Archive for March, 2008

Mar 13 2008 at 9:08am

When you can’t just start over, revisited

A few months ago I wrote about the frustrations involved with working with someone else’s outdated code. 37 Signals has a similar post today:

Here’s something I don’t say often: Suck It Up. If you work on more than a few projects, they can’t all smell like today’s fresh linens. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad programmer. It simply means that you’re prioritizing.

And I think that’s something that goes for any type of project. There’s rarely enough time or money to make everything perfect, whether it be a programming project at work or the paint job in the dining room. You have to find the point of balance and decide when it’s worth it to put in the extra time and/or money. Does this really matter in the big picture?

This can be a difficult thing to get over and, as a perfectionist, I know I often spend time on things that don’t matter that much.

Posted in General, Web Standards | 2 Comments »

Mar 09 2008 at 7:00pm

Is serving xhtml as html really such a crime?

I have a new article up at A Padded cell about choosing a doctype for your site. The article is mainly intended for people who are just starting to work with web standards. It is a complicated problem so I tried to keep it simple. I did think long and hard about whether to recommend an html or xhtml doctype. I decided to go with xhtml mainly because it encourages better coding habits.

IE8 version targetting: I don’t buy it either

Okay, okay, I’m sure you’ve read enough about the whole IE 8 meta tag debacle. I understand, so have I. So feel free to stop reading. This is yet another mostly negative opinion (as could be expected, right?). And, yes, I’m a few weeks late to the discussion. Bill Gates was visiting, it took up a lot of my time. Now isn’t that ironic?