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By Jonathan Kemp

Firefox Beta 3 Available

February 19th, 2008 by Jonathan Kemp

So this happened last week, and I’m just getting around to posting it, but it’s still a big deal. Firefox Beta 3 was released. You can download it here, and check out the release notes here. It’s noted that this is a test version and not recommended for public consumption. If you’re interested, check out the known issues so far.

Seems like there are still lots of bugs, so it’s probably not quite ready for release. Still, Beta is a good sign. I have only heard good things about version 3 so far. I can’t wait to test it, but I’m not quite ready to give it a try yet. If you find any bugs, be sure to report them.

Posted in Firefox

The X-UA-Compatible Situation

January 23rd, 2008 by Jonathan Kemp

Just when I was excited about the fact that Microsoft is starting to talk about IE8, this happens. At the same time, A List Apart published 2 articles, Aaron Gustafson talks at length about why this was done and Eric Meyer talks about why he thinks this is a good idea. Jeffrey Zeldman chimes in on his blog also about why this is a good idea.

The issue at hand is that Microsoft is introducing a meta tag that will allow developers to specify whether or not they want their site to be compatible with IE8 or not. Not including this meta tag will render the page in IE7 mode. First off, let me say that in my opinion, this is a bad idea no matter how you spin it. Releasing a new browser and requiring users to opt in to get the features provided by that browser just does not make sense to me at all. Also, how many developers will know to include this meta tag once IE8 is released?

After reading a lot of the explanations and reactions, I think the situation has a lot to do with knee jerk reactions and fear based reasoning, and this is why it is not good. According to Microsoft, when IE7 was released, sites that were not using web standards did not look good in it. Microsoft refers to this as “breaking” those web sites. They consider this a bad thing, so their knee jerk reaction to this is to have all future sites render in IE7 mode by default, unless you include a tag that tells it that you want it to render in whatever the current version of IE is. This is fear based reasoning.

I agree with a lot of what Meyer and Zeldman are saying as well, but again it seems like these are knee jerk reactions. Microsoft thinks that by supporting standards, they failed, so Microsoft’s support for web standards is in jeopardy. Well, we can’t let Microsoft take their ball and go home, so Meyer and Zeldman say that this is good thing lest Microsoft reconsider their support of standards. This comes across as being fear-based reasoning to me, in addition to Microsoft’s reason for adding this meta tag in the first place.

So to recap, requiring users to opt in to get the latest browser support is not good. Making decisions based on fear is not good either. Together these add up to a bad situation. So what options do we have at this point? Do we just accept it or is there a possibility that Microsoft will change its mind based on developer reaction?

Finally, here are some more things that stink about this. One, Microsoft acts like they were open about this decision when they were not. Two, Microsoft acts like this decision will benefit all browser vendors when it only benefits them.

Further Discussion:

Update: More updates on Microsoft’s browser version targeting came today. I really liked Eric Meyer’s follow up, even though I don’t agree with his conclusion. John Resig and Sam Ruby gave us an important piece of information, in that there is a way to get IE8 to render pages in the IE8 engine without using the meta tag. Safari said that they wouldn’t be version targeting anything. Roger Johansson tells us why version targeting is a bad idea. I’m sure there are lots more posts on the subject, and that developers will be discussing this one for a long time.

Posted in IE

Browser Testing for Internet Explorer

December 28th, 2007 by Jonathan Kemp

As a web designer, you should make sure that you test your designs across all major browsers. Here is the list of browsers you should be testing on, if you aren’t already, in no particular order.

  1. Internet Explorer 7
  2. Internet Explorer 6
  3. Firefox
  4. Safari
  5. Opera

Of those 5, I find that IE6 is the one that gives me the most trouble. I recently changed jobs which resulted in me having to come up with different ways to test in IE 6 and 7. At my previous job and in my house, I test different versions of IE on different computers. In my new job, I don’t have that luxury anymore, so I had to find a different way to test on one machine.

One option that was recommended to me was Multiple IEs. This is a program to use if you have IE 7 installed and want to install multiple versions of IE below version 7 that you can have running at the same time. I found that this didn’t work well enough for me. The reason is that running IE 6 through Multiple IEs is not stable. Also, you can’t use the IE Developer Toolbar with IE6 in Multiple IEs. Since IE 6 is the main browser I debug in besides Firefox, I found that I had to find a way to have IE 6 running as the main IE version on that machine.

Another solution that was recommended to me was Virtual PC. Virtual PC for Windows allows you to have another versions of Windows running on your PC. This way you can have different versions of IE running at the same time. Plus, Virtual PC is now a free download from Microsoft.

