Well if you’re like me, you like everything to look good in every browser (except IE6). Of course you can use sites like BrowserShots but there is a few things terribly wrong with it (enough to make me not actually use it). The load times are horrendous for starters, upwards of 10 minutes to an hour in some cases, probably due to the popularity of the service. I think you can pay for faster load times but that isn’t what we want (do we?). And there is way too many browsers already pre-selected. There should be common browsers and then older or less common browsers. I guess it needs a better UI is what I am getting at.

Well once again Adobe have come to the rescue with Adobe BrowserLab a.k.a Meer Meer. My first impressions are that it is unbelievably fast compared to other similar services. It also renders multiple browser images (yes, images, I thought it was straight HTML at first) at one time, so you can “onion skin” your selected browsers and see where objects are skewed. For example I found out IE7 renders the video page incorrectly on this site.

This free service by Adobe is still in beta so I suggest you get in quick. It was only by luck that I got in; I decided to see if it was usable after trying to find a multi-browser preview solution. You can find BrowerLab here and you need an Adobe ID (also free).

Included Browers/OS:

• Firefox 3/XP
• Firefox 2/XP
• Firefox3/OSX
• Firefox 2/OSX
• Internet Explorer 7/XP
• Internet Explorer 6/XP
• Safari 3.0/OSX

As you can see there is no support for Linux or Chrome (yet?). I’d expect Firefox on Linux to display similar to other operating systems. Firefox2 and Firefox3 usually display identical pages, same for IE6 and 7. Also, Chrome uses Webkit and so does Safari! Perhaps Adobe is still sorting out a deal with Google or still porting it over as everything is presented through Adobe Flash Player.

Also note, you need to comment out or remove any conditional statements that prompt the user with a JavaScript alert box. I just PHP-commented it out or you could add letters in some places to make it invalid.

Remember, sign up while you still can!

Note: I didn’t take any pictures or video anything because I thought I would fail.

Well just last week my mum’s (yes, I am Australian so we spell it “mum” not “mom”) monitor started acting funny. Her entire computer is a mixed bag of brands and the monitor just happened to be an Acer, as the computer prior to that was an Acer but as expected it died after 2 years. I was ammused when I found out the actual LCD was made by LG/Phillips and the power supply board was made by TDK so I thought maybe I could fix it.

The symptoms were the monitor turns off after roughly one second. After about 5 minutes of Googling and forum stalking I was sure it was the power supply and a capactior was the issue. I took it apart and in my case, the power supply board and the board for the display adapter (excuse my lack of terminology) were two separate boards which made it a little easier. I ripped apart the monitor.

I had to wait 7 days however until I had enough time to run down to Jaycar and get some capactiors. I thought I’d take the board with me and show the person and to make sure I wouldn’t forget the rating of the capacitors I needed. The guy was rather helpful and set me up with 4 capacitors, a soldering iron and some solder. He suggested I replace all 4 of them, although he said 1 of them looked alright.

Now this was my first time using a soldering iron and it was quite the experience. I had an old motherboard (the one from that Acer computer I mentioned earlier) and decided to do some practise on that before I try it for real. After about 20 seconds I went straight into the deep end. I started trying to melt the old solder; a process that took longer than expected but I eventually got there.

I am pretty sure the existing solder had a layer of some metal hence why it took a while nevertheless I eventually got the first capactior out. I initially took care with the capactiors (the old ones that is) but I was doing this ghetto style and I didn’t have a vice on my desk so I just ripped them out after weakening the solder.

I almost gave it away though, I accidentally let my soldering iron touch the power cable of the same device… lets just say I was lucky and I was very cautious from there on. I replaced the capacitors, taking note of the correct polarity and soldered them in. I must say my soldering work was quite good for being self taught, and doing it for the first time. Moving forward I thought i would test it after replacing on capacitor. There was an improvement: The monitor stays on for more than one second but flickers so another capacitor is the issue.

I tested it after 2 more replacements and it was alright however there was a slight noise, a high pitched ringing noise. I thought why not replace the last one, surely the new ones would have no issues. To my surprise the last capactior was fine, one of the new ones wasn’t yet the monitor worked. I was really happy at this point.

I basically replaced 4 blown capactiors and it worked! It only cost $25 for the equipment I used. I bought a Soldering Iron ($15) and 4 capactiors (25V, 470 micro farad) and solder which totaled another ten dollars. I also used some pliers to pull the capactiors out and the screw driver inbuilt into it (it was one of those multi-swiss-army-knife-wannabe tools).

However if you are doing this I would suggest to you this: Get a vice, get a work place with heaps of space and wear safety glasses. I sort of walked into the dark and got kind of lost with this one but it is very satisfying to fix something as complicated as an LCD screen. It only took 3 hours or so as well but I had something to eat during that time.

P.S. Also make sure your capacitors discharge, I waited for the LED to go out.