Not so. It's available for free download for a year, after which they'll start charging; however, copies downloaded free remain free and fully licensed. Not sure where you dug, as 4 clicks from the www.microsoft.com homepage will lead you to the pricing section of the FAQ:
12. Do customers who acquire the Visual Studio Express products during the free promotional pricing period have to pay after the first year if they want to continue to use them?
No, as long as you download Visual Studio Express on or before November 7th 2006, you will not have to pay for it.
(For the navigationally challenged, the route is: MS homepage, "Developer Tools", "Visual Studio", "Visual Studio Express", and in the right hand column headed "Express Quick Facts" follow the link "Free for 1 year".)
Actually, Opera's user agent string includes the word "Opera" even when it's set to identify as IE. The problem is with the incompetents who think that finding "MSIE" in the user agent means it's IE. A few years ago (around 1996-7), the problem was people finding "Mozilla" in there and thinking it was Netscape 3 when it was IE 3. Yet another reason not to trust browser stats.
User agent strings:
Internet Explorer 6 on XPSP2:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
Opera 8.5, set to masquerade as IE:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; en) Opera 8.50
<?xml version="1.0"> isn't the XML DTD, it's the XML prolog. Any character at all, even whitespace, before the HTML DTD will cause IE to enter quirks mode, where it uses the IE 5 box model, rather than standards mode, using the W3C CSS box model. As IE doesn't understand the application/xhtml+xml MIME type, there is absolutely no point in serving XHTML to it, so the XML prolog (which isn't a mandatory requirement anyway) is just a waste of space.
IE7 won't be available for any Windows version older than XP SP2, so all those Win 2000 desktops out there will continue to run IE 6. There's not much hope of throwing away our hacks for coercing IE into just-about-standards mode for several years.
Online before broadcast
on
IT Crowd On-line
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The really interesting thing about this is that the show won't be broadcast on Channel 4 until next Friday. I believe this is the first time a UK broadcaster has made a programmes available online before broadcast.
To date, only my current client has been explicitly concerned about accessibility, and I believe that the initial impetus came from the legal department.
On the other hand, the in-house developers have seen this as an opportunity to get up to speed with a subject which they knew was important, but wouldn't have had the opportunity to explore without that legal push helping to justify the budget for the project. So the whole "fear of being sued" thing can trickle down and lead to developers learning more about the subject, which can only be a good thing.
For some time now I've taken pretty much the same approach as described by Andy Clarke in his article
Advocating the Quiet Revolution. There's a multinational corporation out there that may one day become concerned about the accessibility of their European intranet; it's taken care of, and didn't cost any more, because that's just the way I do stuff these days. It may cost more money to build a ramp at the entrance to a restaurant, but if you build a web site the right way from the start, accessibility doesn't add any extra cost. (I'm assuming here that one doesn't have to subtitle hours of video, or suchlike.)
It would be good if more clients were actively concerned about accessibility, and as the implications of recent changes in the (U.K.) law become more widely understood, that may happen. But I think for the moment we're stuck with developers quietly driving a grassroots change for the better, as and when they get the chance.
I couldn't agree more. I'm 43, I've been coding since I was 13, and I still learn something new every working day.
I now work as a freelance web developer and life is great. I get to work on exciting projects, don't have to do the boring maintenance stuff, can take time out between contracts to learn anything new that catches my interest, and get to pass my skills along to the people I work with. Clients appreciate the fact that I've moved beyond the total geekiness of my younger days, and can thus appreciate the various negative real-life forces acting on a project (budgetary constraints, business needs, office politics, managerial cluelessness, Internet Explorer) and get the job done.
Old coders never die, they just don't do the dull jobs. I can't imagine accepting a permanent role ever again - and I get offered one by every single client:-)
Microsoft have been justly lambasted over the past few years for their failure to keep IE up to date, but (perhaps prompted by the success of Firefox) they are now doing real work to improve matters, and this has been accompanied by an unprecendented degree of openness and clarity. Time will tell just how much they achieve on their promises, but it's clearly wrong to suggest that this rather trivial piece of news is all that's been happening over the past year.
If you're really interested in functional improvements made by Microsoft then rather than waiting for us to call you, you could try subscribing to a few feeds. Here's one to get you started: IEBlog (Atom 0.3).
(Oh no, I defended Microsoft; there goes 8 years of karma...:-)
I don't know what the law is where you are, but in the United Kingdom a domain name is an asset like any other. If a company goes into receivership, its domain name(s) end up being auctioned off by the Official Receiver, in order to help pay the creditors.
IIRC, the JavaScript confirm() function returns three values -- true, false, or null, depending on whether you hit ok, cancel, or x.
