I've been making this web stuff long enough that some is well past its expiration date.
Copyright Rob Eberhardt
I've been making this web stuff long enough that some is well past its expiration date.
Speaking of usingnew web tech, I just rolled out a new site yesterday:
Some bullets for gearheads:
I’ve been using CSS3 for a long time, but this was the the first with HTML5. The design is based on existing print materials. It’s just a brochure site, but it was fun.
I finally took some of that new web tech I was talking about here and used it here. I couldn’t stand the “brick” look anymore, so it’s mostly border-radius and box-shadow, but there’s also an RGBA background color and a webkit transition. None of this gives joy for IE, though – perhaps I should Chrome Frame it? …I did also tighten up the Reader feed and search box.
I realize how long it’s been here, and that Facebook’s walled garden has been catching the vast amount of my sharing. I’d like to “get out” here more, but til I do, don’t miss me there.
~r
I recently stumbled on FindMeByIP.com, and thought “yet another IP lookup / geolocation site”. Then I noticed the “Modernizr Support” section, detailing my browser’s support for new standards.
I was impressed both by the graph and my browser’s support. Here’s how it looked
with Google Chrome:
It reminded me that last week I was experimenting with HTML5, CSS3, and Chrome Frame, and had whipped together an ugly(!) demo. I figured I’d line up the current browsers here and run them through both exercises. To be clear, my demo is NOT fair because it uses several Webkit-specific extensions, but I thought it worth seeing.
The Downward Spiral
Chrome 3.0 (and Safari 4.0)
Yes, it’s tilted on purpose. Interesting bit: the black background is the abyss behind the
rounded <HTML>. Who knows what lurks there? (Bizarre video artifacts
when I resize the browser, actually).
Firefox 3.5
@font-face worked on my header, but no gradients, and I don’t know why border-radius
failed. (It’s worked on other sites).
Opera 10
Why is the standards-nazis’ browser so sucky here?
Internet Explorer 8
The bottom of the suck, and what we’ve all come to know and loathe. (To be fair
though, IE has supported much of this since v4, but in a non-standard way.
Pragmatically, I’d grant it Box-shadow, Opacity, Gradients, 2D Transforms, and Transitions
thanks to its CSS
Visual Filters and Transitions.)
A Testing Crisis
Currently I test my sites with SIX web browsers: Safari/Chrome, Firefox, Chrome, IE6, IE7, and IE8. This is a testing crisis for me, and IE6 has no give (with a stubborn 33% market share), so I’ve been forcing IE8 into downgraded IE7 mode for a slight reprieve. Yes, I downgrade an already-behind browser!
Sure, I could try to encourage users to upgrade their browsers, but apparently most people have no idea what that means!
Aagh, there’s no way out! With apologies to Mr. Folds:
IE is a brick and I’m drowning slowly.
It’s really more like three bricks drowning the web. If we could drop one or two versions, IE8 could be survivable, but how?
Hope We Can Hope For?
This is where Chrome Frame wants to come to the rescue. With it, I can use Chrome as an IE plugin, just like Flash, Java, AIR, or Silverlight. Sure it’s cheating, but in a good way – it still uses the original native web code (so it is NOT the Un-web like those other plugins).
IE8 with Chrome Frame:
Perfect! And the same results in IE6 and IE7!
If a plugin story is acceptable (widespread use of the Chrome Frame plugin would help), this means only 3 browser engines to test. I haven’t used it in production yet, but I’ll be carefully considering it for new projects.
~
not to waste hours in time and a client's money on lengthy workarounds in an unnecessary attempt at cross-browser perfection.
Remember the IMG element’s LowSRC attribute? Unfortunately, no modern browser does! While the big ones used to offer this for the slower folks among us, they have all dropped support for it.
I need it again, though! A current project calls for a (just) 320x280 high-color illustration with alpha-transparency – nothing other than a full 32-bit alpha-channel PNG will do that justice.
Out of the editor, it’s 160KB, which is huge for homepage decoration. A good PNGCrushing got that down to 106KB, which is still 16 seconds on 56K. Oh, and there’s the rest of the page too…
A pinch of JQuery and classic Javascript later, and LowSRC works again!
