<h1 src="myimage.png">This is my alt text</h1>

However, it seems that the advent of this type of thing, if it ever happens, is still quite a ways off. Therefore, if you’re looking for an easy way to replace a plain text header with a nice image, for instance, a banner, you need to find another way of doing so.

This article will briefly explain how to do so using purely CSS.

It’s very simple, actually. You just need to add a background image to your header, then hide the text. An example would look like:

Banner Image

In order to do something like what’s shown above, you need to follow these steps:

1. Begin by creating your banner image.
2. Upload the banner image to your Web server somewhere
3. Create an H1 tag in your HTML. Add your “alt” text as the actual text of the H1 tag. This text will show up in the instance that CSS is disabled.
4. Assign the following style definitions to your H1 tag:
   • background - You need to set the url of the background property to lead to the header image you uploaded. You also need to set the background not to repeat.
   • width and height - The width and the height of your header need to be set to 0. This is the first step in hiding your alt text.
   • overflow - Set the overflow property to hidden. This is the second step to hiding your alt text.
   • padding - Set the padding-top property to the exact height of your banner image, the padding-right property to 0, the padding-bottom property to 0 and the padding-left property to the exact width of your banner image.

Voila! You’re done. You can set any of the other style properties you want, but the ones listed above are the important ones. The code for the example above is shown below. I hope this helps.

<h1 style="background: url(/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/banner-test.jpg) no-repeat; width: 0; height: 0; border: none; padding: 75px 0 0 400px; overflow: hidden;">Banner Image</h1>

The Otterbox cases are available for the iPhone, the iPod Touch, the iPod Nano, the iPod Classic and many Blackberry devices. The case offers more protection than any other case I’ve seen.

To begin with, they all come with a screen protector, built into the case rather than having to stick to your screen. Then, a hard plastic case snaps around the entire body of the device. Finally, a soft, silicone glove wraps around the hard plastic shell.

The openings in the iPod, such as the headphone jack, the cable input, etc. are plugged with the silicone case. You can easily open the plugs so that you can insert the appropriate cables, etc.

I have accidentally dropped my iPhone a handful of times and no damage occurred. The Internet is full of stories about people dropping their iPhones and iPods, even on concrete, without any adverse effects.

If protection is your number one concern, there is no better case for your handheld device than the Otterbox Defender.

The Defender is not for everyone, though. Here are a few potential cons that you will want to consider before purchasing one.

1. The case is nice and attractive, but it’s also bulky. By the time you wrap your device in a Defender case, it’s generally about twice as thick and a good inch or so taller than it was without the case.
2. The screen protector does develop static cling between the screen and the plastic protector. The static cling resembles a water spot or an oil slick (most of the references to this phenomenon on the Internet refer to it as the “oil slick problem”). However, I did find a solution in a few places during my search. As odd as it sounds, if you put a little baby powder on a tissue, then rub the baby powder on the face of your device and on the back of the screen protector (the part that touches your screen), that will stop this from happening (at least for a while). If you apply the baby powder properly, you probably won’t even notice that it’s there after you reassemble the case.
3. The case is a giant pain to take apart and put back together. Obviously, that’s a direct result of it being so protective. However, if you think you’re going to want a case that you can easily take your device in and out of, this is definitely not the ideal solution.
4. The iPod/iPhone versions of the case only seem to work with the official Apple USB cable. Most off-brand cables have bulkier housing around the portion that plugs into your iPod. Therefore, they don’t fit in the opening of the case that you use to plug things in. However, I have seen reports (though I have not confirmed them) that you can piggyback two port extenders together in order to allow you to plug other items into the device (such as docks, external batteries, etc.). I have also seen reports that you can successfully use a Dremel tool to widen the opening in the plastic shell. I have no information about the Blackberry versions.

So, if you’re looking for sleekness, you want to remove your device from its case when it’s not necessary, or you use a lot of external accessories, you do not want an Otterbox Defender case. However, if you are looking for an extremely effective, protective case for your device, there is no better alternative.

On the Firefox Web site, Mozilla has also developed it’s own chart similar to the IE8 comparison chart we discussed last week.

The new version also natively supports OGG audio and video, along with the HTML5 audio and video tags.

The myths investigated include:

• duplicate content
• affiliate links

There is a discussion about site design including robots.txt, moving sites and the “rel=canonical” tag. Here’s part of the presentation:

Around 4:15 this afternoon, our Web site at work (which is hosted by Rackspace) stopped responding to requests (at first, I was a little freaked out, because I was running a back-up and thought maybe something had gone awry). I then tried visiting the MyRackspace customer portal to submit a support ticket, and found that it was not responding, either.

