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August 16, 2009

IE6 hyphenated filename bug(?)

This is a bug(?) I discovered while testing a site in IE6. A cursory Google search revealed nothing similar so far, so I’ll call it the “Dash of death” bug.

Here’s the relevant XHTML, some IE6-specific Javascript:

<!--[if IE 6]>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="j/ie-6.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

It doesn’t matter whether the conditional comments are there or not. It also doesn’t matter where the <script> tag is located in the page; I had it at the bottom of the page, but it breaks just the same within the <head> element.

The problem: You’ll notice that the filename contains a hyphen (hyphen-dash, whatever you want to call it) followed by a number. Internet Explorer 6, a browser that is deservedly on its way out, doesn’t look for j/ie-6.js on the server. Surprisingly, it asks for j/ie, for reasons unknown.

This is a line from the server’s error log:

[TIME] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: [PATH]/j/ie, referer: http://localhost/

This is bizarre. Another script I included, named j/ie-all.js, works fine. However, when I changed its name to j/ie-9.js out of curiosity, the bug was back.

The fix? Change the filename to j/ie6.js, keep this in mind for the next project, and find out why it works like this when there’s time.

Posted at 5:34 pm under Web development
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June 27, 2008

Bill Gates: Out

We bid farewell to Bill Gates as Microsoft chairman today. He needs no introduction; among his many achievements are bringing Microsoft to fame (or infamy) and helping people through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the latter of which will now become his main focus.

Here’s hoping Microsoft does well, both in development and in policy. Ballmer, the wheel is yours.

Posted at 9:38 pm under Uncategorized
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May 24, 2008

Use Caution when Captioning

A Reuters photo by Andres Stapff has an unfortunate caption: “Uruguayan school children observe confiscated guns before being destroyed in front of Congress in Montevideo.”

One word can make a lot of difference. The reality of the situation was much more benign; the photo depicts children looking at a pile of guns that are about to be destroyed.

Posted at 3:24 pm under Uncategorized
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April 7, 2008

Spam

Sometimes the odd spam message will escape Gmail’s excellent filters and wind up in the inbox. Here’s one that I found today, just for laughs:

from microsoft ward <rwcooper@charter.net>
date Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 11:10 AM
subject MICROSOFT LOTTERY ONLINE PROMOTION 2008

CONGRATULATION
You are No(5)you won
(1,000.000)One Million Great
Britain Poundsto contact your agent microsmith1@live.com,

Posted at 7:26 pm under Uncategorized
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February 26, 2008

I Did Not Know That (Gmail)


[Dave Shea's Chalkwork icons]

There are a few tricks Gmail offers to filter your incoming mail. One of the most-common methods to sort messages is using the plus-sign trick (e.g., caption@gmail.com and caption+less@gmail.com are equivalent).

Turns out, Gmail gives every user an @gmail.com address as well as an @googlemail.com address. (Google was originally forced to give some countries’ Gmail users googlemail.com addresses because of a trademark conflict.)

Googlemail trick: seen on Lifehacker.

Posted at 12:00 am under Google
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