Dispatches From The Internets

I just encountered a DOM implementation issue in IE which took about three hours to solve (and like a year off my life). The story goes like this:

I could not, for the life of me, figure out why a form submitted in Firefox was coming through perfectly while it was missing fields in IE. The form in question has some normal fields and some dynamically generated ones (if JavaScript is enabled). The normal stuff was coming through fine, but I was getting no values for the dynamically generated fields when the form was submitted in IE. I checked the $_REQUEST variable (I am using PHP) to see what was coming through, just to be sure.

Yeah, I’m weighing into the debate on the ALA redesign. I have to say I agree with Jon and Jeremy regarding the fixed 1024px width. My little 2¢; to add to this discussion is that I think more designers should consider the wonderous world of CSS switching based on browser width (see Rammstein or the slightly better implementation on Drink-drive-lose.com’s Ad Challenge). Using this technique, users can view your site at their most comfortable screen resolution and you can still have a nicely designed page for them (fixed or liquid… or both). Can you say zoom layouts? I knew you could.

Congress in going back into session after their summer recess and they will be taking a vote on the Estate Tax (or “Death Tax” as some people like to call it). It is a hotly contested issue that I feel very strongly about. The truth is that a lot of public services depend on the revenue generated by the estate tax and the number of people affected by it is less than 1.4% of the population. I should be so lucky to be wealthy enough for my children to have to pay the Estate Tax.

Just when I had gotten over the loss of Design In-Flight, the magazine relaunches as a web-only publication. From the history/about page:

With the reduction in production efforts with this format, and a slightly less rigid publishing schedule, DiF is sure not to disappear again.

I finally got around to reading Chris Wilson’s post about standards support in IE7 and I have to admit I am more than a little giddy. Working for an ad agency, most clients (and the majority of my coworkers) have not gotten the whole Web Standards thing, mostly because they only use IE. I can’t express how much relief I feel that IE7 is going to fall in line with most of the other browsers out there with regard to standards support.

Sad news, friends… Design In-Flight is closing shop. This very young, yet stellar PDF-based magazine was off to a fantastic start, but, as Andy put it, changes in his personal and professional life have conspired to make DiF’s continued publication an impossibility.

I agree with Richard: peoples’ eyes do glaze over when you say “semantic,” but they don’t have to. When Molly & I co-teach or when I am on my own, I always try to strike a balance by alternating “meaningful” and “semantic.” I feel it is important that “semantic” does not go away because it does have value. That said, it is necessary to relate to your audience, no matter what their level or experience, so I think alternating the terms and showing the interchangability of the two is beneficial for everyone.

I’ve been doing a little research lately into new laptops and I am finally starting to understand a little more about processors, etc., so I am dumbfounded to hear that Apple is dumping IBM’s PowerPC chips for Intel’s Pentium line. From my experience, Intel chips a) run really hot and b) suffer from a severe processing bottleneck (3.2 Gigahertz with a 533 Megahertz Front-Side Bus? WTF?). It seems to me that it would have made more sense for Apple to go with AMD, they’ve got incredibly powerful chips which I understand do not suffer from these problems. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, after all, I’m not a chip guy (or a Hollywood mogul).

I opened the latest issue of Baseline to find a giant 2-page spread for 1&1 (a hosting company), touting their “Dynamic Content Catalog” and it’s ability to give you “website content like the big players.” Basically, they are offering to syndicate content (news, sports, games, etc.) onto your site, so you no longer have to worry about keeping your site fresh or interesting.

I feel like this is an attempt to reintroduce the idea that every site needs to be a portal (why that concept is still floating about I’ll never know). I also see this as as flying in the face of one of the most important business objectives: establishing a brand, voice, etc. through copywriting. If all you have to offer your clients is data with no distillation, why bother?

I was browsing the popular links on del.icio.us today and stumbled onto Nifty Corners and (via that page) More Nifty Corners. I have to say that I am incredibly impressed with the scripting, but I fear there is something wrong with this picture.