$(function() {
// jLowSRC - Rob Eberhardt (@slingfive.com), May 2009
$("IMG[lowsrc]").each(function() {
if (this.readyState=='complete' || this.complete==true) { return }
var lowsrc = $(this).attr('lowsrc');
this.lowsrcElem = this;
if ($.browser.msie && $.browser.version <7 && lowsrc.toLowerCase().indexOf('.png') >-1) { //IE6
$(this).wrap('<span></span>');
this.lowsrcElem = this.parentNode;
this.lowsrcElem.style.display = 'block';
this.lowsrcElem.style.width = this.offsetWidth;
this.lowsrcElem.style.height = this.offsetHeight;
this.lowsrcElem.style.filter = "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='" +lowsrc+ "')";
this.style.visibility = 'hidden';
} else {
this.lowsrcElem.style.background = 'url(' +lowsrc+ ') no-repeat 0 0';
}
this.onload = function() {
this.lowsrcElem.style.background = '';
this.lowsrcElem.style.filter = '';
this.style.visibility = 'visible';
}
});
});
It works in Firefox 3, Chrome, Safari 3, Opera 9, IE 7 and 8. I also got it
handling IE 6 (with a small re-flow jump to the final image), which is the bulk of
the code. (Dear
33% of the world, your web browser is 800 years old and eating our
brains. Broadband isn’t free, but newer browsers are.)
For testing, I simulated modem speeds and “first loads” (disabled cache) with the brilliant Fiddler2. It’s not just a noticeable improvement, it’s the difference between getting sandwich or sticking around.
Hope it helps someone else!
Kevin Pang’s 10 Programming Proverbs Every Developer Should Know
Great stuff there. You got that?
Submitted to http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
Exact query that shows a problem (copy this from the Google search box):
Technet Plus -vs- Action Pack
Resulting Google page that shows problem (copy the Google URL):
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS291&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Technet+Plus+-vs-+action+pack
The specific web page or site that is misbehaving: Type(s) of problem (check
all that apply):
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Microsoft/Applications/Q_23272956.html
Additional details:
To Firefox or Internet Explorer user-agent strings,
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Microsoft/Applications/Q_23272956.html
shows
its registration page. "View this solution now by starting your 7-day free
trial..." at the bottom under Accepted solution. The real answer content
is NOT on the page.
But when I switch my browser's UA string to Googlebot, it shows the real answer content which was in the Google search results. This is deceptive to users, dilutes Google's search relevance, and and violates your Webmaster Guidlines at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
NOTE: SOMEtimes Experts-exchange.com DOES show the answer at the bottom, so please test from a variety of IPs and browsers.
Interestingly, it's no new problem and Google is aware of but ignoringit? Maybe if more people fill out the form to complain...?
It's August 2008, almost 2 years since Internet Explorer 7 came out. So why on earth does IE6 still have almost the same market share?
Fri Feb 1 00:01:02 2008 - Sun Aug 31 23:58:00 2008 213.0 Days
1. MSIE 7.x
15370300 (41%)
2. MSIE 6.x
13493578 (36%)
3. FireFox
6230544 (17%)
4. Safari
1276526 (3%)
5. Opera x.x
306845 (1%)
I was sure the world would be (nearly) free of IE6 a year ago, but adoption has slowed so much that it's only given 1% to IE7 in the last 7 months.
Microsoft, you're not pushing hard enough -- get that fogey out of here ASAP!
And now back to futzing with transparent PNGs for IE6...
You will not sleep, if you lie there a thousand years, until you have opened your hand and yielded that which is not yours to give or to withhold. You may think you are dead, but it will be only a dream; you may think you have come awake, but it will still be only a dream. Open your hand, and you will sleep indeed -- then wake indeed.
From Lilith, by George MacDonald
Found in The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis, page 123
It's a book meme. I did this, you do it too:
On the meaning of life:
What if Life is just one big, much-too-interesting waiting room?
If so, I think I'm a bit afraid to find out what's next...