I called our point of contact and asked him to look into it. Around 4:40, our Web server was back up and running. Rackspace, however, was still down for a while longer.

Rackspace is keeping customers updated on their blog. At this point, they are saying that everything is back online.

For the last two weeks, Rackspace has been performing tests, upgrades and maintenance to their back-up power utilities because of “anomalies” they’ve encountered. I wonder if this power outage was a result of those anomalies, a result of the upgrades, maintenance and testing or if it was completely unrelated.

Friends and Colleagues

I follow my friends and colleagues simply to keep up on what’s going on in their lives and at work. I also follow them because most of my friends are interested in many of the same things that interest me. Therefore, I quite often get good nuggets from them, like links to interesting blog articles, funny pictures, etc.

Sega and Other Video Game Organizations

I also follow @Sega, @SonicGames (the arm of Sega devoted specifically to Sonic the Hedgehog), @OCRemix, @MAGFest and @GameUnicon because of my interest in video games, and Sega in particular.

I also follow Sega because of their #freestufffriday competitions. Every Friday, Sega puts together a batch of really cool Sega paraphernalia to give away on Twitter. They alternate from week to week between their US office and their UK office. Last week, I won a batch of stuff from the video game “Viking.” The prizes range from simple things like notepads, shirts, etc. to soundtracks and full video games. For those of you with Xbox Live, they also give out XBLA codes on a fairly regular basis.

OCRemix is a really cool group that takes music from video games (popular and obscure) and remixes it into new and interesting stuff. All of the music they put together is available from their Web site.

MAGFest and GameUnicon would traditionally be called video game conventions, but they are actually much more than that. They are festivals of video games and game-related music. Basically, they are events where you spend all weekend doing nothing but playing video games, listening to discussions about video games, listening to music from video games and more. You eat, sleep (for those who sleep over the weekend) and breathe video games for the entire time. I like getting updates about what’s going on with the festivals. I am a regular attendee of MAGFest and like to keep my finger on what’s going on with the festival. GameUnicon is in Massachusetts, so it’s too far for me to travel, unfortunately. However, the guy in charge of that account regularly posts fun stuff.

Tech App Developers

I follow some developers of various applications I use on my computer and the iPhone. For instance, I follow @Tapulous, the makers of the Tap Tap Revenge, the greatest portable game available on the market, today. I also follow the makers of @TweetDeck and @boxee and the developers of @Linux_Mint to keep track of what’s going on with those products.

Tech Bloggers

Because I am interested in many things related to technology, I follow a handful of tech bloggers, including Allen from @CenterNetworks and Holden and Alex from @TechGeist. The three of them are always posting fun and interesting things about technology and their lives in general.

Musicians and Celebrities

Some of my favorite updates come from various musicians I follow, including @celldweller and @16volt. I am a huge fan of their music, and I love to read the updates they post. @celldweller consistently posts funny stuff on Twitter and his blog. 16Volt posts some interesting information from his life, and also posts some links to various articles about the music industry, his music and more.

I also follow @DonGeronimoShow, who was previously half of the nationally syndicated radio duo “Don and Mike.” I have been a fan of Don and Mike since I was a kid, and I enjoy seeing what Don has to post on his Twitter account. Many of his posts are rather inane, but there’s always a nugget in there that makes it worth it to follow him.

News and Humor

I am a big fan of NPR (National Public Radio), so I follow their political feed (@nprpolitics). I also follow @theOnion, @icanhascheezburger and a few others. Those last two, I follow strictly for comic relief.

So, my real question to you is, who are you following? Why do you follow those people? Who should I be following?

You can download the beta software from Zend’s Web site.

Getting tired of trying to manually resize my windows and move them around, I started searching for a program that might make it a little easier. Ideally, I was looking for a program that would split my screen into four equal sections, then “dock” the applications in those sections so that I could drag the corners and have them snap in place.

I didn’t find that, but I did find a fantastic application that does quite a bit of what I wanted, and quite a bit more. WinSplit Revolution is a nice little background utility that allows you to resize your windows into preset “zones” on your screen, dividing your screen into halves, quarters, sixths and more. It also helps you manage a dual-head configuration, making it extremely easy to switch apps between the two screens.

