Dan Rooke’s Blog

As you may, or may not, be aware both Mozilla and Microsoft have launched new versions of the popular web browser Firefox and Internet Explorer late in October. As a web developer, this has quite an important impact on how I develop web applications.

I personally use Mozilla’s Firefox for my browsing and primary development needs. It better conforms to web standards than its rival Internet Explorer. But the majority of web users stay with Internet Explorer, for the most part because it is conveniently installed on a PC running a Microsoft Windows operating system by default. Internet Explorer however is known to have lower levels of conformance to web standards than Firefox and does have a reputation of particularly fussy. Internet Explorer 7, the latest version of the browser, does go some way to better conforming to web standards however it does still trails its competition.

As a web developer, having various levels of conformance to standards in browsers and particular requirements for each browser causes a plethora of problems and complicates the development process massively. To combat this, I feel that standards should be taken to the next level. I believe that all web browsers should use, here comes the technical bit, a common rendering engine. The rendering engine takes the code and converts it into a human friendly interface known as a web page. Having a common rendering engine will greatly reduce the complexity of supporting different browsers for us web developers. It will encourage better standards conformance which in the end will help the web site/application user. It should also, in theory, reduce development costs of web browsers.

By all means have different web browsers providing different features and functionality, but have a common rendering engine at the core of each. This idea is not meant to discourage competition, merely make the web a better place for us all.

Yesterday’s news that two British motorists were taking a test case to the European Court of Human Rights in which they are challenging the fact that motorists should not have the incriminate themselves, and that they have the right to silence, raised the issue of speed cameras in the UK once again.

My feelings on the issue are quite simple. Yes we need to catch speeding motorists as indeed speed does play a big factor in motoring accidents, but we also need to combat the rapidly falling standards of driving on the roads today we equally if not more so contribute to accidents.

Police forces over the past few years have reduced the number of traffic enforcement cars and rapidly increased the number of speed camera devices on the UK road network. A recent Auto Express survey discovered the true facts about how the UK Police forces are policing roads in their area. The survey reveals the number of traffic enforcement cars and the number of speed cameras used for each of the UK Police forces. The figures show the ratio of traffic enforcement cars to speed cameras for the area of jurisdiction, with speed cameras have much greater numbers than traffic enforcement cars.

While catching speeders is a priority, so should be tackling the other traffic laws which are broken everyday. In my daily commute to work along the M62 corridor, I see all manner of traffic law violations and discourteous driving. This puts all motorists in danger as well as pedestrians and other road users. There are no static speed cameras on my route, and I very rarely see a traffic enforcement car either. As a result of this, it seems that other motorists feel they can do as they please in order to arrive at their destination just a few minutes earlier than if they had obeyed traffic law.

I feel strongly that speed cameras are a ‘one trick pony’ and that Britain’s roads should not be enforced primarily by these devices. I am not saying that they do not have their place, I am saying that they should be used as an aid by Police forces and not as a replacement for traffic enforcement cars. I’m sorry to say that with the current Government attitude, I don’t see anything changing in the short term.

We have made a push to recycle more over the last couple of months in our house. It has resulted in a full / overflowing green bin to be put out every month. So much so that we ran out of room and had to use the normal bin toward the end of the month. The black bin has generally only been half full. So all in all quite good going.

After being in the Lake District on honeymoon and having zero light pollution at night, coming back to an urban area involves quite an adjustment in that sense. Thinking about it I came up with the idea of turning all, or a number of, the street lights off after a certain time at night where they are barely utilised. This is quite similar to the French way of doing things where only a small number of lights are left on after a certain time at night. The idea being to cut down on light pollution and also reduce energy wastage and costs. Let me know what your thoughts are! If I get a good response, I may even write into the local council proposing a trial.

The local election campaign saw very little mention of the state of the local roads. This may seem like a small issue however with the average price of petrol hitting an all time high of 96 pence per litre mainly due to government taxation I believe it is an important one. The state of the roads in the region, in my opinion, are poor topped off with the poor driving standards left to deteriorate with the lack of traffic police.

Being a regular reader of Auto Express, I have spotted some good news for Britain’s roads and road users:

1. Car share lane on the M62 heading east towards Leeds
   A controversial idea but it should benefit the car sharers, the environment as well as commuters using the main carriageway
2. Street lights which dim when not needed
   Ever thought what a waste of energy street lights can be when on at night with no road users? A new invention will see the end to this with lights dimming when not needed helping to reduce energy wastage and light pollution
3. Brake lights which are brighter and pulse when braking harder
   Very useful enabling following motorists to be aware of hard braking and to react appropriately

Despite these advances, I think there’s still a lot to do in terms of taxation of motorists. While I appreciate the fact that cars are polluting, I think there are many ways in which the tax collected from motorists should be used to help motorists as well as providing alternatives. Cars will be around for a long time to come, I think that the government should accept this and work with motorists rather than against them. Work should then be done to provide alternatives to ween motorists from their cars by their own choice, not by trying to price them out of the market with perpetually increasing taxes.

Yes, I’m back onto my seemingly favourite topic once again - Royal Mail.

I had a failed delivery attempt on Friday where I got a lovely red card informing me I needed to collect an item from the main post office in town. I was a little annoyed because I was in but didn’t hear them knock, but that could well have been my fault. Anyway, went to collect it this morning and it had not been ‘processed’ yet - typical! I find this very irritating and have an alternative solution. Why not drop all of the failed deliveries into the local post office at the end of the round meaning that the items would be available at most a few hours later?! This would save processing at the main post office and be more convenient for people.

This annoyance comes on the day that stamp prices rise to 32 pence for first class and 23 pence for second class. Are we really seeing value for money? Now that the market has been opened to competition, when will we start to see a real alternative?