[nzlug] Where to start... where to start...

[Dave Lane]

Hi Nick,

I've been running Ubuntu for the past 3 years (and linux for about 10 
years before that).  I also write web apps for a living, so I can assure 
you it's possible.  You can use VMWare server (the free edition) or 
Virtual Box (http://virtualbox.org) to run MS Windows XP or earlier (and 
frankly, why would anyone run Vista?).

One point, however: please do not design/build websites for IE.  IE6 
(and, to a somewhat lesser degree, IE7) are broken.  They purposefully 
use MS-only technologies were freely available open standards exist.

Designing sites just for MS IE6/7 perpetuates the brokenness of the web. 
    My colleagues and I feel very strongly about adhering to open 
standards first and foremost... and once that's achieved, and only then, 
use the conditional IE-only tags to break things so that IE will render 
the sites correctly.  MS IE has a large marketshare, but the sites we 
build, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror and other, far better and open 
standards compliant browsers actually have an almost equal market share 
to IE.  It's no longer safe to ignore them.

If you're not already familiar with it, here's an example of conditional 
IE-only styling just below your other CSS <style> declarations:

   <!-- deal with improper CSS handling in second-class and old browsers -->
   <!-- fix for disappearing left column in IE6, 
http://www.infocraft.com/articles/the_case_of_the_disappearing_column/ -->
   <!-- apply fixes to remedy complete brain deadness of Microsoft 
Internet Explorer up to 6.0 -
   <!--[if IE 6]>
   <style type="text/css" media="all">@import "/css/ie6.css";</style>
   <![endif]-->
   <!--[if lt IE 6]><style type="text/css">
   <style type="text/css" media="all">@import "/css/ie.css";</style>
   <![endif]-->

I also strongly recommend against using ActiveX and other proprietary MS 
web technologies as they will never work properly with non-Microsoft 
systems.  Pretty much anything they can do can be done just as well with 
various javascript libraries like jQuery (http://jquery.com), and it'll 
be cross platform.

Best of luck throwing off the yolk of MS. :)

Kind regards,

Dave

Nick Taylor wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello folks. Noob here.
> 
> 
> For years I've been saying "right that's the last MS machine I'm going 
> to get" and now it's finally happened. New Laptop... Vista pre-installed 
> (entirely against my will) but with xp on disc if so-desired etc...
> 
> so it looks like Ubuntu is where I'm headed.
> 
> I write web-apps for people who use Windows and IE, so I'm kindof 
> thinking that maybe it might be a good idea if I can dip into Windows/IE 
> for testing things, but the rest of the time stay with Linux.
> 
> Which (I imagine) would probably mean either having a dual-boot system 
> or running windows in some sort of... window, or something. Which I'd 
> prefer because... rebooting is a pain in the arse.
> 
> What do you reckon?
> 
> I'm a fairly adept PHP bloke (about 8 years experience etc) - but my 
> linux knowledge is about the same as my dos knowledge... about 10 words 
> - Enough for rudimentry server admin, but that's about it.
> 
> 
> Any pointers, advice etc?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Nick
> 

-- 
Dave Lane = Egressive Ltd = dave at egressive.com = m: +64 21 229 8147
p: +64 3 9633733 = Linux: it just tastes better = nosoftwarepatents
http://egressive.com ==== we only use open standards: http://w3.org
Effusion Group Founding Member =========== http://effusiongroup.com