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Serving police officer arrested on suspicion of supporting Hamas

Counterterrorism police say the officer is suspected of expressing support for the proscribed group online.




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Appeal after suspected arson attack in garden

Officers say they believe someone accessed the rear of the property through a side alleyway.




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What is happening with East West Rail?

Most asked questions are answered on the East West Rail project, linking Cambridge and Oxford.




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Burnley appoint Salford's Casper as academy boss

Burnley appoint Salford City director of football Chris Casper as their academy manager.




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Appeal after man dies in hospital following crash

Derbyshire Police appeal for witnesses and dashcam footage after the death of a man in his 50s.




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Southend to begin fly-tipping cameras trial

The pilot scheme begins in December to help identify and charge fly-tippers.




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Football supporter banned for homophobic comment

The fan is barred from attending any matches for two seasons, following an investigation.




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Town says no to compulsory High Street parking app

Drivers can currently park for free for an hour, but might need to register on an app in the future.




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Aladdin arrives at Birmingham's Hippodrome

We chat to Gavin Adams and Desmonda Cathabel AKA Aladdin and Jasmine.




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Mastectomy on elderly mum inappropriate - inquest

Disgraced surgeon Paterson gives evidence in Birmingham on the death of Gladys Currall, aged 82.




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'Eyesore' fly-tipped waste in lay-by for months

The "disgusting huge white trailer has been there for ages now", reports one resident.




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Egremont poppy boy

Royal Guards fan 6 year old Frank Gates is preparing for Remembrance Day.




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Losing late leads 'can't keep happening' - Clemence

Barrow head coach Stephen Clemence says his players have to stop the habit of squandering late leads in matches after their 1-1 draw with Colchester.




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Call to tackle 'jaw-dropping' NHS dentistry waits

The MP says people across Cumbria and Lancashire are waiting up to 15 months for treatment.




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Remembrance poppy fundraisers bridge generations

Terry Clarkson and his granddaughter, Olivia, have raised thousands for the Royal British Legion.




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In pictures: Remembrance Sunday poppies and parades

People across the south of England pay their respects to fallen service men and women.




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Free parking day to help late holiday shoppers

Weymouth Town Council says it has made 23 December a free parking day to help last-minute shoppers.




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Club legend hangs up boots after 618 appearances

Wimborne Town centre-back Scott Arnold amassed the last of his 618 appearances against Weymouth.




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Apple to roll out ‘Battery Intelligence’ for iPhone, Amazon slashes price of 43inch Hisense smart TV to £228

The iPhone could finally show you how long it’ll take to finish charging. Code spotted in the second iOS 18.2 beta by 9to5Mac shows a new “BatteryIntelligence” feature that will let you […]

The post Apple to roll out ‘Battery Intelligence’ for iPhone, Amazon slashes price of 43inch Hisense smart TV to £228 appeared first on Tech Digest.




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Boycott Wordle – New York Times workers plead, DNA firm disappears without trace

‘Don’t play Wordle’ is the plea from striking New York Times workers who are complaining about what they say are unfair labour practices. The New York Times Tech Guild, which […]

The post Boycott Wordle – New York Times workers plead, DNA firm disappears without trace appeared first on Tech Digest.




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Blue Sky gets post-election boost, Apple Vision Pro headset production scaled back

Social media platform Bluesky says it has gained 700,000 new users in the week following the US election. Bluesky, which was originally conceived as part of Twitter by its former […]

The post Blue Sky gets post-election boost, Apple Vision Pro headset production scaled back appeared first on Tech Digest.




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Office updates iOS, Android apps – Windows 10 apps coming soon

Since Microsoft first introduced Office for the iPad last March, it’s been downloaded some 40 million times, even with the restrictions of needing an Office 365 subscription to use it. Today, Microsoft announced that Office will soon be coming to …




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LiveSide is retiring, thanks for all your support

All good things must come to an end, and this blog is no exception. When Chris Overd, Matthew Weyer, and Harrison Hoffman founded LiveSide.net back in December of 2005 (LiveSide’s first post was on January 3rd, 2006, …




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Record labels are still ripping off artists…and getting away with it

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from an A&R person at a global dance music label. It was a pretty standard email along the lines of “hey we like your song, would you be interested in licensing it to us?” which I’ve received before and usually they amount to nothing. This often...

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Avoiding the conversion cliff-edge: How SLAs support a successful lead handover

Service Level Agreements are the secret sauce for ensuring marketing and sales are singing from the same song sheet. Qualifying inbound leads is an exercise in cooperation between departments.




