From Inside Microsoft:

The most interesting info centers on web standards. According to Mary Jo Foley’s report of the session, IE8 will encourage web designers to create websites that adhere to web standards, and allow them to opt-in to a standards mode if they meet that criteria.

“IE8 will encourage web designers to create websites that adhere to web standards”

*Cough* I mean really?

M$ pushing for designers to stick to standards?? How long. How long, has Internet Explorer had ‘quirks’ and workarounds for the box model as well as all the other bugs it’s had? Specifically in CSS. Seriously.

On top of all this, the browser is so integrated into the operating systems in such a way that if it becomes corrupt, it can slow down your OS, and make some files and operations down right break. Unfortunately IE still has a large portion of users out there. As of this writing still about 78% of the population(via Marketshare). I’d personally be willing to say I’ll bet they are corporate users, or the small portion of home consumers who are unaware of other options out there.

On the other hand I will say it’s taken much too long. If this IS true, THANK YOU Microsoft! But I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m sticking to my firefox.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Internet Explorer, browser, css, standards

I’ve recently reformatted my computer and started missing my favorite dev tools. In an attempt to record them, I can also share them with others.

A list of my current favorite web tools…

Text Editor:

• Notepad 2 - Very Light. Very Simple.

Compression Utility:

• IZARC - IMO, better than winzip

Localhost Server (Apache/mySQL):

• Wamp - Run an Apache web server on your PC. You can configure it to run or not run on startup. It also includes mySQl and a few php extensions.

Firefox extensions:

• measureit - Measure pixels right on your screen.
• colorzilla - Grab colors off of web pages, zoom, and built in color picker.
• web developer - CSS, XHTML, Screen resize, line guides, disable styles and much much more.
• firebug - A great tool especially for pages created in php. You may have 100 lines of code before the html begins. This helps you debug xhtml issues on “line 12″ which is actually line 112. Works well with included php files as well.

IE Explorer Add On:

• IE Dev Toolbar(For IE Similar to Firebug)

Technorati Tags: Tools, Dev, Developer, Dev Tools

I’m in the process of creating some new pages and am trying to learn how to use CSS ‘properly’. I was coding right along and my page was looking real slick. Then I opened it in IE. What a mess!

One thing I came across the hard way was that IE likes to use their own CSS standards. I won’t get into what I think about this - that’s an entirely different post.

How does this affect a browser? Tons! To begin with I found out I needed to know what the CSS Box Model is. You can just google it up. Here is a nice visual presentation at hicksdesign. And a nice interactive version can be found at redmelon.net.

I would suggest reading the ilovejackdaniels.com explanation of how IE Vs. Firefox/Mozilla browsers interpret the CSS box model.

I could have hacked up my stylesheet to get what I needed out of IE. There are many hacks out there to force IE to doing what you want to. After reading up on it, it’s my opinion that this is a bad idea. For starters, it’s really a pain to have 2 different styles within your stylesheet. It’s really difficult to read after a while (and it’s uglyto the eye). Even more so, it’s difficult to make changes to it. I found a solution. I must say that it wasn’t on my own completely. I had some great help from IRC EFnet channel #css.

The Solution: Conditional Comments.
Conditional comments allow you to maintain 2 different stylesheets for your page. 1 for Firefox/Mozilla, the other for IE. Here’s how it looks Continue reading…

According to zdnet Firefox has passed a 20% marketshare in Europe.

Personally I’ve used Firefox for the last year or so and I really like it. I’ve recently tried Opera. It seems to run much lighter. However, I’ve been told by some css “gurus” that Opera isn’t that good.

I’m unsure why or what the exact complaints are against the Opera browser, and I’m unsure of my source’s credentials. I would really like to get feedback from anyone on their preferred browser and why. Please feel free to leave a comment.

I’ve also been using IE7. I’m quite frankly not pleased with it. In general the options really don’t offer anything more exciting than the firefox or the opera. Not only does it have the M$ signature giant footprint, but as usual it does NOT render css very well.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Opera, Browser