Allow me to ask you a few questions then. Are you still coding the same way now that you were when you first started? Or are you continuing to push the boundaries of what you believe is possible with Web standards based technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript?
Are you willing to embrace new ideas and ways of doing things, or are your coding practices so set in stone that you're unwilling (or able) to adapt?
The reason I ask is because if you're still coding today the way you did in 1999, then you should expect to have to check and recheck, plus hack for Browsers X Y and Z (and versions a, b and c of each). Learning how to write standards-compliant semantic code that separates the structure, appearance and interaction as much as possible, while still ensuring accessibility and ease of use, not to mention maximum code optimization for the search engines (you know, "search engine friendly design") will mean you no longer have to check over your shoulder every six to twelve months when a new browser (version) is released.
I'll grant you - it's not easy, and there is a steep learning curve involved. But the rewards far outweigh the risks, especially when money is involved (I've seen sites that were built the way I described far outperform comparable sites that used outdated techniques). As for moving targets, HTML 4.01 has been around for about a decade, same with CSS 2.1 - HTML 5 and CSS 3 are still about a decade away from being capable of real world deployment. And you know what else? At least with HTML/CSS/JS, I don't have to worry about browser plugins determinig whether I can even access the site or not - the content is always available to me. Can't say the same with Flash/Silverlight and other technologies that require plugins (and still depend on HTML for delivery).
Sure,/if/ your content is the type that can be presented in a text-oriented, page-by-page manner, then creating simple, barebones HTML pages is smart coding.
Actually, that's not the case. It's just a matter of using markup to structure your documents, and then letting CSS handle the display. That doesn't mean you can't use sticky footer techniques (like the one Paul O'Brien uses on SitePoint), Gilder/Levin image substitution techniques, or even advanced floating methods that literally rearrange the content so that you have floats on one part of the page floating underneath content on another part of the page even though there's another content block (or three) in between them.
And yes, I am aware of issues that plague even the most advanced designs; and how sometimes you have to use hacks to compensate for the failures of a browser (not just IE, but Firefox, Opera, and Safari/Chrome as well) to render things properly. (Don't believe me about Firefox? Look up Bugzilla 915 one of these days.)
But every design has its limits. Try pushing at the edges of HTML, and it gets painful, fast. On one project I audited, we were spending 75% of our coding time on browser workarounds.
Given that I've been doing this since 2002, I should know that every design has its limits; it's a limitation of the medium, not the languages used. As I tell everyone, HTML is for structure, CSS is for presentation, and client-side scripting is for behavior. While there is overlap between the three (as there should be with any healthy symbiotic relationship), they do have their own jobs and when used properly, they can achieve results that would otherwise be impossible with HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
But I'm one of those people who debugs as he goes along in all browsers - first with the HTML to ensure that the markup is structurally sound, then the CSS to ensure that the appearance is practically the same in all browsers made in this century (I'm a user-centric developer who prefers to put the people who will use the Web site first, rather than a designer's ego - but that doesn't mean designs can't look great while working well), and finally the scripting (script by script) to make sure that nothing's broken there either. Taking that kind of approach allows me to reduce the time spent debugging by nearly 95%. I've also found that most of the problems I have (and this isn't true for everyone) will be in the HTML itself, and that by modifying the markup slightly I can get it to work in all browsers, rather than piling on hack after hack after hack that I have to check again and again whenever a new browser, browser version or layout engine is released.
Oh, as for pushing at the limits of HTML? There really aren't any limits if you use it as a structural markup language because of the rules in place. The real limits to be pushed are with CSS and JavaScript - that's where the real magic is.
Switching to a RIA was a huge time-saver. At the edges of user interface design, HTML compatibility is thoroughly broken.
At which point I would dare say you're not creating a Web site, but an application. Two completely different environments (with their own sets of rules) co-existing in the same medium. (As someone who once had to make a Web site look 100% identical to a Flex app in all browsers, I should know.)
However, your instinct that the simplest designs are usually the best is spot-on. This is exactly kind of back-to-the-basics thinking that is behind REST, Atom, JSON, and other web-centric techniques.
As I've said before, even rich graphics intensive designs can be done using POSH (Plain Old Semantic HTML). Yeah, you may need a few container hooks, but given that multiple backgrounds and other CSS3 properties aren't properly implemented in all browsers yet, I can live with it for now. (Though I don't know how much more I can take - I want my CSS3 fix now, damnit!)
