| LED Digest 1888: Mac Testing Environments |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ............................................... October 28, 2004 Issue #1888 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Mac Test Environment ==-- ~ Abu Haider "I am a web designer and I would like to test my sites on Mac browsers." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Invitation-Only Affiliate Programs ==-- ~ Tom Campbell "I whole-heartedly suggest Haiko's ABestWeb discussion board." --== Mac or PC? ==-- ~ John Smart "...my point is that no operating system is 100% safe..." ~ Tom Aman "...'better' depends on what you need." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Typefaces & Text Sizes for Everyday Sites? ==-- ~ John Barrick ~ Dave Mead ======== NEW ===================================== From: Abu Haider Subject: Mac Test Environment While this heated discussion is going on about PC & Mac, please allow me to throw in a simple question to the Mac users. I am a web designer and I would like to test my sites on Mac browsers. I am planning to buy a Mac, and I don't know which one to buy. The sole purpose of this machine would be to run the browser and see how my sites show up. As such, I will need the most widely used Mac browsers running on that machine. What is the cheapest model I could buy that will run most popular Mac browsers? And this is going to be a dumb question, but do they come in CPU only so I could use it with a PC Monitor? I have very limited space. Thanks a lot. _Haider ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Tom Campbell Subject: Affiliate revamp > Is anyone else running their affiliate program > on an invitation-only basis? If so, how do you > find people to invite? How do you invite them > to join and get them to start selling...? - Martha Retallick, LED 1887 Regarding Ms. Retallick's request for help finding truly dedicated affiliates to market her products, I whole-heartedly suggest she visit Haiko's ABestWeb discussion board. http://www.abestweb.com. There are other affiliate marketing discussion boards out there, but I've found Haiko's to be the one with the best collection of both serious affiliate marketers as well as affiliate managers representing a multitude of merchants. The dialog is -mostly- courteous, the discussions frank, and the advice priceless for both affiliates and merchants. As with any discussion board, there are a few loose canons, and there are a few rules of the road to learn; one of which is that merchants must never announce their programs anywhere except the designated forums, and that Haiko generally considers that a form of advertising that requires some payment. But you don't have to advertise to get benefit out of the board. Look and lurk for a while, and after you have created an account you can PM (Private Message) some of the more active participants to invite them to your program. Tom Campbell www.10w40.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: John Smart Subject: Mac or PC I would agree that uptime on *NIX is awesome - my FreeBSD server has had uptime reports as high as 26 months, the down time coming from an update that required a reboot. However, I love the idea that *NIX doesn't get virused. Our last machine (A Cobalt RAQ - prior to Sun Microsystems acquiring them) was built on Linux (I forget the flavor) and was hit by a virus that converted every index.html to something very nasty. We had about 150 sites on that box, so the damage was substantial. (Yes, I do know all about backups. I, like most people, only appreciate how important they are AFTER the first loss). The fact of the matter is, even with timely backups, this virus would have taken at least 1 day to find, remove, and repair the damage. This is a virus that targeted a looked after, frequently updated, non-game-playing machine. Now, if I had an NT server, I am sure it would be more than one instance that I would be reporting - my point is that no operating system is 100% safe, and anyone thinking that there's is, may be in for a very nasty surprise. John Smart, Technical Director InternetDesign.com - "A Human Touch in a Digital World" ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Mac or PC Sounds like a friendly discussion is turning into the "armed camp" approach. MAC IS BETTER!!! PC IS BETTER!!! Statements like those from Mary Lee (LED 1885) are typical: > I can tell you that I have no problems at all with crashing of my > Macs... Ever! ... I would never own anything but a Mac for my own > personal use. Macs are also so much more user friendly. I sometimes think a Mac user "doth protest too much". My son's dual processor Mac G5 running the most up-to-date OS X software had all kinds of crashing problems at first. His shop is mixed Mac and PC and he is the person who keeps the computers running. In some aspects of the network settings, he wishes the Mac was as easy to set up as the PCs. And while most things on the Mac are easy to set up, it took him over 3 weeks to find out how to change one setting that Windows had readily apparent in the Control Panel (granted, it was a setting that most people would never want to reference). "user friendly" depends on what you are doing. I used a system running Win2000 that ran for over 6 months (24 hours a day) with never a problem (i.e. no crashes). And this was not used for simple things - I used it for software evaluations, testing and software development. My own Win98SE system at home has run for at least three months (24 hours a day) with never a crash. The point of this: 1. If your Windows based computer crashes a lot, then take some time to find out why. There will always be a reason. If a lot of different programs have been installed, then removed, there may be left-over garbage causing problems. Sometimes it may just be trying to make the machine do too many things at the same time (and adding more memory will not solve that problem). Sometimes it is a combination of two programs running at the same time that cause some lower level conflict. The same holds true for a Mac - the G5 crashing problem mentioned above resulted from attempting to run two different programs that did not happily share the machine (until one was upgraded with a fix for the problem). 2. If you have to run spy-ware removal programs weekly, then look for the reason. The problem may be associated with what is being run on the PCs. I just did a scan of my PC, the first in over 90 days, and it found nothing.(Cookies used by sites for tracking don't count - the Mac is every bit as prone to having these as the PC because they will depend on the sites you visit and whether you security setting allows them to be saved). 3. The "best" computer for you depends on your own needs. If your needs are well defined, unlikely to change much and the software is available for everything you want to do, then either Mac or PC is good. If you lean heavily to graphics or any of the other things the Mac excels at, then by all means, go for a Mac. If you need lots of upgradeablity with lots and lots of choices, then you will need a PC. (I would have a hard time developing software for the Windows market using Borland's Delphi if I used a Mac since the Mac doesn't support it.) Let me suggest some rephrasings of some of the Mac/PC statements that would make more sense: Instead of "I can tell you that I have no problems at all with crashing of my Macs" it would be better to say "For the work that I do and the programs that I run, I can tell you that I have no problems at all with crashing of my Macs". The same statement could be true for a PC. As for crashing problems, "For the work that they do and the programs that they run, [the PCs] crash a lot". They shouldn't - take time to find out why. Comment / question for Mary: do the OSs on these machines have all of the latest updates? Is there sufficient disk space (for things like temp and swap files)? And pay attention to what is running when they crash - there may be some common factor that is the basic source of the problem. Let's drop the "xx is better than xx because...". Neither is "better", they are each different with their own peculiar strengths and weaknesses. "better" depends on what you need. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com amant, cyberspyder.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: John Barrick Subject: Window sizes > Anyone care to weigh in on the best typical typeface(s) > and text size(s) for the everyday web site? - Sandy Galvin, LED 1885 Most folks never change their default fonts and font sizes. Most sites I work on are 11px body copy, some are 10px. A site I recently worked on (www.ameritradeinstitutional.com) was requested to be at 12px which is rare for me. Sites that code their fonts using "em" or "%" instead of "px" are able to be resized by any IE user. Mozilla browsers can resize any text if the user desires. As far as reading on the Web... It's just not the best medium. Make your copy small in dose. If you have a book for them to read just make a PDF and link to it so they can download it and then they can zoom in or out to their heart's content. John Barrick http://www.waycoolwebdesign.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Dave Mead Subject: Window sizes When I design a site I typically follow this path for text sizes: In my CSS I set font-size in the <.body> to 100.01%. Then I set <.h1> to 125%, <.p> to 72%, and then choose the scaling for the other heading tags etc. from there on. I find this looks good on most resolutions and using % means users can increase the size at will and you don't get stuck with "micro-text". Hope this helps. Dave Mead www.dmwebsites.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love." - Kahlil Gibran |
