Monthly Archives: January 2008

Bad Microsoft, baaad…

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Wait, I lied… The title is misleading. I apologize.

People are getting upset because Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is going to be ACID2 compatible, but only if you add a special <meta> tag to the sites that want IE to be running in that mode. Why? I fail to see why this is such a big deal, from the perspective of a web site designer.

Face it. IE6 was screwed up. But it was still the most popular browser until Firefox showed up on the scene. There are going to be countless sites that are built to cater to IE6′s shortcomings and funky non-standards. That’s just a fact. Standards compliant sites are a minority. Face it… Not many people but uber-geek techies (with nothing to lose if people don’t visit their sites) are going to design outside IE’s problems and force their readers to download another browser besides that which came by default with the most popular operating system in the world.

But people are still complaining about IE8. Why? I think it’s because it should render sites properly without the addition of a tag, correct? I can understand that… A tiny, tiny bit. But you would rather Microsoft, who has a huge market share, whether you want to believe it or not, decide to fix their browser and then subsequently BREAK all the websites that were designed for IE6? How is that going to be a good thing?

“Hello, this is Microsoft. We finally fixed IE in version 8, but you’re going to pay for our mistakes now, because your sites are going to be broken, and you’re going to have to rush to make sure it all works again because we screwed up.”

Yeah… That’s going to be a good approach. (The Apple approach, haha: “We changed this, now deal with it, because we know best.”) This is Microsoft we’re talking about. Do you honestly think that’s the best course of action for them? They have a huge responsibility to their existing users, and they have always bent over backwards to provide backwards compatibility for things. Just look at Windows… It’s getting fatter and fatter because people still want to run the thing on ancient hardware. Of course, people complain about Windows being bloated… But then people also complain about Windows Vista having such steep system requirements when Microsoft decides to drop some old hardware in favor of the latest stuff. (And yet, Apple doesn’t seem to garner this sort of reaction.)

Approach A: Microsoft builds Internet Explorer 8 to be 100% standards compliant all the time, without use of meta tags. Sites built to cater to the funkiness of the browser instantly stop working. Public outcry ensues because Microsoft doesn’t give anyone time to fix the problem.

Approach B: Microsoft builds Internet Explorer 8 to be 100% standards compliant only with a special tag for sites that have been built to be standards compliant. Sites continue to work as they are at the moment, giving time for people to upgrade to the new standards mode. Public outcry ensues because Microsoft makes you add a tag to your site to run in the standards mode.

I am going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and say that this is a transitional phase between IE8 and IE9 and 10. Give people enough time to warm up to the new mode and give them enough time to fix their sites. Every browser has quirks. IE8 is a massive upgrade, from the sounds of things. There will, of course, be some quirks. Every application has them. When IE9 or 10 comes out, strip the compatibility feature and use that as the time limit for people to get their sites finished. There will naturally be a group of people who don’t bother to upgrade until they have to, but that’s what the time limit is for. Once you have a sample of how IE is going to work in standards mode, you can experiment without it being mission-critical that you have the site working flawlessly when IE8 rolls out.

But maybe that’s just me and my being a fan of Microsoft shining through.

Private Posts? Hmm…

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So… Private posts. I’ve been wondering about them for some time. There’s stuff I’d like to share, such as story ideas (woah, yeah, you heard me right) and other things that I consider sensitive material but still want to share with the people I trust won’t steal them. I might be a little paranoid, but hey. This is the internet. Whatever I post here is being mirrored and replicated and blared across the entire planet. I don’t want just anything sitting up here, but I still want to share things in a central location for my friends to peruse if they want.

However… To do something like this? I’ll need to incorporate the WordPress user system… Meaning that you’ll have to log in to see these private posts, and I’m wondering just how many people will actually want to go through all that trouble. (Especially if I don’t post a lot of private stuff.) It’ll be relatively easy for me to implement, but still… I know how I feel about sites that require a log in, but I also look over it to read blogs that are locked to a friends list.

These kind of posts barely work… But I’m wondering how many people would put up with a user system to see more content? Granted, in most cases, you’d only have to sign in once and cookies and auto-complete would take care of the rest. But would you use it? Huh-huh-huh? Naturally, I would want your passwords to be strong… On the bright side, if it’s a complex password that you’ve forgotten, I can easily recover it for you, so it’s not like losing an administrator password.

