IE8, Microsoft and the Reverse Fanboys

March 8, 2008 by ryan

Here we go again...

As the beta test of IE8 recently became available we are quickly approaching the release of another version of Internet Explorer. To the millions of web designers / developers out there, this can be a troubling time. Much frustration has been expressed about some of the issues (or supposed issues ) in this beta. Some of this concern is definitely understandable -- I mean, IE6 has been the bane of most web developers lives since it was released in 2001. However, I think some of the negativity is present just because it's a Microsoft product.

The Fanboy

The attitude of hating every Microsoft product just because it's Microsoft is something I would call reverse fanboyism. 

"Fanboy (sometimes spelt fanboi) is a term used to describe an individual who is devoted to a single fannish subject, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession. Fanboys remain loyal to their particular obsession." wiki

A reverse fanboy, is well, obviously the opposite -- someone who obsessively remains disloyal or passionately against a product.. no matter the circumstances. This mindset is just getting kind of old. I would completely agree about IE6 and IE7 showing little regard for web standards and being an overall headache to develop with, HOWEVER, Microsoft seems to be on a different path this time.

Your Perspective

When I was in elementary school, we would grade each other's writing assignments. The teacher would always tell us to give each other constructive criticism because an outside influence can give additional perspective or show errors that we previously didn't know existed. I hope we can take that same approach here. IE8 is still in beta test -- It is far from being a release ready product and there are still a number of issues. That being said, there are ways that those in the web development community can voice those concerns. It is important to make the IE8 developers aware of the issues as they come up so we don't have to live with the problems when IE8 is released.

 

How's it going to turn out?

Although it has a long way to go, IE8 is leaps and bounds better than its predecessors. I don't know that I will switch from Firefox but from a development standpoint, a standards compliant Internet Explorer seems like a dream come true (although we will probably need to support IE6 for who knows how long). I say we give the IE8 team a chance to fix the bugs (and voice issues as they become apparent) and see what comes out of it. What are your thoughts?

 

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Diving into Ruby on Rails

February 6, 2008 by ryan

This past weekend I started really digging into Ruby on Rails.  For a while now, I have known a little bit of ruby (by reading Why's Poignant Guide and messing around a little with Rails), however, I wanted to have a much stronger understanding in it -- even if it's only for the concepts. 

 
Why Rails -- Why Now?

Rails has been publicly available since July 2004; some may ask why I am just now becoming interested in the framework. There are actually several main reasons...

1. It is a good educational resource in the MVC Pattern. This applies to many implementations such as Microsoft MVC, Symfony and Cake on PHP and a whole slew of other frameworks.
2. Rails is becoming a more viable option with JRuby and the forthcoming releases of IronRuby.
3. The concept of DB Migrations is very nice -- especially when you have encountered the difficulty involved in placing your database under source control.

 

Setting up the environment

1. I needed to configure my computer to run the rails apps. NetBeans seemed like a good idea to me because of the simple JRuby integration (other options Aptana Studio, Eclipse, your favorite text editor w/ Instant rails). 
2. I already had MySql installed on my computer so there was no need to set up a database server (Sqlite was a tempting option as well).
3. Created a series of databases (as needed) for the various test rails apps to write to.
4. Downloaded and installed MySqlYog Community edition. I knew I was going to be handling most of my database stuff with the Rails ActiveRecord implementation and db migrations BUT I still wanted to see what was going on inside the db.

 

Initial Impressions

After the initial hour or so of setting up my environment, I wrote some quick test applications (following some tutorials, at first obviously). I really liked the principle of Convention over Configuration.  This was apparent in many areas of the framework such as the generator / rake tools and the easy application configuration in the .yaml files. I can see how this may not be the best choice for certain applications but for a lot of web applications, it seems like it will be a good fit.

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