Welcome 2006

Tried to include this SVG file in my blog, but I guess my ISP doesn't know how to send a file type of image/svg (everything is basically sent as text/plain).
It was kind of fun spending some hours the last couple of weeks getting refamiliar with HTML. Then once I started doing that, then I had to dabble in CSS, DHTML, XHTML, SVG, Javascript, etc. (I knew I was getting too far when I started looking at AJAX).

It was an interesting exercise to discover how browser still differ in respect to supporting the numerous standards (or even in how they parse files in some cases). A challenge was determining the minimum code that would still render pages pretty closely in all the browsers with no Javascript errors.

Not sure if I fully achieved that with the Merry Christmas entry. [For readers outside the U.S., there was some silly feud going on between FOX News host Bill O'Reilly and Comedy Central Daily Show's Jon Stewart - search Google for more details.] The simple SVG example looks the same in IE (with an Adobe plugin) and Firefox 1.5 with native SVG support. Looks a little different under Opera 8.51. At least, I got a taste for what developers must go through when trying to make an application DB and/or OS independent.

So, now that that's out of my system, back to writing articles in mostly plain old text!

Hope 2006 turns out to be the Best Year Ever for everybody.