Why I switched to nginx
When I originally setup my VPS I didn’t think twice about using Apache for my web serving duties. Setting up the LAMP environment was very easy and everything that I needed to host worked perfectly with this setup. However, when I decided to create my blog using Rails, I knew I would have to modify my setup. Originally I had planned to use mod_proxy_balancer and mongrel, but then Phusion’s Passenger came out and that was easy enough to get running. However, I was itching to try something new, improve the speed of my sites and lower the amount of resources that were being used on my Slice. Enter Nginx.
If You Want IE6 to Die, Kill it
Internet Explorer causes web developers a lot of problems. Specifically supporting older, less CSS/standards friendly versions like 6.0. Internet Explorer 6 still requires a lot of hacks and fixes to get working properly and in some cases can limit your design. Complaints about Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in the web development community are a dime a dozen, everyone wants to complain about IE6 but nobody seems willing to do anything about it. If IE6 needs to go away, let’s do our part to help, stop supporting it.
Designer v Developer Death Match
There’s been some interesting buzz going around about the role of designers and developers in the modern web development process. The demi-gods at 37Signals sparked some controversy when they posted about why they skip photoshop. Andy Rutledge posted an entry on his Design View blog about how to be an employable designer. James Bennett summed everything up nicely with his Designers and Developers: FIGHT! entry.
I’m surprised (and not at the same time) from the reaction from both designers and developers. Both want to keep their “I know something you don’t know” status while insisting that their jobs and skills are important. However, once we inject some professionalism into the debate it becomes clear why combining talents is the best scenario.
NiftyCube Corners and IE7
I recently started on a project that called for rounded corners. Some areas where supposed to be “fluid” which present a problem with my usual rounded corners method. However I’ve used NiftyCube Corners in the past so I was able to find an easy solution.
Learning Best Practices, Idioms and New Languages
A few days ago I was listening to an episode of the StackOverflow Podcast and Jeff Atwood said something interesting about how he did a lot of reading as a kid but didn’t do much discussing about said reading with other people. The problem being that he had a lot of words that he wasn’t sure how to pronounce outside of how he had originally determined they should be pronounced.
Dead on Arrival Deadlines
If you’ve done even a small amount of project management for a web development project you have probably been responsible for and have issued a number of deadlines. Deadlines make sense, they feel right, there’s just something about them that says “productivity”.
