Computing

Thoughts on the use and abuse of information technology.

Everyday Computing

Everyday Computing

Implementing an Ajax-like Interface: A Quick How-to: by Neil Gardner    (14/05/2007)

In the Web development world there's been a lot of buzz about an acronym many of us previously associated either with a brand of detergent or a Dutch football team. In a nutshell Asynchronous Javascript And XML means inserting new information into a Web ... more (804 words) »

Dear Macophobe Charlie Brooker: by Neil Gardner    (05/02/2007)

In response to Charlie Brooker's piece on Guardian Comments Free: Why I hate Macs Hey, I'm using a Mac and also use Linux on another machine, use Windows XP + Linux at work and have endured my fair share of woes with the various incarnations of fenestrated ... more (534 words) »

CSS Two Column Layout: by Neil Gardner    (13/01/2007)

If you view this site with Firefox or other browsers based on the Gecko 1.8+ engine, you'll see the body of articles neatly arranged into two free-flowing and self-balancing columns. This relies on the new CSS 3 column module, implemented in Gecko browsers ... more (141 words) »

The One Laptop per Child Dream: by Neil Gardner    (13/01/2007)

Do children need game consoles, mp3-players, camera phones, bedroom TV sets with inbuilt DVD players? Probably not. Few cross-cultural comparisons would suggest such devices are of any educational benefit. Indeed they distract children from other forms of ... more (620 words) »

Buying a Mac: by Neil Gardner    (14/12/2006)

For the last 15 months I've been using a second-hand laptop purchased on ebay for £200 with a 1.3 GHz Athlon processor, 256MB RAM and a 20GB hard drive. I first installed Mandriva Linux 10.0 and owing to persistent power management problems I later tried ... more (738 words) »

Where OpenOffice could do better: by Neil Gardner    (27/08/2006)

Some may argue that you cannot fault the quality or features of free software, so if MS Office still offers a few bells and whistles that are a tad more polished than their OOo counterparts, a potential user need simply decide if these refinements are ... more (464 words) »

What is Open Source and why should you care?: by Neil Gardner    (20/07/2006)

Operating systems and productivity software are very much here with us to stay. The millions of person hours invested in the development of the powerful programmes many of us use every day will serve hundreds of millions of users for generations to come. ... more (1904 words) »

Why are you using still using Microsoft Internet Explorer?: by Neil Gardner    (30/06/2006)

You may just be wondering why it matters. Microsoft have their operating systems on over 90% of the world's desktops and these just happen to ship with IE as the default browser. Not only that some sites use code specifically designed for Microsoft ... more (848 words) »

Non-Web Formats: by Neil Gardner    (14/03/2005)

The Internet is a collection of interlinked documents distributed in open formats compatible with the greatest number of heterogeneous operating systems and devices. The World Wide Web's standard text markup language is HTML, which has undergone numerous ... more (1985 words) »

Reclaiming Word: by Neil Gardner    (01/03/2005)

If you own a computer, you probably have some form of word processor. Whether you need to type a report at work or a letter at home or maybe just a short shopping list, chances are you think you need Word or rather Microsoft Word TM . How could we ... more (2738 words) »