Targus, where are your 64-bit drivers?

I own a Targus PA088U Serial to USB adapter, which I use to connect to devices such as switches and routers. I've had it for a couple of years now, but it is still a current product.

Having recently moved to 64-bit Windows 7, I've discovered that the drivers for it don't work on 64-bit Windows, and when I rang Targus they couldn't give me an ETA or even confirm that they are working on 64-bit drivers.

Come on, Targus, that's pretty poor. 64-bit versions of Windows have been around for about five years now! Rant, rant, rant ...

I've ordered a Tripp Lite U209-000-R which claims to support 64-bit Windows 7, as a replacement. I'll let you know how it goes.

Now I can't live without my iPhone

It's funny how this Apple technology really does grow on you after a while. It's three months now since I posted about my top iPhone annoyances, but now I feel like posting about what I really love about the thing.

7. I can VPN to the network at work, so it would be possible to do remote support. I've not actually needed to do this, but it's nice to know it's there.

6. I can tether to either Windows or Mac using Bluetooth! Yay, remote connectivity for the PC! My previous phone had all sorts of software issues which affected tethering, but with the iPhone it just works. Now, if we could just do it using WiFi ...

5. It took me a while to get used to the Messages application, but now I really like the way it displays the conversation, like a chat session.

4. I've never had my email always with me before, but it's actually really handy to have.

3. I take the web with me everywhere, what a drug that is! The news, the weather, Facebook, mobile banking. For casual web surfing on a small screen, it works perfectly. And there's no getting around it, Telstra's NextG network is superb.

2. The iPod application is just such a pleasure to use, so polished. It's a combination of great looks and attention to details like the way it automatically pauses the music when you unplug the headphones. My previous phone couldn't play video, and was a bit unreliable with the Bluetooth headphones. The iPhone just works.

1. Games, games, games! There are some absolute crackers out there, including Flight Control, Angry Birds, Parking Mania and Electric Box. I've spent more time playing computer games in the last three months than at any time since being at university.

iPhone annoyances

There's a lot to like about the Apple iPhone, but just as much to dislike. Here are my top iPhone annoyances:

11. No AM/FM radio. Of course internet radio is great but in Australia we pay through the nose for bandwidth.

10. No FM transmitter. Some of us have old cars (like 8 years old) with no auxiliary audio inputs or Bluetooth.

9. No camera on the front, so no two-way video calls.

8. The camera is crap. OK, so probably all phone cameras are.

7. USB cables cost $30! Come on! It's a short piece of wire between two plugs!

6. You can't sort by rating in the App Store, which means you can't easily find the "cream of the crop" applications -- those which people really like.

5. You can't use the device as a 3G WiFi router (or MiFi as people are calling them these days).

4. Battery life stinks. OK, so because you can do so much with the iPhone, you do use it a lot. But when one charge doesn't even last 24 hours, things are grim.

3. Complexity of programming. Microsoft's developer tools are streets ahead. When I hop into Objective-C I feel like I'm in a twenty-year time warp.

2. No access to the file system. It won't function as a mass storage device, so getting photos off it is a pain, and you can't use it to port random files around.

1. Applications can only be installed from the official App Store, and they have to be approved by Apple first. We paid for the device, we should therefore be free to install any software we like onto it.

iPhone VPN to Nortel

I am a long-time fan of the Nortel VPN Gateway, which we have at work, and which several of our clients have as well. SSL-VPN technology is just so convenient, you just need a browser and Java, and away you go. The device also supports IPSec connectivity, making it a complete VPN solution.

Until the iPhone came along, with no Java, and support only for Cisco IPSec. So, no VPN to work :(

But what Nortel have done in code release 8.0 for NVG, just released, is include support for L2TP-over-IPSec, which the iPhone does support. And I've just tried it, and it works! Thankyou, Nortel! xoxoxoxoxoxox

I assume that L2TP/IPSec will soon appear in the software for the Contivity series (Nortel VPN Router), if it hasn't already.

Firing script with an anchor

Quite often I want an anchor (link) to execute a script, and usually I fall into the trap of trying to use onclick and set href to an empty string or leave it out entirely. However, href is a required attribute and empty string is a valid value which means "link to self", so the correct solution is to put the script into the href attribute, prefixed by "javascript:".

For example, here is an anchor which does the same thing as pressing the browser's Back button:

<a href="javascript:history.back();">Back</a>

Thanks JWhittaker for setting me straight.

Always show a vertical scroll bar

IE always shows a vertical scroll bar for a web page, regardless of whether or not the page is long enough to require one. This is nice for sites with a fixed-width centred layout and a combination of short and long pages, because it means the horizontal position stays exactly the same on every page. Other browsers (Firefox and Chrome at least) don't do this by default.

Finally I've looked up how do this in these other browsers, and discovered that it's actually quite easy. It's not even a hack! Just a CSS rule ...

html {overflow-y: scroll;}

Styling table columns

It seems so natural to want to set colour and alignment on columns of a table. But CSS2.1 does not allow it, it only allows you to set width, visibility, border and background. Hixie explains why. Internet Explorer supports it, but no-one else does.

The workaround is to use CSS selectors as follows:

#table55 td:first-child { text-align:left; } /* col 1 */
#table55 td:first-child+td { text-align:center; } /* col 2 */
#table55 td:first-child+td+td { text-align:right; } /* col 3 */

This works in CSS-compliant browsers including IE7 and above. Thanks to Simon Pieters for this one.