iMovie '09 – tsk
Spot the deliberate mistake:
Just keep your eyes peeled!
IE6 CSS – let them eat cake?
An interesting idea is presented on “for a beautiful web” regarding how best to deal with IE6 and its many failings. Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS proposes that IE6 always gets sent a standard look and feel, so that the experience for its users is not bad – just not the full shebang. It’s clear it has been designed, rather than sending plain CSS-less HTML, but it’s very sparse.
Personally, I like the idea. I have done something similar on more than one occasion. I haven’t taken it to the same level, possibly, but I’ve treated IE6 in a similar way to how I treat screen readers for example: make sure all the content is available, and is usable. What follows are a couple of screen shots of redamc.com, first from Safari 4, then from IE6. (The Safari 4 shot is representative of all modern browsers, though.) The design basically revolves around having all the content on one page, in nicely scrollable boxes. In IE6, this was not well supported, and the decision was taken to make the layout more “blog-like”. All the content is the same, however.
First, Safari 4:
And IE6:
Protected: Development Standards: HTML
iPhone SDK 3.0 beta 3
Beta 3 is out and the new OS fixes the non-working Youtube from the previous beta.
[Update: and also breaks syncing, which now hangs on “Syncing contacts…”]
[Update2: Seems like the contacts syncing hang was a temporary issue…]
Development Standards: Intro
I’ve decided to write an occasional series of articles on coding and development standards. It will be how *I* see them – the standards *I* myself follow – so it might not be for everyone. What it will be is a guide to what to expect if I’m working for you, and what to expect if you’re working for me.
I’ll write separate pieces for CSS, HTML, PHP and possibly for server administration-type stuff too – Apache configuration, and so on.
Expect the first instalment in the near future…
MacBook hard drive upgrade
I just got a new drive for my MacBook (MacBook2,1 – black) and am quite pleased with the simplicity of the process. First up, I didn’t need to add a jumper to throttle the SATA II drive down to SATA I speed. I put it in, it was recognised OK. The drive is a Seagate ST9320421ASG.
Secondly, the restore from Time Machine was pretty damn simple and effective. It’s always the same question with backups – if you don’t test them, do you know they’ll work? I’ve grabbed individual files from Time Machine and that seemed fine, but I had no way of knowing, without having a new drive with which to test, if a system restore would work. It did. Just boot with the DVD (or a copy of it on an external drive, if your DVD drive doesn’t work, like mine) and choose to restore from Time Machine. Just pick which backup to use, pick where to restore it to and wait. I suppose it took about an hour.
Once that’s done, reboot with the new system.
The only things I noticed awry were that my hosts file wasn’t there and that my Downloads directory wasn’t either! Seems a bit odd… Anyway, copy old hosts file to new location, copy old Downloads directory to home dir and sorted. I need to look into the missing directory issue, but all in all, not too bad an experience.
[Update: small, possibly even unrelated error: the firewall seemed to have Ruby blocked for some reason, even though it was listed as allowed – just switched it to block, then back to allowed and it worked.]
[Update2: the Downloads directory wasn’t there because I, er, set it to be excluded… ahem. I’d forgotten about that.]
Screencast as development tool
I’m in the middle of the first phase of building a new webapp and like most web developers (I would bet) when I show someone what I’ve done, it’s not apparent what marvels of engineering I’ve pulled off! So, in order to actually give a quick run-down of where we’re at with the application, I thought about making a screencast of the login, profile creation, module, video upl– well, I’ve said too much already ;)
After thinking about that for a bit, I wondered if any methodologies, agile or otherwise, use screencasts specifically as a tool. I could just Google it, I know. In any case I think it’s a nice way of showing progress on the development – or bugs in the app.
Webshop launched
As the first example of my [Tienda.co.uk](http://tienda.co.uk/) project, we’ve just launched [slant1996.com](http://www.slant1996.com) which sells slightly mad t-shirt designs!