Artryst.com: Design by Gregory Tarnoff

Launch of Firefox 3…and the unfortunate death of Firebug

If you haven’t been paying attention to the interwebs lately, this has been a big week for the browser wars. Opera 9.5 launched as well as Firefox 3.  I have been a fan of Firefox for a long time and recently have become a huge fan of the extension Firebug for it.

In my current work environment we are building Java web applications and while I can and do run them locally, it can take a while to put the build up, take it down, modify it and put it back up. Since most of my work is front end focused I spend a lot of time in Firebug testing things before taking the build down to update.

When Firefox 3 launched on Tuesday, I diligently downloaded and installed it. I played around with it a little and saw that Firebug wasn’t updated for it yet. So I packed it away and pulled out Firefox 2 and got back to work. Then I started having tabbing issues. I have had to restart my PC three times because my tab button on my keyboard stops working in Firefox 2. Additionally, if I am in Firebug’s CSS live editing window  and highlight a property it automatically deletes the property when I tab out. Becoming increasingly frustrated I dug around and saw they now have Firebug updated for Firefox 3 but in a beta format (although is it beta 3). so like a good little boy, I installed the new extension and booted Firefox 2 back up.

One of the beautiful things about Firebug is the ability to turn on and off various properties. However in the new beta on Firefox 3 this is causing the entire browser to crash. So here I come Firefox 2, wait what is this…the new beta is incompatible with Firefox 2 BUT deletes the old version on install. Come on guys, if you are going to not be functional, you can at least not touch my previous install.

By the way, what is with Firefox 3 not importing all my bookmarks from Firefox 2 on install? It captured my IE and Opera ones, but ignored the ones I actually use.

New Look, Cleaner Lines

So I finally got around to updating the theme I wanted. I still have the same feature set I did before, but this time I kept it simple and reflective of my new minimalist perspective on things.

In case you are wondering the image of the Buddha in the corner does have a significance. I have officially declared myself Buddhist this month after spending some time studying, meditating and getting to know some of the great people up at the Milwaukee Shambala Center. They teach and practice a traditional Tibetan Buddhism up there that really appeals to me. Anyone that knows me, knows that this isn’t a real surprise as I have been leaning this way for years. I want to thank Hakill over at stock.xchng for the image of the Buddha.

Internet Explorer 8 beta Released to Designers and Developers

Hot on the heels of announcing that IE8 would be standards compliant by default, Microsoft has announced the first beta release of their new web browser. Lots of new features abound including web clips (similar to Mac web widgets), better jscript handling, better AJAX handling, and extensions similar to what Firefox has. It automatically detects and imports from Firefox, however i haven’t installed it yet so I don’t know how the import of extensions works or if they are com patible. I will also be curious to see if they import form Safari, Netscape and Opera.

Something to be warned about, It does appear that Microsoft hasn’t learned to allow multiple installations of its browsers. IE8 will replace whatever working copy of IE you currently have running include 7 and 6. Install with caution.

Get the beta here.

Internet Explorer 8…now with more standards compliance

When I first wrote about IE8 and the new HTML 5 standard the plan was that by default IE8 was going to render in the IE7 mode unless you declared it to render in the new IE8 standards mode using a meta tag.

Today, Microsoft announced that this will not be the case. The new standards mode that render the Acid 2 Test with 100% accuracy will be the default mode. If you have an old site that breaks in the new IE8 you will have to go back and add the meta tag or adjust your server to allow for rendering under the older engine (aka quirks mode).

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.

Some speculation behind the change points to Opera’s complaint and the recent European Union fine of $1.3 billion dollars for anti-trust tactics by Microsoft, but like any good spin-meister they deny this.

We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. As stated above, we think it’s the better choice.

You can read the rest of the article discussing the various modes at the MSDN blog.

An Old New Look

Something I have always been good with is paying attention to details. However this sometimes finds me spending more time on personal projects, or jumping between personal projects while working out these details.

Since working on client projects I have a clear deadline that forces me to stop, I have a tenancy to be more efficient in completing those. Well with my last theme change to the site, I never set a deadline for myself, and subsequently the features I wanted to add didn’t get resolved before I tired of the design. So I have pulled out an old theme (with a few modifications) from the past that I will have up until I finish the current theme I am working on. Which I have set the deadline on as being this upcoming Sunday, March 10th, 2008.

I figure I have enough time as that gives me all weekend and all day Wednesday (taking the day off from the regular job for my birthday) to get it done and it is more than half way there already.