Save yourself time with Subversion

If you use FTP in your day to day workflow, a switch to subversion can put time back on your calendar. Anytime you save yourself a few minutes by removing manual steps from a task, you've freed up time to do the interesting and fun parts of your job. Here's my workflow with subversion: when I've got changes I want to send to the server, I commit my changes with a single line at my command prompt, or a single right-click in Windows Explorer. Then I switch to another window and update the server with the same single command/right click. Done. My changes have arrived and are live. If I don't need the server to update immediately, I can do a scheduled task or cron job that updates itself once a minute/day/hour. Since I test locally, I only commit when I'm ready for it to go live, so the automated update works well for me. Ever worked with someone on the same file? You change it, FTP it up, then they FTP their own changed copy, and then you do another change, etc etc.? Now who's got what copy where? With FTP, the only solution is to manually overwrite the files once you've sorted out what version you need. With subversion, the logs show you who did what, and when they did it. A quick check of the logs (again, with a single right click or command) and you can see what happened. Need to get back to how things were before? Again, a single command can take you to any point in history to see how it worked, and another command gets you the latest version again. So you can fix the problem and have free time to take care of other tasks*. Web 1.0 was built on FTP. Web 2.0 rocks with subversion**. What web are you working with? * Like administering a beating to the co-worker who overwrote your files. ** To be honest, there are lots of great version control systems (VCS). Subversion, git, mercurial, etc etc. I use subversion b/c it works for me. But any VCS is better than FTP.

IE Whitespace Issue

So I ran into an old IE bug, or I would so much as call it a rendering issue. Whitespace, which should be collapsed by the rendering agent, to form inter-word spaces (except for <PRE>), all other whitespace should be ignored. This issue has been known for quite some time, but I ran into this yet again -- IE8 even. What whitespace? In HTML, spaces, tabs, and return characters are considered to be “whitespace”. One solution is, simply remove all whitespace around your links, and images:

<ul>
 <li>
  <a href="#" >
   <img src="img.gif" alt="Blah" />
  </a>
 </li>
</ul>

As:

<ul><li><a href="#" ><img src="img.gif" alt="Blah" /></a></li></ul>

This method is not very pretty, and makes it difficult to use many auto formatting tools. Another method is to apply inline styles to the parent: li { display: inline; } Also a solution is to apply float left (or right) to the parent container: li { float: left|right; } There are more solutions to this issue, but just keep in mind, IE renders whitespace as whitespace between list elements. I have also seen it rendered when an image or link is simply on its own line. In such cases sometimes applying {display:block;} to your anchor tags might do the trick, but might not be applicable. In such cases the foremost method would be suitable. Good luck. Sources: http://archivist.incutio.com/viewlist/css-discuss/34926 http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#h-9.1

Let's make the web faster

Google has released an effort to "Make the web faster". Several tutorials and guides can be found under the "Learn" link. It also has a community driven effort, allowing developers to submit ideas, suggestions and questions via a discussion forum.

Google has maintained for years that the performance of Web sites and applications is extremely important to the company, which developed Chrome in large part because it wasn't satisfied with existing browser technology in this area.

You check it out here: http://code.google.com/speed/ Usability latency: http://code.google.com/speed/articles/usability-latency.html For some extra nice articles on JavaScript optimization: http://code.google.com/speed/articles/optimizing-javascript.html Also some goodies about CSS: http://code.google.com/speed/articles/include-scripts-properly.html Sources: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134736

Why is IE6 still around?

Most web developers that I know have horror stories about the countless hours spent trying to get their web application to work and behave with Internet Explorer (IE) version 6. Fortunately for us developers, those days seem to be few in number, or so we hope. With the recent release of IE8, one would think that IE6 is either dead or seriously near total annihilation; however this sadly and most unfortunately, is just not true. As of May 2009, stats by usage show that IE6 is neck and neck at 20%, with Firefox 3.

While usage within corporations network traffic show that IE6 and IE7 are neck and neck at about (40%) a piece.

So, why is IE6 still around? To me, it's simply because people are just not interested in upgrading, especially since most everything is seemingly working “OK” with IE6. Some people might be restricted from upgrading due to non administrative privileges, or restrictive company policies. IE6 might have a certain level of “comfort” for people. Others might only use it for legacy applications, or testing. “I can only lead the horse to water; it’s up to him to drink.” So as the old saying goes, I can’t make you uninstall IE6 and rid the world of that plague, it is up to you. I don't have a simple answer for those who are restricted from installing it. I suggest to everyone, where possible, to take the time and upgrade IE to at least version 7, if not version 8. Most especially if you are using IE as your default browser, however even if you are not using IE as your default browser, it’s a good idea because some programs automatically fire up IE disregarding your default browser preference. If you do use IE as your default browser, wont your consider trying out Firefox 3?

If you noticed, IE7 useage is up around 40%, while IE6 is down around 20%. I think that's huge! “Using Internet Explorer is So 2006” –Mozilla Corp.

References: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/06/02/134224/Internet-Explorer-6-Will-Not-Die http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ie.html?from=getfirefox http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Internet-explorer/default.aspx http://www.statowl.com/web_browser_usage_by_version_trend.php?timeframe=last_6&interval=month&chart_id=11&limit[]=ie&limit[]=firefox&limit[]=safari&limit[]=chrome&limit[]=opera&limit[]=netscape&fltr_os=&fltr_se=&fltr_cn=Corporate http://www.statowl.com/web_browser_usage_by_version_trend.php?timeframe=last_6&interval=month&chart_id=11&limit[]=ie&limit[]=firefox&limit[]=safari&limit[]=chrome&limit[]=opera&limit[]=netscape&fltr_os=&fltr_se=&fltr_cn=