Brilla.org

We don’t do markup or CSS. We take the code you give us and chop it up with some XSLT, so that it wraps on top of our XML-based content management system beautifully. (If you are still tuning in then you’re definitely a web developer on the hunt for a bug fix… keep reading)

There’s the IE6 problem. It renders everything that should be beautiful to look like absolute ass. Thankfully, that ain’t our problem.

But, for times when it is your problem, someone smarter than me came up with a brilliant solution to this. IE7.js a workaround to get IE6 to play nicely like it should. Just drop it in and it does the rest. Done and done.

Recently a client delivered some XHTML/CSS making use of IE7.js. Done and done; set it and forget it.

So we did. Nobody actually checked out their finished site in IE6 — frankly, because no one with a right mind actually uses that browser.

But, the client’s clients do. They started getting emails that everything was ugly in that awful broken old excuse for a browser.

Henceforth, the IE6 problem became my problem.

So what changed? Assuming we kept all that intact in the process (we did), why then, would a demo page with bogus content look fine, but once it’s filled out with living, breathing pages and news stories, does everything blow up?

JavaScript error. Hm:  ‘v’ is null or not an object.

A little Googling reveals a possible culprit. Apparently, IE7.js starts acting up when frames are involved. Our CMS solution does make unabashed use of iframes.

So, I make the code changes mentioned in that message. Save, dump cache, and hit F5. A new error message appears:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://…

Operation aborted.

Seriously? After that, my web page defaults to a yucky The page cannot be displayed screen. Ick.

More Googling and I find myself skeptically glossing over a page on MSDN. And there she is:

2. Adding the defer boolean attribute to the script block (this defers execution of the script content until parsing is complete)

I’d heard of this ‘defer’ thing before. It’s a stupid IE-only attribute that instructs the browser to not load the script until the page is done rendering. Think of it as one big $(document).ready().

So I add ” defer” to my opening <script> tag. Error messages gone. Blank screens gone. Page is no longer looking yucko in IE6, it renders like it should. Everything just works™.

In conclusion (TL, DR)

If your IE7.js is acting a fool on you, put defer to work:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<script src="http://ie7-js.googlecode.com/svn/version/2.0(beta3)/IE7.js" type="text/javascript" defer="defer"></script>
<![endif]-->

Set it, and forget it.

The last couple years have been about things cheap, fast, and accessible. Google and Wikipedia cemented themselves as de-facto brain extensions for anyone working on the web. Twitter became the 140 character venue for the A.D.D. blogger. Life hacks, lists of 46 best blanks to do blank. Even a broader sense of advertising: getting ripped in two weeks with one simple rule. Lose weight & get rich fast have been around for a while now, but you see what I’m getting at.

But there’s a new trend we’re seeing here. Lots of brilliant web thinkers (and even celebrities-turned-Twitter allstars) are turning a new leaf. Project52 insists we start blogging again and revive this mostly-dead medium. Guys like Anil, Merlin and Seth are beckoning us to reach a little deeper and put a lot of creative force and focus into what you produce. Derek dissects burnout beautifully. My buddy Jay has kindly asked all the hack get-rich-on-bullshit-content people to leave his internet alone. Rob Goodlatte preaches it. Even Mister Santa Maria’s new manifesto is fucking righteous.

I am thrilled to see a slow shift away from the hyper-multi-tasking life. From spreading ourselves so thin; we’ve done that. I feel like we as a small society of designers, developers and nerds, have proven to ourselves that we can juggle 528 things at once. But also, we’re going to start getting picky and turning away the 524 things we don’t want to do, and start focusing the handful of engaging projects where our passion lies.

THEN. Oh man. Big beautiful nasty things are going to start surfacing. Geeks being geeks for the sake of being geeks, and not just to fulfill a stakeholder’s wish or some bloated business objective, man. The Pictorys, and the Favrds (bless its little heart); the stuff EJS is talking about.

And, as I wrap up this post now, I see Jina writing on a very similar theme.

I have seen the future, people. It is lovely.

Too much going on, gang. I can’t not blog.

Pleasantries first: since we last spoke, I have moved again. This will be fourth time in the last eighteen months, and should be my last for a while. Most notably, it solidifies that I’ll be in Seattle for a while. Good Christ, I love this city.

Learning. I’ve bought some fifteen books in the last two weeks. Design. Novels. Cocktail recipes. Big photo essays. A visual guide to dream interpretations. A few very trendy web-related topics (Ruby on Rails, Django, and mobile design). Follow along, if you want. It’s more fun if you participate too, though.

Work is blowing up right now in a big way. I built the site for Forbes’ #1 Fastest Growing Tech Company. But there’s more coming that I either don’t want to jinx, or can’t blog about yet. Lotta opportunity before me.

Part of me feels like I’m blowing up, too: quite literally, combusting. There is so much ambition, desire, and passion flowing through me. Sometimes I feel like my skin is going to rupture and just spew all of this energy all over the hardwood floor.

Thankfully, I blog instead.

Good news: I am up for promotion in a few weeks. It is understood that I am deadly dangerous with technology. But the folks at work are discovering that I also have these soft skills: chiefly, talking to people. So, they are moving me into Sales Engineering. I am going to become the technical guru, breaking down the details for the people who write the checks.

In preparation, the next month or two are my veritable ‘rush weeks’ at work. Jim’s goal is to, “throw as much weird shit at [me]” as he can. Which is good on a couple levels:

1. Stress testing. How does Johnny C balance his current workload with these additional new duties? Jury’s still out.
2. Cramming. Soon I’m going to be expected to be a product genius on our software. So it’s good to get exposure to the many strange facets of the software we ship out to customers. I need to know my stuff.

Admittedly, last week was absolute hell. This week I realized I gotta buck up, manage people and get my stuff done. Been reading a lotta that Merlin Mann bullhonkey. I check my email twice(!) a day, and I am loving it. Staying busy and feeling good about it.

This is really a completely new direction, too. My major (MIS) is perfectly suited for this, but every role I have ever had has been strictly development. Ain’t no going back to programming after I make this jump. But, maybe that’s a great thing for me.