I also changed the name of the site from :skyecade online to simply robertsinclaire.com. It’s been something I’ve been toying with for a while now. All the original URLs will still work, however, so feel free to keep plugging in skyecade.net if that’s what you prefer.

Lastly, I added a “Subscribe Via Email” section to the side bar for people who would like all my wonderful posts sent directly to their inbox. Never again will you miss out on the pure awesomeness which is :skyecade online robertsinclaire.com. Just pop in your email address, hit “Subscribe”, and wait by your inbox. Oh yeah!

Okay, off to jury duty……again.

This is a great write-up by Swedish blogger Roger Johansson. From my experiences over the last month, I would say he hit the hammer right on the head. This is what he had to say:

1. Sites that have an XML declaration before the DOCTYPE, making IE 6 use quirks mode, but not IE 7. Both browsers still get the same CSS, so IE 7 renders it differently.
2. Sites that depend heavily on CSS hacks that no longer work in IE 7.
3. Sites that use conditional comments to feed a bugfix stylesheet to IE without specifying a version number, thereby making IE 7 load the bugfixes and mess up rendering.

This site uses a lot of CSS and is written in xhtml (transitional), both of which comply with w3c standards. Validate them yourselves if you wish. BUT WAIT! Before you do, I should mention that though the site code complies with w3c standards, some of the content may not always validate properly, e.g., when embedding videos from Youtube. So to validate this site, click on this to leave the front page and then click on the two buttons below.

   &   

Needless to say, the site renders perfectly when using Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Safari, Konqueror, and even older versions of Internet Explorer. Grrrr. I’m so disappointed. I was really looking forward to this release.

So what now? I could block all IE7 users from my site. That’s just mean. Not to mention that in about one months time IE7 is going to be included in Microsoft’s automatic updates – which in turn, means that the majority of Window’s user’s will be upgrading to IE7. That’s a little under 50% of my visitors. Yeah, I thought that was a crazy statistic too. That obviously means that about half of the people that visit this site are using something other than Internet Explorer. Although, I’ve always assumed that people who read and/or write blogs were more likely to use an alternative browser to Internet Explorer, but I never would have guessed 50%. My faith in humanity has just doubled.

Maybe I should just wait for Microsoft to fix this problem for me. (you may now take a moment to laugh). Done?

No, I think my only viable option here is to find a CSS expert who can write me an IE7 hack of some type. If it’s even possible. I really don’t want to do a complete site redesign just because of one stupid company that can’t play nice with the rest of the kids in the yard.

To help clarify my last statement:

• kids = web standards
• yard = the internet
• stupid = Microsoft

Alright, I don’t think Microsoft is stupid. In fact, I think they can be down right brilliant at times. So why, then, can’t they get something as simple as this correct? Why, oh why.

Anyways, I don’t plan on doing anything drastic for a while. Maybe Bill Gates is a frequent reader of my site and will be appalled with what he sees and go back to Redmond and personally fix the problem himself. Thanks Bill! I owe you one.

Enough blabbering. What is the moral of this story ladies and gentlemen? For the love of god, download Firefox.

<!- - end IE7 hack - ->

Phrostbyte holds a certain amount of sentimental value to me. It was an ugly site when it was up, but it was completely original. I wrote the site entirely by hand in html, which I learned as I went along. Later, I added things like javascript and CGI, skills that I had also picked up along the way. I added chat rooms via IRC, integrated into the site with javascript. I embedded multiple search engines within the site. I had reference pages, shout boxes, arcade games, you name it. I wanted to try everything I could. I even had my first taste of SQL, PHP, and CSS with Phrostbyte. It has been a great experience.

I also had a pseudo-blog on my site. This was long before I even new what a blog was. Blogs have been around since the mid 90′s, just not on my side of the net. I was a member of the forumsphere, so to speak, not the blogosphere. On the front page of my site, however, I had a column where I would write on a variety of topics. The mechanism even worked the same way as a traditional blog. Every time I made an entry, the previous entry would be pushed down and replaced with the new one, complete with a time & date stamp. Very blog like, huh? I guess you could say that Phrostbyte was my first real blog.

I’d have to say that my favorite part of Phrostbyte were the discussion boards. I used a great software package called Ikonboard. I later switched to phpBB and then to SMF. As far as free software goes, I still like Ikonboard the best.

It wasn’t the software that made the forums great though. The forums were tiny, with only a hand full of close friends that used it regularly, but it was always active and we always new where to find each other.

The site has been dead for quite some time now and it’s the right time to shut her down. I still have skyecade.net and I’m also working on a new community site which will, in a sense, be replacing Phrostbyte. I hope to officially launch it within the next 2 months.

I would like to bring Phrostbyte back sometime in the future. What form she’ll take I can’t say. I’ll probably use her for some other educational endeavor. Perhaps Python or Ruby. Or maybe even a little Ajax. Time will surely tell.