Internet Explorer · Grey Nicholson

Into the Fire

2009-03-06T15:07:00+00:00

An entry at Illuminated Mind has struck a chord with me. It's titled “If It’s a Good Idea… Don’t Do It”, although “If It's Just a Good Idea…” captures the message more clearly.

One of the reasons I petered out of university was that I was doing it only because it was a good idea, and not because I was still passionate about understanding the physics. Even the dead-centre-of-my-field-of-interest module of Cosmology was failing to inspire me.

It wasn't at all arduous: I still came upon flashes of epiphany every so often—one such I recall involved the insight that the constituent particles in atoms' nuclei are also arranged in shells, like the orbiting electrons, and that shell boundaries could explain some discontinuities in each element's differing physical properties—but they were too few and too far between to hold my interest.

I also realised that I wasn't especially good at maths, and the solid intuitive understanding of maths needed to grok the physics I was learning was just slightly beyond me. Perhaps I stopped caring about maths too.

I realised that I only cared about qualitative trends, and not about the process of calculating results from formulae, or being able to properly derive a formula from memory and a set of more fundamental equations. Once I knew that formula C necessarily followed from formulae A & B, I was happy. I still like unscaled graphs as qualitative illustrations.

The main thing I cited at the time was Six Feet Under. More4 were showing repeats of the later series late each weeknight. I decided that the characters' philosophical discussions (perhaps combined with the late hour of the broadcast) were expanding my mind more than rigorous study of science.

I never particularly wanted a degree—I just wanted to learn about the universe. And I found myself gaining more insight into the universe by following the fictional escapades of a family of intelligent undertakers than by computing physical quantities.

So I was doing what was a good idea, rather than what inspired me. I'd made a similar decision before, when I chose to carry on Religious Studies to full A-level in college, instead of continuing to study Chemistry, despite doing slightly better at chemistry in practically every respect.

The difference was that in that case there'd been a fire for me to jump out of the frying pan and into. Watching Six Feet Under is not a full-time occupation.

So I bummed about a bit, not even looking for a job for the next few months as I had some spare student loan and overdraft to play with.

I eventually happened upon a desk job that suited me down to the ground: opening letters, filing, sorting and being a general administrative office bitch, for the customer relations department of a train operating company.

The work itself was easy and almost entirely stress-free, as I always had someone to turn to when in doubt. I continued to devote much of my mindshare to the day-to-day happenings in software and technology news (an interest I can trace back to the buggy implementation of CSS in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6).

I did, of course, think about my job as and when required. As is my wont, I came up with a couple of suggestions to do things better in the office, but anything beyond keeping tidy, labelled piles of stuff was stymied by being stuck with a particular set of tools.

This was OK. After all, I didn't really care that much. Yes, it'd be nice if Mrs Smith from Glasgow could receive a response to her complaint about delayed trains a day or two sooner, but.

I was rudely awakened from my employmentary coasting when my office was relocated to Newcastle, a 60-minute (free) train-ride each morning and evening, on top of the twenty-minute walk. This gave me plenty of time to read some books for a change, and I sped through The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein and the original Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov (in full this time) over the course of a couple of weeks.

But co-workers and my genial manager were leaving because of the move, and the immediate vicinity of Newcastle Central railway station is no match for the lunchtime scenery afforded by York's River Ouse and Museum Gardens, especially in summer. Though I couldn't see myself leaving, I couldn't see myself staying there either. And so I jumped: I handed in my notice (metaphorically—I actually just told the outgoing and incoming managers when I intended to leave).

Technology news was replaced by job-searching. I recall one Tuesday in Newcastle spent, by all three members of the administrative team, primarily looking for other employment.

Astoundingly, it worked, and two weeks later I was staying in a hostel in Bristol about to be trained to be a charity street fundraiser.

Thirty-six hours after, I found myself standing at the side of the main street in Leeds, nervously sipping at a cup of tea, trying to dilute the adrenaline.

That day went unexpectedly well, propelled largely by my frequent self-reminders that I was talking to random people on the street and trying to convince them to donate to a charity, for a living.

Three months elapsed.

My old teammate had often told me that the day's outcome could be influenced by my expectation of what would happen. I expected to come back to work and do solidly well. I expected that I knew what I was doing. My old team-leader had said he firmly believed that if you wanted something enough, you'd find a way to attain it. I believed that I wanted to be a good fundraiser. The team's coach insisted I had it in me. I deferred to his superior understanding.

It was starting to become apparent that I wasn't meeting targets. Not just the actual targets, but the minimum ones too. I wasn't earning my place on the team.

This came into focus one Wednesday evening in York when, after applying every technique I could muster—level thinking, playing the long statistical game, appropriate body language, concision, knowledge, friendliness…—I found myself walking home without having signed a single person up.

I realised I didn't actually know what I was doing. I was doing a good impression, much of the time, of someone who knew how to go about street fundraising, but in reality I was winging it. And not well enough. An awful day should yield no fewer than two sign-ups; the remainder of the team had signed people up.

