What I’m Reading
Shareworthy articles and content syndicated from other sites. These aren’t things I’ve written or necessarily endorse, for the record.
How To Upgrade To The iPad 2 For A Fraction Of The Cost* (AAPL)
UPDATE 2: Looks like the deal is over. Because Apple has slashed the price of the original iPad, you can no longer sell yours to Gazelle for the prices listed below.
If you managed to sell yours before now, you should be locked in to the pricing you were quoted at first.
UPDATE: Due to high demand, Gazelle now says this offer could end as soon as tonight.
EARLIER: Those of you on the fence about making the upgrade to an iPad 2 because of cost may no longer have an excuse.
Gadget buy back site Gazelle is offering a special on original iPads in good condition. The offer is good through this Saturday, March 5th, so make your decision quickly.
If you sell before the cut off on Saturday, your offer will lock in for 30 days. After you send in your iPad, Gazelle will inspect it and send you a final offer, which you can decline if you choose.
Here’s what they are offering for each model:
- iPad 16 GB wifi: $375
- iPad 32 GB wifi: $437
- iPad 64 GB wifi: $463
- iPad 16 GB 3G: $446
- iPad 32 GB 3G: $552
- iPad 64 GB 3G: $585
Don’t Miss: The 12 Tablets That The iPad 2 Will Probably Crush This Year
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To Reset or Not Reset — That’s the CSS Question
Every web browser uses a base stylesheet. It ensures HTML is rendered reasonably well when you don’t provide custom CSS. You know the kind of thing: blue for unvisited links, purple for visited links, bold for strong tags, larger text for h1 titles etc. Unfortunately, vendors love making our lives complicated and each browser uses a different base. So how can you ensure your custom CSS is not affected by a default style implemented on a specific device?
Enter CSS resets. These strip most styles so elements are rendered consistently across browsers. Typically, all fonts and line heights revert to 100%, margins and padding are set to 0px, borders are removed, and ordered/unordered lists become unstyled.
Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset was one of the first and is the most well known and used. The HTML5 Reset Stylesheet from HTML5 doctor can also help style newer elements. There are several others — CSSReset.com provides a great selection and documentation.
Do you use a CSS reset? Should you?
I’ve looked at a random collection of 30 websites and the majority used a CSS reset. The advantages are clear:
- They provide a blank canvas; any styles applied are (almost) certain to be your own.
- Development can be more logical: you’re adding styles rather than removing or modifying them.
- Browser compatibility issues can be minimized.
Despite these advantages, I don’t use CSS resets. Actually, that’s not quite true — I often use the basic margin and padding reset because the default values are rarely useful:
* { padding: 0; margin: 0; }
This affects every tag and some developers will tell you it causes havoc or slower CSS processing. I’m yet to encounter a situation where it’s become problematical.
My main issues with CSS resets are:
Additional page weight
Most CSS resets add around 2Kb of code (uncompressed). That may not sound much but it’s a large overhead when the majority of my CSS files rarely exceed 10Kb.
Additional effort
A CSS reset requires you to re-style all your elements — which adds further weight to your file. Sometimes though, I’m happy with the browser’s defaults. Font weights, line heights, link outlines, bullet discs and other styles are often fine. If they’re not, I’ll change them accordingly.
Different browsers render pages differently
No two browsers are the same yet some people expect pixel-perfect rendering across all devices. CSS resets often give the impression that this goal is achievable. It’s not.
Personally, I don’t mind if titles in Firefox are 2px larger than IE or Opera’s idea of ‘bold’ is slightly heavier than Chrome’s. A CSS reset will never resolve those issues for you.
They don’t negate the need for browser testing
I’m not convinced CSS resets aid browser consistency. You must test your site or application in as many devices as possible so you can address errors and bugs caused by your code or the browser.
They don’t fit with my workflow
I’m not a fan of CSS frameworks. I rarely encounter situations where a generic CSS approach applies to the site being built. I may copy a few code snippets from elsewhere but, in general, I prefer to start with an empty file. It remains my code and I know exactly where to go when bugs arise.
Although it’s not as complex, a CSS reset is a framework which can introduce unexpected results.
They don’t save time
Has a CSS reset ever saved you hours of development time?
Before I’m attacked by an angry mob of CSS reset fans, I’m not saying you should never use them. They may they work for you and that’s fine. I suspect they’re also useful to those who are new to web development. However, are you adding a CSS reset because it’s genuinely useful or has it become a development habit?
As a test, try removing the reset styles from your website to see if it makes a significant difference.
Do you use CSS resets? Have you recently adopted or dropped the practice? Do they help?
New Study: 70% Of People Find ‘Piracy’ Socially Acceptable [Updated]
I’ve pointed out time and time again that I don’t, in any way, condone unauthorized file sharing. I don’t participate in it, and I don’t think people should do so, though I certainly understand why many do. Instead, I talk about recognizing two things. First, such unauthorized downloading is here and it’s happening and there’s little likelihood that it’s going away, so your best bet is to figure out how to deal with it, rather than just bitch about it. Second, once you come to realize that, you can often come up with much smarter, better, more effective and more profitable ways to make money by embracing what your fans want. And, yet, I’m still told that I’m “the world’s biggest piracy defender” who “only wants to rip off musicians.” And, recently, I was told that it was particularly pernicious of me to suggest that content creators recognize that piracy isn’t going away.
However, it looks like even more data is supporting that position. TorrentFreak points us to a new study coming out of Denmark — where the entertainment industry has been extra aggressive in trying to “crack down” on unauthorized file sharing and to “educate” the public on why such activities are wrong. And, yet, the study shows that 70% of people still find unauthorized downloading to be socially acceptable in some form or another. 15 to 20% say that it’s totally acceptable, with the rest saying that it’s acceptable within certain boundaries. Where people begin to think it’s not acceptable is when it involves downloading the works of others and then selling them. This isn’t all that surprising, and fits with what we’ve seen elsewhere, but it’s still interesting to see the numbers.
What’s also interesting is that these numbers are almost identical to what a similar study found over a decade ago. In other words, despite tons of money, lawsuits, lobbying, education campaigns, advertising, threats, news reports and the like — all telling people that unauthorized downloading was unquestionably morally wrong — it’s had almost no impact on people’s attitude towards the practice, and the vast majority find it socially acceptable. That certainly suggests that my position has a pretty strong basis in fact. Historically, it’s very, very difficult to convince people that something they feel is socially acceptable is morally evil. And that’s likely to be true in this arena as well. So why does the industry keep insisting that they can change that basic fact?
Update: Good discussion in the comments digging into the details of the study. It becomes clear that there are very different levels of what the folks surveyed believe is socially acceptable. What it suggests is that only 30% say that unauthorized sharing is always unacceptable, while the remaining 70% is across the spectrum in terms of how socially acceptable it may be and under what circumstances. I don’t think that changes the overall point — but it is good context for the discussion.
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