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-James

More IE madness: Internet Explorer 7 does not support min-width for tables

Posted by james on Feb 4, 2010 12:00 AM

This is maddening. IE7 "supports" the CSS min-width property. I use quotes, because it truly doesn't. This works:

<style>
div {
width:80%;
min-width:500px;
}
</style>

<div>
This grows with the page, but has a minimum width too.
</div>

That's great, and very useful. But this does not work:

<style>
table {
width:80%;
min-width:500px;
}
</style>

<table>
<tr>
<td>
This is broken.
</td>
</tr>
</table>

So while IE7 supposedly supports the min-width property, it doesn't work in this situation. What a huge pain in the butt. And how completely typical for IE.

This is a quick-fix hack:

<style>
div {
width:80%;
min-width:500px;
}

table {
width:100%;
}
</style>

<div>
<table>
<tr>
<td>
This grows with the page, but has a minimum width too.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>

Since the fix is so simple, you might think this isn't that big a problem. It is. Buggy browsers are always a problem, and cost a *ton* of money. I'm sure it would be completely staggering to calculate the amount of dev hours wasted (and therefore money lost) on working around CSS bugs in IE, and that's not even considering the non-browser that is IE6.

Yet another IE bug - innerHTML of a PRE does not preserve whitespace

Posted by james on Jan 28, 2010 12:00 AM

I was working on Monkey Analytics when I noticed this bug:
<pre id="some-pre">This
should
appear
on
separate
lines.</pre>
This is fine, but when you do this in IE7:
<script>
document.getElementById('some-pre').innerHMTL = document.getElementById('some-pre').innerHMTL;
</script>
It strips all the whitespace out, putting everything on a single line. Why? In all other browsers, innerHTML returns the contents of a PRE. In IE7, innerHTML returns the contents with all whitespace consolidated and altered, so there are no linebreaks.

So this is yet another IE bug. What a giant pile of crap. It's hard to imagine any serious web developer voluntarily using IE to do anything.

Thanks to this blog post for confirming what I've seen.

Google Phone: Nexus One

Posted by james on Jan 5, 2010 12:00 AM

Oh man!
http://www.google.com/phone/

I haven't even seen this phone in person, but I'm obsessed with it. Might just be the best phone out there right now (iPhone included). We'll see (if I ever get one...).

2012

Posted by james on Dec 2, 2009 12:00 AM

6

After seeing the previews, I thought two things; "This is like the sequel to 'Day After Tomorrow'", and "Oh man, I have to see this in the theater." I was well prepared for the complete package of stereotypical characters, bad acting, horrible plot and dialog, and of course an onslaught of special effects like the world has never seen. I went to see this at the local theater, which is decent, but I really wished I'd gone to the digital theaters (oooo) in Warwick. Not just for the size of screen or the digital projector coolness... more for the 'rumble you out of your seat' sound. Local theater sound is ok, but not great. Add on top of all my misgivings was seeing John Cusack in the trailer. Don't get me wrong, I like him in some movies (Don't I? Wait, which ones... can't remember now). But in general he seemed like a bad match.

At the end of the movie, I realized that I'd sat through 2.5 hours of disaster movie, and it didn't stink. That's pretty good for this genre. You pretty much know why you go; to see crazy special effects that the world is ending, the same type of reason you'd watch fireworks (sparkly!) or see something like Transformers (transformy!). The plot was standard fare, not overly cheesy. The actors were surprisingly decent (John Cusack, Amanda Peet... who knew). Overall, it was pleasant enough to sit through once in the theater, and once again at home given a good sound system (with tons of bass).

So yes, a decent disaster movie. Not great, nothing really worth writing about in particular, but pretty solid considering.