I arrived largely undeterred the following morning in Newcastle, after a journey that was equally oddly familiar and strangely different. It was drizzling—not supposed to affect a fundraiser's performance, but not especially conducive to it. As it was November, there was an almighty racket accompanying a department shop's Christmas display, rendering a decent swathe of the street useless for talking to people. I was deterred.

Despite this, I signed two new donors before lunch, a decent tally for the morning session. Briefly, I convinced myself that I'd remembered how to fundraise. I spent most of the afternoon mulling over the decision to quit, safe in the knowledge that soon enough a decision would most likely be made on my behalf anyway. I even signed another person up (though I'm told he's a serial charity-joiner).

The following morning's news headlines centred around the deepening recession: specifically around new figures for job losses, and the recession's stifling of charitable donations. I have a wry sense of humour.

Jonathan's blog post reminded me strongly of when I left both university and fundraising. Both times, the initial spark of enthusiasm for what on paper is a pretty awesome idea had dwindled, leaving me merely going through the motions.

University lectures were not a chore, so the twenty-or-so hours of every week of term that they occupied weren't sorely missed. Even spending a day in labs each week was OK. Attaining a proper quantitative understanding of physics, though, required plenty of off-timetable study—time I was loath to put in since in truth I cared little for the specifics. It showed: each week's problem questions seemed more and more daunting, which only increased the resolve needed to actually study.

Fundraising had me leaving home each day at around 07:30 and getting back at about 22:30—albeit typically due to healthy after-work socialising. (And I should point out that everything that went with the job was wonderful: my teammates, and our adventures together—even running for a train back from Harrogate with one minute to spare felt like an adventure—were each uniquely brilliant).

I now know that I'm not capable of devoting my time to something that I'm not enthralled by. It doesn't have to be actually important—I just have to care enough to want to take control.

I suppose part of it is the knowledge that someone else could be doing a better job instead of me. My demotivation in physics and fundraising alike roughly coincided with the dawning that I would be neither a brilliant cosmologist nor a legendary fundraiser respectively.

I have this need to correct things and improve upon what's there, and if I can't make something better I tend to leave it to someone else.

So I agree with Jonathan that something just being a good idea doesn't make it a useful application of my time.

Netscape 4 is newer than Internet Explorer 6

2005-04-12T05:03:00+00:00

Browsing W3Schools, I've found something interesting – IE6 is older than Netscape 4.

Sort of. From their incomplete and somewhat dogmatastic overview of web browsers: Netscape Communicator 4.8 was released from Netscape in August 2002. whereas [Internet Explorer 6.0] was released in August 2001.

I know this has nothing to do with the age of the rendering engine, but dumb users know and care nothing about the rendering engine; in their eyes Netscape 4.8 is newer than IE6.

So if you're gonna stop supporting one of them next time you design a website, shouldn't it be the oldest? (Ideally, screw both of them.)

IEBlurb

2005-02-21T00:25:00+00:00

Five months ago I wrote about how the IE weblog's Browsing the Web section was empty. Since then, they've written one item in this category, A fresh IE security update. Yes, that's what browsing the web is all about.

I seriously believe the only reason it's in this category is that it concludes with the phrase Surf safely!. Do you see? Surf? That's Browsing the Web, that is!

Afterthought

This is my hundredth entry.

It's a Weblog Entry!

2005-01-08T02:48:00+00:00

OK, so the normal service has been a bit thin on the ground. Aaanyway... I'm back off to university tomorrow (Sunday); any new text and/or other whatnot will appear at Mooquackwooftweetmeow B, my university webspace.

Meanwhile

It took them four years, but this Christmas the people in charge finally cottoned on to the idea of putting two and two together, where the first “two” is a lot of homeless people in London and the second “two” is an empty Millennium Dome.

Over in Mozillaland...

Some guys decided to call Firefox “1.0” for a change. It seems to have worked. Then some other guys did the same with Thunderbird; that also worked reasonably well. And then roughly 20 million people downloaded them and they saw that they were good. And they divided the Firefox and the Thunderbird from the other applications; the Firefox and the Thunderbird they called “cool!” and the other applications they called “less so”. And lo Internet Explorer became without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of its developers. And Bill said “let there be users” but there were no users, for they saw that it was bad. And the grace of web standards be with us all. Amen.

Or something like that.

And in Operaworld...

They made a browser that can talk like an American, but it still insists on trying to sell me things I don't want, and I can't stop the browser or webpages from doing it. I guess they're firmly targetting users who can't see.

Oh! And...

It's 2005, you know - happy new year to everyone.

IEBlank

2004-09-13T14:39:00+00:00

The Internet Explorer crew over at Microdollar clearly spend a lot of time thinking about browsing the web - as well they should, since they're supposed to be making a web browser. Now, they've pooled their collective thoughts into the IE weblog's Browsing the Web section, which serves as a useful, entertaining and enlightening glimpse into... oh, hang on a sec... what's...? No, it's definitely empty.

Odd.

Very curious...

2004-05-12T15:50:00+00:00

Mozilla browsers have long had an “easter egg” whereby if you enter about:mozilla into the location bar, you're presented with a nice quote from the Book of Mozilla.

