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.