Business has been good. Unfortunately, it has been so busy that the smelly old Slingshot Solutions website stuck around way too long.
When I say smelly, think:
So my goals for a new site were focused on simplicity and compatibility. I started designing building it when I started back to Slingshot Solutions full-time, and have been alternating between false starts, second-guessing, and neglect ever since.
It's finally done now, though. Please meet the slim and trim new "slingfive.com
2.0":
It works on any modern browser, plus IE6 (kicking and screaming). Some other geeky goodness:
Weaknesses / to-do:
For now I'm just happy it's out and not killing anyone. Hurrah!
Dear Mr. Q:
I find it disturbing that you could misspell your own name, and not notice/care for this long.
Dean pointed out that Apple's Webkit team is finally adding Internet Explorer's CSS Visual Filters (invented back in 1998 with Internet Explorer 4), and are calling it CSS Masks in Safari.
The sad news is that nobody's giving the IE team due credit. The good news is that that power is now there.
So hooray Safari for ignoring web standards! Yes, I mean that. I'll take a good de-facto standard over nothing any day (anyone remember when the W3C actually did stuff?) Step up to the plate, Opera, Mozilla, and Konqueror!
While you're at it, don't forget to grab IE's other great dev features, too!
If we get DHTML
Behaviors, Databinding, CSS
Expressions, Conditional
Comments, and Deferred
Scripts, that will cover my 2005 Dev
Wishlist for Other Browsers.
That done, MS-haters could complain less about proprietary/innovation
and the the web could keep moving forward. To be clear, I'm saying
the effort to complain about IE's extras would be better spent copying them in other
browsers, helping web developers and by extension users.
Hooray for progress!
I saw Matt McSpirit's posting about Microsoft's new PartnerBot IM agent and contest, and gave it a whirl. The result was a bit disappointing, and then went downhill:
(4:45:55 PM) me: How can I combine SQL instances on SBS 2003?
(4:45:56 PM) MS PartnerBot: Welcome back...
Do you want more on How to buy SQL Server or SQL Server Product information?
(4:46:00 PM) me: no
(4:46:00 PM) MS PartnerBot: I'm sorry I couldn't help - please try again
(4:46:16 PM) me: I'll just ask Google.com instead
(4:46:16 PM) MS PartnerBot: Component Object Model
(4:46:20 PM) me: What?
(4:46:21 PM) MS PartnerBot: Partner Bot is unable to answer your query, please try again.
(4:46:30 PM) me: Like I said, Google will help.
(4:46:31 PM) MS PartnerBot: I'll try to help - please type your question
(4:46:40 PM) me: No thanks.
(4:46:40 PM) MS PartnerBot: You're welcome, please come back soon.
(4:46:55 PM) me: (for nothing)
(4:46:56 PM) MS PartnerBot: I cannot help you yet, could you refine your search?
(4:47:03 PM) me: Who's asking the questions here?
(4:47:03 PM) MS PartnerBot: I'm sorry I can't find that name in my directory - please try the Outlook Address Book
(4:47:17 PM) me: Ok.
(4:47:18 PM) MS PartnerBot: Partner Bot can't understand your question. Please rephrase it.
(4:47:32 PM) me: Who is the Heartland District's partner representative?
(4:47:33 PM) MS PartnerBot: Our partners are our priority - we want to help you develop and grow your business. Please visit the programme membership page at http://partner.microsoft.com/uk/40014052.
(4:47:43 PM) me: Why don't you show me that information here?
(4:47:43 PM) MS PartnerBot: In a competitive environment, having the right business intelligence can be the deciding factor in closing a deal. Gain a competitive edge with the information your customer needs to make a decision in your favour. Learn more at: https://partner.microsoft.com/UK/40018122
(4:47:58 PM) me: You're Eliza, aren't you?
(4:47:59 PM) MS PartnerBot: I am Partner Bot - code with attitude. Please type your question.
(4:48:04 PM) me: ha
"Code with attitude" -- if only it was helpful too.
A friend gave me a work update today, which made my day:
"They wanted a craptastic site that just shows what they offer and how to get a hold of them, so I pooped something out of Frontpage and gave it to them."