Unfortunately not. I can see that it would be useful to have, but a quick test shows that both Cancel and the Close button return false (on Windows 2000, IE 6 and Firefox 1.0.7). IIRC this is in line with the expected behaviour for such dialogs, although that may vary per operating system.
Try it: type
javascript:alert(confirm("blah"))
in your browser location bar.
For the paranoid/justifiably cautious: the "javascript:" causes the browser to pass the rest of the line to the JS interpreter, "alert(expr1)" pops up an alert (surprise!) containing the string value of expr1, and "confirm(expr2)" does the OK/Cancel box containing the string value of expr2. So first you get the OK/Cancel box, which returns a boolean value, which is then converted to a string, which is displayed in the alert box.
The article is obviously meant to address people who think this way
Actually, the article is obviously a joke.
In fact it's a joke stolen from Roedy Green; the original starts with the words, "This is my most popular essay. It is amazing how many people don't realize it is tongue in cheek."
As the sentence you point out is not a direct quote, it's not what these unspecified "experts" said; it's what the journalist thought they meant. Even at the BBC science journalism isn't necessarily written by people who properly understand the subject under discussion. See Guardian science writer Ben Goldacre's critique of science reporting in the media to get an idea of how this kind of meaningless story comes about:
Scientists never said that tenuous small new findings were important headline news - journalists did.
Clients that use persistent connections SHOULD limit the number of simultaneous connections that they maintain to a given server. A single-user client SHOULD NOT maintain more than 2 connections with any server or proxy.
I don't see that anybody should have a problem adhering to standards when putting their content online. Telling people to do low-level technical stuff properly is hardly going to stifle innovation... unless you believe that such 1997 tricks as using multiple <body> tags with different bgcolor attributes to create an irritating flashing of colours was somehow innovative, rather then just stupid.
Pity those who try to use Front Page to create their mobile-friendly sites...
<pedantry>
Well, strictly speaking, unless 1.5 has been explicitly modified with the intention of fixing this exploit, it's just that it doesn't work on 1.5. It's entirely possible that a change in 1.5 has prevented the exploit from working but, as it wasn't done as a fix, a further change in 1.5.n (or 1.n where n > 5) will allow the exploit to work again. In other words, there may be no fix to back port.
</pedantry>
Slashdot Mirror
You were lucky. I tried your search (G11 and 50 miles) and got
Which is precisely the kind of use of JavaScript this book sets out to oppose.
No, it's stored on the PostIt note on the monitor.
Not so. It's available for free download for a year, after which they'll start charging; however, copies downloaded free remain free and fully licensed. Not sure where you dug, as 4 clicks from the www.microsoft.com homepage will lead you to the pricing section of the FAQ:
(For the navigationally challenged, the route is: MS homepage, "Developer Tools", "Visual Studio", "Visual Studio Express", and in the right hand column headed "Express Quick Facts" follow the link "Free for 1 year".)
Actually, Opera's user agent string includes the word "Opera" even when it's set to identify as IE. The problem is with the incompetents who think that finding "MSIE" in the user agent means it's IE. A few years ago (around 1996-7), the problem was people finding "Mozilla" in there and thinking it was Netscape 3 when it was IE 3. Yet another reason not to trust browser stats.
User agent strings:
Internet Explorer 6 on XPSP2: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) Opera 8.5, set to masquerade as IE: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; en) Opera 8.50Apple no longer ships IE5 with OS X.
<?xml version="1.0"> isn't the XML DTD, it's the XML prolog. Any character at all, even whitespace, before the HTML DTD will cause IE to enter quirks mode, where it uses the IE 5 box model, rather than standards mode, using the W3C CSS box model. As IE doesn't understand the application/xhtml+xml MIME type, there is absolutely no point in serving XHTML to it, so the XML prolog (which isn't a mandatory requirement anyway) is just a waste of space.
IE7 won't be available for any Windows version older than XP SP2, so all those Win 2000 desktops out there will continue to run IE 6. There's not much hope of throwing away our hacks for coercing IE into just-about-standards mode for several years.
The really interesting thing about this is that the show won't be broadcast on Channel 4 until next Friday. I believe this is the first time a UK broadcaster has made a programmes available online before broadcast.
And, as Mark Pilgrim's original email which is the basis of TFA points out, Apple haven't even implemented XML namespace support correctly.
Or you could just use outline: 1px solid green;, given that as of 1.5 Firefox supports outline.
To date, only my current client has been explicitly concerned about accessibility, and I believe that the initial impetus came from the legal department.
