Oh yay, look... Vista has hit the shelves.

Windows Vista hits store shelves today
		Microsoft builds what it dubs a Digital Ice House to trumpet the commercial availability of the operating system. Also showcased was OneCare security, Internet Explorer and OneNote applications

Is it just me or is this the worst managed launch campaign of a major OS release in history.

I feel completely anticlimactic about this, I have to say selling themes for your OS at a premium and making security something that you have to pay extra for (because god forbid you should be releasing a secure product for the base price, you should pay extra if you want "security".

Since fully 90% of what I do now takes place out of a Firefox browser or in either a text editor or OpenOffice , isn't it great that Explorer7 now has tabs? something that firefox has had for over a year now, nice to see that if not being standards compliant, they aren't too proud to steal good user interface design from others.. but wait I guess we know that from Xerox Park, Apple and others along the way, so really that's nothing new either.

I have to say my most likely upgrade to my OS in the foreseeable future is likely ubuntu, not Vista... Sorry Microsoft, but I think you've finally lost any last vestige of appeal that you may have had at some point for me.

Onsite Image Resizing

This is a cool tool that James came across that seems like it would add a ton of functionality to most CMS systems out there, the whole "make sure your image is 80 x 80 pixels and try uploading again" thing would be gone... NICE JOB!

RR

Crop & Resize with JavaScript, PHP, and ImageMagick

Tags: crop, CSS, development, example, ImageMagick, JavaScript, PHP, resize

Image management is often a big part of a comprehensive CMS, and in my personal experience, has been one of the more difficult areas to make really easy for people to use. Those that are technically inclined are often able to successfully format an image to their liking if given proper instruction. On the other hand there are many who find image editing to be difficult, intimidating, and/or confusing.

The XL Blog: Calendar code tackled

The XL Blog: Calendar code tackled
this is big guys

Calendar code tackled

After an initial attempt on the part of Francois, it looks like the elusive calendar module is going to be tackled by Vince Hodges.



He's done up a little sample test code to show off the drag and drop functionality, nothing much more yet, but it's nice to have some fresh energy on the team.



As much as I enjoy using google's calendar, I must say that it would be nice to have our own working calendar that was properly integrated into the rest of the application for a change.



It should really allow us to feed in other ical and xml fed calendars as well, how it would be managed as a multi user calendar anyway I'd expect.



HireBrains.ca is Vince's company and they've got a neat little financial management tool that they've developed.



PennyMinder.com helps you track your personal finances and is a perfect addition to offering that we're trying to create. We've flagged entering receipts as one of the things we need to be able to do.



Look for a new look on the software - XLsuite is getting a complete overhaul. We look forward to having a clean new look for the new year.



You can download the code now at www.XLsuite.org and try it for yourself.

Feel free to drop us a line if you'd like to get involved, we're looking for all the help we can get.

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