Gary Haran.com

Internet Explorer 7 will not longer require Windows Genuine Advantage validation. Because the majority of Windows users have pirated versions of the OS they will now have access to a free update without having to purchase Windows!

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/10/04/internet-explorer-7-update.aspx

I’d argue that IE7 still is sub-par when it comes to standard compliance but it is light years ahead of it’s prior incarnation and way more stable so I don’t get to feel like an asshole when I tell someone… “dude your browser sucks, it’s not my fault it crashes when you visit my site. That thing is ancient”. I’m so happy that I cannot contain my joy.

First we shamed IE into releasing an update to their ancient browser, now we shame them into releasing that browser to the world! Raise a glass developers! The web is about to get that much more interesting!

Tonight was another interesting Montreal on Rails meetup. As was explained in briefly at the end of the evening the reason why James and I presented tonight was because we pushed one another to share our knowledge more. François Beausoleil also presented a great tool to solve the problem of subversion externals causing havoc on your repository.

Anyways as promised here are a few links to downloads.

Slides in PDF format - 675kb

Not much in that pdf but it’s there for the taking.

Rails Application I Used For The Demo - 1.8Mb

This is the full rails application including table.js, the sortable table plugin I mentionned I was open sourcing at the meetup. I’d wait for version 1.1 before doing anything major with it.

I was told that we’ll have video and pics of the event getting uploaded shortly. I’ll link to them in another blog post here soon.

Microsoft is limiting downloads of Internet Explorer 7 to Windows users who validate their licence with Windows Genuine Advantage. What they hope happens is that they’ll sell more licences or get more people to upgrade to Vista. I hope people know better and adopt the Firefox web browser.

No matter the reasons for the slow adoption of Internet Explorer 7 I can’t help but feel bad for users who don’t know any better and stick with such a sloppy mess that is version 6. It hurts us web developers too because we can’t put in practice all the newer stuff because of numerous browser crashes. We also have to put so much work in making things work.

As a fellow web developer remarked even the hotmail home page has all kinds of hacks to make IE6 work:

<div id="contentMinWidthPlaceHolderWithOutSkyScraper"> <!-- ensure the min width in IE -->

It’s pretty easy to break IE6. A simple line of Javascript does the trick and it’s not only limited to scripting. CSS can also crash the browser rather easily.

If every web developer pissed at Microsoft slowing the adoption of IE7 added this piece of code to their blog/personal projects we’d see more users grab a hold of Firefox or Microsoft changing their tune because they’d look bad.

<script>for(x in document.write){document.write(x);}

But of course that would be unethical… almost as much as abusing your monopoly.

I had a meeting today for work. A developer present at the meeting thanked me out of the blue. Particularly he thanked me for encouraging him to try Ruby and RoR. He had developed systems in PHP, Java and C++ before and Ruby completely turned his view of programming on its head.

I always thought that language in programming was irrelevant until I tried Ruby. It opens capabilities of expression that I never thought possible.

I’m always happy to proselytize to a developer about the virtues of being able to express yourself in short, readable and maintainable high level language.

In every case he has an epiphany and finds programming fun again.

I even want to open books about Ruby to learn more about it on my lunch hours.