Saying that a student's odds of being elected President are so astronomically high that he might as well invest his or her time in something less harmful (like banking, or becoming an attorney) is one thing. Saying you're not even fit for janitorial work or flipping burgers is another thing entirely.
The simple fact that I get to choose my own hours, decide whom I want to work with (even though they by default become my bosses for an agreed-upon amount of time), and set my own rates without much difficulty or fear of a prospective client saying "No, I'll go to the 'guru' who can do the same job at 1/1,000th of the quality for only a dollar a day*" strongly indicates that the counselors, like many other people in my life, were in fact wrong.
(* Especially when they realize it's far cheaper to hire me at the start rather than once their "guru" has screwed everything up so badly that I have to come in and fix everything.)
Welcome to the painful reality of SGML being so lax in its rules enforcement. If only SGML would stop invalid code dead in its tracks rather than allowing the browsers to not only parse but render invalid code as Web pages, then we'd be able to get somewhere.
Of course, that would make HTML so "complex" and "difficult" that only those with computer science degrees (or the patience of Mother Teresa) would be able to actually author pages in HTML to begin with.
Fair shot. I'm self employed, and I spend my time helping other Web professionals and enthusiasts on forums such as SitePoint (where I volunteer as a community Advisor), SEO.com (as an administrator), and newer communities such as LovingTech.net (yep, I'm a moderator there, too).
What sucks for me though at the moment is that I've spent the past six months watching my mom waste away due to the lack of proper health care from one doctor after another (and that's despite having health insurance).
Right now I've got three really wonderful clients that I'm working with, and am about to pick up two more (I'm very picky about the clients I take on - I prefer to work with those who are willing to work with me, rather than those who kick the tires and want to buy oceanfront property in Arizona for a nickel once global warming has had its way and finished redrawing the map). Not bad for someone who does all the work himself (and spends his time helping others with their own sites instead of working on his own).
Of course, I could be doing something more productive, like cutting up a fish to illustrate how Congress wastes our taxpayer money.
In this day and age, you don't need to know good html in order to make a webpage. We have WYSIWYG editors. So I don't see why we couldn't have an editor for the canvas tag, that would provide artists with a point and click interface like flash does.
And yet those tools produce more crap code than Microsoft had market share for its Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser in the first few years of this decade.
Seriously - there's a huge problem when someone can create a Web page with a WISIWYG editor that breaks when a new browser, browser version or rendering engine comes out and is generally inaccessible to people with disabilities while leaving search engines guessing which content is the most important; yet I can create the exact same page by hand using nothing more than a plain text editor and a decent graphics program (like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements) that works just as well in Internet Explorer 5, IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Opera, Safari, Chrome and other browsers without having to update them whenever a new browser, browser version or layout engine is released - without hacks about 90% of the time for any browser. And that's just for GUI capable desktop clients.
While using only 25% of the code the WYSIWYG editor barfs up, making the site accessible to everyone (not just the disabled), search engine friendly, and able to support up to three times as many people due to lower code weights, fewer HTTP requests needed with every page view, and optimized images (CSS sprites anyone?) - and that's just off the top of my head.
If I can learn how to do that, anybody can. And my high school counselors (not to mention my family and their friends) thought I would never amount to anything.
For God's sake, my friends that are in highway patrol just decided yesterday they will stop any car with Clinton bumper stickers and find a way to give the people driving a ticket or send them to jail. If that's the case then they should lose their jobs. Putting personal politics above the law is not and should not be a part of a law enforcement official's job description. Especially when it can cost the city/state hundreds of thousands or even millions of taxpayer dollars on unlawful arrest lawsuits that could have easily been prevented had the officers in question shown some self restraint and done their jobs in the first place - and left their politics at the door.
good point. any tips on how to migrate out of yahoo mail? Do what I'm going to do if/when this old-school corporate thug style hostile takeover goes through. Just run everything you use on Yahoo! through your own Web site. Mail, RSS feeds, news syndication, EVERYTHING you can (though in my case the only real casualty would be Yahoo! Instant Messenger, but I already use MSN as well as AIM and ICQ on Trillian anyway so that will be no real big loss should this go through and regulators give the hostile takeover the A-OK).
