On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

Quick post this one as the web dev type will clearly poke around the code (I want you to!) — this evening I have created some very quick but potentially very usable code that progressively uses Javascript to create a ’sidebar’ element on a webpage for widgets that you could change the order of, and potentially close or add to depending on your preferences.

http://www.sunshinesista.plus.com/worthing_test/sortables.html

This code creates a page and if Javascript is enabled creates the sidebar and a cookie that is stored on your PC for 7 days. This notice will pop up just so that privacy with regard to my code is transparent.

The sortables are then set up in this floating side bar and then you can re-order the examples and exit the page, browse away, whatever. When you come back, the order you created will be restored neatly.

By all means use it yourself I know I will be… (I’ll add ‘remove/hide’ and ‘add’ code but that’s it)

Hope it’s useful. It uses jQuery, an absolutely superb Javascript library.

Well it’s here and it’s – looking interesting even though the standards mode seems to be doing peculiar things. Have we been doing our job wrong or is IE8 still teething in this department? My guess is a lot of the conditional code and CSS hacks used for IE are causing issues for some. I look forward to continued investigation with IE8.

Woah nelly, hell has just dropped below zero (or 32F)!

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/03/microsoft-s-interoperability-principles-and-ie8.aspx

This is fantastic news and a brilliant example that Microsoft does listen when something makes sense. That’s right: it seems IE8’s default behaviour will now be IE8 (ACID2 compliant) standards mode, with IE 7 Standards (read IE6 interoperable) mode being switchable.

In one policy decision, in one line of code probably — Microsoft is effectively ‘fixing the web’ to borrow some of their parlance.

This is a fantastic bit of news and may even make me consider IE 8 as my main browser if its good enough on my Windows XP box/partition.

As a veteran web developer now, I am so happy. Microsoft deserves kudos for this; even though they should have been consistent with standards from day one. But I won’t hold a grudge, even when half of my working week is spent with my mind taunted with Internet Explorer 6 compatibility.

At last the new Worthing Theatres website is online.

It’s a cracking little site. Lots of very snazzy CSS wizardry and not a bit of Flash or the likes in sight. A bit of Javascript for the calendar and title image rollover text but that’s it. Plus it also works in Internet Explorer 6.

I’m very happy with it. And I know a lot of other people will be too. Hopefully this will answer all of the problems we had with the old site which was just not a good website.

Also–it’s an entirely static website apart from some ASP glue; no database driving it at all. That’s not necessarily a good thing but we have managed to keep most of the ‘dynamism’ a database driven site naturally has.

I’m such a happy bunny Three months hard work have paid off.

Now on to the next one.

Note, this is a long heartfelt blog post. It’s not the usual web evangelism angle but a unique one. Whether you give it the time of day is neither here or there but the matter remains–what I’ve written here means a lot to me.

Interesting is how I would call the past couple of months or so. I don’t tend to write personal stuff on this blog because I don’t think this is the place. That said that wasn’t the case even just a couple of months ago when I wrote far too much personal stuff which has now been channelled into Memoirs of a Time:

I finished as soon as I could in the service station [Knutsford on the M6] and dashed back out into the rain to fumble with my keys getting them into the door lock, jumping into my steel cocoon and just sat cowering. Everywhere I went there was a superlative in human form to compare myself to. The end result was a lasting impression of inferiority. The Lakes were my dearest hope that peace to quell the thunder in my heart would come. I just needed to calm down; inhale the crystalline air and listen to platitude; feel clear sparkling water run through my thoughts, that would cleanse and quench my thirst and resolve my war.

from Memoirs of a Time “Northern Links” by Victoria J.K. Lamburn

The thunder was quelled and since then I have really got back on track with so many things. One of those is really taking a good hard look at what’s happening in the world of web development and ultimately the career I absolutely love with a passion.

This isn’t an exercise in bragging though; rather an explanation in my words of something I have ‘hit’ that has been a part as much as anything in digging myself out of the rut I had got into this year up until mid July.

I was talking to Cotia (one of my best mates) the other night over what soon ended up almost three bottles of wine between us (didn’t feel drunk at all, quite odd, felt very tired the next day and still paying…) and we were talking about when we started University in 2002; by which point I got really excited because that is exactly what I wrote about (although about September 2007 rather than October 2002) is that Autumnal air that we all feel press down on our shoulders, like a familiar face leaning over your shoulder radiating a perverse warmth in the cold biting air.

I am a very reflective person, I value halcyon, I harbour the past with me even when I look forward half of me looks over my shoulder with a smile. I’ll always be like this, and I like being like it. I look back on that innocuous and mundane time of waiting for a train at Moulsecoomb station in Brighton in October, in the afternoon of a dawning winter with the perfectness of fading light. So what is it that I’ve hit?

Nothing bad but something to look forward to. Earlier this month I went to the Barcamp in Brighton which was a real eye opener. Not so much on the technical front which was just phenomenal some of things that are being done with the web a mere 12 years after I got into creating my first web page. (In 1995, things were primitive and in my case it was an Amiga 1200 running AMosaic in 640×512 resolution. Yes, not the first but I was there in the days of NCSA Mosaic. *takes a geeky bow*)

The thing that took me aback was actually how much of a community circuit seems to revolve in the web development game and how deeply collaborative it can be. I’m very much a share and share alike person (there are reasons aside from price to be an exclusive Linux user) and I was impressed by this. In fact the collaborative nature of the beast wasn’t purely one upmanship but seemingly the product of passion. When you use a website, have you considered whether the people/person behind it was thinking, “I really want them to enjoy this site, I hope they like it.” Passion, flair, creativity, ingenuity, resourcefulness, exactitude and dynamism is what drives the web economy and its this marvelous afterglow that makes the Dotcom burst of 2000/2001 seem not a surprise but an inevitability of naievty in the market at that time. Now there seems something so much more soulful behind the motivation of the true pioneers. (I’m not one of those, I follow once the path is well trod–I suppose I’m the Slackware of web developers!)

Notice I am hesitant to say ‘Web 2.0′ as it’s become almost a joke in itself but when you cut through the hype and increasingly nonsensical descriptions, I personally can see the marked difference in the web of today to that of even 3 years ago. In three years time? That’s the buzz, that’s the excitement. What other industry is on the cutting edge of enterprise like that of the web developer?

I’ve hit that realisation that whilst I don’t hope to really create the next killer web app, or killer web site, it’s reinvigorated an enthusiasm inside of me that is just sitting there with me when I write that first line…

<!DOCTYPE html...

Isn’t that a wonderful feeling!

I suppose there is only one thing more that I love more than designing and coding websites, and that’s writing:

At the same time with the flowing patience was a lowered tone in my subvocal thoughts that enunciated my conviction’s brevity to every syllable. That dreadful Monday night changed from the most terrifying of storm clouds to the gentle drifting wisps in the sky whose shadows did not leave me in the shade. Because soon whichever way fate played it, I knew at last I could be free of everything that had raged inside of me, all of that which has brought me down at the slightest faltering step.

from Memoirs of a Time “Elysium” by Victoria J.K. Lamburn