We’re at an interesting time in the development and adoption of web browsers.  Several years ago Internet Explorer won the browser wars, and while there was some mumbling from power users (who probably continued to use some version of Netscape or Mozilla), it made good business sense to focus on developing solely for IE.  We were limited, to be sure, by its feature set and lack of innovation, but you could be confident that the web applications you tested on IE would work on IE… but that’s changing.

Today we have many users who continue to use IE 6 as their primary browser, but in the past three months we’ve seen an increase in the use of IE 7 and IE 8.  It looks like the upgrades are about 50/50:  half of the users leaving IE 6 go to IE 7, the other half to IE 8.  (Firefox usage has remained constant during this time; Safari use is minimal but increasing.  Being an enterprise application, that we have any Safari users at all should be a surprise.)

In a couple months Windows 7 will be released, and if the buzz is to believed it will be as successful as Vista was unsuccessful in penetrating the enterprise space.  I’m looking forward to watching our browser usage numbers over the next 6 months to see what effect the Windows 7 release has.  I’m anticipating that we’ll see the biggest turnover in browser versions — mostly from IE 6 to IE 8 — that we’ve seen in a long time.  It’s an interesting time to developing web apps.

本來我這個人已經認為甚麼都應該自由的，可是在沒有標明任何原作者的情況下，機構就擅自把我的 Firefox 筆記改為了 Internet Explorer 7 的版本，而且圖文錯漏百出。我把筆記拿給朋友看，他也嗤之以鼻，諷刺更改的人連 IE 也不熟悉。

雖然我沒有在筆記上註明甚麼（只是我覺得接近理念的 GFDL 有點麻煩，而且我也不確定我有沒有在教材中使用不自由的資料，所以未確定授權而已），但那代表別人可以偷來用嗎？

本來教 Internet Explorer 有很多困難，機構不知道，只有我教過才知道。例如搜尋引擎只有微軟的 Bing。大家都知道那有多不濟，如果人們要加添搜尋引擎（如 Yahoo 及 Google），是很煩的事，那最後，我相信懂得用 Internet Explorer 的搜尋列的人也不會多……也是說，學員已註定學不到最好的東西，這是機構的損失。「好手氣」功能沒有了……再者，微軟讓 IE 8 更貼近 HTML 的標準，那為甚麼要教 IE 7？可否給我一個有說服力的解釋？ IE 7 有很多英文語句都沒有在地化，也是說翻譯都不完整，學員根本很難理解很多英文字。相對而言，Firefox 雖然也不是完全自由的瀏覽器，可是翻譯要完整得多。

再者，機構已經安裝了 Mozilla Firefox 及 Google Chrome 瀏覽器，那還有理由不教學員使用自由的瀏覽器嗎？

哀哉！我教完「哀咿」的第一堂，發覺真的沒有讓學員認識多了，而是少了－－讓學員眼界變得更窄，罪過－－願我自己折壽一年！誠心所願。

之前 Pi Publication Limited 非法盜用網友電玩攻略的作品，已一直被我封殺了。就算這家公司改了名字、換了老闆，我也會咒詛這個集團的人，也會罷買和這家公司有交易的公司的產品。今次這機構，我暫不公佈名稱，因為行政的問題，希望機構內部有人可以以行政的方式改善（我尚且可暫時當他／她們忘記了授權的問題），也希望有人能提點她們能好好反省！

Ja, nu är det dags igen konstaterar jag efter att läst IDG.se. Nya hack mot IE 6 och IE 7. Jag arbetar med min dator och är mycket mån om vem som kommer åt innehåll och resultat eller vem som använder min virtuella identitet så det lämnar inte mycket val – Mac och Safari.

Okay, so I’ve decided to give in and join Beth Fish Read’s The Sookie Stackhouse Challenge.  It would seem that I’m going to buy the books anyway… lol, even though I told myself I wanted to wait to see if I LIKED the first book first, I went ahead and bought the second book.  So I’ll “goat head” as my mom always said,  and join the challenge.  There doesn’t seem to be any specific number for this challenge other than to read the books, so for now, I’ll just start off with the two on Mt. TBR.

1. Dead Until Dark  
2. Living Dead in Dallas

I’ve also got True Bloodseason 1 in my Netflix queue, but I’m waiting to read the first book before getting them.  I may be a little late to this ball, but I wanted to be sure.  Funny, I’ve gone from scairt to join any challenges to being in five?  Does the CDC know how contagious reading challenges are?  What are they doing to help the victims? 

And, I found a Manga Challenge at Rhinoa’s Ramblings… Yay!  LOL.. Now, if you told me this time last year that, not only would Ibe reading manga, but that I’d be joining a whole challenge devoted to it, I would’ve quit reading altogether.  Funny how you can change in just a year. 

The challenge is simple, just read 6 mangas in 2009.  I don’t know if graphic novels are included in that, but since it’s a manga challenge, I’ll just stick with them.  My list for the challenge is:

1. Fruits Basket, volume 1by Natsuki Takaya ~ I’m almost done with it already, and I have volumes 2-5 coming in the mail.  I’m thoroughly enjoying it, and it seems the only book I can focus on right now,  so if I’m not careful, I’ll end up just reading them and ignoring all the rest of the books I’m suppose to read.
2. Death Note, volume 1by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
3. Psychic Academy, volume 1by Katsu Aki
4. Naruto, volume 1by Masashi Kishimoto
5. Vampire Hunter D, volume 1by Hideyuki Kikuchi and Yoshitaka Amano, which is still in the mail, but should be here today or tomorrow.
6. Cowboy Bebop, volume 1by Yutaka Nanten, et al.  It’s not been mailed yet, and I’d actually requested it once before from PBS, but the person never sent it.  So we’ll see if it gets here this time. 

