When will IE8 be released?!

At first I was hearing that Internet Explorer 8 was supposed to be available for download by the end of 2008. Now I am reading that Microsoft wants to have 'one last beta release' to iron out any problems. While I appreciate Microsoft's attempt to release IE 8 with as little problems as possible I find myself eagerly anticipating the release to see how I can code my sites with just one style sheet instead of five. I also want to play with the new CSS Table feature that will now be supported. Another issue is supporting IE 8. At my work we support the latest release of the major browsers as we determine through Google Analytics data for our site (Firefox, Safari, Opera and Netscape) and one version back for IE. So here's the problem, we're gearing up for an entire redesign of our site in 2009 and I was hoping that IE 8 would have been released early enough to have good enough market penetration that we could support it when we went live with the new version of our site. Things are still in the planning stages now so it will probably all work out but as one of the two Web Designers there I am responsible for making sure we have a strategy for supporting the major web browsers and IE 8 throws an interesting curve ball into that equation. Basically, what do we do with late adoptors such as people who still use IE 6 in all it's buggyness? Or even IE 7 with it's incomplete support of CSS2.1 standards? My initial thought is to push IE 6 users to upgrade their browser to IE 8. This can be accomplished by adding a simplified style sheet that IE 6 users will see that will prompt them to upgrade to IE 8. They would not see the site as it was intended but would still have functionality. We would have to have conditional commenting to point to a seperate style sheet for IE 7, though.

As Web Designers we have an obligation to move the web forward and with the release of IE 8 this is a milestone that we should take a stand and make users upgrade their browsers to take advantage of the new standards. If all web sites did this we could move IE 6 to the scrapheap of old browsers and be able to code to the new standards that are supported in all the major browsers. 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy targeting specific browsers sometimes to do cool things such as with my site www.davidlender.com. But it would be nice to have one or two (conditional commenting for IE7) style sheets tops.

Anyway, I'm still waiting to hear when IE 8 will be released. Perhaps near the end of the first quarter of 2009.

Rabbit Rabbit

My mom used to tell me to say 'Rabbit Rabbit' on the first day of the month to bring you good luck for that month. I always thought it was a silly superstition as superstitions go. Not really ranking up there with breaking a mirror and getting seven years bad luck, or not walking under a ladder, or step-on-a-crack-break-your-mothers-back.
I think I may have asked her why you should do it at some point but I forgot whatever explanation she gave. But as I look back now I see it possibly more as a way to teach my brother and I a concept of time and how it passes. For little kids the first of the month means nothing. it's like any other day. But give it a special meaning and you're looking for it. I don't know. That may not have been her intent. She may actually have believed it gives you good luck. But it was an interesting learning tool.

Developer Tools For Different Browsers

I know it's been a while since I posted anything but I have found something to talk about really quickly. When I work on a site that has tables and such in it like you'd find in a CMS (Content Management System) environment I need to find out what CSS classes are in the pages. What comes in handy is the Developer toolbars that are available in many of the browsers. I started off using Firefox's Firebug a couple years ago and then moved on to the IE Developer Toolbar. What I liked about the IEDT is that it highlighted the different elements on the page when you hovered over the code in the toolbar. You can expand out the various DIV's or TR's, etc. I then found out that Opera, Safari and even Chrome all have their own Developer Toolbars. They are named differently: Opera has Dragonfly, Firefox has Firebug, Internet Explorer has Developer Toolbar, Safari has Web Inspector and Chrome has Inspector.

All of the toolbars are similar in what they display but how they display it is different sometimes for each. There are other things that you can use these Developer Toolbars for like Scripts and such but since I use them primarily to troubleshoot CSS I won't touch on that.

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

The IE Developer Toolbar is nice because it is straight forward and all the options are presented up front. You can dock the toolbar in the window or have it seperate in it's own window. Drilling down into the HTML is as easy as expanding the tree. It also gives you the CSS classes and attributes. When hovering over DIV sections and such in the code it will outline the section of the page that it controls.
One drawback is that it doesn't come pre-installed with the browser. You have to download and install it yourself. Oh, and it's only for IE7.

