January 2005

No, it wasn’t a school reunion and neither was it a swingers party.

I mentioned previously that I had purchased a cheap, second-user Windows laptop from eBay to help my web development work. I’ve managed for the past few years to get by with a bit of "Virtual PC" emulation and a bit of luck to get my stuff working on both Mac and Windows platforms but as my need for more intense DOM hacking increased, I really needed to be able to test directly on a Windows platform. Virtual PC is good, but only emulates a Pentium 1 300mhz computer which is just painfully slow. The new version of Virtual PC is meant to be quicker but I realised that for little more money I could just bite the bullet and get a cheap-o laptop. So that’s what I did.

I’m a long term Mac user and I’d love to now list all the things I hate about Windows - but I can’t. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, Windows is actually OK. It’s no OS X but it’s useable although there is something about it that makes it feel unproductive but I can’t put my finger on it. Secondly, I’ve not really had much of a chance to work in Windows. Why? Amiga. Forever.

Fifteen years ago I owned an Amiga A500. The built in 512k was massive and it had an inbuilt floppy drive! It was a computer ahead of its time. The chipset (of which, several chips were codenamed with human names, hence Paula, Lisa and Fat Angus) was aknowledged as the best in its class. I spent many hours with the Bitmap Brother’s game, Speedball II which still stands up today. Another favourite was Dune II an early RTS game which had me hooked for months. This was back in the day when crackers put their phone numbers in a little flashy demo before the cracked game would load.
The Amiga’s OS, Workbench was really pretty good, considering you had to load it from disk first. It’s stunning to think now that an entire OS was able to fit on one 880k disk.
I stuck with the Amiga for years. I eventually upgraded to an A1200 which featured an improved graphics chipset and more memory (still no built in hard drive, though). I wrote games in AMOS (a BASIC language for the Amiga OS) and released them into the public domain. Unfortunately for the Amiga, Commodore went bust and Escom followed shortly after a few blundered attemts at re-launching the Amiga brand in 1995.

So, ten years after the last Amiga was sold here I am re-living my mispent youth via the wonders of emulation. All I need to do now is track down a copy of AMOS and see if I can find the 8 year old source code for my break-out clone which I actually named "YABC" (Yet Another Breakout Clone). I’m still refining my rusty Speedball II skills and the Harkonnens are getting the better of me on planet Dune.

Open Windows? I’d rather play with a workbench.

So, for the last seven days or so, I’ve been fully immersed in the world of javascript and the document object model. PHP seems like a distant memory and I’ve got the urge to use as many periods in one line of code as I can. Over the past few days I’ve finished our rich text editor (screenshot) (I can’t stand typing WYSIWYG all the time) and a basic menu class for IP.Dynamic.

I must admit, prior to this intense javascript workout, my use of javascript was basic. I used it to test form fields, throw a bit of DHTML around the screen, basic text handling and the odd bit of trickery-pokery with cookies. I had flirted with DOM programming but never really into it. It’s definitely been a great experience and I can see many ways in which to offload some low-key server side processing to client side processing (stuff that degrades nicely and doesn’t require javascript turned on). That’s not to say that I’m going to go DHTML mad, but there are some instances where it can be used to good effect.

It’s been very handy having my newly acquired PC laptop next to me as the amount of inconsistency and bugs between browsers is shocking. With that in mind, here’s my list of "Things I’ve learnt this week".

• IE6 has a lot of browser bugs. My favourite is where select boxes and other widgets show over a DIV when the div is shown. This is interesting as there’s nothing that says "cool" like a drop down box mysteriously floating over your menu. Thanks to Joe King’s idea of adding an iFrame inbetween the widgets and the DIV as a shunt overcame that. Phew.
• Mozilla crashes a lot when your programming is more DIM than DOM.
• Programming for Opera is much like a real opera. You don’t really understand the language but you get the gist of it and it’s never really over until the fat lady sings.
• Mozilla crashes a lot just (important enough to mention twice)
• If Mozilla implements document.all, the world is in trouble.
• If Konqueror or Opera introduce their own DOM based execCommand model, I’ll cry.
• Javascript loves hiding bugs. parseint() fails, parseInt() works. Hurrah!
• 2100 lines of javascript code for a single RTE takes a long time to write
• Microsoft’s javascript debugger doesn’t make any sense
• Mozilla’s javascript console is the best thing since - well, Mozilla.
• If you leave Mozilla’s javascript console open whilst browsing the web, it fills up with errors and warnings pretty fast.
• I’m expecting a lot of bug reports from the RTE; such as "It uses <br> not <br />!" and "Why not use PX font sizes?" all of which will gleefully be filed under "Don’t talk to me, talk to them!".

So there you have it. I’m off to PHP.net to see if I can remember how to code in it.

"This isn’t right", I thought to myself as I passed by the Eternal Gates of Damnation on my way into hell. The usual warm glow from the lava pits and fires had been replaced by ice and snow.

I noticed a large figure skating towards me. His awkward frame made his ski jacket even more bulky but it was still easy to recognize him. With a sharp turn on his skates, he came to an abrupt halt.
"Satan?" I said quizzically.
"Matt!" he exclaimed as he threw aside his ski goggles.
"What the…" I said, brow furrowed.
"Great, isn’t it!" he beamed. His yellow fangs drew back across his bottom lip as he continued "What do you think?".
"It looks like hell has frozen over!" I replied, still confused "That can’t happen very often".
"You’d be surprised" Satan boomed, "Remember that time Microsoft released service pack two and proclaimed it as secure?" his eyes narrowed "Got pretty cold down here that day!". He paused, "So, what brings you down here? Checking up on the soul?"
"Yeah, it’s been almost a year. I also wanted to say thanks for the Santy worm which knocked off those phpBBs and all those security updates to vBulletin were first class."
"No problem! To be honest, ever since forming AOL, I’ve always enjoyed a bit of trouble-making on the internet. Of course, I make sure I route through Vietnam first."
I nodded, it started to make sense. I was about to ask my next question when I noticed a gap between two flagellation stations. I gestured towards the area, "What’s that space for?"
"Oh, that’s for a bush".
"A bush?" I quizzed, "But you don’t even like gardening" I finished, confused.
Satan laughed "It’s not that kind of bush".
It didn’t make sense and I started wondering if this visit was such a good idea. "So Matt" Satan boomed, cutting through my thoughts "Hell has frozen over, you know what that means, don’t you." I nodded. I regretted making such a rash promise. "Well, what are you waiting for? " Satan grinned. "Get back up there and buy that PC!".

All the way back to the mortal plane I kicked myself for saying that I’d buy a PC when hell freezes over. Still, I found a cheap laptop on eBay that’ll help with my web development.

Even though I’m keeping my Macs as my main machines, I’m now walking in a Windows wonderland.

Happy new year, and all that.

I just wanted to make a little post to let you know that I’ve not dropped off the face of the earth (even though that would please some people). I’ve been very busy since getting back to work on Invision Power Dynamic. I’ve hit a nice little patch of development and I want to focus on that for as long as I can.

So much has been done since I last blogged about IP.Dynamic. I’ve finished off the metatorial framework (metadata driven content groups) and written a publishing queue and work hold system over the basic framework and started on my "palettes" code which will handle most of the ancillery items and pop-up windows, such as the content library, etc. It’s all very exciting and I’m relishing the challenge of doing something else other than re-invent the wheel with forum software.

I’ll post more about that soon, for now - check the site for all the updates!