So I decided to uninstall IE 7 and reinstall IE 6. This allowed me to have a stable version on IE 6 running with the IE Developer Toolbar. I then installed Virtual PC. Microsoft has also made a Virtual PC hard disk image with an evaluation version of Windows XP with IE6 or 7 available as a free download which you will need to run IE on Virtual PC. Keep in mind, this version has an expiration date of April 1, 2008.

Once I had that installed I was able to run Virtual PC with XP and IE 7 on Windows while running IE 6 at the same time. You can also install the IE Developer Toolbar in Virtual PC. In fact, Microsoft includes the developer toolbar with this version of the hard disk image. I found this to be the best solution so far for having multiple versions of IE running on the same machine. Not surprisingly, this is the same method that Microsoft itself endorses. Which method do you prefer?

Posted in Browsers, IE

Unfinished Sites

December 12th, 2007 by Jonathan Kemp

Now that I am leaving, I was trying to count how many sites I have worked on recently that have not launched yet. There are four.

  1. WDVX
  2. Roane Alliance, Chamber and Tourism
  3. Edgewater Hotel
  4. Structural Strategies

These are sites that I completed builds for that are stalled for one reason or another. I am watching to see when they launch. Once they do I’ll add them to my work page here. I doubt that any of these will launch before the end of the year. We’ll see what happens next year.

Update – 1/23/08: It turns out, WDVX launched this month.

Posted in Portfolio

Job Change

December 12th, 2007 by Jonathan Kemp

It’s probably safe to announce now that I am changing jobs. I have been with Mediapulse in Knoxville, TN for almost 3 years. I decided to change jobs a few months ago, and ended up getting hired by Scripps Networks to do front end development. Scripps owns HGTV, Food Network, Fine Living, DIY and GAC.

I’m really excited about this opportunity. At the same time, I’m sad to leave Mediapulse. When you put a lot of your life into something, it’s always hard to leave. Mediapulse is a great company, and I wish them all the best in the future.

Posted in General

Internet Explorer 7: The First Year

December 6th, 2007 by Jonathan Kemp

Microsoft updated their IE blog last Friday, with a post on the one year anniversary of IE7. Most interesting to me, was this piece.

There are over 300 million users are experiencing the web with IE7. This makes IE7 the second most popular browser after IE6. IE7 is already #1 in the US and UK, and we expect IE7 to surpass IE6 worldwide shortly.

Let’s hope that comes true. If you are an IE user and haven’t upgraded to IE7 yet, here are a few reasons why you should.

  1. Improved security
  2. Fraud protection
  3. Fewer bugs

Of course if you care about web design standards, you should upgrade to IE7 for it’s improved support for CSS. The problem with this is that IE7 only fixed known bugs and added support for CSS properties that were already being used in current browsers. IE7 did nothing to advance support for CSS, and it is still behind IE6 in its user base.

What web designers want to know, Microsoft, is where is IE8 and how do you plan on using it to advance support for CSS and web standards. If you need more proof of this, just read the comments on your own blog.

Posted in Browsers, IE

Using Web Inspector in Safari 3

November 20th, 2007 by Jonathan Kemp

I am really digging Safari 3. One of the cool features in Safari 3 is web inspector. Web inspector is a tool mainly for web developers to use in debugging web pages. It is basically Firebug for Safari.

Web inspector is not new. It has been available for a while in Safari 2. But it has been redesigned for Safari 3. Here is a screenshot of it.

The tricky part is that you need to enable it in order to use it. First, if you are using Tiger, you need to get 10.4.11 in order to make sure you have Safari 3. If you are using Leopard, you already have Safari 3. Once you have it you need to be able to use command line in Terminal. To enable Web inspector, open up Terminal and type the followwing command.

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true

Now you have it enabled. To use it, restart Safari and right click on any element on a web page and select Inspect Element. This will open up Web inspector.

I won’t take the time here to give a thorough review of everything it does, but play around with it and test it out. It lets you view the underlying code of your page along with the CSS applied to each element in the correct cascade order of the properties. It also gives you an error view and a network view. The network view shows you how each item on the page downloaded and how long it took. There is also an element inspector that lets you view each element that was downloaded that can be very useful for developers.

I also have to comment on how fast Safari 3 is. I noticed while using it that it is much faster than Firefox. It was enough to get me to switch to Safari from Firefox while using a web application. It’s that much faster.

So there you go. If you aren’t using Safari yet, I just gave you two good reasons to check it out.

Posted in Browsers, Mac OS X, Tools

Safari 3 for Tiger is Now Out

November 15th, 2007 by Jonathan Kemp

You may or may not know that Apple released Safari 3 with Leopard. If you are like me, you were wondering when it was coming out for non-Leopard Mac-users, or if they were going to release it at all. Well, today is the day. Safari 3 is now available on Tiger. Read about it here.

