zahnster

Ahh, Internet Explorer. For many years now, this browser has been the main cause of stress-related injuries among the web community. Supporting this browser has proven to be one of the biggest challenges for any web designer / developer who has ever had to write one line of html/css/javascript. For many years, IE didn’t really care what the web community thought of it’s product, but since version 7 hit the scene, Microsoft has been devoted towards getting IE to be a solid, standards-aware browser deserving of it’s massive market share.

The big news with IE right now is it’s upcoming release, IE8. Slated to come out “4th quater 2008″ (so… any day now, right?), IE8 is supposed to have a lot going for it from a web developer standpoint. In fact, on paper it almost looks dreamy – the IE team has decided to include a full Firebug-esque debugger console, IE7 emulation, and more. When I was at the Ajax experience last week, the IE team showed off these features briefly in their presentation. From that, I was actually pretty excited about it all, and I couldn’t wait to get back to Zenbe to install it on our PC system and try it out. Even if there were bugs, I thought, it would be okay, because of this IE7 compatibility mode.

Right? Not a chance. It’s IE, after all.

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Just posting quick to publicly announce my intense disappointment in how Firebug has been maintained recently. Firebug 1.2.0 (beta 6) is so awful and buggy that today I’ve given up on it completely. Which is sad, really, because it means that my use of Firefox 3 is limited to browsing the web… as if I were some ‘normal’ web user and not a developer who constantly has her browser open for the purpose of developing websites.

So, for now, I have to go back to using FF2…. which is a bigger letdown than one would think.

The only light we have at the end of the tunnel was the recent announcement by John Resig that he would be devoting half his time to get Firebug back to where it needs to be.

This can’t happen soon enough.

Ever since starting with Zenbe, I’ve found myself feeling refreshed and newly invested in the web community – so much to the point that I can’t pick a singular thing to blog about tonight.

So, I’ll mention them all. First up is a site called Mint, which is just brilliant. You sync up your bank account info with them and they put your finances together in a spectacular array of animated bar graphs and pie charts. It also helps you manage your budget and find ways to save expenses. It’s also full of cute little statistics like the Starbucks data to the left (which apparently helps you realize you went a little crazy with the lattes). I’m a total nerd for this stuff, and the app, which is built in Flex, is smooth and responsive in ways which almost make me feel like a fool for sticking with this javascript stuff.

Besides Mint, there’s also a lot of other applications of all types that have been coming around. First, Versions is finally out, and it’s quickly found it’s way into my ‘most used apps’ list. There’s also 280 slides, which does amazing things with web-based presentation tools; Fluid, which turns any website into a self-running webkit-based application; a youtube/last.fm mashup, and more. Much more.

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Most people who would be reading this blog know that today Firefox 3 is released to the public. I’ve been itching to get this release for a while – FF3 uses a totally different graphics engine and already I can tell that it’s a lot slicker, smoother, and overall just kicks some ass.

The FF3 update is pretty massive, and there’s a lot of reasons we all will want to switch over to it as soon as we can (not just the graphics thing). However, within 30 seconds of running the app – I noticed that it has new rendering differences (improvements) from the FF2 version. Quickly this turned into a sticky situation, as I was in the middle of debugging some CSS in FF2 that, well… worked perfectly in FF3. It brought home the sad fact that as web developers, we’re still totally owned by browser compatibility issues* and need to support FF2 for a while – until the 3.0 transition is long a thing of the past.

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This post isn’t meant to be a bash on Safari. Safari is a great browser overall, it’s super-fast, lightweight, and very integrated into the Mac OS. However, it’s not perfect, and not, as Steve Jobs thinks, any replacement for the Firefox browser.

When Steve Jobs had his last Keynote presentation at the WWDC, he displayed a chilling vision of how he sees the future of the browser market share. Not only is his vision unrealistic, it’s also insulting (what’s also insulting is he didn’t try to chunk away at IE’s market share). By effectively removing Firefox (and the ‘other’ web browsers) from the pie chart, he is demonstrating to the world that he really doesn’t understand the advantages of Firefox over his Safari browser, and in turn, what makes Firefox a refreshing alternative to any other browser on the market.

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