Except the 14th district is about 60 miles from Cook County. As someone who isn't in the district in question, but is close enough to have been bombarded with the BS from both sides, I'm not so sure Foster won this election so much as Jim Oberweis lost yet another political race (at last count he's 0 for 4).
That's precisely what happened (United States Senate, Illinois governor, and two House runs - all failed spectactularly - and I for one couldn't be happier for it). After defeating popular (and well respected) State Senator Chris Lauzen in the special primary election for the GOP nod, he changed his cow-pie slinging from attacking his Republican rival to smearing Foster's campaign, which was also taking heat from Foster's fellow Democratic rival John Laesch, who demanded a recount here in Aurora as well as other precients in the 14th District because not all the votes were counted (absentee ballots) and due to the election problems here in Aurora (incomplete ballots, ballots missing candidates and even entire political races, and so forth). (Laesch decided to withdraw his demand the other day.)
The simple fact of the matter is this: Oberweis knows he can't buy his way into office yet he keeps trying to every single time. He wants into office as bad as Microsoft wants to crush Linux and free software (note I mean free both as in "free as in freedom" as well as "free as in beer" here - I don't play favorites on the issue). He's going to be squaring off against Foster again in the November general election, and I for one won't be voting for him. Thankfully a lot of other Illinois voters (especially conservative independents such as myself) feel the exact same way as I do - that he should sell milk and ice cream, not buy his way into public office (the Illinois GOP is even thinking of asking him to step aside as well "for the good of the party" since they're claiming that he cost them the election and their traditional Congressional stronghold).
If I'm right though (and for the sake of the nation, I hope I am), the Illinois GOP is going to have three years to figure out how to get the district back into its hands. Though with the current problems plaguing the Illinois Republican party, I doubt that's going to happen in three years as long as Oberweis keeps wasting his milk money on failed campaign after failed campaign (not to mention the lack of a clear direction and leadership in the state party as well). If Foster ends up doing a good job though, puts his constituents first (like that'll ever happen) and serves to the best of his ability, then I'll consider voting for him (like I said, I'm an independent, not a lackey).
Did anyone notice that the value of the ID attribute in that example is invalid? (ID attribute values cannot start with a numeral.)
Overall though, I'm starting to like what I'm seeing with IE 8, especially now that my main complaint against the browser (having to opt-in for real standards support) has been consigned to the deepest darkest pits of Hell (and I don't mean the town in Michigan either).
Of course, I do reserve the right to reserve judgment until I can finally get around to playing with the browser to see what works, what doesn't, and how it handles the way I develop Web sites.
Get over it. Detect your browser version and render your custom CSS. Play like everyone else plays.
News flash. This is 2008, not 1998. As for detection, you should be using object detection, not browser (or even version) detection since not every version of every browser supports the exact sae specifications and standards (or as the W3C calls them, "recommendations") 100%. But that's beside the point.
The problem which resulted in this "solution" (I think of it more as a stopgap measure and ironically, Jeffrey Zeldman feels the same way) is two-fold.
The first one is obvious because it is so easy for people to (in this case correctly) place blame. Microsoft. After the release of Internet Explorer 6 and the demise of Netscape's popular browser - which came about not primarily due to the problems with Netscape 4.7, but instead the company waiting too long to come out with the Gecko rendering engine that would become the cornerstone of Mozilla Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers -Microsoft simply saw no real need to "update" the browser. As far as the company was concerned, they had "won". Their browser was the dominant browser on the market, everyone used it and it was installed on every new PC, whether people wanted it or not. At the time, Opera's browser sucked worse than a box of rocks (as far as I'm concerned Opera didn't truely become ready for "prime time" until Opera 8.5 was released), Safari really hadn't come on to the scene yet, and Konqueror was the "browser" of choice for those using Linux (at least KDE anyway). Microsoft had crushed the competition at the time and figured that the "war" was over. That is until Netscape open-sourced their new rendering engine, the Mozilla Foundation got started on their Mozilla Suite (and its eventual successor, Firefox), and Opera finally pulled their collective heads out of their rectums and did what many thought was impossible - rewrite the rendering engine and make a product that worked (which again, was a process that culminated in the release of Opear 8.5). Now Microsoft finds itself in the unenviable position of playing "catchup", especially after five long years - talk about having to eat crow while having egg on one's face.
