As I mentioned I was reading John Resig's Pro JavaScript Techniques recently (I actually finished it today.) The last chapter deals with the future of the language, and goes into a few different JS related technologies on the horizon- the <canvas> element, Comet, etc. One technology featured I'd never actually played around with was ECMAScript for XML (E4X.) Reading the sample code, I realized it could potentially be really useful, so I decided to take it for a little spin this afternoon, just to get a feel for what it might be like to work with. I came up with the following…
(more…)

It's been more than a year and I'm still developing for IE6 first. Will it ever dominate the IE landscape?

Here are my numbers from October. Combined IE still dominates, but Firefox has gained a percentage point and a half from the last time I ran these numbers. IE7 has gained as well, just not quick enough for my tastes. It's up a measly 2% since June:

Firefox (mostly 2.*) 10,618 37.6%
Internet Explorer 6.0 8,515 30.2%
Internet Explorer 7.0 6,558 23.2%
Safari 1,115 3.9%
Opera 565 2.0%

And some interesting stuff from the bottom of the chart:

Playstation Portable 137 0.5%
Playstation 3 29 0.1%
SAMSUNG-SGH-I607 7 0.02%
Palm680 2 0.01%

I have NO idea what this site will look like on either of the Playstation browsers and the Samsung is just a surprise. I wonder if they're visiting mobile.drunkenfist.com?

Check this out:

Yes, for the past 30 days more people have visited my site with Firefox than visited with Internet Explorer 6. Combine that with the additional 20% using IE7 and the majority of people viewing this site are ready for some of the cool things I'd like to do under the hood but can't until the IE6 beast is finally put into the ground. Oh the fun we'll have.

Of course, on the flip side the number of people using IE6 is still almost double that of people using IE7. I was hoping it would be a year or year and a half from the release of IE7(2006-10-18) before we'd be able to transition to a Firefox/IE7 primary development target (with "support" for IE6.) At this rate it look likely to be a 2+ year transition period. Bummer.

On another metrics front, only 8.74% of users are still running 800 by 600 screen resolution. 48.95% are running 1024 by 768. Wicked.

I bought a new domain a few months ago. In case you were wondering why, it's really one of those "just in case" kind of things* and I don't expect to do much with it. That said, I've been hoping to get it up in some reasonable shape so that it can start to get spidered and maybe a few pennies a day off of Adsense clicks.

Anyway, the point of this is not the domain so much, as it's not actually "launched" just yet.** The actual point of this is the goofy things I'm trying to do with the :first-letter pseudo element.
(more…)

A continuing series based on the google analytics numbers for DrunkenFist.com

Finally IE7 makes it to 10%. A month or two ago I probably would have been surprised that it took this long. Now, considering I still haven't gotten the automatic update at home or at work, I guess it's no surprise.

Overall numbers:

Internet Explorer 7

Firefox 2