I chuckled at the writing on the cover of Cowboy Bebop, “Done the Right (to left) Way!”  The one obstacle for Mags reading it on her own is the right-to-left, top-down, way you have to read it.  She’s making me read Fruits Baskets out loud to her.  AND I’ll be sooooooo glad to finally get through the mangas PAST the anime series.  Every other page she gripes how the show is better and the book’s inferior.  Bah!  I’ve been secretly reading ahead of her so I can enjoy it… shh, don’t tell!  I actually like the book better than the show, though, I admit, I read it with the voices from the show (and do the voices when reading it to her).

Let’s see… what else….  Oh, I just got an email the publisher that I’ll be getting my copy of Undiscovered Gyrl, and I’m sooooo excited for that!  I’ll probably just drop everything and read it as soon as the packaging is ripped from it.  I don’t get this excited for specific books very often, the last one I read straight from the envelope was Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank!  Hopefully I’m not looking forward to it too much and the only way for it to go is down…

And now, some random things from my digital camera:

Липсва ми само Google Chrome

Източник: www.robotjohnny.com

I came across with this weird IE bug(occurs in IE-6 and IE-7 not in IE-8) that throws a File Download Security Warning on form post.

File download security warning

This is the code for the corresponding action inside controller

def update
 respond_to do |format|
  format.js   {....}
  format.html {....}
 end
end

* I guess this bug will only propagate if respond_to is used

I put a debugger after the respond_to line and made a http post request through IE6 and IE7 browsers and hooked into the request parameters.

request.format => #<Mime::Type:0x7b567a4 @string="image/jpeg", @synonyms=[], @symbol=nil >
request.format.html? => nil

Making the same the request through Firefox returned this

request.format => #<Mime::Type:0x55da8b8 @string="text/html", @synonyms=["application/xhtml+xml"], @symbol=:html >
request.format.html? => true
request.format.js? => false

So one thing came into light that there is no Mime::Type registered for “images/jpeg” i.e format sent by IE

Looking at Rails 2.1.0 code actionpack/lib/action_controller/request.rb line no: 92

# Returns the Mime type for the format used in the request. If there is no format available, the first of the
# accept types will be used.
def format
  @format ||= parameters[:format] ? Mime::Type.lookup_by_extension(parameters[:format]) : accepts.first
end

And that brought me to the solution.If no request format is available, which is the case with IE, then the first format will be picked up.So moving format.html above the format.js will solve the problem(or i should say format.html should be the first format defined)

def update
 respond_to do |format|
  format.html {....}
  format.js   {....}
 end
end

Or we can also use format.any to our rescue(instead of moving format.html)

def update
 respond_to do |format|
  format.js   {....}
  format.any  {....}
 end
end

I have a user who suddenly was unable to type anything in her text boxes in IE 7 a while back.  We were in the middle of a big move and my time was so limited that we just installed Firefox for her and she was fine, for a while.  It wasn’t until we started rolling out Microsoft Office Communicator and Microsoft Office Live Meeting this week that I was reminded of the issue because she was unable to type new messages or respond to messages sent her in Communicator.

I did all of the normal things we do, I think.  I cleared out all cookies and temporary internet files, I ran antivirus and ad checking and spyware programs.  I even uninstalled Java and reinstalled it and nothing worked.

Finally, I reinstalled IE 7 as a last resort before just doing an upgrade to IE 8, and after a reboot . . . walla . . . she is able to type in text boxes in IE 7 and Communicator now.

Recently, I encountered an IE 7 bug and it’s documented at here. I try to see if I can workaround the issue next week.

Site coders/developers ought to take more care when including non-secure items in their SSL web content!! If you’ve been plagued by that annoying warning “This page contains both secure and non-secure items. Do you want to display the nonsecure items?” you will know what I mean.

To get rid of it in Internet Explorer 7, adjust the security settings via Tools, Internet Options, Security then select the Custom level button at the bottom of the dialogue box.

Scroll to the Miscellaneous section, then find the section “Display mixed content”. Change the radio button from “Prompt” to “Enable” – gone!

Wonder how ? If you want to render a page or a website in all IE versions starting from 5.5, just try :

A Firefox extension can be found here.

To add the service to your website paste this code on the body :

<form method="post" id="form" name="form" action="http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php"
accept-charset="utf-8" target="_blank">

<select name="browser" style="width: 145px;">

<option value="ie8">Internet Explorer 8</option>

<option value="ie7">Internet Explorer 7</option>

<option value="ie6" selected="selected">Internet Explorer 6</option>

<option value="ie55">Internet Explorer 5.5</option>

<option value="ie-mix">IE7-IE6 Mixed</option>

<option value="ie-diff">IE7-IE6 Difference</option></select>&nbsp;

<input name="url" id="url" value="http://" size="61" maxlength="240" type="text">

<input name="go" value="Render" type="submit">

</form>

Another extension for all browsers rendering is available here but it’s still experimental and needs a trial registration to BrowserCam Capture Service.

You can also test your page in 23 browsers with litmus but you’ll have to pay (Only IE7 and FF2 rendering are free)