I'd normally give credit, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want it for this.
I've fought with this before, and am getting it again on a fresh SBS R2 install in monitoring reports (and the Event Viewer/System log):
The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID {E579AB5F-1CC4-44B4-BED9-DE0991FF0623} to the user NT AUTHORITY/NETWORK SERVICE SID (S-1-5-20). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.
It took a long time to track down/fix the first time. It was faster this time, but I'm documenting it now for future reference. I underlined the important bits above.
My opinion: connecting the dots shouldn't be so nearly much more involved than making
the fix.
(Credit to this article for documenting the basic troubleshooting process.)
I won't say it's "finally" coming, because it might be one of Internet Explorer's fastest major upgrades. But IE8 is coming, and better yet, I think it is "finally" catching up with the competition.
The news is all over the place, and this time I won't dig into the tech like I did with the IE7 beta. I have installed the developer beta for a little testing, and it looks pretty similar to IE7. Since the UI isn't changing much, I think it's a comparatively developer-heavy release (yum!).
New Direction: A lot of the most interesting new stuff is neither UI/security improvements nor core web technology improvements, but Web 2.0-type stuff like Activities and WebSlices which seem to be targeting easier mashups and 3rd-party browser extensions.
Bad Chrome: A later IE7 release added back the Classic file menu. Now they've added the crap links bar back in, sacrificing that much more viewport to the biggest waste of browser chrome. Those plus the infobar warning I got right away doubles the 3 rows it should be, meaning if it goes live this way, my various inattentive relatives are gonna be scrolling way too much:
Developer's Browser Ecosystem: IE7 usage is still roughly even with IE6, and seems to have leveled off. It's frustrating that IE6 is still hanging on so much. Let's get IE8 in and IE6 gone!
Microsoft just published an interesting Windows Vista One Year Vulnerability Report
I especially like this graph:
I mentioned a few days ago that Vista seems to have picked up at XP's current level of stability. From this it looks like it's done the same with security.
I think what's remarkable is that they've accomplished this while increasing the amount of Windows code (because of new features). Normally more code creates more ways for it to fail and to get hacked, but the Vista team has done the opposite. That's impressive.
For bonus points, read through the report's comments (pretty fun on its own) and then read this response on the MS Software Development Lifecycle team blog.
I've been using Vista Business for about a year. I've had it on a secondary work machine since around May, and as my primary work machine since November. Overall, it's quite nice.
But it's definitely had its quirks, mostly with waking from standby or hibernation. I put a couple hotfixes on, and they definitely helped, but it still did have an occasional strangeness. That said, in almost a year's time, I only remember needing to hard-reset it perhaps 3 times, and needing to reboot it maybe 5.
Now, I think that's great, considering these machines belong to a tweaker like me (read: not a grandma or Mac-type user who doesn't try new things). I'd say it's comparable reliability to a current stable XP system. This is an important comparison -- XP has been maturing since 2001, but Vista started out at the same level of reliability.
As an aside, I've had several non-technical folks ask me "is Vista as bad as they say?" and I've only been able to respond "as who says?" The only negative reviews I've seen were some journalists who must have put Vista on old hardware without current drivers. But IT professionals I've talked to who've used Vista for a while seem to like it.
So anyway, I still didn't want that occasional quirk, so I tracked down hot-off-the-presses Service Pack 1, and applied it last night. It took about 45 minutes, and went flawlessly. Hooray for that, and hopefully it sails even smoother now...
In case anyone needs this, I found that this (quite batchable) command opens the XPSP2 Firewall appropriately so Symantec Management Console can push SAV licenses to workstations:
>
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 2967 "Symantec AntiVirus Client Management" enable
subnet
Wow, I've been out of it for a while...
I've failed to mention my new job at TQL as Web Team Supervisor (best described as "all things web"). Well, 2yrs ago isn't "new" anymore, though. The job was both a break for me and also an experiment to try A) being not a consultant, B) working for a non-IT organization, and C) working with bigger stuff. The break/experiments are over now -- my questions are answered and I'm back to working on Slingshot Solutions full-time (never actually stopped, but it was only for a few clients).