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4 must-have assets that marketers should create to support sales activities

Peter Drucker, ‘the founder of modern management’ said:




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Using personalisation and segmentation to support advanced marketing techniques

Advanced marketing techniques such as Account-based Marketing (ABM) and 1-1 marketing require a more individualised approach than traditional inbound marketing tactics. No longer can we paint with a broad brush, as marketers. We must find ways to speak directly with individuals, rather than an audience.




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A modern approach to browser support

Just recently, some front-end code Clearleft delivered to a client was making its way through acceptance testing. We were slightly surprised to discover that their standards required our code to be supported by the two latest versions of web browsers. And then we realised we didn’t have a browser support policy of our own – something we set about rectifying.

When considering browser versions, we were fairly sure our client didn’t mean, for example, versions 124 and 125 of Chrome (released on 16 April and 14 May 2024 respectively). Instead their support standard would most likely be harking back to the days when Internet Explorer was a thing, and major browsers were updated once a year at best. To put this in context, the final version of Internet Explorer shipped in 2013.

It’s at this point we noted that Clearleft didn’t have a written browser support policy to counter or complement that of our clients. We probably did in the dim and distant past, but in recent years we’ve just built accessible, progressively enhanced websites without feeling the need to codify what that means. For the sake of professionalism and good client relationships, we decided to rectify that.

But where to start? Using browser versions clearly doesn’t make any sense, so what do we turn to instead? As it turned out, Jeremy had already nailed it in a recent blog post. We wanted a browser support policy that would focus on outcomes for the user. Rather than being fixated on specific browsers, we needed to consider capabilities, using the mindset that sees modern coding use feature detection in preference to browser detection. It turns out there’s an initiative for that.

The Baseline initiative is a joint effort by Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla to categorise browser support for web standards. Baseline provides clear information about which web standards features are ready to use in websites. It designates new features into two categories:

  • Newly available – a feature is supported by the latest versions of all core browsers
  • Widely available – a feature has been supported across browsers for at least 30 months

We use the Baseline project to determine which browser features to use in production. If a feature is widely available according to Baseline, we can use it.

Quoting directly from our browser support policy:

Progressive enhancement

If a feature is newly available, we might still use it, but we’ll ask a follow-up question:

“Can this feature be used as a progressive enhancement?”

In other words, will using this feature harm browsers that don’t support it? If a newly-available feature can be used as a progressive enhancement, we might well use it. If not, we’ll wait until the feature becomes widely available and choose a different method in the meantime.

This approach restricts usage of new features to nice-to-have additions rather than mission-critical requirements. But it also means we don’t necessarily have to wait for every browser to support a feature before using it.

Access for all

Underlying our browser support policy are two foundational principles:

  1. Website content and core functionality should be accessible to everyone.
  2. It’s okay for websites to look different in different browsers.

If content is unreadable in some browsers, that’s a bug that we will fix. If content is displayed slightly differently in some browsers, we consider that to be a facet of the web, not a bug. This means that there will sometimes be subtle visual and functional differences from browser to browser. We deem this acceptable provided that content and core functionality are unaffected.

We think this the right approach to browser support, and it’s something we believe the whole industry should follow in principle. To that end we’ve made our browser support policy available under a Creative Commons license, meaning you can use it for your own purposes if you find it helpful.

Originally published on the Clearleft blog.

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Use of ch unit considered inappropriate (in certain circumstances)

Update: The title of this post was originally a knowing nod to the considered harmful cliché. I thought it might be amusing and get a bit of attention. However it was brought to my attention by a few people I respect that the title as written might be harmful in itself, so I changed it. However I believe that the subtle point I’m trying to make still stands:

When did we start using the ch unit to specify the maximum length for a line of text? Many places you look nowadays you'll see a variation on:

.prose {
  max-inline-size: 60ch;
}

Is it because of a direct reading of Bringhurst and people (like me) who’ve quoted him:

Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as a satisfactory length of line for a single-column page set in a serifed text face in a text size. The 66-character line (counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded as ideal. For multiple column work, a better average is 40 to 50 characters.

I get it: there’s all that talk of ’characters’. But that’s not what Bringhurst means literally. I’ll come back to that shortly.

Firstly let’s remind ourselves about the CSS ch unit. While ch sounds like it should equate to a number of characters or a character width, that’s not strictly the case. The ch unit specifically refers to the width of the zero ’0’ character within the selected font, or 0.5em if no ’0’ is present. So unless you have a line made up entirely of zeroes, or are using a monospaced font, a width of 66ch will probably not give you a line containing 66 characters. What’s more, the rendered width of that line will vary with the font design, sometimes significantly.

