I've been extra techie-minded lately. Basking (or floundering) in my nerdishness, depending on how you view it. One of the fun (or frustrating) things about being a Web developer, again depending on your view, is that there are always new tools, new ideas, new ways of doing things coming out. And sometimes it isn't so much that these things are 'new' as it is that people are applying older ideas in new and interesting ways. Voilá Web 2.0! Sometimes they make you stop what you're doing and say, 'Hey, I need to check this out.'

Now, this isn't a tech blog, and I'm pretty much a techie-imposter anyway, so I definitely won't try to make it one, but I thought I'd highlight a couple of neat things I've been playing with lately.

1) There has been quite a stir in the developer community about the upcoming release of the IE7 Web browser and the effect it's going to have on existing page designs, particularly ones that are CSS-heavy. I've been wanting to download the beta to experiment, but since doing so would replace the existing version of IE on my machine (in typical MS loveliness), preventing me from being able to test in IE 6, I have refrained. Until the other day when I remembered I had an old laptop under the bed, not doing anything. Polly. The laptop's name is Polly, and it used to be Catherine's. So I booted her up (Polly, that is, not Catherine) and (after resetting the system clock) she still worked, though she's got a fan in her that's loud as hell. Anyway, I downloaded the IE7 beta onto her and have been playing around. Honestly, it's not as kinky as it sounds.

For the most part, the new IE is good. It has a lot of the same functionality as Firefox, which is a positive step forward, but it still lacks all the Firefox charm. It definitely seems to handle CSS more faithfully, which is good. I have found a few display problems in some of my pages, but they're probably the result of prior hacks I had used to get things to display properly in the old IE. I'll have to look into that a little more.

2) I've also been playing around with some stuff I found on script.aculo.us (link via Sixfoot6 - thanks!). The code is easy to implement, cross-browser compatible, and allows you to make some pretty neat usability tweaks, which have the added advantage of looking very cool. I don't have any examples to show yet, but after some initial playing around, I've already thought of a few ways I can put it to good use.

So there you have it: the exciting life and times of yours truly. One of these days, I will get back to telling stories and thinking about things other than Web development, but for now this stuff is kind of at the forefront of my brain.

Oh, one other thing: I had to cancel my trip for this year's men-only fishing trip because there's just too much going on right now and I got kind of behind after my trip to Texas. Do I feel less manly for backing out? Yes, dammit.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Work  Web_Design  Tech  IE7  CSS