On the other hand, the in-house developers have seen this as an opportunity to get up to speed with a subject which they knew was important, but wouldn't have had the opportunity to explore without that legal push helping to justify the budget for the project. So the whole "fear of being sued" thing can trickle down and lead to developers learning more about the subject, which can only be a good thing.
For some time now I've taken pretty much the same approach as described by Andy Clarke in his article Advocating the Quiet Revolution. There's a multinational corporation out there that may one day become concerned about the accessibility of their European intranet; it's taken care of, and didn't cost any more, because that's just the way I do stuff these days. It may cost more money to build a ramp at the entrance to a restaurant, but if you build a web site the right way from the start, accessibility doesn't add any extra cost. (I'm assuming here that one doesn't have to subtitle hours of video, or suchlike.)
It would be good if more clients were actively concerned about accessibility, and as the implications of recent changes in the (U.K.) law become more widely understood, that may happen. But I think for the moment we're stuck with developers quietly driving a grassroots change for the better, as and when they get the chance.
I couldn't agree more. I'm 43, I've been coding since I was 13, and I still learn something new every working day.
I now work as a freelance web developer and life is great. I get to work on exciting projects, don't have to do the boring maintenance stuff, can take time out between contracts to learn anything new that catches my interest, and get to pass my skills along to the people I work with. Clients appreciate the fact that I've moved beyond the total geekiness of my younger days, and can thus appreciate the various negative real-life forces acting on a project (budgetary constraints, business needs, office politics, managerial cluelessness, Internet Explorer) and get the job done.
Old coders never die, they just don't do the dull jobs. I can't imagine accepting a permanent role ever again - and I get offered one by every single client :-)
Posting AC? What do you have to hide?
What sort of thing? Stuff like
Microsoft have been justly lambasted over the past few years for their failure to keep IE up to date, but (perhaps prompted by the success of Firefox) they are now doing real work to improve matters, and this has been accompanied by an unprecendented degree of openness and clarity. Time will tell just how much they achieve on their promises, but it's clearly wrong to suggest that this rather trivial piece of news is all that's been happening over the past year.
If you're really interested in functional improvements made by Microsoft then rather than waiting for us to call you, you could try subscribing to a few feeds. Here's one to get you started: IEBlog (Atom 0.3).
(Oh no, I defended Microsoft; there goes 8 years of karma... :-)
I don't know what the law is where you are, but in the United Kingdom a domain name is an asset like any other. If a company goes into receivership, its domain name(s) end up being auctioned off by the Official Receiver, in order to help pay the creditors.
Unfortunately not. I can see that it would be useful to have, but a quick test shows that both Cancel and the Close button return false (on Windows 2000, IE 6 and Firefox 1.0.7). IIRC this is in line with the expected behaviour for such dialogs, although that may vary per operating system.
Try it: type
in your browser location bar.
For the paranoid/justifiably cautious: the "javascript:" causes the browser to pass the rest of the line to the JS interpreter, "alert(expr1)" pops up an alert (surprise!) containing the string value of expr1, and "confirm(expr2)" does the OK/Cancel box containing the string value of expr2. So first you get the OK/Cancel box, which returns a boolean value, which is then converted to a string, which is displayed in the alert box.
Ever tried that from behind the Great Firewall?
Actually, the article is obviously a joke.
In fact it's a joke stolen from Roedy Green; the original starts with the words, "This is my most popular essay. It is amazing how many people don't realize it is tongue in cheek."
(And, as others have pointed out, it's a dupe.)
As the sentence you point out is not a direct quote, it's not what these unspecified "experts" said; it's what the journalist thought they meant. Even at the BBC science journalism isn't necessarily written by people who properly understand the subject under discussion. See Guardian science writer Ben Goldacre's critique of science reporting in the media to get an idea of how this kind of meaningless story comes about:
And a pony.
And when are they throwing the switch?
That would be, "Too bad the HTTP 1.1 standard strongly discourages more than two concurrent connections to the same server":
I don't see that anybody should have a problem adhering to standards when putting their content online. Telling people to do low-level technical stuff properly is hardly going to stifle innovation... unless you believe that such 1997 tricks as using multiple <body> tags with different bgcolor attributes to create an irritating flashing of colours was somehow innovative, rather then just stupid.
Pity those who try to use Front Page to create their mobile-friendly sites...
<pedantry>
Well, strictly speaking, unless 1.5 has been explicitly modified with the intention of fixing this exploit, it's just that it doesn't work on 1.5. It's entirely possible that a change in 1.5 has prevented the exploit from working but, as it wasn't done as a fix, a further change in 1.5.n (or 1.n where n > 5) will allow the exploit to work again. In other words, there may be no fix to back port.
</pedantry>
Yup, looks like it's time to update my Annoy Browser Zealots script ;-)