Two text blocks are set to 34 ch wide, but the use of a condensed font (top) and an expanded font (bottom) makes the rendered width narrower and wider respectively.

The important part of Bringhurst’s guideline is not the ’66-characters’ but the ’satisfactory length’. This is about readability, and readability is affected by the length of a line more so than the number of characters in it.

A consistent finding is that long line lengths on screen are least preferred or judged as least easy to read [my emphasis]

With that in mind, restricting your line length using rem would be a far more appropriate unit to use:

.prose {
  max-inline-size: 30rem;
}

This would give you a line length accessibly tied to text size, but independent of font design.

But is using ch harmful?

Bringhurst’s guideline includes this little caveat: a page set in a serifed text face in a text size. This enables him to equate the number of characters in a line with its length. So if you are using a fairly standard typeface for your text then you’ll probably be fine. However that ’standard typeface’ assumption is implicit anytime you use ch to set the width of a column of text. Using rem removes that assumption and gives you what you are probably really after – a consistent, predictable limit on line length.

It didn’t surprise me to find that Eric Meyer had written about this six years ago. I’ll leave you with an important observation from his post:

If you’re working with multiple typefaces, say one for headlines and another for body copy, be careful about setting ch measures and thinking they’ll be equivalent between the two fonts. The odds are very, very high they won’t be.

So is using ch harmful? At the risk of saying it depends, it might not be harmful, but it could be, and there is a far more reliable and appropriate unit to use by way of the rem when it comes to limiting line length in a column of text.

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This Cinema's Screening The Muppet Christmas Carol Every Day In December Up To Xmas Eve

41 times in all.




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News roundup: deck.js, Yahoo Kills off Maps API, Patterns for Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture

Listen to this week's podcast (September 9, 2011) Patterns For Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture Patterns For Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture is a lengthy article by Addy Osmani detailing some basic principles of writing a large-scale JavaScript application. It's inspired by a classic Nicholas Zakas talk outlining some of the same principles ...




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“That’s how we silence them”: Verstappen’s stunning Brazil win from start to finish | Formula 1

From pre-race confusion to post-race joy, from 17th on the grid to a stunning win, here's how Max Verstappen's Brazilian Grand Prix unfolded on his radio.




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Every way Verstappen can clinch the championship at the Las Vegas Grand Prix | Formula 1

Max Verstappen is poised to clinch the 2024 drivers' championship if he finishes ahead of Lando Norris one more time. Here's how he can seal a fourth title at the next race.




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Adding structured data support for Product Variants

In 2022, Google expanded support for Product structured data, enabling enhanced product experiences in Google Search. Then, in 2023 we added support for shipping and returns structured data. Today, we are adding structured data support for Product variants, allowing merchants to easily show more variations of the products they sell, and show shoppers more relevant, helpful results. Providing variant structured data will also complement and enhance merchant center feeds, including automated feeds.




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Adding markup support for organization-level return policies

We're adding support for return policies at the organization level, which means you'll be able to specify a general return policy for your business instead of having to define one for each individual product you sell.




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Configure your shipping and returns directly in Search Console

This post discusses a new and easier way to add shipping or return information directly in Search Console.




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Supporting AVIF in Google Search

Over the recent years, AVIF has become one of the most commonly used image formats on the web. We're happy to announce that AVIF is now a supported file type in Google Search, for Google Images as well as any place that uses images in Google Search. You don't need to do anything special to have your AVIF files indexed by Google.




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General approach to translating Across projects out of Across

If you read my articles regularly, you are already know that I dislike Across. Across is difficult to use, does not offer feature that are readily available in other CAT tools, and rather slows me down during my work instead of … Continue reading




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TR?ICTIO Invoicing System development approaches the finish line

As some of you already know, the TR?ICTIO Invoicing System is a simple invoicing platform focusing on freelance translators. I have been developing the system for about 12 months and after extensive personal testing and actual use in my business, as … Continue reading




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A New Approach to Water Flow Algorithm for Text Line Segmentation

This paper proposes a new approach to water flow algorithm for the text line segmentation. Original method assumes hypothetical water flows under a few specified angles to the document image frame from left to right and vice versa. As a result, unwetted image frames are extracted. These areas are of major importance for text line segmentation. Method modifications mean extension values of water flow angle and unwetted image frames function enlargement. Results are encouraging due to text line segmentation improvement which is the most challenging process stage in document image processing.




