April 18, 2007
New web development paradigm - step up while it's hot!
Every where I look web companies are describing their programming as 'lovingly hand-coded', as if.
I'm starting a new trend, you saw it here first - foot coding. I've even got a catch phrase
Programmed lovingly by foot so you know if the program stinks - it's not the code!
Posted by dottie at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 10, 2006
What year is it?
It seems that the IE developers are finally getting their act together - with humility even! Accountability!
Wow.
In the world generally this is a real breath of fresh air, but for Microsoft to admit failings. Pinch me.
Get the skinny in this blog entry about what is fixed in IE7 and what is likely to be fixed for the release.
While I applaud these changes and acceptance of past failures I wonder what it bodes for the future. Obviously a lot of effort has been put in to make sure that IE7 is up to fairly recent standards, which is great, ataboy's all round.
However.
Judging by Microsofts past should we expect the IE7 team to be dissolved on release? Will Microsoft be again be satisified at nearly achieving yesterdays standards? Will development languish once again?
Again kudos to the team, management and members both, but if the team is dissolved thats that. Let's hope that Microsoft can fully return to the fold (remember it - well, Tantek Celik - helped write the web standards we all use today) by becoming strict and pedantic (ooh! spank me!)
Posted by dottie at 9:29 PM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2006
Schadenfreude
It was bound to happen. I hate to say I told you so (actually. I don't)
Shock! - IE7 likely to break a raft of CSS hacks
Now to go and install the Beta, fix the CSS errors I have and maintain a smug superiority :)
Posted by dottie at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2006
Irony
Am I the only person who finds it funny that modern web design and development is heading toward leaner web pages, improved accessibility and portability (XHTML and CSS), reduced traffic to and from the server (AJAX) and syndication (RSS). All these technologies were a necessity back in the day.
Instead we had to deal with image heavy (all those padding GIF's!!), code heavy (n-n-n-n-n-n-nested tables anyone?), innaccessible and non-portable (printer friendly pages, text only versions, netscape and IE versions - what?). Not only all that overhead but we had to drip these huge hairballs of crap through dial-up.
Thank god I work in the 'digital hub of Europe'. Yes, I am talking about Ireland. Our glorious leader famously claimed in a press conference that that was just what we were. This at a time when there was NO broadband in the country.
Having gotten over being the laughing stock of Europe if not the World. We are now in a good situation. Slowly but surely people are beginning to cop on to the fact that there are earnest people out there who do care about what a customers website looks like and also cares about how it is coded and built.
I think clients are actually becoming switched on to our way of thinking. They realise that we are not out to make a quick buck and if they open up and trust us and work with us that wonderful things happen.
I think that if anything is the core message of 'Web 2.0' (sorry I cant type that without adding the quotes) - trust, community. The real challenge now is to find a way to translate all the great advances made with all the community websites into something that the private sector can use.
I can see there being two tracks though - those who trust and are openm and those who dont and are not. There is space for everybody at the through so lets get on with it! Here's to the next bubble!
Posted by dottie at 2:21 PM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2005
Sharp Develop Rocks
I was having all sorts of difficulties with free versions of Microsoft's various flavours of Visual Studio and even with a full blown version I borrowed (its uninstalled again - didnt work for me, ok BSA?).
I just couldn't get a DLL for an ASP.NET project compiled without hacking the code to include all the namespaces for built in classes and methods. Nuts - and time consuming, and unnecessary!
My little saviour came in the form of SharpDevelop.
For my needs, it is great. Unobtrusive, intuitive, fast, light.
I love opensource.
I love the delicious irony of opensource doing a better job than Microsoft's own tools :)
Posted by dottie at 8:02 AM | Comments (0)