Enough background. Going into this, I wanted to start a "consultant-vs-corporate drone" comparison . Coming back out, I do again. So here it is. I'll just sketch it here and fill it in as I think of it. Consider this in progress:
Working For The Man: Regular and Separate.
But too many, and for no extra reward but sacrifice to my own quest for perfection.
Working For The Me: Free and Easy.
"Working for the man" can mean "I'm the man!" But sometimes
it's too free. I often found/find myself working at odd hours I shouldn't.
And often my boss was a jerk -- time off doesn't pay the bills, so no vacation and
no sick time. Chalk this up to I'm just a nincompoop.
The Man: Good-ish.
Unfortunately, a strong sense of ownership without enough discretion = lousy follow-through
and perpetual frustration. Not my bag baby.
The Me: Great.
The only limit is my own capacity. Time tends to be the biggest limit
for me (I often suspect this is more a bachelor's game).
The Man: High.
An uptight organization's expections often venture outside of performance.
Uptight sucks.
The Me:
High.
Remember that bit about Ownership? It's not all healthy. While
it's great to own your own business, it really sucks when it owns you. (works
of my own hands ... otherwise known as idolatry, I'd say).
OTOH, I noticed I smile, sing and play music, and play with my kids a lot more lately
(at least when I'm not swamped).
The Man: Great.
It's wonderful to let HR, Accounting, DBAs and Network Admins just do
their thing, so I don't have to.
The Me: Sucks.
Yes, I use good subcontractors, but everything is still ultimately my problem.
The Man: Consistent.
There's always someone else watching (or at least the sense that there is),
which keeps me on my game.
The Me: Variable.
As a lone consultant, motivation is more easily affected by other
influences like mood or weather (these snow days are killing me!)
The Man: Convoluted.
When politics/red tape get in the way, it's sometimes hard to tell if I'm fighting
for project's success or just my own ego.
The Me: Clear.
Simple: My customers' success is my success.
I'm not a bumper-sticker person. I really have never had one, and probably never will. I guess my soapbox-ish feelings have never overcome my greater aversion to more visual pollution. ...Except when it comes to driving considerately. If I saw one, I'm sure I would buy and apply a bumper sticker along these lines:
Driving considerately depends on awareness. If you're oblivious to what's going on around you, yes "mental auto-pilot" might keep you personally safe (somewhat), but it interferes with the effective flow of traffic.
This "driving oblivion" is essentially a form of laziness. People should be ashamed when they are passed on the right, and should feel the need to apologize somehow, perhaps by flashing their lights in acknowledgement of the inconvenience they may have just caused the passer. But of course they'd have to notice that too...
A similar symptom of driving oblivion is failure to indicate: just drift on over to wherever you feel like being, with no consideration for other drivers.
I guess flow and being considerate are big with me these days.
A not particularly-related frustration, but one which also breaks flow, is traffic waves. I think I mentioned once that I'd meant to write about it as a form of compression wave, but fortunately someone beat me to it. Traffic waves are actually not a symptom of laziness, but rather one of greediness -- never allowing enough space in front of you that someone else might be able to cut in line. In the process, your foot ends up back-and-forth between pedals, magnifying the compression waves and actually slowing the flow. (Imagine a sink drain that burps, back with the air, forth with the water).
(Normally I'd apologize for venting, soapboxing, etc. But lookee there at my name up top! Speaking freely is a blog's "why".)
A comment I just posted at http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/attensa/ :
I've been using intraVnews for several years, liking Outlook's sorting power to manage info, but I'm not at one machine long enough lately to keep current. So I went shopping for an online reader, and found your post and the RSS Reader Survey .
Based on those, I tried (or at least looked at) Bloglines, Rojo, NetNewsWire and Great News. I mostly didn't like the UIs (too weak or clunky compared to Outlook), and most just didn't work on my Windows Mobile phone' Pocket IE.