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A Petri Nets based Approach to Specify Individual and Collaborative Interaction in 3D Virtual Environments

This work describes a methodology that supports the design and implementation of software modules, which represent the individual and collaborative three-dimensional interaction process phases. The presented methodology integrates three modeling approaches: Petri Nets, a collaborative manipulation model based on the combination of single user interaction techniques taxonomy, and object-oriented programming concepts. The combination of these elements allows for the description of interaction tasks, the sequence of interaction processes being controlled by Petri Nets with the codes generated automatically. By the integration of these approaches, the present work addresses not only the entire development cycle of both individual and collaborative three-dimensional interaction, but also the reuse of developed interaction blocks in new virtual environment projects.




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LaSca: a Large Scale Group Decision Support System

Decision-making involves choosing between one ore more alternatives, to achieve one or more goals. To support this process, there are decision support systems that employ different approaches, supporting groups or not. Generally, however, these systems do not have great flexibility; their users have to follow preestablished decision methods. This paper, after exposing some decision-making processes, describes a system, LaSca (from Large Scale), to support decisions in large-scale groups. This system, besides allowing effective achievement of the benefits of deciding in large groups through the proper structuring of the group, also allows its users to define themselves how this structuring will happen, based or not in the existing theories on the subject. So, in addition to facilitate the decision-making process, LaSca also allows its users to decide how to decide.




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CSCWD: Applications and Challenges




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A Clustering Approach for Collaborative Filtering Recommendation Using Social Network Analysis

Collaborative Filtering(CF) is a well-known technique in recommender systems. CF exploits relationships between users and recommends items to the active user according to the ratings of his/her neighbors. CF suffers from the data sparsity problem, where users only rate a small set of items. That makes the computation of similarity between users imprecise and consequently reduces the accuracy of CF algorithms. In this article, we propose a clustering approach based on the social information of users to derive the recommendations. We study the application of this approach in two application scenarios: academic venue recommendation based on collaboration information and trust-based recommendation. Using the data from DBLP digital library and Epinion, the evaluation shows that our clustering technique based CF performs better than traditional CF algorithms.




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Web 2.0: Applications and Mechanisms




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QoS-based Approach for Dynamic Web Service Composition

Web Services have become a standard for integration of systems in distributed environments. By using a set of open interoperability standards, they allow computer-computer interaction, regardless the programming languages and operating systems used. The Semantic Web Services, by its turn, make use of ontologies to describe their functionality in a more structural manner, allowing computers to reason about the information required and provided by them. Such a description also allows dynamic composition of several Web Services, when only one is not able to provide the desired functionality. There are scenarios, however, in which only the functional correctness is not enough to fulfill the user requirements, and a minimum level of quality should be guaranteed by their providers. In this context, this work presents an approach for dynamic Web Service composition that takes into account the composition overall quality. The proposed approach relies on a heuristics to efficiently perform the composition. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed approach, a Web Service composition application prototype was developed and experimented with public test sets, along with another approach that does not consider quality in the composition process. The results have shown that the proposed approach in general finds compositions with more quality, within a reasonable processing time.




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An Approach for Feature Modeling of Context-Aware Software Product Line

Feature modeling is an approach to represent commonalities and variabilities among products of a product line. Context-aware applications use context information to provide relevant services and information for their users. One of the challenges to build a context-aware product line is to develop mechanisms to incorporate context information and adaptation knowledge in a feature model. This paper presents UbiFEX, an approach to support feature analysis for context-aware software product lines, which incorporates a modeling notation and a mechanism to verify the consistency of product configuration regarding context variations. Moreover, an experimental study was performed as a preliminary evaluation, and a prototype was developed to enable the application of the proposed approach.




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Semantic Web: Theory and Applicationsns




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Algorithms for the Evaluation of Ontologies for Extended Error Taxonomy and their Application on Large Ontologies

Ontology evaluation is an integral and important part of the ontology development process. Errors in ontologies could be catastrophic for the information system based on those ontologies. As per our experiments, the existing ontology evaluation systems were unable to detect many errors (like, circulatory error in class and property hierarchy, common class and property in disjoint decomposition, redundancy of sub class and sub property, redundancy of disjoint relation and disjoint knowledge omission) as defined in the error taxonomy. We have formulated efficient algorithms for the evaluation of these and other errors as per the extended error taxonomy. These algorithms are implemented (named as OntEval) and the implementations are used to evaluate well-known ontologies including Gene Ontology (GO), WordNet Ontology and OntoSem. The ontologies are indexed using a variant of already proposed scheme Ontrel. A number of errors and warnings in these ontologies have been discovered using the OntEval. We have also reported the performance of our implementation, OntEval.




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Des frappes de Tsahal ont fait plus de 50 morts au Liban et à Gaza, tirs de roquettes sur Israël

Des frappes de Tsahal ont fait plus de 50 morts au Liban et à Gaza, tirs de roquettes sur Israël