The second part is the Web designers and developers (which I happen to be). Now, as a Mentor on the Design Team over at the SitePoint forums, I probably shouldn't be saying this, but a lot of designers and developers just flat out don't know any better. And a lot of the ones who do think they know actually don't. Thankfully this has changed a lot (at least over at SitePoint anyway) in the year and a half I've been helping people on their forums, but if you look just about anywhere else you'll see one of two types of designer. The "Code for Firefox, Hack for IE" crowd, and those who build for IE, and pray that it works elsewhere (or just flat out pretend that IE is the only browser out there).
What both camps should instead be doing is writing clean, minimal, semantic, and valid (X)HTML (I honestly don't care if they use HTML or XHTML, even if served as HTML, as long as they are aware of the limitations of each DOCTYPE and don't abuse the languages) to mark up the contents and structure of their pages and then write clean, minimal, valid and warning-free (the latter is optional, for those who care) CSS to present the appearance of that well structured content to the browsers.
The HTML part isn't hard, I mean if you don't know how to mark up a masthead, menu, content area, sidebar(s), and footer, use headings correctly, mark up blocks of code, quote other pages and people, cite your sources, et cetera, and have the markup be independent of the design (within reason, of course), then you need to learn PDQ. At most it'll involve "unlearning" what you already thought you knew (who thought Homeritis would be a good thing? If you're wondering it's "Eve
Why does it look like the moon? Because like with every other terrestrial world in the inner solar system, it's been bombarded by meteors, asteroids and the like for over four billion years. Combine that with the lack of any real atmosphere (yes, I know about the thin hydrogen atmosphere, but let's be serious for a moment, shall we?), you're not going to have enough meteorological energy (weather) to start eroding those craters. Same with geological activity (there likely isn't any). Besides, given the large apparent size of the planet's core, this may be all that's left of the world.
why is it in black & white? I'm not an engineer, but I think they went with B/W images to actually get better results with the camera. I'm sure there are a few engineers here and I know there are people who know a lot more about this particular subject than I do, so I'll let them explain further if they chooes to.
Hope that helps.
I was aiming for "gentle correction, but in a funny way:-)" Ah, I see. I typically try not to correct people over such trivial matters since it tends to detract from the overall conversation. But to each their own.
Congratulations - however, with much of my previous posting on usenet groups that equate sloppy spelling with sloppy thinking, I generally fire off one or two corrections every 20/30 posts. (off topic) I avoid usenet groups like the plague for precisely that reason. Anyway, shall we return to the regularly scheduled discussion, already in progress?
Are you trying to be funny, or just down right rude? It's early in the morning here, I haven't finished waking up yet, and I have a long day at work ahead of me.
Since comparisons have been drawn between this and the Tunguska explosion, perhaps studying this will help prove or disprove that theory. Actually it wouldn't help prove or disprove Tunguska, since assuming that it was an asteroid or meteor, it would have had to explode as it made planetfall.
Now Barringer Crater (aka "Meteor Crater") on the other hand would make an excellent comparison, but we'd still have to remember that Mars has a fraction of the atmosphere, no real magnetic field to speak of (that I'm aware of anyway), no ozone layer... oh, and the meteor that dug out that piece of real estate in the Arizona desert was slightly larger than half a football field. How large is this rock again? (Seriously, I forgot, and I'm too tired to look it up again.)
Poor, poor buggalo though, who's going to save the buggalo?
Assuming that the RIAA wins its case, the damages awarded will be commensurate to the loss. Since the guy was just ripping for his own use (to an easier to use format) I assume that the loss will be zero. Would he have paid again for the songs in MP3 format? Probably not, he would just have had to shuffle physical CDs.
So: zero loss means damages of what ?
Attorney's fees, court costs, punitive damages, the list goes on, actually. A court is under no obligation to award actual damages in cases like this (note: I did not RTFA, I'm just saying "in general" here).
Now, as for my own thoughts on this? I hope the defendent gives the RIAA the Adolf Hitler treatment from the movie "Little Nicky". I just hope he has a large enough pineapple to shove up there though.
You don't have to show proof of your ability to drive a car, a State ID works just fine, they're like $4 (here in IL). $20 actually (for the State ID).
There are also state income taxes in all but a few states, so tack on something between 5 and 10 percent. Illinois charges a flat 3% income tax (at least as of right now anyway).
