Mark Edgington

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) – the new version of Microsoft’s web browser – is likely to be released in the before the end of the year. This release promises to deliver greater standards support and better performance. However, with the release of any new product there is always a risk incompatibilities or bugs.

The risks posed with the release of IE8 are that the browser may not be compatible with sites already in service . These risks are minimized if you have  committed to standards based development as the IE8 development team is focusing heavily on standards support.

In addition, IE8 (and all subsequent versions) allow site maintainers to define how the browser should render pages. Where a site maintainer believes their site will render incorrectly in IE8 they can set a meta tag within the page that will force IE8 to render pages as IE7 would. This means that you can avoid rendering problems, either temporarily while we determine impact, or permanently where we believe it is not cost effective to fix.

A first beta version of IE 8 was released for developer review earlier this year and a second beta is expected in the next few months. The initial beta release is lacking significant amounts of functionality scheduled for inclusion in the final release and therefore not suited to site testing at this stage. However, based on feedback the following may potentially be an issue with the final release:

1.     Incomplete or buggy CSS 2.1 support

Action to take:

a.     Assess the severity on the site affected.

b.    Enable IE7 mode on site

c.     Determine effort to fix

d.    If viable apply fix and enable IE8 mode on site

2.     Some content may not be accessible when using assistive technologies (AT)

This is outside our mosts remit as it is a failure of the software. Additionally you need to posses the  AT equipment to test.

Action to take: none.

3.     Printing reverting to IE7 mode

This should not be an issue if sites  have already been tested with IE7.

Action to take: none.

The best action is to track developments as subsequent beta versions are released. When the 2nd beta release is available we will test with a sample of current sites. From this estimate the likely impact of the final browser release and take a view on whether IE7 mode should be enabled on current sites prior to release.

Upon final release test current sites:
·        Visual conformance comparing screen for screen with IE7

·        Rendering of flash content

·        Functional testing client-side functionality for failure and script errors

·        Functional testing forms for failure

This is best carried out on review servers were suitable, or by disabling IE7 mode on the live site during testing.

It is very likely that issues encountered in beta versions will be resolved on final release. I would therefore advise that you do not embark on full testing or make changes until the final release is available.

You should however plan to enable the meta tag to allow us to turn on/off IE7 mode at site level. You will need to estimate the effort involved for each platform. This feature will allow you to manage the impact of new IE versions ongoing.

Thanks go to  John Hunter who complied this for me.

CushyCMS is a fast, simple and free content management system that aims to make life easier for web designers by simplifying content management. Using CushyCMS, web designers can give content editors (for example a client) access to part, full or many pages at a granular level (headings, images, sidebars, etc), enabling them to update or create standards-compliant content directly from a browser without messing with the sites coding.

It’s in beta at the moment, but works well.  I made a site editable in about 15 minutes www.JScudamore.com , it’s a tool with great potential for small sites run be a single individual.

After a number of comments around the conference regarding the near fanatical religious nature of the guys on the Ruby stream, i had to attend. I was not disappointed. If you broke the panel down into individuals i believe you would get a very balanced discussion around the sessions subject, When is Rails an appropriate choice however as a panel lead by Nic Williams, was in my opinion hindered. Why? well Nic is quite obviously an intelligent guy, with alot to offer, but on this occasion (maybe due to the fact that it was the end of the day), all he offered was general sweeping statements, about the greatness of Ruby; which may well be true, but a little backing up would have been nice. The problem for me was, i really wanted to know when rails, would be an appropriate choice. I came away with comments regarding the fact that it does not run the same on Windows as Unix, and you start to get worried business sponsors; especially if there development team are stocked with Windows PC’s and there not that keen to run Virtual PC for development purposes. Couple this with the only use pushed was for CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) apps and you don’t feel particular informed. Does this sound like a recipe for world domination?

