IE 6 will out live IE 7 – and I have proof
Microsoft have gone and released IE 8 (19/03/08) and with it finally gained ground on being a ’standards conformant’ web browser. This is excellent for the average user and long overdue. In fact it should in time make our lives as web developers easy simply because cross browser checking should be less demanding - will we ever be able to test in one browser?But then I was left thinking about how quickly this would be adopted particular within the elearning industry and I realised it may cause an interesting issue:Our user base has 2 principal operating systems
- Windows XP / Vista
- Windows 2000
The vast majority fall into the Windows XP group and therefore have the ability (from the manufactuer not necessarily company IT) to update. It is not unreasonable to assume the Microsfot update tool will push this out shortly. So everyone currently on IE7.0 moves on to IE8.0 probably within 6-12 months. But hang on a moment what about all those people on Windows 2000. There is no IE7.0 for them and certainly therefore no IE8.0.
Consequence: IE 6.0 is actually the last option here without an operating system upgrade which lets face it is unlikely if the machine has been around this long.So it therefore becomes conceivable that we’ll be left supporting IE6.0, 7.0 & 8.0 in the very near future, with decreasing attention given to IE 7.0.
And the proof...
http://ajaxian.com/archives/ie8-vs-ie6-rise-of-the-new-machine
Firefox collections plugin
Firefox has released a useful extension which I’ve been hunting for for some time now.
Simply: the ability to define a collection of plugins and install all of them with a single instruction. In fact they’ve gone further than this and allowed us to create collections of plugins which are available for others to click and grab. It really is simple and very useful.
Head over to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/editors_picks to see more. And if you’d like to access my all things google related collection check out the following: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/cdb63c71-9c70-f92a-5d80-554beb600806
Ascii Table
As a web developer we often need easy access to an ASCII table so I thought I'd move one out of Google and place it at easy reach.
Rails – speaking to rest as a mock webservice
Finally understood the distinctions between webservices and rest. Now I don't mean the theory aspects Roy Fieldings paper adequately explains the concepts and frankly helps a great deal to try to introduce technology which is along the lines of 'less is more'.
HTML meta data – MSThemeCompatible
Be aware this <META HTTP-EQUIV="MSThemeCompatible" CONTENT="no"> which is there to disable the Windows XP teletubby theme causes Safari and Firefox to completely remove scrollbars.
The issue is tracked in a Firefox bug report.
Localising a rails app – in 20 mins
I had an existing rails app which has nearly completed and during its development its been upgraded from 1.2 all the way up to 2.2.2. Anyway I sat down with the latest updates and figured that acts_as_paranoid and will_paginate needed to be altered but beyond that it seems it just worked.
Suffice to say I'd managed to configure the locales and make heavy use of google translate to begin adding an alternative language.
It is impressive how easily this has come together.
3 days to complete the showcase
Hi
So xmas break is coming and I've a long list of things I'd like to investigate concerning rails.
Having written a few apps now and kept up with rails.latest I'm ready for a serious test of my skills: a squash ladder in 3 days!
Should be fine its basicly a leader board with the added option of challenging users to games on a date and tracking the score to position each in the ladder.
I'll keep u posted of progress!
Westminster Annual Motorcycle Parking
If like me you comute into work on a motorcycle and would like to purchase an annual motorcycle parking ticket then this guide may help:
Navigate to: http://www.westminster.gov.uk/cashlessparking/
Click on Manage My Account
Click on My Account and login using your mobile phone number and pin.
Along the orange toolbar click on 'buy permit', you can now select to buy an annual parking ticket
Evaluation of wordpress as an induction site?
Great idea presented to me today - the idea that a company induction site could all quite easily be sat within an instance of wordpress. Wordpress being the blogging tool used by thousands on a daily basis to provide a strong and capable back bone to maintain and publish content. Plus throw in the facility that it provides plugins and static pages and we have a small induction site which can be maintained without an IT person - perfect.
So where's the downside - well it aint custom so it will look like your actually in a blog, this could if not maintained mean that content doesn't get 'posted' for sometime. Could this mean that the content looks old, and the site looks poor. Possibly but on the flipside the ease of adding content might suggest that any editor responsible for the induction site could add stuff. Of course if there is no sub-editor either process or person then we could end up with a shambles but I'm prepared to guess that this wont be the case.
From a costing point of view its extremely encouraging - wordpress is free and we have the skills to hack the code into various shapes. Add to that that all the really juicy content is stored elsewhere - videos, articles etc and it we have a compelling opportunity to bring something into being without excessive cost of bespoke development.
I'll update again shortly with pitfalls and successes.
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