Google Maps and Internet Explorer 8

Yes, yes, I know that Internet Explorer 8 is still in beta testing. Despite that and the fact that I permanently run my browser in IE7 emulation mode, I have still seen a few problems here and there while surfing the web. The biggest one so far is probably whatever problem it is that completely stops me from using Google Maps.

Have a look at the screenshot and see for yourself the horrors which I was subjected to when trying to plan a little journey of mine.

As well as not seeing any actual mapped journey (just a couple of markers), the map also broke out of its usual confines and the zoom controls were obviously on acid or something. Cool. I wonder how it’ll look if I print it out…

Fun and games with Mono

Mono is the Linux port of .NET, Microsoft’s all-encompassing programming framework.

Mono also has an Apache module which allows ASP and C# code to be run in Linux.

At the moment, my VPS runs Ubuntu, so I set out to find a way of installing Mono. Unfortunately, Mono doesn’t have an automatic distribution repository for Ubuntu installers (Debian-style). Therefore, I needed to download and compile the sources.

Mono, however, is a massive piece of software and it took more than half-an-hour to compile and install, which is more than I’ve had to wait for anything like it before. Fortunately, XSP and mod_mono took much less time.

Something which helped me a lot was a quick tutorial on the Ubuntu forums. Without that, I’d have been stuck to compile and install the right things! Obviously, this is somewhere where Mono can do much better with pre-compiled binaries.

I will post a copy of the tutorial up on the site at some point just in case the site goes down.

PS. If you get the message when compiling XSP that APXS cannot be found, then you need to install the apache2-threaded-dev package. You can do this by running sudo aptitude install apache2-threaded-dev.

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If you’ve been paying attention over the last couple of months, you’ll most likely know of the uproar concerning Apple’s Software Update on Windows, and how it used to include new software (namely Safari) in the same section as software…

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