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X-UA-Compatible: Sensible Defaults

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

I’ll keep this short1, because last time I rambled, and basically failed to make clear what I thought the problem was. In the end, my problem with the whole X-UA-Compatible concept was really in what IE8 planned to do when it was absent, which was to pretend it was IE7.

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Notes

  1. ↑1 well, short-ish

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Links of Interest (January 31st 2008 Through February 19th 2008)

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Crime podcast novel gets HUGE boost in advertising
Video of a digital billboard advertising for Seth Harwood’s “Jack Wakes Up”
The parseInt gotcha
I’m pretty sure once you’ve been hit by this parseInt() behavior in javascript you never forget it, but if you haven’t you should learn about it now before you do.
CSS Tools: Reset CSS
Eric Meyer’s Reset style-sheet (now in its permanent home, with versions numbers). Including this should reduce browser inconsistencies, and help you not to rely on undefined default behaviors.
CSS Tools: Diagnostic CSS
Eric Meyer’s diagnostic.css (now in its permanent home). Including this stylesheet will highlight elements that are incomplete and may be degrading the user experience.
Jason Bateman Confirms “Arrested Development” Movie Talks
I cannot begin to express how much I hope this comes to pass.
Amazon acquires Audible for $300 million
This caught be by surprise. Hopefully it will remain mostly unchanged, although adding stereo support to all the stereo BBC programs they carry would be nice.

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Links of Interest (January 28th 2008 Through January 30th 2008)

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
jQuery Validation plugin overview
Examples of how to use the jQuery Validation plugin 1.2 to provide unobtrusive Javascript validation to forms.
The Dissing of SF
Ever have someone ask you for a favor and simultaneously insult your career? Science Fiction author Robert J. Sawyer had this happen twice in one hour, and he posted his responses.
JavaScript Pretty Date
John Resig has released a prettyDate Javascript library that can take strings like “2008-01-28T20:24:17Z” and turn them into “2 hours ago”. It works standalone or as a jQuery plugin.
JavaScript Memory Leak Detector
Paolo Severini of Microsoft’s Global Product Development team has released a utility to help find Javascript memory leaks in IE. It can be set to detect things that would leak in IE6, things that would leak in IE7, or actual leaks.
Getting HTML 5 styles in IE 7+
Possibly the most interesting thing to come out of the X-UA-Compatible discussions was this method for allowing IE7+ to apply styles to elements it doesn’t support.
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Write to Done
A friend (thanks Kate) recommended this spin off of zenhabits.net which is billed as “Unmissable articles on writing. Twice weekly.” So far it’s living up to it’s promise.
MD044 - Stan Lee Interview
Veronica Belmont interviews Stan Lee on Mahalo Daily. I never get tired of seeing interviews with Stan Lee. Maybe it’s his voice.

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Links of Interest (January 8th 2008)

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
An Interface of One’s Own
Virginia Heffernan covers alternatives to Microsoft Word for writers including Scrivener (my personal favorite), Ulysses, WriteRoom, and Nisus Writer.
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Future of Ajax.NET Professional
With the release of VS2008 and .NET 3.5 Michael Schwarz is ending development on Ajax.NET Professional (an alternate Ajax toolkit for ASP.NET that predates Microsoft’s own).
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The Secret Lair
An all new podcast hosted by Chris Miller and Kris Johnson.
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The transformation of a writer with Mur Lafferty
Wayne Sutton interviews Mur Lafferty about social media (video).
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IE7.js version 2.0 (beta)
Dean Edwards IE7.js has been updated after a long period of inactivity. The new version is split in two files IE7.js brings IE5+ into the same level of compliance as IE7, while IE8.js contains further standards compliance fixes beyond what IE7 currently
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Links of Interest (August 24th 2007 Through August 31st 2007)

Friday, August 31st, 2007
Science Fiction Writers of America abuses the DMCA - Boing Boing
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America invoked the DMCA to request works be removed from Scribd even though in a number of cases they had no right to do so, including Creative Commons licensed work.
Consumer Reports says ‘keep that car’
Driving one car for 15 years is cheaper than buying a new one ever 5 years. Nice to see I’ve been doing the right thing all this time.
YUI Theater ? Joseph Smarr: ?High-Performance JavaScript: Why Everything You?ve Been Taught is Wrong?
Video of Joseph Smarr’s talk on High-Performance JavaScript.
30+ Firefox Add-ons for Web Developers & Designers
Nice collection of Firefox extensions useful for web developers and/or designers.
Redirection - Manage 301 redirections without modifying Apache
Wordrpess 2.1+ plugin to handle redirects. Looks very full featured.
eTextbook seller fails logic test
Evo points out what I assume is a hilarious misuse of survey data. CafeScribe is supplying a “book” scented scratch and sniff sticker to customers because people like the way books smell.

