough for the real code. I’ll leave it up to a real coder, and for now I’ll stick with my hack.

25.04.04

New location

Tags: — Jeff @ 12:18

I decided to switch off of blogger.com…testing out FTP hosting on a 1and1 free hosting account (3-year free deal==excellent). (Edit: it works! It would have been nice if the Help docs had mentioned that a log out might be necessary for it to work in a more prominent place. It was in the troubleshooting section but not in the FTP setup section.)

Why not?

Tags: — Jeff @ 12:01

While I’m at it, I should probably explain the title of this blog. Think back to your high school physics class. Remember how you learned all about these equations for motion:

  • v=v0+at
  • v2=v02+2aΔx
  • Δx=v0t+1/2at2
  • Δx=(v+v0)t/2

Well, you’ll notice that v0 is repeated pretty often…that’s the initial velocity of the object whose position, velocity, and acceleration are being tracked. The equations are easily verifiable using common sense, logic, and a little calculus if you desire. Anyways, the variable v0 is pronounced as “vee not”. (I’ve never liked the “not” part so I pronounce it as “vee oh”.) Similarly, y0 is pronounced “wye not”. “wye not” == “Why not?” It’s an interesting question, I suppose, and it’s suitably cryptic (thus a fitting blog title – yes, I’m cynical and I know it). The blog title is shown as y0 due to the inability to put HTML in blog titles (haven’t tested, will try after publishing this post – VERIFIED FIXED, although I had to manually plug the title into the page to get the subscript formatting).

Heh, it’s exactly 00:00 right now on my system clock…I should probably get some sleep. If only I could fall asleep that easily…

24.04.04

First post

Tags: — Jeff @ 12:11

Heh. Will I actually use this or not? This is primarily in the interim between me having time to set up MT somewhere and use that in its fully-customizable glory. The problem with that is that it requires money for a good host. O where o where is a good (free/cheap) host?