Firefox Firebug

Firebug has a nice interface that gives you more room to view the code. Also a nice feature is that it makes DIV names and images and such red for easy identification. The other thing that I like with Firebug is when you hover over a DIV or such in the HTML code in the inspector it highlights the area on the page with a semi-transparent box. It's much more obvious than the outline that IEDT uses.

One of the cool things that I have discovered with Firebug is when you hover over an image reference in the HTML code it pops up a thumbnail of that image. Very cool!

Also, it is has to be downloaded and installed.

Opera Dragonfly

I haven't used Dragonfly very much. I just stumbled across it recently but found it similar to Firebug. It assigns different colors to the areas of the HTML for easy reading and such. It also has a nice handy Metrics box model that illustrated the CSS borders, padding and margins that are applied to a DIV. Another nice feature I found is that is actually displays the entire stylesheet that is affecting that page.

One of the not-so-impressive things is that is outlines the area of the page when you click on the HTML just like IEDT. It also has a nice 'breadcrumb navigation' at the bottom of the window to follow where you are in the code.

Comes installed with the browser.

Chrome Inspector

Chrome's Inspector toolbar is simple but effective. It does seem to have all the bells and whistles of the other toolbars and it does put the semi-transparent box over the area of the page when you hover over the code in the inspector. It's nice to not have to click the actual code to see what area it affects. You get the Metrics box model as well as properties for elements. It offers a Resources tab that I haven't figured out what it does yet. Something about Time and Size.

Inspector comes installed with the browser but to access it you have to right-click somewhere on the page and select 'Inspect Element'.

Safari Web Inspector

While Safari's Web Inspector is nice and sleek and tricked-out looking I was less than impressed that it didn't highlight areas on the page when you hoverd over or clicked on areas in the HTML. (There may be an option to turn that on but I haven't found it and I would think that it would be on by default.)

It will show you all the images in the left navigation column and when you click on one it will display in the center. It will also show you the entire stylesheet affecting that page.

All in all, each of these has nice features and I've found myself using more than one sometimes on a project to find out what was affecting an element or something. If I was put on the spot and had to pick one to use it would probably be Firebug because I really like the semi-transparent box thing as well as the different elements being different colors in the code for easy reading. I know other Dev Toolbars have these things but I'm more comfortable with Firebug. But, since I'm not limited to one I will continue to use each of them. It also helps to debug problems when you are trying to style for each of the browsers. ;-)

Obama's VP Pick - Huge Mistake!

Obama chose his running mate for the 2008 Presidential run this weekend and it was a huge mistake. Everything was a mistake about this. From the pick to the way that they chose to announce it to the world.
Let's start with how the Obama campaign decided how to announce the momentous and much-anticipated running mate selection. Evidently, a text-message was the way they decided to break the news to the world in general (the media, voters and other interested parties). They tried to be slick and hip to appeal to the 'younger' crowd. Probably an attempt to set themselves apart from the 'traditional' way of how politicians and politics works. Not a terribly bad idea but it turns out that, after many 'supposed' leaks of who the VP pick was (Evan Bayh, Keane, etc...), it was leaked at about 12:17am EST to Foxnews's Major Garrett. At 3:31am EST (or somewhere around there) the Obama campaign sent out the text and confirmed that Joe Biden was the choice. This was crazy! Not only did they miss the major news cycles, they did it in the middle of the night and probably woke up thousands of potential voters with their cell phone vibrating or ringing away waking them out of a sound slumber. Imagine being one of these new 'young and hip' voters whose been up till the bar closes at 1 or 2am and just getting home to bed and getting sound asleep when your cell phone goes off and wakes you up. Sheesh! Why didn't they announce it at 4:00pm on a Friday? This way, everyone goes out to happy hour and dinner and talks about it all night. The major news outlets have some time to run the story during their dinner news hour also. I just don't get the reasoning behind announcing so late and waking people up.
Now on to Joe Biden. I've never really liked 'ol Joe. He always struck me as fake. He's got the reputation of a 'straight-shooter' and all that but he seems so full of himself. The comment he made about he having a higher I.Q. than a reporter was pretty clear of how he responds when challenged on things. This exerpt was pulled from the Betsy Newmark News Blog on the Fox Forum:

