transmothraI am aware of a problem with viewing this site through the narrow and unrefined lens of IE6. I have a fix for it in mind and will implement it as soon as we are done moving and settled in.
For now, why not get the juicy taste of the Twenty First Century in your mouth with a shiny new web browser? They’re Box Modelicious!
I really only have one thing left to do before I upload and activate the preview of the Big Urgent Wish WordPress theme. It’s a bit of a killer. It’s actually quite easy, but the logistics are making me swoon a bit just now. Mind you, once I have it all down, the installation will be a breeze for anyone familiar with the mind-bogglingly super-easy process of downloading and using a new WordPress theme. (The basic gist is this: download a theme, upload it to your Themes directory, and then activate it. That’s all there is.)
Here’s what I gotta do: because my theme uses semi-transparent PNG graphics for backgrounds in some places, any version of IE under 7 will not display them properly. Therefore, I have a browser sniffing PHP routine to determine what, exactly, the platform/browser are… and, hence, what the User Agent is capable of supporting (assuming UA string spoofing is not taking place).
Thus, by renaming *.css files as *.css.php (the “.css” bit is unnecessary but useful), and by parsing those files as CSS (after, of course, being processed as PHP), I can substitute GIF images instead for the crippled masses.
However, this entails a bit more typing and rearranging than I care to stomache today, so I will put it off until tomorrow (a day off from work).
Incidentally, the name “Big Urgent Wish” came to me one day as I was at my day (read: night) job (answering e-mails for a big-name online fashion retailer), extrapolating on some of the strangely translated phrases we sometimes get from non-English speaking customers abroad. This is not a phrase that was directly written out by anyone, it’s just something I thought up while trying to come up with something to top a goofy phrase I once read. As an aside, I embrace non-English speaking peoples… and, equally, the unusual and poetic, evocative turns of phrase that they can sometimes be capable of producing. Isn’t language even more wonderful from alternate angles?
According to MezzoBlue’s Dave Shea IE7 is really, honestly going to fix (almost) all of those things we’ve been whining and complaining about for, well, years now. Some of the mouth-wateringly acceptable features IE7 will now finally be capable of, out of the box: PNG’s alpha-channel transparency (thank fucking god), fixed positioning, and the :hover pseudo-class now works on (supposedly) any element!
IE7 beta is available, and the rendering engine is, basically, as finished as it’s likely to get; any changes from this point out will have to do more with bug fixes and security. I’m going to download it and see it for myself.
And if you do not upgrade on the day it is released, you’re a monkey’s arse and i will – mark my words – no longer be making web sites with your lousy browser experience in mind.
i moved desks today at work. luckily, i’m now on XP and Netscape Browser 8 is installed. i was surprised that NS8 now has built-in FF/IE rendering options out of the box. the downer is that i hate XP’s need to group taskbar buttons together, and i can’t change that. also, i am a very few inches farther away from my ex-girlfriend Lisa, but there’s no longer a cubicle wall to separate us. on the whole, though, i give the move a big thumbs up. big plus = no longer totally alone, sit much much closer to Holly!