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I was checking the calendar and noticing that my regular "blog" day next week fell on the 25th. Something about that date is tugging at my memory, but I'm not sure why. While I look into it, I'll just post something today, just in case I miss next week's scheduled time.

Interestingly enough, like mana from some bacony heaven, news hit yesterday that IE8 renders the Acid2 test correctly. I can just hear the stunned silence from the audience. Or maybe that's just 'what the heck does that mean' silence? Yeah, that's probably it.

At heart, as you may have noticed from the link, the Acid2 test is a smiley face. Not just the "" smiley either, but a big yellow one, with green eyes. It's not a graphic, though. The elements making up the smiley face are rendered via standards compliant HTML/CSS code. The idea behind the test is to determine whether a browser correctly implements agreed-upon web standards by accurately rendering the smiley face. The only winner so far is Opera. Even Firefox 2 doesn't pass the test, though that is on the list for the upcoming Firefox 3. Of course, as one might expect, all current and legacy versions of IE also didn't pass the test.

IE8 has done it. Is that a big deal to the "web browsing public"? Not really. Ultimately what they care about is being able to view all the websites they visit without any problems. They don't care what's "under the hood". Web code could be displayed via ancient Nordic runes, they won't care as long as what pops up on their screen is in a language they can understand and buttons work when they press them.

To people like me, who deal in forging the ancient Nordic runes that display all that stuff the public reads, it's pretty important. It means that our jobs "may" be getting easier, as we "may" have to do a lot less fiddling with code to get our websites to look the same across different browsers. I'll say "may" because we're still a ways off from a finished product, but certainly the Acid2 test is a great indicator. For anyone who ever pondered when Microsoft would ever put out a standards compliant browser, it is certainly the first indication that pigs are taxiing to the runway for takeoff.

Dean Hachamovitch's post touches upon what the general public expects from browsers, though in far more diplomatic terms then I put it a couple paragraphs ago. He states one of the goals of IE8 is that it not "break" the massive amount sites out there that are programed to work with IE7, 6, and previous versions. The "standards community" is only a small part of their audience, after all. Having a standards compliant browser that suddenly "doesn't work" with popular websites, or mom and pop's store shopping cart isn't smart business. It won't help having a bunch of uber-nerds pointing out the "site" is really broken, not the browser.

Web standards aren't laws. Judging by some of the vitriol spewing from their camps, I have the sneaking suspicion some standards "advocates" have dreams of a Utopian world where web designers who code non-standard websites are hunted and jailed. That's a highly unfair characterization, of course. Perhaps they'd be happy with repeated tazering instead.

In any case, the web will roll on. Maybe my job will be easier. Maybe I won't need Yahoo's zeroing CSS anymore. I'll confess to having a little excitement about the new IE now, but I seriously doubt it will ever steal back default browser status from Firefox for me.

Next Year's Pig Is a Lovely Blue

Couldn't really let this one get away. Pantone has selected the "Color of the Year for 2008". A quick primer for anyone wondering who the heck Pantone is. They make inks for printing. As my primary medium is the web, I have only a passing familiarity with them, limited mostly to accidentally clicking the "Color Libraries" button in the Photoshop color picker.

The press release is about eight kinds of awesome from the bulls-, er... "flowery prose" department. The Color of the Year, Blue Iris, is described thusly:

"Combining the stable and calming aspects of blue with the mystical and spiritual qualities of purple, Blue Iris satisfies the need for reassurance in a complex world, while adding a hint of mystery and excitement."

It gets better from there, including the words "emotional," "meditative," and "magic." Apparently 2008 is a lucky year, since a color of the year hasn't been announced since 2005, at least according to Pantone's press release archive. That one is also a gem.

Seasons Greetings

I have to report that I won't be doing any more blogs until next year. I hope everyone can hold out that long. Also, I just bought a new sofa and it's really cool because I don't have make any payments until NEXT YEAR! It's such an amazing deal, I was lucky to get it.

Happy Holidays and New Year