Michi Knows

I discovered a bug in IE today. If:

1. You have headers (as in <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc) and…
2. That header appears above another transparent area and…
3. That headers has any transparency effects itself then…
4. You get jagged edges

This is compounded by the fact that the area I was dealing with was a white box on top of the transparent text, so by all means the area “behind” the headers weren’t transparent. See screen shot to the right.

This is retarded. I have a simple fix for this problem. Simply add this to your CSS code:

1. /*
2.  * this is a necessary work around for transparency to work with h tags. 
3.  */
4. .container h1, .container h2, .container h3, .container h4, .container h5, .container h6 {
5.     background-color: white; // or whatever color you are working with
6. }

Replace “container” with whatever area you need to fix.

This is only a problem in IE; Firefox handles things just fine.

It seems Dell is caving to public demand rather than Microsoft’s will. They are going to begin offering XP again… well, for their business customers.

Interestingly, they got this idea from their recent Digg clone, which they use to figure out what their customers want by using a open suggestion and voting system. It appears having XP was the top request among its customers. Still, it blows that they ignore their non-business customers who might be interested in XP.

This is an important move for Dell since a recent report pointed out that it was losing market share to all of its rivals. It lost 14% of its US business in a period where the industry grew 3.6%. (side note: Apple grew the fastest in the same period at +30%.)

It was rather amazing that computer makers would switch to Vista so suddenly, knowing full well that business consumers aren’t interested in the latest and greatest.

This all paints an interesting picture for Microsoft: they worked so hard on Vista, but nobody really wants it. Sure, XP has its problems, but it works. And since Vista pretty much requires a new computer the cost of adopting the new operating system is higher than any previous version.

Microsoft made some critical mistakes when it was deciding on how to upgrade its operating system. By focusing on the visuals instead of performance, they’ve made the system less appealing to business consumers. And since they faked the whole security model upgrade, it hasn’t exactly impressed the technical people who might have jumped the gun for it. We’ll see how this plays out this year as Microsoft increases its pressure on its retail distributers to sell more Vista machines.

I did. The PS2 was the #1 selling non-hand held console last month, beating out the Wii by over 10% and the 360 by just under 50%.

Some other interesting statistics:

Interestingly, the PS3 was the only new console to see an increase in sales for the month. Wii sales were down 22 percent and Xbox 360 down 12 percent. … PS3 saw a month-over-month increase of 2% with sales…

This is likely due to the launch last month in Europe, creating renewed demand for the PS3.

As a side note, the number one over all console is the DS hand held by Nintendo, selling nearly double that of the PS2. Here’s the actual numbers for those of you too lazy to read:

1. Nintendo DS – 508K
2. PlayStation 2 – 280K
3. Wii – 259K
4. Xbox 360 – 199K
5. PlayStation Portable – 180K
6. Game Boy Advance – 148K
7. PlayStation 3 – 130K
8. GameCube – 22K