Pop Art Blog

Hooray! The feedback from the web development community convinced the IE development team to change their minds about the default setting for version targeting in IE8 (as I discussed in a previous post ). “In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we’re choosing differently. Now, IE8 will show pages requesting ‘Standards’ mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s ‘IE7 Standards mode’ will... Read More...

Previously on Web Developer Controversies: Aaron Gustafson from the Internet Explorer development team announced that IE8 will use a META tag to kick the engine into standards mode by targeting a specific browser version, something that was previously done by using a valid DOCTYPE. A lot of people, including Jeremy Keith, think this is a bad idea. Here are some of the more interesting points that have been raised in the discussion so far. “If IE8 acts like IE8 by default, then IE8 might break... Read More...

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates Read More...

We recently upgraded the Pop Art Blog to Community Server 2007 , and I was assigned to upgrade the templates. Dave produced a wonderful comp, and when I read about CS2007’s new Chameleon Theme Engine , I was pretty excited. The actual experience of working with the templates turned into a bit of a nightmare, however. Before I get into how it went wrong, let me point out what went right. First of all, we did eventually succeed in getting nearly everything we wanted done, and I’m incredibly proud of... Read More...

Now that Pop Art has set up this very snazzy company blog (shout out to Scott!) I feel a certain amount of pressure to represent my little corner of the organization. However, as an Account/Project Manager I'm looking at a dearth of topics that would be both professional and interesting enough to post. "Interesting" Let's see, should I start with a rundown of the various approaches one could take to create a project schedule or should I dive right into tools for tracking and monthly... Read More...

I had to make a slight tweak to a page on a site with a content-management system today. After spending a few minutes unraveling the code, I found out that a simple list of three links was using the following markup, which has clearly been screwed up by the WYSIWYG editor on the site. <p> <span class="TextBold"> NEXT STEPS: <br> <br> </span> <span class="TextPlain"> <span class="TextPlain"> <span class="TextPlain">... Read More...

I recently had a fascinating conversation with our VP of Client Services. Long story short, I learned that selling web standards is difficult, because many of the benefits it offers are “soft.” For instance, if we tell a client that the extra money we charged them to upgrade their site to web standards will make future updates easier, the Client Services team is afraid the client will come back and say that we should charge them less for updates. For a standards zealot like myself, this... Read More...

Wanna get a headache? Go type “ html book titles italic em ” into Google and read for about 15 minutes. What you’re looking at is an intense debate over the best way to mark up a book title using HTML. I’ll save you some time and tell you that after several hours, my conclusion is that you should use the <cite> element for book titles. If that’s all you need, then feel free to save yourself the trouble of reading the rest of this, but if you’re curious about... Read More...

Kirk: “How long to re-fit?” Scotty: “Eight weeks. But you don’t have eight weeks, so I’ll do it for you in two.” Kirk: “Do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?” Scotty: “How else to maintain my reputation as a miracle worker?” Kirk: “Your reputation is safe with me.” – From Star Trek III I started this post awhile back with the idea of advocating Scotty’s “miracle worker” method... Read More...

Last year, I attended An Event Apart 2006 in Seattle . It was a great event, although I remember it being really rushed, because they seven sessions packed into one day. So when I heard that they were coming back to Seattle, and had changed the format to two days, I signed up right away. I’m happy to tell you that the new format is a huge improvement. The event no longer feels rushed, and even though there are six sessions every day, there’s a 15 minute break between each one, and a 1½... Read More...