Slashdot Mirror
Allow me to ask you a few questions then. Are you still coding the same way now that you were when you first started? Or are you continuing to push the boundaries of what you believe is possible with Web standards based technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript?
Are you willing to embrace new ideas and ways of doing things, or are your coding practices so set in stone that you're unwilling (or able) to adapt?
The reason I ask is because if you're still coding today the way you did in 1999, then you should expect to have to check and recheck, plus hack for Browsers X Y and Z (and versions a, b and c of each). Learning how to write standards-compliant semantic code that separates the structure, appearance and interaction as much as possible, while still ensuring accessibility and ease of use, not to mention maximum code optimization for the search engines (you know, "search engine friendly design") will mean you no longer have to check over your shoulder every six to twelve months when a new browser (version) is released.
I'll grant you - it's not easy, and there is a steep learning curve involved. But the rewards far outweigh the risks, especially when money is involved (I've seen sites that were built the way I described far outperform comparable sites that used outdated techniques). As for moving targets, HTML 4.01 has been around for about a decade, same with CSS 2.1 - HTML 5 and CSS 3 are still about a decade away from being capable of real world deployment. And you know what else? At least with HTML/CSS/JS, I don't have to worry about browser plugins determinig whether I can even access the site or not - the content is always available to me. Can't say the same with Flash/Silverlight and other technologies that require plugins (and still depend on HTML for delivery).
Actually, that's not the case. It's just a matter of using markup to structure your documents, and then letting CSS handle the display. That doesn't mean you can't use sticky footer techniques (like the one Paul O'Brien uses on SitePoint), Gilder/Levin image substitution techniques, or even advanced floating methods that literally rearrange the content so that you have floats on one part of the page floating underneath content on another part of the page even though there's another content block (or three) in between them.
And yes, I am aware of issues that plague even the most advanced designs; and how sometimes you have to use hacks to compensate for the failures of a browser (not just IE, but Firefox, Opera, and Safari/Chrome as well) to render things properly. (Don't believe me about Firefox? Look up Bugzilla 915 one of these days.)
Given that I've been doing this since 2002, I should know that every design has its limits; it's a limitation of the medium, not the languages used. As I tell everyone, HTML is for structure, CSS is for presentation, and client-side scripting is for behavior. While there is overlap between the three (as there should be with any healthy symbiotic relationship), they do have their own jobs and when used properly, they can achieve results that would otherwise be impossible with HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
But I'm one of those people who debugs as he goes along in all browsers - first with the HTML to ensure that the markup is structurally sound, then the CSS to ensure that the appearance is practically the same in all browsers made in this century (I'm a user-centric developer who prefers to put the people who will use the Web site first, rather than a designer's ego - but that doesn't mean designs can't look great while working well), and finally the scripting (script by script) to make sure that nothing's broken there either. Taking that kind of approach allows me to reduce the time spent debugging by nearly 95%. I've also found that most of the problems I have (and this isn't true for everyone) will be in the HTML itself, and that by modifying the markup slightly I can get it to work in all browsers, rather than piling on hack after hack after hack that I have to check again and again whenever a new browser, browser version or layout engine is released.
Oh, as for pushing at the limits of HTML? There really aren't any limits if you use it as a structural markup language because of the rules in place. The real limits to be pushed are with CSS and JavaScript - that's where the real magic is.
At which point I would dare say you're not creating a Web site, but an application. Two completely different environments (with their own sets of rules) co-existing in the same medium. (As someone who once had to make a Web site look 100% identical to a Flex app in all browsers, I should know.)
As I've said before, even rich graphics intensive designs can be done using POSH (Plain Old Semantic HTML). Yeah, you may need a few container hooks, but given that multiple backgrounds and other CSS3 properties aren't properly implemented in all browsers yet, I can live with it for now. (Though I don't know how much more I can take - I want my CSS3 fix now, damnit!)
Saying that a student's odds of being elected President are so astronomically high that he might as well invest his or her time in something less harmful (like banking, or becoming an attorney) is one thing. Saying you're not even fit for janitorial work or flipping burgers is another thing entirely. The simple fact that I get to choose my own hours, decide whom I want to work with (even though they by default become my bosses for an agreed-upon amount of time), and set my own rates without much difficulty or fear of a prospective client saying "No, I'll go to the 'guru' who can do the same job at 1/1,000th of the quality for only a dollar a day*" strongly indicates that the counselors, like many other people in my life, were in fact wrong . (* Especially when they realize it's far cheaper to hire me at the start rather than once their "guru" has screwed everything up so badly that I have to come in and fix everything.)
