Arc v' August 20, 2002

A couple of months back, I wrote up a series of posts on "Zope" Page Templates. There was "Zope Page Template Joys", "More Page Templates (a buttal of sorts?)", and a screenshot of "GoLive Editing in QuickEdit Mode".

As a quick follow-up, I just have to say that with certain exceptions*, I'm never going back to DTML again. With or without a graphic HTML designer, Page Templates are just a much cleaner way to do dynamic pages.

* The exceptions are for when dealing with non-HTML/XML dynamic content. Besides SQL Methods (which have special DTML tags that are actually a delight to use), this includes JavaScript and Style Sheets that need dynamic code. Most of the time this tends to be JavaScript code snippets that need absolute URL's (a common Zope-ism), including navigation bars with heaps of rollovers.

If there is one thing that I desparately think needs improvement in Mac OS X, and is hopefully fixed in 10.2, it would the Help. The current Apple Help application is notoriously slow at launching. Help should be instant. The new Help application looks better from some of the screen shots that have been floating around, I just hope it performs better.

I sometimes forget the beauty of this film.

It looks like Apple's caught on to what many potential .Mac customers are doing - waiting until the last minute to purchase the discount upgrade price. The reason so many are waiting? .Mac membership is valid for one year from the date purchased. As a result, many would-be upgraders are waiting until the last minute to eke out the most value out of their purchase (and I think that once iSync and other utilities are in place, .Mac will actually be worth its price).

So, this evening, I get a notice from Apple that if I convert from a trial account (the status bestowed on all current iTools users) to a paid membership before September 30, 2002 (when the discount upgrade ends), it will be valid until September 30 2003, regardless of purchase date.

Alright. Maybe I will have to upgrade now. If Apple's promise of being able to synchronize calendars, contacts, and certain files between multiple Macs holds true, I'll be in heaven. I've got three calendars and three address books running right now (and this is with my iBook off the network). I can't wait to get it all down to one.