With WinSplit Revolution, you can set up hotkeys to move your windows around. By default, if you press Ctrl+Alt, then press a number on the number keypad, the active window automatically moves to the appropriate corner and resizes itself. For instance, if you press Ctrl+Alt+7, the window jumps to the top left quadrant of your screen. If you press Ctrl+Alt+7, the window resizes to one-sixth the size of the screen. If you press it again, and you have dual-head set up, the window resizes to half of the total width of your display.

If you press Ctrl+Alt+4, the window resizes to half the width and the full height of your main screen, then jumps to the left side of your screen.

If you press Ctrl+Alt and the left or right arrow key, the window moves from one screen in your dual-head configuration to the other screen.

The program is extremely easy to use and makes it a cinch to keep your display organized. The screen shot above shows my entire dual-head configuration as laid out by WinSplit.

In the top-right display area of the screen shot (which is my 30″ monitor), you will see my browser in the top-left, Outlook in the top-right, Dreamweaver in the bottom-left and TweetDeck in bottom-right. I also generally keep Winamp behind TweetDeck in the bottom-right, and occasionally open PhotoShop in the bottom-right. When I open Word or Adobe Acrobat, I usually let them fill up the entire left or right half of my screen.

Then, in the bottom-right screen (which is actually my laptop display), you will see Windows XP and Linux Mint running in VirtualBox. For proof-of-concept, I used WinSplit to split them to the left and right sides of my second display. However, usually I use VirtualBox’s fullscreen mode to make it look like I’m actually running two separate operating systems at the same time on the same computer. My main display is usually obviously Vista, and I switch between XP and Mint on my laptop display.

Unfortunately, WinSplit is only available for Windows, but it apparently works with the 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows 2000, XP and Vista. WinSplit is released under the Creative Commons license and is available for free. If you have a large display, I highly recommend downloading and using WinSplit to keep your windows organized.

Being peddlers of 3D content, we thought it appropriate to take a look at the current state of 3D in the browser. How do the different browsers stack up? Read on to find out, and if you’re using IE6, please, for the love of your developers, upgrade.

 Safari 3 (and 4)

Rating: BEST

Download:  Mac  PC

Both Safari 3 and 4 dominate all the other browsers in terms of speed, performance, and aesthetics, with 4 being the latest and greatest. We of course realize Safari is not all that popular, particularly with Windows users, but the sheer technical superiority of Safari warrants giving it a shot. In terms of specifics, Safari 4 executes javascript faster than any other browser (with the exception of Chrome, where it is about evenly matched), it supports the latest standards for website design, and it exhibits no threading or memory issues related to rendering 3D in the browser via an ActiveX plugin(see Firefox).

 Chrome

Rating: GREAT

Download:  PC

At this point, Google’s Chrome is PC only, but for any windows users who really dislike Apple, Chrome is the way to go. It executes Javascript nearly as fast as Safari 4, is very stable, adheres to modern standards and just works. We didn’t give it Best status only because it isn’t cross platform. But with public Mac and Linux builds around the corner, Chrome may soon steal our coveted top spot.

 IE 7/8

Rating: GOOD

Download:  PC

It may be surprising, but IE 7 and 8 get third place in our browser line up. It may not have the prettiest web rendering, or even support all the web standards we would like, but the core engine is relatively stable, and doesn’t cause any of the disastrous framerate glitches we see in Firefox. Of course IE8 is much better than IE7 in terms of web standards compliance, but really, that is just a matter of taste, and if you really care about supporting web standards, download Safari or Chrome. That said, picky users who only trust Microsoft products should still download the latest version of IE, both for the added security benefits as well as superior gameplay performance.

 Firefox 3

Rating: OKAY

Download:  Mac  PC

We’re stepping on some toes here, we know - but in terms of playing 3D games in your browser Firefox isn’t very good. It leaks memory, which means it crashes more frequently, and something in its Javascript core seems to not be threaded properly, which causes framerate glitches. Additionally, it always seems like they are breaking one aspect or another of ActiveX control support (in this case 3D). The web standards support is nice, but generally, we’d recommend Safari or Chrome for performance reasons.

We’re really hoping Firefox 3.5 solves some of these issues, because we love the Add-on architecture, and probably couldn’t live without Firebug.