Welcome to the painful reality of SGML being so lax in its rules enforcement. If only SGML would stop invalid code dead in its tracks rather than allowing the browsers to not only parse but render invalid code as Web pages, then we'd be able to get somewhere. Of course, that would make HTML so "complex" and "difficult" that only those with computer science degrees (or the patience of Mother Teresa) would be able to actually author pages in HTML to begin with.
It's in all browsers, and for Ghu's sake, we shouldn't have to switch to the new (and painfully slow) comments system to "fix" the problem.
Fair shot. I'm self employed, and I spend my time helping other Web professionals and enthusiasts on forums such as SitePoint (where I volunteer as a community Advisor), SEO.com (as an administrator), and newer communities such as LovingTech.net (yep, I'm a moderator there, too). What sucks for me though at the moment is that I've spent the past six months watching my mom waste away due to the lack of proper health care from one doctor after another (and that's despite having health insurance). Right now I've got three really wonderful clients that I'm working with, and am about to pick up two more (I'm very picky about the clients I take on - I prefer to work with those who are willing to work with me, rather than those who kick the tires and want to buy oceanfront property in Arizona for a nickel once global warming has had its way and finished redrawing the map). Not bad for someone who does all the work himself (and spends his time helping others with their own sites instead of working on his own). Of course, I could be doing something more productive, like cutting up a fish to illustrate how Congress wastes our taxpayer money.
And yet those tools produce more crap code than Microsoft had market share for its Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser in the first few years of this decade.
Seriously - there's a huge problem when someone can create a Web page with a WISIWYG editor that breaks when a new browser, browser version or rendering engine comes out and is generally inaccessible to people with disabilities while leaving search engines guessing which content is the most important; yet I can create the exact same page by hand using nothing more than a plain text editor and a decent graphics program (like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements) that works just as well in Internet Explorer 5, IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Opera, Safari, Chrome and other browsers without having to update them whenever a new browser, browser version or layout engine is released - without hacks about 90% of the time for any browser. And that's just for GUI capable desktop clients.
While using only 25% of the code the WYSIWYG editor barfs up, making the site accessible to everyone (not just the disabled), search engine friendly, and able to support up to three times as many people due to lower code weights, fewer HTTP requests needed with every page view, and optimized images (CSS sprites anyone?) - and that's just off the top of my head.
If I can learn how to do that, anybody can. And my high school counselors (not to mention my family and their friends) thought I would never amount to anything.
That's precisely what happened (United States Senate, Illinois governor, and two House runs - all failed spectactularly - and I for one couldn't be happier for it). After defeating popular (and well respected) State Senator Chris Lauzen in the special primary election for the GOP nod, he changed his cow-pie slinging from attacking his Republican rival to smearing Foster's campaign, which was also taking heat from Foster's fellow Democratic rival John Laesch, who demanded a recount here in Aurora as well as other precients in the 14th District because not all the votes were counted (absentee ballots) and due to the election problems here in Aurora (incomplete ballots, ballots missing candidates and even entire political races, and so forth). (Laesch decided to withdraw his demand the other day.)
The simple fact of the matter is this: Oberweis knows he can't buy his way into office yet he keeps trying to every single time. He wants into office as bad as Microsoft wants to crush Linux and free software (note I mean free both as in "free as in freedom" as well as "free as in beer" here - I don't play favorites on the issue). He's going to be squaring off against Foster again in the November general election, and I for one won't be voting for him. Thankfully a lot of other Illinois voters (especially conservative independents such as myself) feel the exact same way as I do - that he should sell milk and ice cream, not buy his way into public office (the Illinois GOP is even thinking of asking him to step aside as well "for the good of the party" since they're claiming that he cost them the election and their traditional Congressional stronghold).