I ended up using Google Reader instead -- sure it's not as powerful as intraVnews/Outlook (no search folders, no deactivating feeds), but I don't think I need that power since the "reading flow" is so smooth (aka "UX", or User Experience in Microsoft's new lingo). I don't Need to filter out the "junk" since it's easy to just ignore it.
Granted, it's only been 2 weeks, but I've been successfully keeping up on 296 feeds pretty easily.
I should mention I was actually looking for an Outlook/online combo. Apparently Newsgator and Attensa both do this, but Newsgator ain't free (and I'm a tightwad), and I couldn't find Attensa's supposed free service... I've tried the Outlook addins for both in the past, tho, and they're fine (since it's Outlook).
Hm, should I post my 296 feed OPML? ..or I guess Google Reader has a sharing feature -- maybe that's something to try out.
Busy? Oh yeah.
For those in a similar tight place...
Alright, I shouldn't have experimented with the BIOS settings so flippantly, but all my other current hardware either has an internal "reset" jumper, or it automatically detects problems and resets itself, so I assumedI was safe...
Well imagine my surprise that powering on gave me an utterly blank screen, and no combination of keys would fix it. Opening the case showed no reset mechanism either. And Sager's website showed no support options except an RMA form...
Fortunately I found (elsewhere) an email address for support: websupport@sagernotebook.com. I emailed and got a response within 24 hours asking for a serial number. Knowing it was out of warranty (and expecting a "sorry about your luck" response), I gritted my teeth & answered.
Glory be, 12 hours later I received these instructions from Daniel on how to reset the BIOS to factory settings:
Bob,
If you feel comfortable, Try this, 1st unplug all the power remove the AC Adapter and the Battery. And open the bottom cover(see attachment picture) and unplug the Cmos-Battery’s wire(red&black crop by Green Color) for like 15sec. Then reconnect it back the wire then everything ACA and the Big Battery. See that will help.
*** We don't hold any responsibility ***
Daniel
Sager computer
18005 Cortney Ct
City of Industry, CA 91748
Tel# 1-800-741-2219 626 964 4849
Fax# 626-964-2381
Despite Bob-ifying me, it made enough sense that I was booting normally in 5 minutes (and mostly time for the tiny screws).
It's good info, Sager just needs to share it more easily. I wrote back to thank Daniel, and suggested they put this kind of info in a public knowledgebase.
IE7 was supposed to have supported min-width in CSS. It doesn't work right.
Their spec says it applies to "floating block-level elements", but they don't mention that it also requires an explicit width -- "auto" won't work. While that's fine for "stretchy" layouts, it's useless for what I want: a flexible, tableless form layout (with elements which can expand to their contents' sizes).
In fact, my previous IE6 hacks to force it with CSS expressions now don't work,
because while the min-width attribute is
valid in IE7, the feature is not actually implemented. SO, while I
previously could pick it up in IE6 with something like this:
SELECT {
min-width:11em;
_width:expression(this.currentStyle.getAttribute('min-width'));
}
IE7 now requires the same trick to be like so:
SELECT {
min-width:11em;
_width:expression(this.currentStyle.getAttribute('minWidth'));
}
Unfortunately, forking logic inside CSS expressions is a bit of a pain. That, combined with the limitations of this technique (IE6 treats width as min-widthonly when the contained elements can't be wrapped), prompted me to write a solution script. Here it is:
/*
author: Rob Eberhardt
desc: fix MinWidth for IE6 & IE7
params: none
returns: nothing
notes: cannot yet fix childless elements like INPUT or SELECT
history:
2006-11-20 revised for standards-mode compatibility
2006-11-17 first version
*/
It uses a shim technique to fix it only for IE (other browsers don't support currentStyle). The remaining limitation here is that it only works on elements which canHaveChildren, so it does not work on childless elements,like form INPUTs or SELECTs. Any suggestions for this case are welcome!
To use it, just call fixMinWidthForIE() in the window.onload, or better yet when the DOM has loaded, and you're set.
2006-11-20: I updated the script for better standards-mode compatibility (it was causing extra blank lines). I had missed the doctype switch in my current project. The good news is that IE7 in standards mode does do min-width. (I wish I'd noticed that sooner!) However, I still have a lot of IE6 miles to go before I can put it to sleep...
