I just read a great article about Rich Internet Application Development tools on FlashAnt. As a mid-level programmer, I’m still finding out what into the world of Rich Internet Applications (RIA). Almost all of Macromedia’s stuff is geared in that direction, and I think that it’s the future of the web.

I also think that Macromedia really has a step up in the RIA world because of the widespread usage of Flash. They’ve been able to turn this into a great thing for developers (build in Flash, anyone can see it!) and also for users (get a Flash enabled phone so you can have the best of the web in your phone!). With the release of Flash Video, it’s just one step further.

Being able to easily build applications that take advantage of this ubiquity is something that as a young developer, I think is invaluable. Flex does an amazing job of this. Some of the things you can do in Flex are really, really, cool, and are viewable by anyone that has Flash Player 7.

As broadband gets more and more prevalant, people are going to want high quality RIA that look good on their computers, their phones and (down the line), cars and possibly even home theater systems. Microsoft has already talked about the opportunities of subscription based software, and in the future, I see no reason why most of the functions of an operating system couldn’t be supplanted by RIAs running on a central server. Macromedia has the infrastructre in place that will allow developers to take advantage of the power of RIA so that the experience for the user is one that keeps them coming back.

I’ve had a few people wonder where the picture at the top of the page is and whether or not I took it. I did take it, and it’s a picture from the top of Redcloud Peak, Colorado. At an elevation of 14,034 ft, it was Ciara’s first fourteener. We climbed it June of 2004 and had a good time doing it.

There’s nothing like being on top of a mountain that’s 14,000 feet above sea level. It’s a pretty humbling experience.

Thanks to a couple of tips from my father-in-law, the new site is up, running and looking the way I want it to in BOTH of the major browsers. I haven’t fired up Opera yet to check it, but if it doesn’t work…then who cares.

My father-in-law pointed me in the direction of XHTML as a validation tool. As you can see, XHTML doesn’t like some of the links in my page, but other than those, it appears to be okay. When I first converted the site to XHTML, it butchered the CSS I had in place. Nothing was working correctly. This turned out to be a good thing, because the more rigid standard of XHTML forced me to clean up the CSS which resulted in the site actually rendering correctly.

I did find one bug that I haven’t had a chance to research yet. On the right div tag (the one that holds the calendar and the other modules) doesn’t like to have the “float” attribute set in Mozilla. What you’re seeing now is that div tag without the “float”. I created a separate style-sheet with the float tag enabled so you can see what I mean. Check it out here in both IE and Mozilla and you’ll see that when I float it, the rest of the page won’t flow to the bottom the way it does in IE. I’m going to post on some of the CSS newsgroups and see what I can find out.

I’m getting ready to roll out the new site design soon. I spent a good portion of the night working on it but I have been frustrated again by my web browser. This time, Internet Explorer renders it just fine, but Mozilla butchers it. I have no idea why. It validates, and I’m not trying to use any fancy code, but it still doesn’t work.

You can check it out here. If you’ve got both browsers, have a look for yourself. It seems that Mozilla doesn’t like putting div tags at the bottom. If you’re looking at it in Mozilla the last two images (the bottom border and the blue box) are supposed to come after all of the text in the middle.

I have all of the text (including the right menu) contained in a div tag that is supposed to span the entire page and put the background in that makes the left side white and the right side blue. In IE, it does it’s job.

I’m planning to play with it more tomorrow after I get home from work.

In other random news, Wyoming is now on The Facebook. Because I’m an alumnus, I don’t really use The Facebook very much, but it’s been interesting to see who puts up a profile from Green River. I think there are 12 or so people who list themselves as having to gone to Green River High School. It’s also a strangely addicting thing to look at, especially at a school like Penn.

Of course I remember the good old days when The Facebook was only for the Ivies. Then they opened it up to everyone.

The Frozen Four was on ESPN2 tonight, and whenever I’ve seen hockey this season, I realize how much I miss hockey. Hearing Bill Clement and Gary Thorne doing the commentary, then Barry Melrose on the between period commentary takes me back and gives me that warm familiar feeling. Pathetic, I know, but true. Denver beat Colorado College early today and University of North Dakota is beating Minnesota as I speak.

The NHL makes me so angry when I stop to think about it. Hockey is such an awesome game, but the players and the owners have turned into a joke here in the states. It’s such a shame because if it was marketed properly, the NHL could be very successful. Maybe the Armageddon this season will turn into something positive. Until then, hockey lives on.

I wish Penn had a varsity hockey team.

I created examples of the problem. First off, the css page can be found here. And, it validates perfectly.

Now, here is the rendering in Internet explorer. The big bar on the right is supposed to be “floating” over the main part of the site. In Firefox it works, but it doesn’t in IE.

Supposedly IE usually works with the float attribute just fine, but for me it wasn’t working. Like I said below, I may have just coded it incorrectly, but it works pretty well in Firefox, so I think it should work in IE.

Standards people, standards.

I spent most of the weekend working on a new site design. I ended up scrapping it and photoshopping another one today but I got a chance to play around with some more advanced CSS.

Unfortunately, in doing that, I found out how horrible a browser Internet Explorer is (article is old but still valid). Most of the stuff I was doing was just CSS 1, not anything too advanced, but while Firefox would render it beautifully, Explorer would absolutely butcher it. There may have been a more universal way to write the CSS I was trying, but Firefox had no problem with it.

Really, Firefox is just a really, really good browser. I’m a creature of habit (I’m writing this in IE), but even I have started to do most of my web browsing in Firefox in protest of the fact that IE, with something like 90% of the browser market share, isn’t standards compliant. It’s ridiculous.

I’m hoping to have the new website up this week. I think it looks a little bit cleaner and more professional which should be a good thing. It’s still pretty graphics intensive so I’m also planning on putting together a digitalbackcountry-lite version with no pictures.