Just in case you don’t know…I despise IE6

Being a web developer I am often faced with the challenge of getting a website looking sweet in various types of browsers and versions of those browsers.

Each browser interprets code differently, so when one writes code which renders correctly in one browser it doesn’t necessarily render as well in another browser. The thorn in all web developer’s sides is good old Internet Explorer 6 or IE6. One can build a webpage which looks fantastic in the world’s best browser Firefox (yes I am biased ) and then look at it in IE6 and it will most probably have layout issues.

There are numerous tricks and hacks to get web-pages looking good in IE6, so one just learns to deal with how bad the browser is.

So, what’s the real issue?

Just to re-enforce how bad the browser actually is, I was recently told about how Internet Explorer (all versions) have a built in default error page which will always be displayed even if you have added a customized error page to your web project.

What it boils down to is that if your custom error page is less than 512 bytes, it will never be rendered in IE. I seriously could not believe it when I saw the article by Jeff Starr, but it’s true. So, some Microsoft employee specifically wrote code to do this…one has to ask why? I mean seriously, what was the logic behind this decision? What a bunch of jokers!!!

To make matters worse, there even settings for this in the Windoze registry which differ according to the type of error….craziness!!

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\ErrorThresholds
Error - threshold (default)
400 - 512 bytes
403 - 256 bytes
404 - 512 bytes
405 - 256 bytes
406 - 512 bytes
408 - 512 bytes
409 - 512 bytes
410 - 256 bytes
500 - 512 bytes
501 - 512 bytes
505 - 512 bytes


Useless tip of the day: Ensure that your custom error pages have enough useless content in them to make them larger than 512 bytes

I’m not sure if it’s a bug in the Flex code framework, but I have found it difficult to get the handcursor working when hovering over components like Labels/Text which arn’t used as links by default. After bashing my head against my desk for a few hours and doing some research on the web, I finally came across a soution which which works in most cases. To get the hand cursor working you need use the following 3 properties:

buttonMode=”true” mouseChildren=”false” useHandCursor=”true”

Here’s an example of a Label which is used as a link:

< mx:Label text="Log out" buttonMode="true" mouseChildren="false" useHandCursor="true" click="logout()" />

It seems like it’s a pretty common problem and these two articles showed me the light of day, thanks dudes!

• http://frankieloscavio.blogspot.com/2007/08/mousechildren-and-buttonmode.html
• http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/communityengine/index.cfm?event=showdetails&productId=2&postId=1687

G3 Global is a SAP Channel Partner specialising in the implementation of SAP ERP solutions in the Media industry.

The old site was built using static php pages, had a dated design and was disjointed in a few areas. So, we set out to improve the site by putting more emphasis on our products, the introduction of a fresh design, a flatter hierarchy, a blog, and an events section.

The design was done by “Andy, the chief coffee drinker” at Caffeinehit Ltd . I have to say that he did a great job after lots of Starbucks Grande latte’s and a few design workshops in our offices.

I did the implementation of the site and for those of you that care…yes the geeks ;), I used wordpress as the CMS solution along with a number of plugins which I either downloaded and hacked or wrote myself.

Overall I really enjoyed working on the site and I think it has been well received by the rest of the company. Now all we need to do is get everyone blogging…so I’m going to have to answer questions like - “what’s a blog?”, “how do i put a list into a post?”…blah, blah, blah

Besides Andy, thanks also go out to Chris and Drew for their hard work and guidance. Good effort lads!

When my longest run was 13 miles, a marathon seemed nearly impossible.
When my longest run was 26 miles, 50 miles seemed nearly impossible.
When my longest run was 50 miles, 100 miles seemed nearly impossible.
When my longest run was 100 miles, 50 miles seemed like a nice, long training run.

Don’t let the distance scare you; run from aid station to aid station and the distance will take care of itself.

One of the things I have been working on is a FAQ section for a web portol. To implement this I have used the following components and controls:

1. A basepage
2. A standard mxml Tree contol ()
3. A custom ItemRenderer
4. A custom DataDescriptor
5. A function which is executed upon creation (creationComplete=”initTree()”)

The focus of this tutorial is however on Item 3, a custom ItemRenderer. So here goes…

Firstly the data structure that I am using is a standard xml file which has categories, an answer and a question, I have included an exmaple below:

< ? xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
< faq xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
< category>
< nameGuidance
< item>
< question>What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?
< answer>42
< /item>

Secondly, the Tree control has a number of paramaters which need to be included to get the desired result:

