This example was produced rather quickly in response to a challenge by Tim Heuer and shows the energy consumption of US households over the last few years and then predicted to 2030.  I was inspired by an article in National Geographic that I was reading, and it highlights I hope, the rather dramatic amount of energy is wasted through “electrical loss” (though I was a little disappointed from the visualisation point of view, how little the data changed in the prediction, made for a less dramatic animation!).  [read more] Windows Live Tags: Silverlight, Energy, Visualisation

In Silverlight 3 we have seen that the Alexandria Framework will have a rich validation and business logic framework that is really very powerful and productive.  Silverlight 3 is due to be announced at Mix 09, and I would expect a CTP or Beta to be available then. But what can you do now?  Even if we get a go-live license on a SL 3 Beta it will be too early for many corporate teams to adopt.  This post will look at using Silverlight 2 and: ... Read full article ...

Ok – that’s a bit unfair – I do like IE8 but the amount of sites that are broken until you switch compatibility on is quite startling! Developers don’t need to do much to fix it, just add the following header to force IE8 to enter IE7 compatible mode automatically (or change your site to be IE8 compatible of course ;-) <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=EmulateIE7″ /> Note too that in the dialog above Microsoft are creating an updated list of sites that need compatibility mode, so perhaps we won’t need to be so drastic...

[cross posted from: http://blackburnian.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!FB8B852EF1AB0B35!1917.entry] In the UK the DDA (The Disability Discrimination Act, 1995) makes it a legal requirement for service providers to ensure access for disabled customers and if necessary make reasonable adjustments to the way they deliver their services; this includes web sites (see Part III, 2.2, 4.7, 2.13-2.17, 5.23 and 5.26).  This almost certainly isn’t news to most of you, but I think there is a large degree of confusion about what creating a DDA Compliant site actually means, if not among the legal profession, it certainly appears to be among the development teams...