Chad’s News

I’m guessing that the web developer community, like me, is excited to hear that IE8 will pass the Acid2 test. But there has been concern expressed about the various “modes” that IE8 will support.

The basic problem is that web developers write their code to work around (or take advantage of) bugs in the various IE versions. When Microsoft fixes these bugs in subsequent releases, the effect may be to break existing sites. And in the case of Internet Explorer, we could be talking about breaking millions of sites. Web browsers, including non-Microsoft ones, have dealt with this via a method known as doctype switching, where the browser will render the page in one of three modes (quirks, standards, and super-standards) depending upon the DOCTYPE value. When developing IE8, however, Microsoft realized that doctype switching was insufficient for their purposes. Assuming that each new browser release would have unique bugs and quirks, they needed some way of informing future releases of IE that the web page had been coded against a specific version. So they came up with a new method that uses a META tag to determine which browser mode to use.

The META tag, which is described in the linked article, will specify the highest browser version against which the web page was coded. Thus if you set it to IE8, for example, when IE9 (or IE10, or IE11) comes out, you can be assured that your page will still be rendered as if the browser were IE8. Each subsequent version of IE will be capable of rendering the older versions with all their bugs, based on the META tag. If the META tag does not exist, then the current IE7 doctype switching method will be used.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Update: After a significant amount of web community uproar, Microsoft has changed its mind and decided to use the latest standards mode by default. Thus IE7’s standard mode is no longer the default.

When searching for domain availability via Network Solutions, they put a 4-day lock on the name. This effectively prevents you from registering that domain with a registrar other than Network Solutions. Here at the Chad’s News network command center, however, we always use Network Solutions because we know it will never go out of business and leave our domains stranded. Sometimes it’s worth paying a bit extra for increased peace of mind.

Link: http://www.computerworld.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

AOL has announced that it will discontinue any further support for the Netscape web browser, as of February 1st, 2008. Time to switch to Firefox if you haven’t already done so.

Link: http://blog.netscape.com/…
(via Slashdot)

digg is only a bit over three years old, but it’s already taken the internet by storm and is a serious competitor to old-school sites like Slashdot. It’s worth checking out. And anyone who already knows digg should enjoy the linked video.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/…
(via digg)

Tired of maintaining the mail server for your custom domain? Google Apps can manage it for you, with all the benefits of Google’s uptime and reliability. There’s a free version as well as a fee-based premier plan.

Link: http://dmiessler.com/…
(via digg)

A New Yorker saw a woman on the subway and fell in love instantly, but he was unable to introduce himself. So he posted a description on the internet, and before too long had managed to find out who she was. This just goes to show the viral power of the internet.

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

There are many sites that will calculate your connection speed, but I like this one. It gives statistics for upload, download, and ping, and it also allows you to select from servers worldwide.

Link: http://speedtest.net/

This post should only be of interest to web developers. With Windows Vista, Microsoft decided to update the core web fonts that are used by pretty much everyone. Sigh… Developers will want to install the new fonts on their non-Vista systems—the Slashdot article’s comments have several ways to do this. In addition, CSS font lists should be updated to include the new “C” fonts at the front of the list. There is a matrix in the linked article showing which fonts should go where.

Link: http://www.hunlock.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Internet2 is a dedicated, second-generation internet that allows members (universities and some government/industry) to connect at very high transmission speeds. Currently they’ve achieved 100Gbps, with the theoretical ability to reach 1Tbps. That really puts my 1.5Mbps DSL link to shame. I’m not sure if/when Internet2 will be opened for general use, but even if it is, don’t look for it to be available to residential users any time soon, since it requires a dedicated fiber optic connection as well as specialized equipment.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Ever had a really long web address that you needed to send to someone, or to post in a comment somewhere—just to find that it gets split into pieces by the software? Or perhaps you have a complicated URL that needs to be entered by hand and is prone to error? TinyURL has been around for some time now, and it has the answer to this problem. Simply register the long URL, and TinyURL will give you a much shorter, email-safe URL with which to replace it. Clicking on the short URL will automatically redirect you to the long URL. The short URL never expires, so you can use it with impunity for as long as TinyURL is in existence.

Thanks to Josh for this topic.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/

Ever found yourself in need of a temporary email address that goes away after a day/week/month? The linked article has several disposable email providers—be sure to check the comments for even more.

Link: http://lifehacker.com/…

It’s becoming increasingly popular for parents to purchase internet domains named after their newborns, even to the point where the availability of a domain affects the name of the baby. Makes me glad I got cloman.com early on.

Link: http://www.businessweek.com/…
(via Lifehacker)