Day: March 3, 2008

Categories
XHTML/HTML

IE8: Standards mode by default

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Others might talk about Microsoft’s move to the clouds, but one decision MS made shows its feet are firmly planted on solid ground: IE8 will be standards mode by default.

This was a good decision, but it’s also an ominous decision. Not a word on support for the XHTML mime type. With no clear idea of exactly what MS has planned for this release, I am forced to hold my huzzahs until we see what IE8 actually delivers. According to the ieblog report, IE8 will be one of the topics covered at MIX08. Perhaps we’ll see the first beta release of IE8 this week.

To put this in perspective, Microsoft has just agreed to deliver what Opera, Firefox, and Safari have always delivered.

update One interesting thing about this announcement–the IE program manager announced the move on the ieblog, and Ray Ozzie announced it in the press release. Where’s Chris Wilson?

second update Jeffrey Zeldman sounds like a man who put himself on a line that just disappeared.

third update I just sent an email off asking the opinion of someone who knows this stuff better than me what he thinks, but from web log entries for this site, based on the new MSIE 8.0 user agent string, IE8 does not support the XHTML mime type. I repeat: IE8 does not support pages served up with application/xhtml+xml.

Again, this statement isn’t based on a confirmation from the company. It’s a guess based on current web log entries reflecting the new user agent string for IE8, and matching a pattern I’ve seen with previous IE versions that cannot access this site because of the MIME type I use. I sincerely hope I’m proven wrong.

Categories
Programming Languages

Learning something new in PHP

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I didn’t know the ?> closing tag was optional with PHP code only files, either. I did know about white space following the end tag. Probably every PHP developer knows about the white space following the end tag problem.

What header? What ******** header!?

Other useful stuff on PHP best practices at the Drupal site, with more detail on omitting the end tag.

Question to those who know Drupal: how is it on supporting XHTML? Both published and consumed via comments?

Categories
Diversity Web

Women and tech, money and sex, and Wikipedia

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Seth Finkelstein has one of the better takes on the Wikipdia “sex” scandal. I wouldn’t even be interested except for two things:

1. Seth and All’s Wool both mention about the deep irregularities associated with the Wikipedia Foundation’s money, including how Foundation money is finding it’s way into founder Jimmy Wales pocket. If the organization hasn’t been audited recently, I would say it’s due.

2. Why is it that most of the time women and Silicon Valley or women and tech generate a lot of buzz in the tech community, it’s in reference to women and clothes, women and clothes, or women as former girlfriends? Or some variation of the latter: woman as vamp, woman as bitch, woman as whore, woman as babe, etc…and this geek or that tech.

Wow, guys, we don’t only dress and date. Next time you pair “women” and “technology”, try writing a story about women who program, design web sites, write or speak about technology, participate in standards committees, manage companies, or generally do things that you all don’t seem to notice or give a damn about until we’re either stripped naked or wearing purple, or have our sex chats blasted across your front pages.