And then Mickey Kaus reminds us of this prize Biden moment from 1987 when he made five boasts about his academic record. And four of them were totally, disprovably false.
He then went on to say that he ”went to law school on a full academic scholarship - the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,” Mr. Biden said. He also said that he ”ended up in the top half” of his class and won a prize in an international moot court competition. In college, Mr. Biden said in the appearance, he was ”the outstanding student in the political science department” and ”graduated with three degrees from college.”

The moot court thing seems to check out. The other boasts - not so much. He was 76th in a class of 85.

But the real kicker is what he told the guy who seemed to be asking a rather mild question:
The tape, which was made available by C-SPAN in response to a reporter’s request, showed a testy exchange in response to a question about his law school record from a man identified only as ”Frank.” Mr. Biden looked at his questioner and said: ”I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do.”

Then there are these gems Biden said:

Biden, on a post-debate appearance on MSNBC, October 30, 2007: “The only guy on the other side who’s qualified is John McCain.”

Biden appearing on The Daily Show, August 2, 2005: “John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off, be well off no matter who…”

Also from that Observer interview: “But — and the ‘but’ was clearly inevitable — he doubts whether American voters are going to elect ‘a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate,’ and added: ‘I don’t recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic.’”

September 26, 2007: Biden for President Campaign Manager Luis Navarro said, “Sen. Obama said he would do everything possible to end the war in Iraq and emphasized the need for a political solution yet he failed to show up to vote for Sen. Biden’s critical amendment to provide a political solution in Iraq.

Biden on “Meet the Press” in 2002, discussing Saddam Hussein: “He’s a long term threat and a short term threat to our national security… “We have no choice but to eliminate the threat. This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world.”

Biden on Meet the Press in 2002: “Saddam must be dislodged from his weapons or dislodged from power.”

Biden on Meet the Press in 2007, on Hussein’s WMDs: “Well, the point is, it turned out they didn’t, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued — they catalogued them. This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued.”

Biden to the Brookings Institution in 2005: “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out — equally a mistake.”

One of the ones I like the most is this:

At the Tuesday-morning meeting with committee staffers, Biden launches into a stream-of-consciousness monologue about what his committee should be doing, before he finally admits the obvious: “I’m groping here.” Then he hits on an idea: America needs to show the Arab world that we’re not bent on its destruction. “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran,” Biden declares. He surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a ‘How do ya like that?’ look on his face.
The staffers sit in silence. Finally somebody ventures a response: “I think they’d send it back.” Then another aide speaks up delicately: “The thing I would worry about is that it would almost look like a publicity stunt.” Still another reminds Biden that an Iranian delegation is in Moscow that very day to discuss a $300 million arms deal with Vladimir Putin that the United States has strongly condemned. But Joe Biden is barely listening anymore. He’s already moved on to something else.

Just like a Democrat. Let's just throw money at the problem and it will fix it!

Besides the ludicrousness of the idea of giving a couple of hundred million to Iran, who had never shown any inclination that they were favorably disposed to the United States, doesn’t this vaunted expert on foreign policy realize that the Iranians are not Arabs and so giving them money out of the blue wouldn’t do anything to make Arabs feel better about the U.S.?

Add to these Biden's comments about Obama: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man." and "I think he can be ready but right now I don't think he is. The Presidency is not something that lends itself to 'on-the-job-training.'"

Mark my words, this decision will sink Obama's Presidential run. Biden is a big mouth. Just put a camera in front of him and he'll say something stupid. He's done it over and over again.

Now, McCain has to pick Mitt Romney for his running mate. Either that or Condy Rice. Boy! Wouldn't that throw a new element into the campaign?!