I can think of maybe four people off the top of my head who I’d want to add to this list, and who would most likely not mind the extra effort, but… I still would like your input!

Boofle…

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Ahh… College is (marginally) better today. Even though my Server 2003 stuff was late, I went ahead and did it all… Maybe they won’t notice the submission date. Hey, it’s happened a few times before. They even told me I would get half-credits on an assignment because it was late, but I think the assistant missed the memo and gave me full credits for it. I wasn’t going to complain. :P

By far, the most complicated is English Composition. So meticulous and vague. Right now, we’re supposed to be giving explanations of our “career choice”, and then respond to two other posts and give “new ideas” into that career choice. Blargh. Plus, I have to write an entire paper on my “career choice”, complete with sources and interviews and I need a first draft this week. I don’t even know how to write a proper bibliography with sources, meh. They say the book explains it, but knowing the current state of my classes, it’s all vague nonsense with no real examples. (Or in the case of English, literally 100 pages of examples.) My weekly reading is nearly 200 pages a week, which, admittedly, I skip over a lot of the examples. I read a lot, and I write a lot. I’m very good at both, I just don’t know how to write “officially”. But I managed to get three people in on my interview! Capella, Jesthar and Iaian7… And geez, do I have information to work with now. I was away when each of you signed off tonight, so I didn’t get a chance to thank you. But… THANK YOU.

Vista and Server 2003 and History is all easy, just a lot of memorizing and proving you know the stuff… Lots of simulations and quizzes and pre-tests and short papers. The simulations for Windows are laughably easy and I was able to very sleepily burn through all the simulations that go through how to add users to Active Directory and how to sign in… And how to click the OK button… And how to use the Run window… Repeatedly. The fun part came when I was actually allowed to use a Java remote desktop application to connect to an actual remote server running Server 2003, but it was still boring and not very new… Still, I had to prove I know this junk.

Save me…

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It’s only the third week and I’m already freaking sick of college.

I have to write papers out the butt for stupid little things, and, oh, be sure to spend all your time researching and prove that you did by giving us 500 links to your sources, because sources are everything, even if you’re right, we can’t take that for face value, we have to take someone else’s knowledge and see that you learned from them. Heaven forbid that you’re in these classes to pass them because you already know them, no, we’re going to make you learn it all over again at the pace of the rest of the class who are too stupid to read the assignments and write the proper posts and leave you in the dark as to how to respond so you can get your grade, too!

And here I am, in the third semester of this course, if you can even call it that, because not even the instructor seems to know how it works, and this particular set of classes requires that you finish everything on Saturday, not Sunday, nooo… Not Sunday like EVERY single other class I’ve ever taken. No. Saturday. We’re going to rip away a whole day of time that you’re used to having for no particular reason, and haha! Look at that, you sent in all your stuff late! You don’t get any points for that! So much for your 4.0 GPA, am I right?

I’m sick of school. I just want to move on and do a job for a change. Screw the idea that I already know how to do all this and am failing because the instructions aren’t clear and that I’m rushing around because I keep finding out that I have to do more and more junk. I didn’t even want to do anything this semester, but I was pressed into doing it when I was already burned out from last semester, and now I’m regretting it and I have FOUR MONTHS TO GO.

And I decided to write this in 5 minutes instead of doing my classes because there’s no possible way I can get anything done in 10 minutes before midnight where everything is locked up. You know what I was doing today instead? Oh, wait… I was coming up with questions for a stupid interview I have to do so I can explain to myself what my career choice is! WHAT FUN! I’m going to watch Monk now and hope that maybe I fall into a coma tonight or something happens so that I can wake up in 3 months and say “oh, sorry, extreme unforeseen circumstances prevented me from completing my tasks”. On second thought, that’s probably a bad idea because Ivy Tech is manned by complete and utter idiots and they’d Fail my classes instead of going “oh, well, since you couldn’t tell us you were unable to finish these classes, we’ll say you withdrew.”

That, and my World of Warcraft guild would wonder where I went.

Well…

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There’s a lot of my explaining about why I left Uru, as much as I want to stop…

For the record, anything I have to say will be included in my original post on the subject. Any comments I leave to further explain my situation, I will add to that post, so people can reference it if they need to without linking to a bunch of other posts. Comments, however, will still be disabled. It’s a post meant to read, not to discuss.