I actually was happy with my view of Ruby and Rails before i went. I think its a great language and framework for the right problem, CRUD applications. I also think that Ruby’s usefulness has been expanded into the Java world by JRuby and the IDE integration in Netbeans and INteliJ. The tie ins with Java, allow it to be used clearly as an external DSL (Domain Specific Language) that can augment the general problem solving capabilities of Java with a fantastic and agile language like Ruby. It would have been nice to expand my knowledge beyond what i knew, rather than just be told ‘Rubys Great, use it’ for an hour.

Its been interesting to listen to speakers, each of which portraits the strategies and principles and this time was the turn of Randy Shoup. His four strategies for architectures for scale.

Partition everything
ASync everywhere
Automate everything
Remember everything fails

Around these points he very clearly showed pattens ebay have implemented and how these directly related to his strategy.

As expected a full energy opinionated talk on why REST together with the internet as your enterprise bus is leaps and bounds above anything vendors or WSDL and The WS-* (death star) specs have to offer

Another excellent talk in which Kent provided his latest views on how he thinks problems should be solved from the design point of view. He started by following on from his keynote, pushing that we must design with people in mind; design for the skills of your availoble developers. The talk built up to five principles that Kent felt should be followed when a problem or new piece of functionality is required:

• Leap (you have confidence, just do it)
• Parallel ( you lack a little confidence do it in parallel)
• Migrate (your comfortable with your solution that is in parallel, migrate to it)
• Simplify (eliminate constrainsts to make the problem easier)
• Place a stepping stone (tackle it a piece at a time by breaking it into easier steps)

Walking through the list showed a clearly thought out path and one which i belive is useful in the approach.. The aim is to try to move your functionalty towards Leap, i look forward to more on these ideas.

Without a doubt the highlight of the day so far. The panel of the days presenters covered the whole spectrum of cloud computing from current position to future issues. I have five pages of notes from this so not one for my N810 or my thumbs will go dead. The key points of interest to me where the fact that the cloud is almost a renewal of some old technology ideas that did not quite make it, mixed in with standard tried and tested ideas and innovative pricing. If there was or will be a key issue it has to be Security (trust), i think it would only take one major security breach (loss or steal of data) and it could take down a company; many will have to base themselves firmly around trust so one to watch.

I posted about pipes about a year ago and it has since increased its modules from 20 to 50 and makes up 1/3 of all mash-up calls to Google. I really need to play with it some more, it really is very cool, bringing a lot of power without the need to code and enabling those that can to spend more time on the applications that consume the data.

My last five conferences had been in San Francisco, so the howling winds and buckets of rain which destroyed my umbrella did not put me in the best, or driest of moods. However, i had registered for DSL with Martin Fowler, Neal Ford and Rebecca Parsons, so i held hope. They did not disappoint, presenting a work in progress for a new book that covered Internal, External and Language Workbench definitions of DSL.

While DSL have been around for many years, this attempt at clarification, was clear and well thought out. The definition :

• computer program
• language like in its nature
• limited expressiveness
• domain focused.

The easiest entry point seemed to be Internal DSL (those created within your current language of choice, or by investigating and branching out into other complementary languages External DSL’s, i.e Groovy or JRuby to complement Java. A potentially more difficult External DSL’s route was to write your own DSL, this offering great power and control, but potential high-complexity as these are home spun definitions, lexers and parsers and this will be alien to many. Finally of great interest were Languages Workbenches, which in the case of Jetbrains MPS is a multitude of DSL’s that go together to form the MPS tool for creating DSL’s. This and other similar work has the potential to change the way we work, some are near to production quality, so we will see.

My take out was that the use of DSL’s needs to get more prominence, in a similar way to Agile development; which has taken years to gain main stream prominence. Through the use of DSL’s developers will gain skills and solve problems in a more elegant fashion, so it’s a definite win and with a Martin Fowler book on the subject it should get wider prominence.

(Written on my N810, so excuse grammar and spelling)

I am happy to announce that my team have just launched the new Sky Travel site . It is a complete re-development form the ground up and integrates with multiple providers to provide a breath of product offerings.  It has been built using open source Java technology (Tomcat, Mysql, Apache) and uses the Spring and Hibernate frameworks.  The site is fully content managed and uses the open source Incendiary Blue CMS.