What's queer, is that entering about:mozilla into Internet Explorer gives a blue page. No other about: address (that I've tried) does this.

Surely Microsoft aren't nicking source code?

Incidentally, why haven't Mozilla's copyright/trademark folks taken Microsoft to court over their use of “Mozilla” in IE's user agent string?

Adventures in XML

2004-04-27T17:40:00+00:00

I did manage to get the XML+XSL-based jiggery-pokery for The Twaddle working - quite nicely, actually. Getting the entire contents of the content field onto the page took a little bit of effort, as described on the mozillaZine forums.

I won't be implementing this on The Twaddle, though - for a start, Opera and KHTML don't like XSLT. And it's not half as accessible for non-standard browsers (relics, mobile devices, text browsers...) as plain, extraneous-menu-items-and-such-written-into-the-article XHTML is. Nonetheless, a working example is online for the time being.

Update: the real thing's gone live... sort of... so the prototype has been removed. Additional related blurb is contained in a later entry in this weblog.

There's a slight chance that I might implement an XML-driven article system on Mooquackwooftweetmeow, where I'm not too fussed about old and/or buggy browsers. The fact that mobile devices won't render the page is more of a concern.

Perhaps some way of pulling in external XHTML fragments could be handled in CSS3? Then again, why duplicate XSL functionality in CSS - small devices' browsers could just be taught to handle XSL.

One more Twaddle-related thing: thanks to Internet Explorer conditional comments (on which MSDN has an hilarious article), I'm now feeding IE users some nice propaganda in the foot of the front page:

You're using Internet Explorer?! You do realise that it's years out-of-date, and screws up most modern web pages, don't you? In fact it's screwing this one up right now and you don't even know it. Try a proper web browser instead.

Oh, and another tiny little piece of The Twaddle-related trivia: the version number on the front page is now in the title text of the copyright notice - it's tidier and it leaves room for a pointless codename.

Over to the Mooquackwooftweetmeow Weblog now, where, thanks to our old friend XML namespaces, and our newer friend the XSL copy-of element, proper links are now in use. I've gone back through the weblog and updated plain text URLs to be links. The more observant of you will have noticed that there have been a smattering of links throughout this post - that'll be the norm from now on.

The even more observant of you will have noticed line breaks as well. I'd use paragraphs but the XSL stylesheet inserts the content into a paragraph - I don't think the XHTML validator would like paragraphs within paragraphs (not that it'd like this Atom file at all...). And I don't think the site's CSS would like divs to hold the text, in place of paragraphs; it might - I just haven't looked at mqwtm's CSS in ages so I can't remember. Besides, line breaks are lighter on the markup than open-and-close <xhtml:p> tags.

And in a final twist of XMLish loveliness, I've chucked a few XHTML <code> tags in as well.

</epic>

IE + XML + XSL + XHTML + W3C = Get In!

2004-04-23T14:07:00+00:00

As a prelude to some major back-end renovation I'm planning for The Twaddle, I decided to see if I could get Internet Explorer 6 to display this XSL-ified weblog nicely, not accounting for IE-unsupported CSS (which is already taken care of at The Twaddle). Previously, IE displayed the DOCTYPE declaration as plain text at the top of the page; using strategic HTML commenting, I've managed to prevent it from doing so.

Actually, I bet simply removing the DOCTYPE declaration wouldn't affect either Gecko or IE's rendering of the page, as I think XML kicks both of them into standards mode anyway.

The next step is to try this with some of The Twaddle. And I'd probably best check Opera's effort, too.

Wow! Internet Explorer can even mangle XML!

2004-02-19T16:15:00+00:00

Here's me thinking Internet Explorer wouldn't display this feed properly! Obviously, it doesn't... but it at least has a go at mangling it, leaving this text (and this) legible. You do get a nice piece of HTML above the title, however.

So, then - Hello! to all you fools reading this in Internet Explorer! Do yourself a favour and fetch a web browser (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/).

Actually, on the topic of plain text links and Mozilla Firefox, I've now reinstalled the text/plain extension for Firefox (http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/textplain), so I can now select plain text links, right-click 'em, and do stuff. I suggest you also install it; it'll come in handy for this log.

Freewebs aren't very good at MIME types

2004-02-19T15:30:00+00:00

Freewebs is obviously designed to cater for “webmasters” who've never heard of Jeffrey Zeldman... Like most, if not all, free web hosts, Freewebs use filename “extensions” to determine what MIME type to serve for a file; this is OK, until they get it wrong. Granted, Atom and XSL aren't the most commonly used file formats on the web but nonetheless Freewebs could bother serving them with the proper MIME types.

A few months ago, I asked them if they could serve .xhtml files as XHTML rather than plain text. They responded by saying they wanted to comply with web standards; could I please send them the reference to the W3C recommendation. Great! ...except that nothing's happened since (or at least they haven't told me about it if anything has) - a couple of weeks ago I checked and .xhtml files were still being served as plain text.

I'd appeal to Freewebs now, except I suspect they use Internet Explorer, and thus won't be able to read this...