Whomever loves jQuery, raise your hand!

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Yea, me too. Until a year ago yesterday, I was independent. My first gig during that time period was on a web project. Within a few months, it was decided by the powers that be to leave web and go to a desktop solution instead. That was .NET v1.1 and was the last time I had an opportunity to do any web work of any kind. ~4+ years.

And yea, some out there are saying, “Well, why didn’t you just keep up on the technology on your own time?”

Folks who say that either haven’t been independent, don’t have a family, don’t spend adequate time with the family they have or some combination of those three plus some other extraneous items, I’m sure. Not judging, just sayin’.

But now that I’m on the web team in my current position, I’m thankfully getting the opportunity to work with all the stuff I’ve been missing all these years. For example, I recently was able to pioneer the first ASP.NET MVC app the company had delved into. I started while it was in RC1 and updated to RTM once it hit. I’ve built my own MVC apps for years with my own home-grown version of what I perceived MVC to be. But now the the official MVC framework, I do believe I’ll be sticking with it in future when my needs call for MVC.

But MVC isn’t why I’m here today. I’m now getting to do quite a bit of UI work, so I’ve been slowly chiseling the “n00b” sign off my forehead, specifically with jQuery.

I remember the days of seemingly endless treks through my Javascript Bible, working desperately to make stuff work the way I envisioned it, the framework growing to such proportions that it would’ve taken a full-time resources to not only manage it but keep everyone on the team fresh on what it had in it. Now it seems guys like John Resig have felt the pain of developers the world round and created jQuery.

John, if you’re listening, I owe you a few beers. Matter of fact, I don’t think you should ever have to have the dishonor of paying for your own beer for the rest of your life. All us other dev’s who love jQuery should be picking up the tab.

jQuery is to JavaScript what the court reporter is to courtroom dialog. It is what the compression algorithm is to software. And then some.

Since jQuery has been around for some time now, and has been adopted by Microsoft, et al., whomever would be nutz enough to read this far into my blog prolly already knows about it and uses it. So I won’t go into any details about what it is at this time. Suffice it to say that I love it and I’m totally enjoying the journey. This is the kind of learning curve I love to surf.

Thanks again John and all the other contributors of jQuery. Thanks for everyone who continues to create kewl plugins and other things to make our development lives easier. Keep up the awesome work.

My beer money jar is surely soon to be empty.

The Google Toolbar apparently doesn’t feel the Delicious Toolbar is very…well…”delicious”. I’m seeing the same issue on Windows 7 (RC1 & RTM) and XP Pro, so it looks as if the issue is OS agnostic.

I’ve kinda randomly installed other widgets as needed, IE8 Add-On’s being only one category. And I had no issues at first with IE8. But after a while, I started getting the following error every time an individual tab in IE8 gets closed:

APPCRASH plus all the stuff that makes no sense to anyone but the IE team: StackHash_0a9e, app version, etc.

Imagine you have 10 tabs open. You get a separate error for each one. Yay, fun! So, whenever any issues happen with the browser like this, the first place to look is your Add-On’s.

I have a few other Add-On’s I tested with, but had no issues. So we’ll just focus on the two that are butting heads: the Google & Delicious toolbars.

What I discovered is, quite simply, that Google doesn’t like it when the Delicious toolbar is diddy. Diddy meaning “on top of” the Google toolbar. So, here’s the no-no:

So, to fix, just place the Delicious toolbar below the Google toolbar:

Just disable the Delicious toolbar, restart IE and re-enable it to place it below the Google toolbar.

Lame? Heck yea. But at least the workaround is simple. I really love Google stuff. But this one's pretty weird. Time may prove even prove that Google isn't the issue. But for now, until I read otherwise, looks like Google is the culprit. 

I guess we’re lucky Bing is built in and doesn’t have a toolbar. We’d prolly be back to the days of such bugs/viruses that caused our monitors to explode in our faces. Can you imagine a Google AND a Bing toolbar in the same browser??? Dogs & Cats living together, MASS HYSTERIA!!!

Oh, and do you have a problem with Google wanting to be Diddy? Then be encouraged! They have the perfect place for you now.

Thankfully, there’s a decent gym here at work. I have it on my calendar to pause what I’m doing and head in there every so often during my day to do a quick 5 minute circuit to shake off the cobwebs and get the blood flowing.

Today I walked in on a lady I’ve never seen who was in the middle of a workout. She was watching a Christian channel. But the second I walked in, she scrambled to find the remote in the room. She then quickly started flipping channels. Ironically, she ended up on a drama series about witches & witchcraft. Just before she hit that station, she hit The 700 Club, paused for a moment, but then continued on to the show about witches. She left it there and went on with her workout.

She obviously didn’t know me or Who I stand for in life. But it appears she was ashamed of Jesus. It’s not my place to judge for sure, but 2 + 2 typically = 4.

Please be who you say you are. If you love the Lord, then don’t be ashamed. If you’re ashamed of Him, he’ll be ashamed of you. Don’t apologize for loving Him. He loves you deeply and only what He thinks matters. No one and nothing else does.

Selah