Testing multiple versions of Internet Explorer

June 24th, 2008 · · Other code, Uncategorized No comments - Tags: , , , , , ,

We all know how completely un-awesome Internet Explorer 6 is and how un-wonderfully it complies to all those standards and stuff. As website designers, the world would be a much happier place if everyone was using Firefox or at least IE7, but unfortunately the world is a miserable place with millions of people still trolling around the internets with the now very outdated Internet Explorer 6.

Unfortunately for us, each verison of Internet Explorer uses the same resources to get the job done which means installing multiple versions is impossible. Or so I thought.

Standalone browsers

These look to be fantastic as they don’t overwrite any of the system files that your main browser uses. What this means is that you are effectively testing a fresh copy of IE6 (or earlier if you really feel the need) on the same system as IE7 or IE8.

You can grab the standalone installers from here -> http://browsers.evolt.org/?ie/32bit/standalone

A note on Vista

After fishing around for a very long time, it apppears that the only way to test in IE6 on a Windows Vista machine is to run a Virtual System. Microsoft has a full set of instructions on how to set this up.

The thingy on the taggy thing (CSS terminology)

June 2nd, 2008 · · CSS No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

One thing I have always struggled with is terminology. You know what you want to describe, you look at it on the screen and you go “yep, I want another one of those things” but when you are trying to communicate your ideas or pass on instructions to others, you get caught out very quickly when you start talking about “attaching things to other thingy’s” or “tweaking the value on the other thing.”

So I’m doing my best to learn the proper names of things. Starting with CSS.

I would step through all my own notes on tags, values, descriptors, etc, but why bother when there are pages that do it all so brilliantly already. And surprise of all surprises this one is a Microsoft page!

Checkit: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/designer/css02.htm

Why isn't there a font-size:default value?

May 21st, 2008 · · CSS No comments - Tags: , ,

Playing around with fonts trying to figure out the most efficient way of setting up font size values for a major website, and I keep running in to inheritance problems, mainly because the system is build on a CMS which unfortunately has a lot of in-line styles.

So trying to keeop a percentage/ems based font-size method running becomes problematic when every second div has it’s own font-size command.

What would solve my problems is if there was a font-size:default value. The tag would break any inherited font-size values that may have been brought down from any parent items, and allow you to start fresh no matter how deep in the page you are.

Of course, the other solution is to go through the CMS and kill all the font-size commands, but that sounds like far too much hard work!

EDIT: Thinking about this problem more, I’ve thought of a situation that would make this command extremely useful – building code-snippets for other websites. If you know you want your text to be a particular height, but don’t know the context that it will be used in, this would be very useful. Or in situations where you don’t have access to the style sheet for a page.

Still hoping for a June release for 3G iPhone

May 20th, 2008 · · Uncategorized No comments - Tags: , , , ,

Adding to my previous post which speculated that we may be seeing a 3G iPhone before th end of the financial year, Engadget has once again posted speculations that include a June release date. The exact quote from the article reads:

Apparently, a record label executive “familiar with the discussions” states that the Cupertino gang is hoping for a “big launch in June” which includes OTA music downloads, ringtone sales, and ringback tones

Australian Apple website MacTalk is also throwing in it’s own speculations on a June release adding many details about contracts, availability and ideas for who you might be able to buy one from (which I read to indicate it will be anyone with an Apple Reseller sticker in their window which may include big players like Domayne, Harvey Norman and Myer as well as the telcos). The main selling feature of the credibility of the MacTalk article however is its quoted source – Apple itself!

Resellers were informed over the past few days by Apple – the Australian Apple reseller community is like a little mothers club, so word travels fast

Now once again these are just rumours, but when so many rumours keep suggesting the same timelines who knows, maybe we will see the fabled 3G iPhone released next month.

Just thought this was awesome…

May 16th, 2008 · · Other code No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

I just found this AJAX loading graphic generator and had to share it -> http://www.ajaxload.info

I won’t write any more about it here, just go and have a play!

3G iPhone has to be close…

May 8th, 2008 · · Hardware One comment - Tags: , , , ,

Engadget just posted this article about UK phone retailers running out of first generation iPhones. This would suggest that Apple stopped manufacturing new iPhones some time ago in the lead up to the release of the long awaited 3G iPhone.

What is surprising is that the stocks of iPhones are drying up so early. Most estimates of a launch date for the 3G based iPhone were around September, with many countries including Australia finally getting a release.

Could this mean that Apple has been beavering away at manufacturing millions of 3G iPhones for worldwide simultaneous release for a good few months already? With every new rumour or press release the launch seems closer. I’m going to put my money on a July release in Australia. If they can swing it, possibly June to catch the people getting their end of financial year tax write-offs in place.

Hide the text of a link and show a CSS image

May 8th, 2008 · · CSS 2 comments - Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I was playing around with a CSS rollover method which uses the one image, and just shifts it around to simulate a rollover. There are posts for a bunch of different approaches to this around the place ->

The Problem

The problem I had was that to make the technique accessible, it needed content inside the anchor tag (which most of the examples above neglected to add in). This can be solved by hiding the text away somehow, but I soon found a bit of a deal-breaker.

Continue reading »

Absolutely positioned divs randomly disappear

May 8th, 2008 · · CSS 5 comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

We came across a problem today that had us completely stumped. With a certain site on IE7 an absolutely positioned div would randomly disappear. In IE6 the story was far worse with the div not showing up at all.

In the end we tracked it down to a bug in IE where an absolutely positioned item next to a floated item would cause the absolute item to disappear! The solution? Add in an empty div before and after the absolutely positioned one.

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Using Flashvars with Actionscript 3 projects

May 8th, 2008 · · Flash 2 comments - Tags: , , , ,

Recently I decided to try and make a generic video player that any old monkey could use to play FLV’s and other Flash compatible videos.

The obvious way (to me) to create it so that you would never need to edit the swf was to pass the path to the source video via flashvars.

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Why the iPhone is good

May 8th, 2008 · · Hardware One comment - Tags: , , , , , , ,

There are so many blogs, articles and rants out there both for and against the first generation iPhone, but I really wonder how many of these reviewers have spent a few weeks using the phone, and how many spent 20 minutes flicking through the interface before sitting down to write their review.

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