To get Safari, you need to get Mac OS 10.4.11 which is out today. You can either get it through automatic upgrades or install it manually. It requires a restart if you were wondering. It appears to be worth it. I haven’t installed it yet, but from what I hear, it is much improved over the previous versions.

What are the improvements? Surfin’ Safari has a list of ten new things in Safari 3. The biggest performance improvements in my opinion are the enhanced rich text editing, faster javascript and DOM and faster page loading. Chris in my office installed Safari 3  already and noticed those 3 things right away. Hopefully, enhanced rich text editing means that I can use Wordpress, which uses TinyMCE for editing, in Safari now. I also think the developer tools will be useful. I can’t wait to try it out!

Posted in Browsers, Mac OS X

Watch Full-length Episodes of NBC and Fox Shows at Hulu

November 15th, 2007 by Jonathan Kemp

Heard of Hulu yet? Well, you may have heard that NBC has pulled their content from iTunes and YouTube. So their plan was to create their own YouTube with their content and ads and social features. NBC’s original plan was to get other networks to join up and put their content on this site. The only one that did was Fox. Hulu is the result of their efforts.

It recently launched in beta, and I signed up to receive beta access to the site. Yesterday, I received a login to the beta website. The press has given NBC a lot of crap about this idea, and I have to say they deserved it. However, my first impression of the site is that it is pretty freakin’ awesome. The implementation is great! I’m watching the most recent episode on Family Guy right now. The video quality is great. They do force you to watch ads though, although they are fairly short, but the site is otherwise free to use.

I tested it out at work, and I felt the need to say make sure you have a fast connection. I have a faster connection at home than at work, and at work it was very jumpy because it wasn’t downloading it fast enough.

I haven’t really tested out many of the social features, but I will continue to play around with the site. It looks like you can pop out the video and play it in its own window. There is also a sharing feature and a feature to make the video play fullscreen. It also looks like the videos are embeddable. I played around with adding it to this post, and it worked but it was breaking the layout of the page so I left it out. It looks like a good feature though.

Hulu has current hit shows like The Office, Prison Break, The Simpsons, Heroes, and many more. You’ll also find a large number of classic television series, including Arrested Development, Miami Vice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The A-Team. In addition, they are including movies in the beta with an initial selection of feature films that includes Conan the Barbarian, Sideways and The Blues Brothers. What they aren’t telling you is that content is only available for five weeks. I understand that applies to new shows, but I’m not sure how that applies to older shows and movies. My question is with this time limit how are they going to handle the content expiration dates while the writer’s strike is on and there are no new episodes. Seems like they should get rid of the expiration date and use it to their advantage by telling people they can go online and watch back episodes while the strike is going on.

So far I think Hulu is great. Although I’m not sure how much time I will spend watching episodes I have already seen on TV, again on the web. It may be more useful if my friends are using it. Once it gets out of beta, NBC and Fox need to promote the hell out of it to make this work. Hulu is a huge gamble for NBC. Time will tell whether or not it pays off for them, or whether they should have stuck with iTunes and YouTube.

Posted in Reviews, Web 2.0

Tumblr, Twitter and the Social Web

November 14th, 2007 by Jonathan Kemp

Tumblr is a new web service similar to Twitter. When you set up an account, you create a tumblog. Anything you post to it, then gets posted to your tumblog. It’s similar to other blogging services in that, your account can be hosted on their site, or you can purchase a domain name and point that at your tumblog.

What makes it different from Twitter is that you can post more than just text. You can post a photo, a quote, a link, chat excerpts, audio or video. It is different from a blog, in that there is no way to comment on posts. There are also no other bloglike features like categories or blogrolls.

So if you already have a blog, Twitter account or a Flickr account, why do you need another service to post your stuff to? Well, you don’t really. But what interested me in Tumblr is aggregation. You can import posts from other services into your Tumblr account. Services that can be imported include Del.icio.us, Digg, Twitter, Wordpress, VOX, Blogger, LiveJournal, YouTube or any RSS feed. So rather than post the same info to different services, you can post to each service, import to Tumblr and display everything in one place. What this means is that you can track me on all these other services, or you can track me in one place on Tumblr.

I created an account to try it out. You can see my tumblog here. I am still trying it out, but my first impression is that the import feature doesn’t work like I hoped. It does import posts to Twitter. I added this blog’s RSS feed so it should import a link to each post. I also added my Flickr feed to it. It doesn’t import any old info, only new posts, but it takes a really long time. It took over 6 hours to import the Twitter posts.

So my advice is just to keep using your other services, unless you want to aggregate all your stuff like I am doing. You might want to try making this your primary blog if you aren’t using any other services, but be aware that it lacks important blogging features. I do hope they will continue to work on Tumblr and improve it. I think it has a lot of potential to be a really good service.

Posted in Blogging, Reviews, Web 2.0

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