If I'm right though (and for the sake of the nation, I hope I am), the Illinois GOP is going to have three years to figure out how to get the district back into its hands. Though with the current problems plaguing the Illinois Republican party, I doubt that's going to happen in three years as long as Oberweis keeps wasting his milk money on failed campaign after failed campaign (not to mention the lack of a clear direction and leadership in the state party as well). If Foster ends up doing a good job though, puts his constituents first (like that'll ever happen) and serves to the best of his ability, then I'll consider voting for him (like I said, I'm an independent, not a lackey).Did anyone notice that the value of the ID attribute in that example is invalid? (ID attribute values cannot start with a numeral.)
Overall though, I'm starting to like what I'm seeing with IE 8, especially now that my main complaint against the browser (having to opt-in for real standards support) has been consigned to the deepest darkest pits of Hell (and I don't mean the town in Michigan either).
Of course, I do reserve the right to reserve judgment until I can finally get around to playing with the browser to see what works, what doesn't, and how it handles the way I develop Web sites.
Get over it. Detect your browser version and render your custom CSS. Play like everyone else plays.
News flash. This is 2008, not 1998. As for detection, you should be using object detection, not browser (or even version) detection since not every version of every browser supports the exact sae specifications and standards (or as the W3C calls them, "recommendations") 100%. But that's beside the point.
The problem which resulted in this "solution" (I think of it more as a stopgap measure and ironically, Jeffrey Zeldman feels the same way) is two-fold.
The first one is obvious because it is so easy for people to (in this case correctly) place blame. Microsoft. After the release of Internet Explorer 6 and the demise of Netscape's popular browser - which came about not primarily due to the problems with Netscape 4.7, but instead the company waiting too long to come out with the Gecko rendering engine that would become the cornerstone of Mozilla Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers -Microsoft simply saw no real need to "update" the browser. As far as the company was concerned, they had "won". Their browser was the dominant browser on the market, everyone used it and it was installed on every new PC, whether people wanted it or not. At the time, Opera's browser sucked worse than a box of rocks (as far as I'm concerned Opera didn't truely become ready for "prime time" until Opera 8.5 was released), Safari really hadn't come on to the scene yet, and Konqueror was the "browser" of choice for those using Linux (at least KDE anyway). Microsoft had crushed the competition at the time and figured that the "war" was over. That is until Netscape open-sourced their new rendering engine, the Mozilla Foundation got started on their Mozilla Suite (and its eventual successor, Firefox), and Opera finally pulled their collective heads out of their rectums and did what many thought was impossible - rewrite the rendering engine and make a product that worked (which again, was a process that culminated in the release of Opear 8.5). Now Microsoft finds itself in the unenviable position of playing "catchup", especially after five long years - talk about having to eat crow while having egg on one's face.
The second part is the Web designers and developers (which I happen to be). Now, as a Mentor on the Design Team over at the SitePoint forums, I probably shouldn't be saying this, but a lot of designers and developers just flat out don't know any better. And a lot of the ones who do think they know actually don't. Thankfully this has changed a lot (at least over at SitePoint anyway) in the year and a half I've been helping people on their forums, but if you look just about anywhere else you'll see one of two types of designer. The "Code for Firefox, Hack for IE" crowd, and those who build for IE, and pray that it works elsewhere (or just flat out pretend that IE is the only browser out there).
What both camps should instead be doing is writing clean, minimal, semantic, and valid (X)HTML (I honestly don't care if they use HTML or XHTML, even if served as HTML, as long as they are aware of the limitations of each DOCTYPE and don't abuse the languages) to mark up the contents and structure of their pages and then write clean, minimal, valid and warning-free (the latter is optional, for those who care) CSS to present the appearance of that well structured content to the browsers.
The HTML part isn't hard, I mean if you don't know how to mark up a masthead, menu, content area, sidebar(s), and footer, use headings correctly, mark up blocks of code, quote other pages and people, cite your sources, et cetera, and have the markup be independent of the design (within reason, of course), then you need to learn PDQ. At most it'll involve "unlearning" what you already thought you knew (who thought Homeritis would be a good thing? If you're wondering it's "Eve
Are you trying to be funny, or just down right rude? It's early in the morning here, I haven't finished waking up yet, and I have a long day at work ahead of me.
You know, you just might be on to something here. You know they say about propoganda afterall...
Actually there is an AdBlocker.css file available for Opera users. You can download it here: http://members.chello.nl/b.kroonspecker/opera/styles/user/AdBlocker.css
Oh, and while you're at it, tell them we plain old don't like them.
I believe the plaintiff just did that.