A while ago I did some designs for the hostbaby site which they offer their customers to choose from for their sites. I sometimes get a mail by a user who chose a design I did requesting maybe a small adjustment but otherwise they still seem to be quite content with the designs. So I guess the designs are still not too bad.
(I just notice my modesty gets less, but maybe it is just a way to remind me what I did in the last years alltogether.)
Today I read the rather excellent book CSS Hacks & Filters which I borrowed from a teammate. Maybe a better word is skimmed as I finished the complete book in more or less 4 hours (I skipped the dreamweaver section as I write my CSS by hand…). This does not mean that the book is bad – on the contrary, probably one of the best compiled bag of CSS tricks available. But to my own satisfaction (and without any modesty 
I knew quite a lot of the stuff already. But I also found some small information items I did not know or simply forgot. That’s the reason I like to read a book on a rather basic technology even I know most of it already. The finer details are sometimes very valuable and of course most technologies are simply too broad to know them all and in perfect detail.
One specific finer detail is the @import syntax regarding crossbrowser compatibility. I knew there was an issue but never really looked into it probably because I never really needed it. Nevertheless the @import “style.css” syntax in contrast to @import url(style.css) does make a difference for browsers, namely IE4 does not recognize the first one (which would be needed in a project we did at work but as IE4 is almost dead is not a real issue).
But actually I did get a request of a (probable) user of my own cssutils who wanted to use the first syntax but the current version of cssutils does not validate it. So this issue reminded me on my lack of effort on the lib… I wanted to do a new release for almost a year now but never got the time as some other projects came up. I better not make any promises or even plans for myself to not break them but I was thinking about reworking cssutils for some time now. Maybe maybe…
currently more reading than actually doing which I have been during the beginning of this year. reading about requirements in a software project (completeness, tests for requirements etc) which is really interesting and almost always reminds me of projects I have worked in in the last few years. requirements are difficult to to right but if not just can save a lot of money but work actually is more fun too…
I guess I use XML as a domain specific language in most cases. Processing with XSLT simply is very convinient. The topic came to my attention while reading an article about DSL (processed by Java) in german Java magazine.
Not specific to DSL but I wonder where the advantages of using Java generally are, I speculate hardly anyone will be using Java in 5 years anymore? All seems to be complicated as Java is still growing from a huge thing to a giant mass…
somehow comment spam is coming through again. I disabled all comment but still get mails that spam has been posted. Of course I delete all this spam immediately but still the notes from WordPress are already annoying. Wonder what the aim of the spam is as they should know that no own reads it as it must be a deleted by most blog owners…
After a first test about two months ago I tried out Internet Explorer 7 (beta 2) again. Here is a good description of how to use it together with an installed IE 6.
I wanted to know if my own sites cdot.de and cthedot.de and also the sites I have been building for people I know still do look right stylewise and are working properly. To my surprise at least my own sites look just like they should and work well apart from one exception. I do use some rather complex DHTML stuff like scrolling etc which all are working well regarding that the last major Javascript updates I’ve done is well over a year or even two ago. At the time I developed most of the stuff there were no Javascript frameworks like prototype, Dojo or MochiKit around and I put up my own a tiny helper scripts which are in no way a complete framework but still helped and now show are still not too bad.
For the stylesheets I expected even more failures but it seems all is looking rather well. I guess I was lucky using the right CSS hacks which still work. In most cases I try to minimize the hacks anyway and it seems this works out now.
I guess on further and more detailed investigation I’ll find a few glitches but that is for another time. Maybe I even wait for the final IE 7 version which should not but I expect will change some rendering again…
Lots of people tell me there is currently no problem getting a job if you are looking for it. E.g. a very good programmer/manager I know just quit his job to start on a new one. But it also seems all currently available jobs (at least in Germany and the ones I heard of) are J2EE related.
Problem is that (even if I would be looking for a new job now) I am not really interested in J2EE which I think is a bit on the down trend anyway. I am certainly not a full fledged J2EE developer but think I have enough experience to have a valid opinion on this.
Java always seems so difficult but not in a good way meaning complex but in the negative notion of complicated. I guess using Python for some time now is that every time I see a Java related area gives me the creeps (at least a bit .
UPDATE: Of course not representative but still interesting, java programming trend
Just found the Zen of Unicode via the Agile Testing blog. Mainly here to let me find it easily but very useful reading. I read quite a lot of stuff about unicode (processing) already and like Grig thought I know “enough” but I guess it is never enough…
Especially in Python I sometimes get strange (for me behaviour which takes quite some time to figure out why it behaves the way it does. Especially “print”-ing something without encoding it is easily forgotten…
Albeit a detailed article in c’t magazine including download links it takes me quite a while to install the Nokia phone emulator on my PC. The article is not really correct as they have a table with needed SDK versions but miss a column with the basic Symbian SDK in it (see step 1 below).
I had older versions of almost all files lying around from a try last year which was not really successfull. At that time I did not really look into it as I had no real phone anyway but this time I have my new 6680 lying around…
Anyway this seems to be the preferred files including links to current downloads (at least for 6680 which is Series 60 Symbian OS 8.0a 2nd Edition FP2) which is explained in detail (and in english) in Getting started with Python on Series 60 2nd Ed_FP2:
That’s about it. The emulator runs on my PC and now I can (and maybe will try something with it. First thing I noticed that my PC is way faster than my phone, maybe there is a way to emulate a slower mobile. You should try the ball.py demo script which is nice on my phone but too fast and running wild on the emulator.
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