Category: Web Development

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Computing General Web Development

Internet Explorer 8: Stay away, don’t believe the hype, aaaaaaaaaaargh!

I was stupid enough to believe all the offhand mentions like on the Wall Street Journal that said that Internet Explorer 8’s beta actually worked nice. So much so that having not been burnt by installing Chrome, I felt bandwagonesque enough to also install IE 8.

First, IE 8 *overwrites* and *replaces* IE 7. That is as uncool and unacceptable as it gets. You (Microsoft) are replacing a WORKING, STABLE program with a BETA in an all-or-nothing move without too much warning. That’s a load of crap. Suppose you have so much faith in it that you are fine with that.

Next, Security so high it is outrageously stupid. File again, under ‘unacceptable’: on my Windows XP machine, IE 8’s default setting disable JavaScript *ENTIRELY*. I repeat, no f-n JavaScript. Never mind Flash, but you know, it 2008. JavaScript is an unproven, new tool, yup yup. Fail fail fail. Anyway, they tell you that your add-ons are disabled. You click the link to the add-on manager and lo-and-behold, ALL OF THEM APPEAR ENABLED. WTF?

add-ons

So how do you solve this? According to Microsoft’s support, it is as simple as changing an f-n REGISTRY KEY?! As user friendly as entering a class id to the registry. ARE THEY NUTS? DO THEY EVEN CARE?! Is it possible to goof off even more?! A beta means ‘on the verge of release’. This is plain dreadful, Microsoft. Look in the f-n mirror and like, think again. I am so selling my miserable 10 stocks of yours. You suck beyond belief. Really. Done. Indefensible.

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Computing Web Development

Google Chrome: First Impressions

I am proud to put my happy fanboy glasses on and say that I installed Google Chrome on its first day. Better yet, I am writing now using it. Can you believe Firefox is no longer the cool kids’ browser. So sad. So what do I think of it having used it for precisely 10 minutes:

Yay:

  • Wicked Fast
  • Sorta cute looking
  • Search in the address bar works very well
  • Design outside of Mozilla’s reach
  • Process-based design is interesting, maybe it can actually work, hey think outside the box, yo
  • Download manager looks like the Firefox Download Bar extension, only looks waaaaay better
  • No Mac version. Please talk to the genius at the genius bar. I am bitter.

Nay:

  • No ad blocking. Yeah, Google – the ad people – will let you f- with that. I bet that is like, motivation #1 for this whole adventure
  • A remarkably sad day for web developers. Not only are companies going to want to test for another browser like Safari or god have mercy, Opera, you really need another pain in the but in the form of Chrome. And yeah, it renders like Safari, but its JavaScript is all new. Wheee
  • No integration yet with del.icio.us and web developer tools that make Firefox sing
  • Google needing to support users on Windows. Welcome to hell.
  • Only god know which nameless, oh-so-private stats are being collected on us when we use a product from a company that makes money off of that. Yeah, it’s open source, but did you read a million lines lately?
  • Facebook not like, 100% with Chrome: The next/previous links in the Facebook image gallery don’t work; the comment on news feed stories do not work; photo tagging is a fail too; the more I try the list gets longer – in short, FB is shafted in Chrome. Petty, I know, but I am sharing. Doubt Facebook, on the Microsoft side and a Google wannabe anti-Christ, wants to care.

Regardless, I root for Google. Another ballsy, way beyond uber-cool idea. Seems to be running. Was a pain to download because apparently they are so deluged with requests it hurt their servers.

How’s this for low-to-lowest brow review?

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Computing Web Development

How browsers detect whether the URL points to a file or a directory

Suppose you are a browser and you get a URL like:
https://www.enavigo.com/awesome
How do you know if awesome is a directory or a file?
A really nice hint you’d be nice to give is to append a slash to the URL whenever you denote a directory.

So how *can* you find that out?
The only way I found out had to do with headers. It appears that when web servers are sent a URL like https://www.enavigo.com/awesome and awesome *is* a directory, the response header will redirect the browser (or requestor for that matter) to the properly specified URL
https://www.enavigo.com/awesome/ which has the trailing slash character. I am sure that has to do with server setup.

Need to research this issue more…

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