 IE 6

Rating: BAD

This is the worst browser the world has ever known. Unfortunately, a lot of folks still use it, either because they don’t care, or their IT department doesn’t care. Which always surprises us, because it only takes a few minutes to download the latest update and move to a vastly better (faster, safer, & prettier) browsing experience. We have stopped actively supporting IE 6 because the extra work required is about the same as developing an extra game per year. It has terrible Javascript support, terrible bugs and glitches, totally non-standard web rendering, and poor threading implementations - which means bad gameplay and framerate. Please help us eliminate IE6 entirely. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell your IT department to stop eating donuts and at least get you IE8.

On the surface, both applications are very similar. Listed below are some of the general features you’ll find in both TweetDeck and Seesmic.

• Use multiple Twitter accounts (just added in TweetDeck v0.6.x)
• Monitor Facebook friends’ status
• Monitor Twitter search results
• Post to Twitter
• Post Facebook status
• Send direct messages to Twitter followers
• Shorten URLs using various URL shortening sites
• Upload pictures to TwitPic (and a few others) and post to Twitter
• Shrink your Twitter post using TweetShrink
• Adjust the specific amounts of time between checking for Twitter “following” updates, direct messages, search results, etc. to utilize your 100 API calls per hour to its fullest
• Follow/Unfollow/Block Twitter users from within the application
• Notification of new updates via a pop-up on your desktop and a sound (can be configured through the application settings)
• Available for Linux, Mac and Windows (via Adobe AIR)

Now, I will outline the features available in Seesmic Desktop that are not yet available in TweetDeck:

• View Twitter updates and Facebook updates together in a single column
• Columns automatically resize themselves (within reason) to fit in the width of the window
• View your timeline (Sent) from Twitter in its own column, without being mixed in with all of the people you are following
• The Facebook account shows all updates from your Facebook friends (TweetDeck only shows status updates, and only shows the most recent from each friend)
• Choose which URL shortening service, pic upload service, etc. you want to use when you are actually posting it (TweetDeck requires you to set the default sites to use in the application settings)

Following are the features available through TweetDeck that are not yet found in Seesmic Desktop:

• Preview shortened URLs (if you click on a shortened URL, TweetDeck pulls some information about that URL and shows it to you - including the real URL to which that short URL redirects)
• An iPhone application is also available, and you can sync your TweetDeck columns between your iPhone and your computer
• Post the same status update to your Facebook account and your Twitter account in one action
• Auto-complete usernames (from a list of the people you’re following, I believe) as soon as you type the @ symbol - This feature can be turned on or off in the application settings
• Auto-include hashtags when you reply to someone’s post (this feature can be turned on or off in the application settings)
• Translate an update you are preparing to post
• View a list of hashtags you’ve used recently so that you can insert it into your post

Now, I’ll try to outline some of the differences between the two and some of the features I’d like to see that aren’t available in either:

• TweetDeck does not allow you to resize or reorder your columns in any way (except the option to use “narrow columns,” which makes all of your columns about 10 or 15 pixels narrower than the standard size). However, Seesmic Desktop, as mentioned above, will sort of automatically resize your columns to fit in the width of the window. Still, though, Seesmic does not offer any way to manually resize your columns.
• Although Seesmic shows all of your updates (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) in one column, there doesn’t seem to be a way to show them in separate columns. TweetDeck only offers the ability to show them in separate columns.
• There does not seem to be a way, in either application, to indicate which Facebook updates are displayed when you add your Facebook status
• Within Seesmic Desktop, you can “like” a Facebook update or tweet it. In TweetDeck, you can either e-mail the Facebook status update or tweet it. Neither application allows you to comment on the Facebook updates.

Personally, I prefer the interface of Seesmic Desktop over the TweetDeck interface. However, the feature set currently available in TweetDeck offers more of the functionality I want, so I’m working mostly within TweetDeck. The number one feature that would absolutely need to be added to Seesmic Desktop before I would consider switching is the short URL preview. I also would want Seesmic to introduce the auto-complete usernames and auto-include hashtags. I must admit that I also am becoming a big fan of the fact that I can sync my TweetDeck columns between platforms (as long as I sync them with my iPhone, I can also sync them between Linux and Windows and between my work and home computers - which is really cool).

That said, if TweetDeck introduces a way to comment on Facebook updates and a way to resize the columns (automatically and/or manually), I would probably stop considering switching to Seesmic Desktop.

As a final word, I will issue this minor warning: If you use TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop at the same time (as I did while writing this review to allow for easy comparison), you will most likely run out of Twitter API calls before the hour is up (I ran out about 15 minutes early).