ActsAsFlinn

1. Developers
2. Developers
3. Developers
4. Developers
5. Developers…

So you may have heard that IE8 Beta 2 Shipped. It’s awesome…relative to any other previous release of IE. It’s like the Windows XP of Internet Explorers.

I’ve been developing web apps for a long time… which means I obligatorily hate IE. I still do hate it but I’m surprised at how good a release Microsoft has shipped. The look and feel is less bubble gum and a little more crisp. There is even a developer tool that’s almost as good as Firebug… no really. In addition to the dom browser there’s actually a javascript debugger in IE! I’m really amazed. They did manage to sneak in some hook ups to MSN’s crappy services but hey what do you expect?

I actually think there is something to the developer tools in IE8. Microsoft is actually listening to the biggest criticisms coming from the web development community about how difficult it is to develop for IE. I work on some fairly high profile sites along with some pretty large teams for names you’ve heard of (Time, Sports Illustrated, Turner, etc.) and I’m seeing the vast majority of web developers using Macs with Firefox (and Firebug of course). Microsoft really used to cater to developers but the web has always been one of the hardest markets for Microsoft to capture developer market share in. Why? Because Microsoft has made the web suck and our jobs a lot harder. But I think they are starting to get it.

So will IE8 rule over Firefox…not for me but I’m sure it will for the countless masses still using IE. The side benefit for all of us web slaves is an easier to use and program for version of IE. Now please Microsoft just phase out IE6!

Sorry had to put that there ;-)

Some friends recently reminded me that my blog has been down for almost 2 months. So I’ve managed to spend some time to bring the site back up in Typo 5. It kind of goes without saying that deploying rails apps on shared hosts sucks and I can stand behind that. But that’s OK – right tool for the right job.

In the last two months there’s been a lot written about Ruby. There’s been some bad press (zed and friends) and a lot of good press (Rails Machine, Rails 2, Ruby 1.9). Some crying fowl about Rails not being enterprise ready, the community sucking, it’s hard to deploy or whatever else. Who cares! Most of the complaints and accusations I’ve read are from people that need to point the finger in the mirror.

While my site was down a lot changed. Anyone keeping track of me (yeah lots of you I’m sure) knows my startup was a non-starter and I spent 2 long dreadful PHP filled months at a search marketing company and have since moved on to more reputable endeavors with a Connecticut firm building Rails based entertainment apps. I’m working with a team of experienced producers and engineers and I couldn’t be happier. So you can expect some new Ruby and Rails tidbits here again soon.

One last thing to mention before I sign-off…if you read my post mentioning PHP’s lack of late static binding PHP and ActiveRecord you can rejoice or cringe depending on your perspective because the team is adding the static:: runtime resolution that will get PHP that life extending kidney implant that it so desperately needs. This new feature will allow Zend and friends to build a pragmatic Active Record in PHP. I’ve bolded this because a friend of mine said they are fixing the problem but it’s not a fix – it’s no doubt a feature request from Zend that was originally slated for PHP6. Given the slow adoption rate of PHP5 I’m sure the team decided to add almost all the new goodies originally slated for PHP6 to PHP5.3 in an effort to keep up. With all the new (untested) features I’m sure sysadmins will be rushing to deploy this new version.