Cool Mac Gear

HyperSpell is a menu item that gives quick access to Mac OS X's built-in spellchecker. When you launch HyperSpell, an "ABC" menulet icon appears in the right side of your menubar. To use HyperSpell, click on the icon or use the hot key shortcut and enter the text you want to check. Misspelled Words will appear with a red underline. You can then control-click (or right-click) on the misspelled words to reveal a list of possible spellings

You can control-click on the icon for access to the HyperSpell preferences, about box, and the quit command. In the prefs, you can edit the HyperSpell hot key and several features of the user interface. The default hot-key is Command-Option-\ (the backslash key).

HyperSpell works as advertised, and provides a quick and slick way to spellcheck text in teh clipboard as well as pasted text.

HyperSpell features:
• Instant access to Mac OS X's built-in spellchecker from any application (even from Carbon applications).
• Clipboard integration.
• Native Cocoa interface.

New in Beta 4:
• Fixed a problem with HyperSpell's windows not coming to the front when they're supposed to.

System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher

Price: Freeware during beta period

For more information, visit:
http://www.kuwan.net/hyperspell/index.jsp

Ken Heins on Safari Compatibility

From Mark E. Haase

Hi Charles--

You and I have conversed a few times about some shareware that I had written, and today while on your site I noticed a post from a Ken Heins explaining that Safari's standards compliance may make it a loser in some situations. He asks why can't Safari just have an option to render things like IE?

I'd like to posit that rewriting Safari would not just be a major undertaking in and of itself (changing it how renders HTML is basically a core rewrite), but also reverse engineering how IE does its renderings would take forever. Software engineers would have to generate thousands of pages with minute variations to exhaust various possibilities of input HTML, then measure with pixel perfect resolution where the elements came out.

Of course, a lower degree of compatibility could be achieved by disregarding security considerations, such as not inspecting certificates for content other than HTML, as IE routinely does.

Perhaps Mr. Heins should sue. If this site that he accesses is crucial to his business, then he can claim that the hosting company is negligent due to sloppy adoption of standards which make their content inaccessible to him.

Perhaps we should all sue Microsoft.

And persuade as many friends as possible not to use Microsoft software, especially Internat Explorer.

Charles

Real estate and Safari accessibility

From anonymous

Charles,
In my response to the real estate pro whose website does not allow access to Safari, there is the Fair Housing Act:

http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/FHLaws/index.cfm

"Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Fair Housing Act), as amended, prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings, and in other housing-related transactions, based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status (including children under the age of 18 living with parents of legal custodians, pregnant women, and people securing custody of children under the age of 18), and handicap (disability)."

Technically speaking if their website is not accessible to people of a specific web browser are they not violating this act?

Sincerely,
anonymous

Odyssey #377

From David Johnson

Charles

You comment about the "IT Expert" reminded me of a good definition of an expert. Ex is a has been and a spurt is a drip under pressure.

David

;-)

C.

Charles W. Moore