A sly flourish or something more loud and ostentatious?
I stumbled across this site whilst looking for a fix for PNG’s in IE6, but keep coming back to it as an example of some awesome jQuery flashyness.
Web sites should be more fun 
February 5, 2009
February 3, 2009
John Resig – The Browsers of 2009
How I wish this graph was smaller!
Seeing as I’m currently struggling with IE6 development, I can’t wait until this graph changes… substantially.
The increased cost, stress and pain involved with development for the legacy browser is ridiculous. Here’s hoping that the (imminent) release of IE8 will push more people to upgrade. But I doubt it.
January 29, 2009
Absolute Genius
Extra quick post, just to say that I stumbled across this snippet of Javascript that I think is just absolute genius.
My current project at work is to build a new all singing, all dancing website. Which of course “they” (the business) wants to be compatible with IE6.
Browser sniffing is of course bad practise, but sometimes, there’s no option. Here is a tiny snippet of javascript which only ever returns true if you’re using Internet Explorer, all versions, thats 6, 7 and 8.
if(“\v”==”v”)
September 3, 2008
Google Chrome
It looks like the “Google Browser” finally landed.
Seeing as I am a Google fanboy, I’ve been waiting for this the second I heard it was happening. The fact that they got Scott McCloud to create a 38 page comic detailing Chrome’s features adds bonus points!
From my perspective, the three most interesting features, in order of importance are;
- Separate threads for each tab/plugin/window.
- Javascript compiler
- Open source
We’ve already seen what Firefox’s entry into the browser market has done to the “industry”, it’ll be interesting to see whether Google can shake it up any more.
There are a few things missing though, although they aren’t show-stoppers;
- Ad blocker – Aparently there are adverts on the web, I wouldn’t know, seeing as I’ve been using Firefox with adblock plus since it was released.
- Spell checker – I’m lost without this, where oh where are my red underlines?
So far though, I’m really looking forward to working with Chrome, it’s underlying engine is Webkit, which is also used by Safari. Looks like Open Source cross pollination is the way forward!
May 16, 2008
Getting Agile
Recently I’ve been looking at escaping the standard “Waterfall” approach to projects and the development lifecycle. There are many reasons behind this shift, not just the “everyone works in an agile manner” thought, here is a small list;
- Client involvement and “buy in”.
- Easier incorporation of ideas and changes.
- Ability to change direction to meet the changing demands of the client.
- Reduction of risk.
I have had issue in the past of seeing the benefits of agile practices, mainly from reading and listening to preachers and evangelists giving sermons on agility from a highly theoretical, high level manner. What I found lacking was an easy to understand, entry level discussion on what works, and what doesn’t.
Whilst at the qCon conference, I picked up a couple of books for free in print that InfoQ make available on their website. One of these publications gave me that low level basic understanding and view of agile that I needed.
Scrum and XP from the Trenches
This book walks through the concepts of the Agile development methodologies from the perspective of a developer, the author Henrik Kniberg, has implemented many projects using the agile concepts, and through all the struggle and teething problems, has written his experience and approach down in an easy to understand way. It is important to note that this isn’t a theoretical “how you should work” it’s his own experience of how they did work.
I have found it an invaluable resource and have encorporated many of it’s teachings into my current way of working.