Windows XP Professional? Check.
But what about 64-bit? Apparently it's actually not supported on 64-bit Windows
XP Professional.
I add a custom IIF function to every VBscript I make:
' IIF recreated for VBscript FUNCTION IIF(Expression, Truepart, Falsepart) IF Expression THEN IIF = Truepart ELSE IIF = Falsepart END IF END FUNCTION 'used like so: strFlavor = IIF(strColor="brown", "chocolate", "not chocolate")
Mind you, it evaluates all parameters on the way in, so even though this checks the objTest object when assigning using it, it would still fail (when the objTest object reference is not set):
strFlavor = IIF(IsObject(objTest), objTest.flavor, "vanilla")
It's no ternary operator, but it's still indispensible for efficient VBScript coding.
Guess I'm not the only one who was baffled by the new W3C XMLHTTPRequest spec credits.
From Dare Obasanjo:
Interesting. A W3C specification that documents a proprietary Microsoft API which not only does not include a Microsoft employee as a spec author but doesn't even reference any of the IXMLHttpRequest documentation on MSDN. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere. ;)
And then finally from Anne van Kesteren (one of the spec's authors):
Hereby my apologies to everyone who had to waste his time by writing a rant... The current draft reads: "Special thanks also to the Microsoft employees who first implemented the XMLHttpRequest interface, which was first widely deployed by the Windows Internet Explorer browser."
It's great that XMLHttpRequest is finally becoming an official standard. It's better though, that the "other" browsers didn't wait for this before implementing it. Real progress has happened as a result, in particular the recent popularity (& naming) of the AJAX technique, and the somewhat-related "Web 2.0" phenomenon.
The news also makes me smile at the anti-Microsoft folks who have thrown stones at Internet Explorer's standards support -- once again the IE team innovated (*overused word through gritted teeth*) a proprietary extension, and it was such a good thing that the competition swiped the idea, thus making it a de-facto standard.
I'd rather have a good de-facto standard now, than an official one too-late. End result: Developers and Users win (and they already are winning).
Footnote: Anyone else think it's strange that the standard's authors list seems to represent every browser except for XMLHttpRequest's inventor?
Via Dean Edwards' Links, meet HedgerWow's<SELECT>-Free Layer, a CSS-only workaround for Internet Explorer's SELECT bug with z-index.
It's not quite clear from the demo, but I think the magic is an absolutely-positioned + transparent + huge IFRAME inside the layer to show. C'est trés hacky, but it still seems better (in a way) than the usual dynamic hide/show javascript approach.
Here's hoping that Microsoft will quickly windows-update us all with IE7 (which fixes this bug, hoorah), and free us of these sHACKles.
Yuck! ...It even says "everything you need, nothing you don't" -- very much unlike this Flashturbation.
I'd guess the Flash designer hasn't seen Microsoft's (great) parody of its own bad design habits, The Microsoft Ipod:
In this blog's 1.25yrs alive: It's received 193 legit posts and comments, and 1388 comment spams. (And that's with a basic spam filter in place to catch the obvious 80%!)
It seems like the breeeport experiment might've accelerated it. It didn't seem to affect overall visits tho.
...Man, I gotta finish switching over to dasBlog soon.
I'm really not in love with IE or anything, but I do fight with it a lot...
I need to cover what I am in love with: my family, music, ice cream... -- the good stuff.
Something I bumped into today: The first time Internet Explorer loads a URL,
it sends an "HTTP_Accept" request header with the list of MIME types it accepts, like
so: HTTP_ACCEPT = application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword,
*/*
Any subsequent request of the same URL, though, only sends "*/*": HTTP_ACCEPT
= */*
Of course I watched this through an ASP page
which wrote out Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_Accept"). I wasn't
sure if it was IIS or IE's
fault tho, so I checked the raw headers with Fiddler,
and it's definitely IE.
What's especially strange is that I can find little or no mention of the problem. Anyone else heard of (or conquered) this?
It rather messes up a page I'm working on...
UPDATE: See
here for a bug and workaround demo article I just put together.