IE6 Duplicate Character for float element

Throughout the last couple months, I keep working on fixing a corporate site styling, JS execution issue, site performance for which was being implemented quite buggy. Debugging and fixing other people code is always challenging as you need to accommodate other coder’s styling, and try understanding what’s the purpose of writing something you think mean nothing, and avoid hitting some easter-egg issues. But it worths for me the meet such site and picking up such a challenging task as I am actually learning more and much aware something that I may also normally miss-out when I code. Continue reading IE6 Duplicate Character for float element

IE6 Countdown

http://ie6countdown.com/

It is too good to hear news from Microsoft take the active step in enforcing the development of web by putting off IE6. For normal web surfer they may not know why having such act, but for web developer it is really a gospel. IE6 brings us a lot of hard time during web development due to its non-web standard interpretation of web page, pool JavaScript engine, lack for developer-friendly debugging tools and poor handling for image, CSS.

Having IE6 to share smaller portion of the web market help business decision-maker no longer thinking ‘we should support IE6 for our company’ web page meanwhile aim at applying fancy effect to their website while IE can hardly run them perfect.

Well, it is actually not only IE6, but some other browser which also not following web standard for web page rendering should also be put off from the market gradually in he future. So that let more fancy web effects to be executed on best performing browsers.

 

 

Apple Boot Camp Bug: No response for disk burning

從 Apple 一月十四特價日買回來的 iMac 到新年前終於進行了開封儀式。雖然買了 Parallels 6，還是想看看傳說中的 Boot Camp 是什麼回事。

Parallels 6 是 Virtual Machine，用作把 PC Window OS 帶進 Mac 的世界，而 Boot Camp 有著類同的功用，讓 Mac 在開機之際讓用家選擇載入什麼視窗系統。兩著分別在於前者能夠讓用家在某一瞬間同時使用兩個不同的視窗系統，但電腦資源需要被瓜分，而後者則讓用家決定哪 一個視窗作業系統後，讓該系統完全利用整台電腦的資源執行作業。

Continue reading Apple Boot Camp Bug: No response for disk burning

Happy new year

轉眼新的一年過了廿多天，對上一次的寫作經已是兩個月前，管理頁標著99篇回響，當中有99篇也是Spam，這網誌荒廢度更乎百分之百，可真嗚乎哀哉。

這段時間，正職的項目開發工作很忙，由初入職五時半放工，到經常性九時十一時才離開銅鑼灣，暈。跟舊工作作個對比，工時反而長了…當然，薪水搭救，為勞累作個安慰。

然而可幸的是工作需忙，但卻很投入其中。一組男家班，一起工作的團隊感覺是我嚮往的，從過去在小公司工作中感受不到的。雖然工時間或長了，但接觸的新事物多了，工作由最初的IE6-SUPPORT的FRONT-END WEB DEVELOPER變成JAVA編程員。由對ATG Commerce零認知到現在還可獨自寫出一些servlet/droplet搭JSP。最意想不到是有一部Mac Book Pro外還負責了iPhone application的編程工作。人工的量價比低了，但獲益良多。

對現在的日間工作尚算滿意，但還是想充份利用餘暇。由上年年尾到今年初，蒼天蠻看顧小弟，接著一單又一單的freelance上門，對新的freelance工作也得選擇一番。當然若果可以，我還是想進行多些web development方面自我增值。像如何寫較好的HTML5網頁，寫較好的jQuery程式。熟習一些Open source、CMS，好使當有新項目時能更快更易開發。

展望新的2011年，大家能事事順利。別再發生一些慘絕人圜的新聞事吧。

牛刀小試 iPhone Obj-C programming

從聽聞寫 iPhone app 來賺錢有可為之後，便期待盡可能找來一台 Mac 機開展 iPhone app 的開發之路。然而，一台 Mac 機的價值不斐，直到轉了新工作，因應工作需要，被賞賜了一台 MacBook Pro，並且得到允許，借回家使用。

星期天花了大半天，在網上網羅了許多不同的教學文件、免費電子書，圖文並茂，有一點眼花瞭亂。幸好自問還算有點編程底子，看著看著把以往編程的概念轉個角度看看、想想，還算能應付理解。

手上第一個 iPhone App 並不是由零開始編寫，而是由外判公司為公司所製作的 iPhone prototype 副本，嘗試進行些小改和 bug fixing。藉這一過程，初嘗了使用 XCode，改動 Objective C 的程式碼、編譯和運行 iPhone Simulator。當看到程式被我改動後仍然「生還」，在simulator中呈現，心底無限亢奮。

當然，這一編程路的故事只是開始。對 Obj C 的認知仍然只屬皮毛。這一初試其實還得感謝一位同事的一些起始指導，還有上司提供機會讓我去作出這一嘗試。真的希望一天不只有二十四小時，能給我多點時間和精神，讓我鑽研這一技能多好呢~

網上有一個港人的網誌有一些其開發 iPhone app 的分享，是一個對 iPhone App 編程有好奇的人來說一份不錯的起始指導：http://eddyl.com/blog/

TypeKit and Web Fonts

For the project I currently come across is a very stylished corporation website. The site’s designer intends to use special font-face to empharise the brand feeling. This allows me find out something call TypeKit and Web Fonts.

In early web development period, whenever web designer need to use special font face, they may require people to download and install that particular font to client machine. When CSS turns out to a more widely used pratice for web layout control, we use font-family for assigning the font-face we use. But these techniques not yet help web designer to achieve something they want: the use of special, non-widely adopted font face, to their web product.

TypeKit and Web Fonts come to the place for this purpose, with the evolution of cloud service development. TypeKit and Web Fonts acts as a font provider for online purpose. They work in this way:

  1. Web designer sign up for the online font service
  2. Select font face that provided by TypeKit/Web Fonts and define CSS selector for assign font-face effect
  3. Generate JavaScript Snipplet for the fonts service
  4. Put the snipplet to designated web page so as to provides necessary font resource to the web page the snipplet was adopted. Designated CSS selector will take effect with the web font

Therefore, without explicitly storing the font raw file, no installation step on client side. By this mean, web designer can use their ideal font and client side can enjoy the visual effect without any extra font installation.

TypeKit does not provide as many font as Fonts.com Web Fonts provides. And as a Chinese, what I can observe is that TypeKit does not provide any chinese font-face.

Making good use of this technique can definitely help enhancing web layout while not affecting the site SEO concern, say no longer need to use image replacement to show special font design in some case.

Typekit: http://typekit.com/

Fonts.com Web Fonts: http://webfonts.fonts.com/