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Links of Interest (July 21st 2007 Through August 3rd 2007)

Friday, August 3rd, 2007
Official iPhone Tool
This looks somehow familiar.
Math Book Helps Girls Embrace Their Inner Mathematician
Interview with Danica McKellar (Winnie Cooper from “The Wonder Years”) about her new book: Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math and not Break a Nail
Sandbox Designs Competition » The Designs
Gallery of entries for the Sandbox Designs Competition. All entries are the same XHTML styled with CSS.
Fisher-Price recalls 1M toys
If you have any Dora or Sesame Street toys in your home you want to be aware of this. We do. A lot of them. Oddly the online recall only lets you return six items. Not sure exactly what they expect us to do with the rest.
AjaxRain - Ajax/Javascript/Dhtml examples and demos to download
Interesting site. Lacks search. I recommend using the “Tag Cloud” to navigate, but be sure to scroll down after clicking a tag because it looks like nothing happened.
A Series of Unfortunate Events ::: NOW IN PAPERBACK!
Are you made fainthearted by the work of Lemony Snicket? Does the thought of strange new siblings unnerve you? Your answers likely reveal the following brief video to be ill-suited for your personal use.

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Links of Interest (July 2nd 2007 Through July 11th 2007)

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
LOLTrek
Star Trek + LOLcats. You has want laugh? This be super funny.
How To Write The Great American Novel
Informative instructional film (no, not really, but it’s funny).
uncluttr
Derek Gaw’s wonderful search front end to Amazon.com (currently in alpha).
New Books, late June 2007
Locus Online’s listing of new SF/F/H books for late June 2007
Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars
This may be the best page on all of Wikipedia.
Open standards for social networking
Interesting commentary Marc Canter. from I know I wish all these things out there talked to each other better and/or supported OpenID.
jQuery 1.1.3: 800%+ Faster, still 20KB
The newest version of jQuery is available with 80+ bugfixes, increased performance, expanded selectors, and more.

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Links of Interest (June 8th 2007 Through June 20th 2007)

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
Got allergies? Tiny discovery nothing to sneeze at
I hope this comes to something. My tree allergy is so bad I can’t eat most fruit. I miss fruit.
Deconstructing a Star Wars AT-AT Imperial Walker Baby Stroller
Thingamababy analyzes a DIY stroller conversion from a handful of photos.
How To: Translate a foreign language RSS feed
Using Yahoo Pipes to translate RSS feeds. Looks nice and simple.
Future Sony e-book reader to offer IDPF format and Adobe DRM support?via Digital Editions
Sounds like the next version of Sony Reader will support the IDPF open ebook standard. I like reading ebooks from dedicated readers, but I hate the hoops I have to jump through to get them on there. Sounds like a step in the right direction.
Developers launch kid-safe add-on for Firefox
Glubble is a Firefox plug-in that allows parents to create a whitelist of approved sites to let their kids visit.
Dissecting a Plugin: Better Comments Manager
Ronald Huereca disects the “Better Comments Manager” Wordpress plugin, in what is hopefully the first of a series of articles of this type. Should be a great place to start if you’re trying to figure out how Wordpress plugins work.
Batman?s New Set of Wheels
Slice of Sci-Fi has pics of the new Batcycle for “The Dark Knight”
How victim snared ID thief / She chased down woman who had given her 6 months of hell
Karen Lodrick bumped into the woman who had stolen her identity, and gave chase for the next 45 minutes!
Primer, part two (glossary)
Glossary for Diana Peterfreund’s primer on publishing.
Primer, part one
Diana Peterfreund’s primer on publishing.
New Books, early June 2007
Locus online’s listing of new SF/F/H books for early June 2007
Ars System Guide: June 2007
When I’m building a new PC for someone, this is where I start. Great if you’re trying to get the most bang for your buck.

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Links of Interest (May 24th 2007 Through May 31st 2007)

Thursday, May 31st, 2007
Feed Your Television
Google Reader has added support for the Nintendo Wii (yeah, I’m bit behind on noticing this one).
Potter buffs may soon be able to visit Hogwarts
J.K. Rowling OKs a Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, FL. That could be fun. Unfortunately most of the article is about the upcoming book 7, but it sounds like it would be part of Universal.
Sci-fi writers join war on terror
Homeland Security calls on Sigma, a group of Science Fiction writers (including Jerry Pournelle, Arlan Andrews, Greg Bear, Larry Niven and Sage Walker) put together to advise government officials.
squirrels with lightsabers
as adviertized
Programming: How to build a Firefox extension
Occasionally I go looking for an extension to do something, fail to find it and start thinking I should write it myself. Maybe next time I will.
How To: Maintain threaded view in Thunderbird
I’ve been looking for this for years and I didn’t even know it.
Interface elements for jQuery
“Interface is a collection of rich interface components which utilizes the lightweight JavaScript library jQuery. With this components you can build rich client web applications and interfaces with the same simplicity as writing JavaScript with jQuery.”

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