Just Sayin Blog Archive
Posted October 30, 2006 at 5:09 PM in Just Sayin, Technology, Web Standards, Web Stuff | Comments (3)
There’s a interesting and fun post and comment thread about IE7 adoption over at WaSP, and it has me wondering… will IE6 linger like Netscape Navigator 4.x did?
Surely, no browser could take as long as NN4 to be purged from the systems of its dedicated users. Many WinXP SP2 users will be presented head-on with the option to upgrade via Windows Update very soon — and my guess is that most people will accept the upgrade, simply because they don’t know or care enough to learn about what they’re getting. I can already see members of my family just clicking “Yes” or “Accept” on whatever dialog box is displayed… they won’t even bother to call and ask me what they should do.
But if companies and ISPs are really suggesting to employees, clients, and users that they not upgrade to IE7, as one commenter suggests, will people listen? If companies and ISPs are making this recommendation, do they have any reason better than “we didn’t test our site in any of the IE7 release candidates and either we’re too stubborn to accommodate Microsoft or our developers don’t know how to fix the display problems in IE7″?
I only slightly jest in suggesting such an excuse — I’m sure there’s some company out there for which that is their reason. But how ridiculous! Ignorance on your part will only serve to frustrate and alienate users, not Microsoft. Not to mention how bad you, Company X, look for making such a statement.
No, I don’t really think IE6 will hang around as long as NN4. After the Windows Update, and then after the holidays, when many folks get new computers, we’ll see a big drop in its percentage. After that it will slowly decline, until Vista comes out. And by that point its share will probably be less than 20%, I would guess. I could be totally off — I haven’t worked tech support in a long time, but my gut has been right before, and this is what my gut tells me. Regardless, I don’t see IE6 CSS hacks going away, just as IE5 hacks haven’t totally disappeared. CSS is the new proprietary DOM, in that sense… and for a while longer we’ll have to keep forking code to handle specific browsers. IE7 doesn’t solve that problem…
Posted October 10, 2006 at 12:37 PM in Just Sayin, Travel | Comments Off
I was experiencing some technical difficulties with this site over the past few weeks (WordPress kept barfing on plug-ins and I couldn’t get into the admin panel to post, and Gallery kept barfing on pictures uploaded from my camera, which were too big for Gallery to process) but everything has been resolved. Hooray!
I’ve got many catch-up posts to make, but in the meanwhile, please check out these new photo galleries…
Posted July 10, 2006 at 11:27 PM in Current Events, Just Sayin, Pro-Choice, Women! | Comments Off
Rebekah E. Gee, M.D. and M.P.H., has written a piece for the New England Journal of Medicine, Plan B, Reproductive Rights, and Physician Activism. It’s well worth a read! Here’s my favorite bit:
Our government has been burying its head in the sand, pretending that sex does not happen. This agenda sets women back decades, threatening their right to achieve equally in society by robbing them of options for planning their childbearing.
Posted July 10, 2006 at 8:31 AM in Just Sayin, Television, Things I Love | Comments Off
Yesterday, Kevin told me that I was the most brand-loyal person he’d ever met. Which was funny to me, because I’d been thinking about the very same thing recently.
Indeed, I am an incredible brand-loyal person. I blame (in a good way) my family for this. A few of my family members worked for Westinghouse, back in its heyday, and ever since I was a small child I was always attracted to Rand’s ‘W’ logo. Next was Coca-Cola, the only soda we drank, accompanied by Volkswagen — there was only one in the family, but there’s a story behind my love for the car and brand (part of which could be the shared ‘W’ with Westinghouse). Other brands I’m particularly loyal to include Panasonic, Microsoft, Dell (despite the exploding laptop incident), and Wonka Candy.
One brand that I’ve never been particularly loyal to is AOL. For those of you that don’t know me, and may not know that I worked at AOL for six years, you may not find anything strange about this. But for those that do know me and do know that I worked at AOL, you probably also won’t find this strange. My modus operandi was to subvert the norm and push the products I worked on to be the industry’s best, rather than the AOL average of lame and boring.
Well, I don’t know if anything I did at AOL ever worked (see today’s NY Times article, but I can say that they’re now doing something that I can get behind… they’re putting old TV shows online at In2TV! You can catch one of my all-time faves, Max Headroom online. (Max was sort of a brand, too, wasn’t he?) Other oldies-but-goodies include Wonder Woman and Welcome Back, Kotter. Now go watch some TV!
Posted February 27, 2006 at 10:39 AM in Just Sayin, Web Stuff | Comments (2)
I always try to redesign my site before SxSW — don’t know why, just call it my own, personal SxSW tradition. With the various projects I’ve had on my plate, time’s been tight, so I decided to bust out this funky design (à la Duran Duran‘s Big Thing) that I’d played around with a while back. If you hate it, cheer up! My RSS feed will now supply you with the full text of my posts, so you can read that instead.
Anyway, here I am trying to uphold my own little tradition. But it seems that I’m not alone! I popped by a few sites this morning and saw that these folks redesigned too:
- Rodney Anonymous Thoughtless for the Day – was clearly redesigned last month, but I missed it. Glad to see he’s posting more frequently again.
- Brandon @ The Dark Cyde – moved from Drupal to WordPress. Yay!
- Phoebe @ SimplifierLab – I loved her old site (except for the Flash bit) but I’m really digging this one. Can’t wait to see what she comes up with for a project we’re going to be collaborating on!
And look! I just posted to my blog! Gee whiz, it’s like winning the lottery!
Hi, my name is Kimberly Blessing. I'm a computer scientist, Web developer, standards evangelist, feminist, and geek. This is where I write about life, the Web, technology, women's issues, and whatever else comes to mind.
