DesignAndCode software development thoughts..

Tonight, I checked my blog site with Internet Explorer 6, from an older computer that I had to keep on that version due to some software that was not compatible with IE7. I was shocked, that the style for my blog was not rendering correctly there. My usual blogging is done via IE7 from a laptop. I did check that the fire Firefox rendering was good (but it autoupdates to the most recent version). I then check the web stats on Web browser usage and found that about 1/2 of the people use IE - and IE6 is half of those. If you find the CSS Selector at the bottom, the page may render better with another style.

It was intersting to note that Firefox was approaching 50% of the market for browsing - I saw a post from Tim O'Reilley  (of O'Reilly books) that over 1/2 of the users were on Firefox at his site.

If you can switch your browser to something higher than IE6 - your experience will be better - and right now Firefox is better on CSS rendering than IE6 or 7.  I will be changing one of my computers to see the impacts of IE8 in the very near future.

I will have to take a look with the computer with Safari's browser and then try Googles new Chrome Browser too.  Certainly there is competition here for Microsoft in the browser market.

One other note - in editing this post, I did it in Firefox, and the positioning is different from what I am used to in IE7, which required some scrolling out to the right to see the post entry text in its entireity.

The differences in browsers give an impression of instability, and the idea of doing business apps entirely in a browser setting is going to need something to bring them into a more cohesive user experience. 

At the DevLink codecamp, in Murfreesboro TN, I met a developer before the keynote, Corey Haines. He started explaining some things about how Ruby was a language that was going to change the developer experience, and then proceeded to demonstrate a very simple app that he got up and running in minutes - a web site application.

I attended the meeting where the Open Spaces were being planned and session on how Ruby was affecting the profession (or something like that) was proposed as a subject. I was curious - twice within a few hours - this topic had appeared.

I was standing in front of the OpenSpaces board later, and discussing the subjects with people who were standing around, and when I mentioned the Ruby discussion that was going to happen, two older individuals - who seemed like Managerial types chimed in that they have seen that developers can be very productive with Ruby. OK - that is three times before lunch and the subject of Ruby has been put in front of me - this is getting to be a bit ridiculous - so - my curiosity is growing.

The Ruby Language - is not used at my employer today (that I know of). The main impression that I got was that the productivity using Ruby can be an order of magnitude more than what other languages offer. This was a set of information that will take me a while to digest and experiment with.

I have downloaded IronRuby and got some learning materials to go through. I can see that the roots of Perl are in some of this. It will take some time with all the things I have going on right now. 

The little I have read indicated that both Python and Perl were not sufficient for the developer of Ruby, and that is how the language got its start. The breadth of technical areas that the books I got shows that this is a maturing language - I am sure that there will be more to say later as I have digested a bit of what I am learning.

Here are the books I got to become familiar with Ruby

The two code camps that I attended in August, CodeStock and Devlink, were certainly enlightning.  The contacts that I made have been kept alive via the twitter traffic that I receive. I work for a company that does not allow for twitter connections from a company computer. So I connect when I am on my personal laptop. I check the blog sites for the contacts that I made there, as it gives me an insight into their thinking too.

I have also used LinkedIn to connect with some of the developers who attended this. I have learned how networking can be a vital aspect of finding opportunities for technical events, social events, technology information, and professional opportunities.

The CodeCamps have a good set of attendee's who are developers who are trying to improve their skills and knowledge, and these are the types I enjoy working with in both my professional and personal relationships.

I am still amazed at the level of expertise that I encounterd in these codecamps - and I would reccomend anyone to attend them when they can.

I saw a Hansleman tweet about his investigating the Mesh dll's and that the CoreCLR.dll was in there. Indicating that a desktop app might be able to use a reduced CLR via the Silverlight DLL. One of the first comments from that pointed to this http://www.blendables.com/labs/Desklighter/Default.aspx which looks like it has used the Silverlight CLR for a desktop app.

There was something that I saw about someone might learn Silverlight and then approach desktop apps using WPF before doing it the other way round. There may be something to that idea. I will have to investigate that more.

Hansleman indicated that this could be a way of doing some cross platform development with a much smaller foot print that the whole .Net Framework.

It makes me wonder about how the licensing reads for using Silverlight - can you use it offline?