In This Issue...

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Introduction

Hi, Tech Timers! As I mentioned last issue, I have dodged the Melbourne winter and am basking in the summer sun here in Montreal.

On the way here, I made a brief stop in Vancouver, where SitePoint Tribune editor Matt Mickiewicz and I got to spend some time with the geekiest of toys, the Segway™ HT. All I'll say is that they work great and are a lot of fun, and if I had US$6,000 to throw around I would be seriously considering getting one! Feel free to peruse the photos I took on the day.

Anyway, because of all my gallavanting, this will be a fairly short issue. Hopefully the sheer number of new articles and interesting forum threads in the sidebar should make up for it!

Happy Reading...

Kevin Yank
techtimes@sitepoint.com
Editor, The SitePoint Tech Times

Netscape Gone... can Mozilla survive?

In a long-anticipated announcement last week, Netscape owner AOL-Time Warner finally put a stop to new development on the browser. The recently released Netscape 7.1 will be the final version of the Netscape browser.

Ever since Microsoft settled its legal problems with AOL-Time Warner late in May, ensuring that Internet Explorer would remain the basis for the AOL online service for years to come, Netscape has been living on borrowed time. Though a good browser, thanks to the efforts of the Mozilla project, the latest versions have basically been cluttered variations of the austere Mozilla browser attempting to push services from the company's online portal, Netscape.com.

That said, Netscape developers made a significant contribution to the Mozilla project themselves -- a contribution that will no doubt be sorely missed now that those developers are looking for new jobs.

Possibly more important to the long-term survival of the Mozilla browser is establishing a higher profile among the general Internet community. Open-source projects like Mozilla aren't renouned for their advertising budgets, and if the only people who know about Mozilla are developers like you and I, the corporate sponsorships that make it go won't last for long.

Related News Stories:

• AOL kills Netscape The Register
• Mozilla.org announces launch of the Mozilla Foundation to lead open-source browser efforts Mozilla.org

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Quick Tip

CSS Border Slants

See the SitePoint logo? It's not an image! It's entirely done with a technique known as CSS Border Slants!

This complex technique lets you create shapes with diagonal edges (and even curved ones if you have a lot of time and patience!) by taking advantage of the diagonal edges that appear between the horizontal and vertical borders of a CSS block. These edges are clearly visible in the following diagram (which is also pure HTML and CSS).

The question is, why wouldn't you just use an image? Well, for particularly large shapes (where the equivalent image file would be large), CSS Slants can download faster. CSS Slants can also be dynamically modified with JavaScript using common Dynamic HTML techniques.

For more details on CSS Slants and some interesting examples, see the following resources:

• Information on Border Slants by Lasse Reichstein Nielsen
• Eric Meyer's Slantastic Demo
• tantek.com by Tantek Çelik

If your HTML email client doesn't support CSS Border Slants, you can view this tip online in your Web browser.

Help Your Friends Out

Download Kev's PHP/MySQL Tutorial

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• HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS
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• Tableless design - height of divs
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• My top five OO reads
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