< mx:Tree id="myTree"
styleName="faqList"
wordWrap="true"
itemClick="tree_itemClick(event);"
width="100%" height="100%"
top="20"
dataDescriptor="{new TreeDataDescriptor()}"
itemRenderer="renderers.TreeRenderer"
creationComplete="initTree()"
/>

I will try to cover the dataDescriptor, itemClick and creationComplete in other posts, but for the time being, the ItemRenderer works something like this:

• It is important to include the if (super.data) logic otherwise the application will through errors because it’s referring to an object with a null value.
• In the data method, I have set all parents (depth == 1) to have a bold style otherwise the nodes should just have normal font weight.
• In the updateDisplayList:
  1. I firstly remove the disclosure icons from all nodes
  2. Add some default text styling to nodes, which sets the selected node back to its original styling after it was selected
  3. Then if a 2nd level node is either highlighted (isItemHighligthed) or selected (isItemSelected) I change styling, display the disclosure icon and adjust the position of the disclosure icon
     (super.disclosureIcon.x = super.width - 50;).
• Note: The moving the position of the icon is relatively simple, but I had difficulty finding information on the web about how to do this, so I’m hoping this will help someone out ther. This particular example moves the disclsure icon 50px inside the right hand border of the Tree control

package com.g3global.ipp.view.components.renderers
{
import mx.collections.*;
import mx.controls.treeClasses.*;
import mx.controls.listClasses.ListBase;

}
}
}
}

So that’s about it. Unfortunately I can’t link to a working demo of this feature because it is part of a much bigger application which is being built for a client.

Hats off to everybody involved in the new release! It has truly become a fantastic blogging platform and although I have always been a huge advocate for Wordpress, this release makes it much easier for me to convince people how good it actually is.

The usability of the admin interface is so slick and easy to use that I have completely fallen in love with it. So, if you’re using another blogging platform do yourself a favour and get Wordpress installed – I guarantee that you won’t look back.

Below is the screencast of some of the new functionality - it’s awesome!!

Don’t get me wrong here, I do quite enjoy working from home once in awhile as there are less distractions and when I have lots of coding to do the less distractions the better. Also it gives you a break from the office and can be a good way to recharge. However, I think two days a week is pretty much my limit.

I am sure that their are some differences of opinion here, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not my cup of tea. We are after all social beings and we do need interaction….and no, video skype calls don’t count…I’m talking about face to face human interaction. Even, if it’s just having one of your colleagues next to you listening to music in his earphones, at least you can have chat over a cup of tea every now and then.

As far as I’m concerned, if a company expects their employees to work from home, then they are going to have a few unhappy individuals on the payroll.

So, here is my list of things which should to be done to get a project on the right track…most of them should have been taught in Project Management 101, but hey it seem that some people don’t know about them:

1. When a project is started…please tell the project manager that he/she is actually the project manager.
2. The project manager should ideally be involved in the project from the beginning and not just brought in when the shit hits the fan.
3. Tell the project manager what the main priority for the project is. Is it time, features, quality, people, cost…and NO it can’t be more than one…NO!!
4. Rank the features in the application according to priority, so that when push comes to shove, and it will, the PM knows what to concentrate on and what can be left to a later stage.
5. Please try to tell the project manager what his responsibilities and what the project involves
6. Don’t overrule the project managers decisions or undermine him…otherwise, you might as well hire a monkey from Primate Programming. Let the man do his job!!
7. Have clear communication channels about who should make decisions…a project should be run like a tight ship with clarity about these things. We can’t have a monkey jumping on the band wagon every time they want to make a change or don’t agree with something.
8. Listen to your technical staff about what they recommend and please take their advice on board…they do generally know what they are talking about - honest
9. Never override a developer estimate and never force him to do it quicker than he originally said he could…this will result in bad and buggy code.
10. If it could screw up, it will…oh yes it will, trust me!
11. Don’t do testing in the evening and yes you do need to hire a tester…
12. What constitutes project completion? What are the release criteria? And who will sign it off? Will that person be available to sign the project off, or will they be on holiday?
13. Get a decent PM, decent designer, a decent programmer, a decent sys admin…you need these people, so just hire someone good and pay them what they want.
14. Get a prototype out asap, so that you can prove the concept actually works
15. Don’t skimp on infrastructure to save costs on IDEs, servers etc. This saving will bite you in the bum at a later stage
16. And let us not forget…get the developers to use the source control in place…it’s there for a reason, so get them to use it damn it!

There are loads more points that could be added to this, but I think the post will become more of an essay then, so I’ve tried to include the most obvious ones. I have experienced most of these things and the question I keep asking is “What is this? Amateur hour?”. So, good luck to all the PM’s out there - Give it horns!

Thanks to Gareth and Drew for the banter - Nice one!