Rob Eberhardt

Because not proofreading shows your contempt for us both.

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.

First connect the dots:

1. Looked up that CLSID with regedit in HKCR\CLSDID\{E579AB5F-1CC4-44B4-BED9-DE0991FF0623}
2. Looked up its AppID there: {56BE716B-2F76-4dfa-8702-67AE10044F0B}
3. Open Component Services: Start > Run > dcomcnfg
4. (Guess that it's VSS related since SBS often has VSS errors, and) open My Computer > DCOM Config > Volume Shadow Copy Service > properties dialog.
5. Confirm Volume Shadow Copy Service has that Application ID: {56BE716B-2F76-4dfa-8702-67AE10044F0B}

Then actually make the fix:

1. Open Security tab > Launch and Activation Permissions > [Edit] button
2. [Add] Network Service,  [OK]
3. Allow Local Activation permissions to Network Service,  [OK], [OK]

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!). 

Here are some good official links:

• IE8 home page
• IE8 Readiness Toolkit
• IE8 Developer Highlights
• IE8 Release Notes

And the interesting progress & commentary:

• IE8 passes Acid2 test (Acid2 is a CSS Rendering test)
• IE Team says IE8 will have to opt-in to its own new standards-support, and then changes their minds (hooray!)
• Ajaxian on IE 8: Better Ajax, CSS, DOM, and new features
• John Resig (JQuery) applauds IE8's great Javascript (and other) progress

My own/other thoughts:

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!