web design

Microsoft just released Internet Explorer 8.

It's taken a bit longer than I'd hoped, but it's here. And it's good. If you've been holding back for any reason, please download Internet Explorer 8 today.

It's time to move on.

Somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the web's worldwide users are still running IE 6. If you're still using IE 6, it's time to move on. Your browser is eight years old. It has been five years since the last release. You are wasting a tremendous amount of time, money, and intellectual resources. Your dogged use of an archaic browser is responsible for more developer headaches than any other piece of software. It's time for IE 6 to die.

I won't go into all of the arguments here, they've been debated to death elsewhere. If you want more background, please check out the Bring Down IE 6 project.

There is a growing movement for a more peaceful demonstration of solidarity. But I don't think this is enough. Suffice it to say that I'm done arguing. I am convinced that outright war is the only remaining argument.

It's not too late. Download a better browser today. If you're willing to change, my fight is not with you.

Developers, bloggers, and friends. I invite you to join the war.

Please insert the following snippet in a blog post, in a comment, in your site template:

<!--[if lte IE 6]><style>*{position:relative}</style><table><input><![endif]-->

This HTML snippet is an antidote to Internet Explorer 6. Thanks to the magic of conditional comments, it will only inconvenience visitors using IE 6 or worse. And inconvenience them it will.

Note that in some content management systems, comments are automatically stripped out of blog posts and comments. If you publish on one of these platforms, I encourage you to add this snippet to your site template.

If this is too drastic a measure for you, please use one of these other tools to alert your users.

Internet Explorer 6 users please view this post, in its entirety, after the jump.

Ajaxian just featured a rad comment hack, originally posted by Dirk Ginader, for those times when you need to comment and uncomment a section of code a bunch. By adding or removing just one character you can comment/uncomment an entire block of code. This saves a bunch of time, and works great for just about any language that uses C style commenting.

Here's how to do it with (X)HTML:

<!--
<p>lorem ipsum dolor</p>
<!-->

just add a >, to uncomment the whole section.

<!-->
<p>lorem ipsum dolor</p>
<!-->

This seems to work in any browser, and validates as both HTML 4 and XHTML strict.

firefox for mac has something seriously funky going on with the scroll action on my blog. not sure what's causing it, but i'll look into it when i get a minute. until then, i guess you'll have to use the scroll buttons on the side.

sorry 'bout that :-S

adobe (macromedia) flash is a very powerful tool which is, unfortunately, mostly used for evil.

flash is really good at embedding media, creating charts and graphs, making slideshows and games and all manner of great content.

it's a really, really, really, bad tool for your logo or website navigation or anything else that would be better done with html/css/javascript.

if you use flash to make a splash page for your site or build an entire website out of it, you should be kicked.

check out flash sucks: it's an interesting read.

I implore you: use it right, and only when absolutely, positively, unquestionably and undeniably necessary.

as an added bonus mike (the guy i quoted above) points out an html one-liner that brings internet explorer 6 to it's knees...

Note: The philosophical musing in this blog post is hidden behind a couple of really nerdy anecdotes. Feel free to skip to the punchline.

A couple of years ago I started writing a CMS. I wasn't happy with any that I had found, and I was convinced that I could do a better job. the first iteration was light and fast, database driven, and extremely customizable. But it still required too much hand coding.

I learned a ton from that attempt, so I decided to give it another go. Version 2.0 would be modular and extensible. I decided to build a module for every feature I wanted but hadn't found in a CMS. I was well on my way to the CMS dreams are made of when my external hard drive bit the big one, leaving me with no backup. Then my laptop was stolen, and my CMS was gone forever. 2.0 never made it to a production server.