So, I was challenged on my assertion that the new Internet Explorer for mobile that is going to be unleashed in China next year is based on the web developer’s mortal enemy and the virus-writer’s best friend, IE 6 for desktop.
I was wrong, people said: IE 6 mobile isn’t IE 6 desktop back from the dead and dripping goo and pus like a George Romero zombie; it’s an accident, a coincidence of the numbering system. Microsoft are good guys now, they said, committed to web standards.
After all, look at the claims for it:
Internet Explorer Mobile 6 [is] a full-featured browser for Windows Mobile devices that brings the same high-quality browsing experience to the user as desktop browsers. Internet Explorer Mobile 6 supports desktop-quality rendering and has the best compliance support of all versions of Internet Explorer on a Windows Mobile device to date.
Firstly, I tested a simple page to see if it picked up Conditional Comments targetted at IE 6, and whether it picked up CSS rules aimed at the valid, but nonsensical * html elements.
The test page is
p {color:red}
* html p {color:blue;}
<!--[if lte IE 6]>
<h1>Conditional comments think I'm IE6!</h1>
<![endif]-->
<p>Red for non-IE6, blue for IE 6</p>
So, IE 6 (or below) will show a heading, and a paragraph in blue. A modern browser will have no heading and the text will be red. The screenshot shows that IE 6 mobile believes it to be the same as IE 6 desktop on both counts.
A big problem for web developers was IE 6 lamentable support for CSS, so I ran the CSS selectors test. The results say “from the 43 selectors, 10 have passed. 1 are buggy and 32 are unsupported”.
Even IE 7 passes 13 of the 43 selectors (“4 are buggy and 26 are unsupported”).
So what IS IE 6 mobile?
Well, it appears that the heart of it is chucklesome old IE 6 desktop, with a few extra bits grafted on from IE 7 and IE 8′s JavaScript engine. So it’s cross between a zombie and a Frankenbrowser.
To verify, I opened up the back of my mobile and hiding behind the battery, clinging onto the SIM, I found the true face of IE 6 mobile, its lips mouthing “Ni hao” in anticipation of its imminent Beijing exhumation.
there are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different web browser.
We need web standards. And China deserves them, too.
My old mate and wrox refugee, Pete Fletcher, is an odd one. His latest project is “Sneezecount“, which sees him counting his sneezes, recording the time, date, location, relative strength of the sneeze and what he was doing at the time.
I’m new to the world of communal showers, because for years I managed to avoid P.E. at school by presenting a forged note from my mum and then slipping over the fence to the local greasy spoon café to play Asteroids and smoke.
But now I’m a member of a gym, and so I find myself regularly in a shower, in the nude, with other men. I often work out with my mate Matt, and have absolutely no inhibitions about being naked in front of a friend of 27 years. Equally, I have no shyness about nakedness in front of a group of complete strangers.
But occasionally there are people from work in the changing rooms. They’re perfectly pleasant chaps who I’ll say a cheery hello to at the coffee machine, but I find myself unexpectedly ill-at-ease being in the buff in front of them.
Legions of grateful ladies will attest to the fact the dimensions of the Bruce Juice Introducer® are nothing to be bashful about, so I find it odd that I should feel this way.
Are you comfortable getting your bits out in the presence of co-workers? Does my discomfort reveal deep psychological trauma—or, even worse, issues? Do tell.
Naturally, my music taste is impeccably eclectic, sophisticated and erudite. My favourite bands are better than your favourite bands in every possible way.
But sometimes, even I get infected with earworms: some ghastly mass-produced crap like The Spice Girls or Take That finds its way into my brain and will not let go. This week, for example, my car CD mix of Burial, Amritakripa, The Pop Group and Natacha Atlas has remained entirely unlistened-to as I guiltily polluted myself with the latest earworm—“About You Now” by The Sugerbabes (for chrissake).
I was looking at my end-of-year web stats, and have removed my “Links” page as no-one ever looked at it, but reproduce its controversial Lust List™ for posterity.
Lust List™
As you know, I’m a happily married chap, but in response to the literally zero mails I receive asking what kind of woman I find pretty, here’s my current Lust List™:
A willowy West Indian girl from high school. I never had the balls to ask her out, as miscegenation was too shocking a concept for a Worcestershire high school in 1982.
Top 10 searches that found this website
Turns out that a lot of people, when bored at work, type “bum” into Google…
bum
personal site
computers internet blog
bruce
bruce lawson
friday jokes
vasectomy
accessibility
thailand
stiff little fingers
The most-read posts in 2007
Good mix of professional and personal. And the bum and willy pictures (NSFW).
The news came as a bit of a surprise to the web accessibility community, as it was rumoured that the last draft received a considerable number of comments that needed addressing before the guidelines could become a recommendation.
The Swedish accessibility expert, Olaf Pirol was appointed by the the WCAG working group to go through them. After a 48-hour stint on the guidelines, checking comments, removing a couple of success criteria, and adding two or three others, Olaf declared WCAG 2.0 good to go.
Celine Dion’s cover of AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long was morbidly fascinating, until her partner in crime shouted “C’mon Girlfriend!”, and Celine replied “Oh yeah!” in oh-so-rehearsed rock’n'roll ecstasy.
At that point, the primal instinct of self-preservation compelled me to bite off my own ears.
