Long time no see!

I haven't been blogging for some time now, almost a year has passed and lots of things have changed.

IE8 is now a known quantity and an IE9 preview is already available. This new version of the browser from Redmond seems to signal a new dawn for web designers everywhere, with that old dream of consistent rendering and behavior across browsers that standards bodies have trumpeted for so long finally within reach.

Google Chrome too, has been a reason to rejoice. It managed to keep itself speedy while getting almost 100% rid of the frequent crashes which cursed it in it's earlier days. The good news don't end here, because now it also fully supports Linux and Mac OS X, even bookmark syncing is already possible on Chrome, through either Xmarks or it's built-in Google syncing functionality.

I've also been through a lot in these ten months, my development setup, tool set and workflow has changed considerably too:

• I no longer use SVN, I'm a total Git convert now.
• I no longer edit my code on Kate. I spent some time using Aptana Studio but that was mind-bogglingly slow and not that feature rich too. I've rediscovered Gedit with a coworker and have been making good use of it since then. It's a pretty bare bones editor, but its plugins make up for it.
• My use of Inkscape has dwindled a lot since I rediscovered Xara Xtreme, which means I now spend much more time on my Windows XP VM than when its only use was to run IE Collection, and the other windows browsers for test purposes.
• Hardware-wise, I've upgrade my Eee PC with more RAM (2 GB now) and, when in home, I'm running it from a very fast external HDD. My dreary old 17” 1280x1024 CRT has now been replaced by a 21.5” 1920x1080 LCD.

There have been lots of other stuff that changed too (HTML5/CSS3 anyone?), but these are better left for their own posts.

It's good to be back.

First impressions on IE8

So, Windows Internet Explorer 8 is out. As is Google Chrome (In the sense that it is not a beta any longer).

I tried both today and here are my impressions on IE8:

It features better standard compliance, especially when dealing with CSS, but it somehow managed to misunderstand the CSS for the title of this blog, so I changed it even though it worked well in every other browser I tested.

The interface has grown bigger and now it takes an awful amount of the screen real-state for resolutions up to 1280x1024.

Fonts look weird. Some kind of font-edge enhancement must be the culprit, I just couldn't find where to disable it (if it is at all possible) in the five minutes I spent trying.

In the end of the day it is, still, the same old IE, the bad boy in the arena.

What about Chrome? It did not crashed a single time while I was testing it(about 45 minutes). It is as fast as it can be and it does not crashes every once in a while! I'm impressed. All it lacks now is a proper Linux port. That and Firefox extensions...