a timocracy of one

While Parallels is awesome and all, for web developers, I got tired of having to run a whole VM at all times for testing. I decided to see if I could get IE running through WIne, and just use my Parallels install for a final browser test. I basically followed these directions. with a couple additions:

• X11 wasn’t running my .bash_login, so I moved the entire file to .bashrc, and then made a new one that sourced (“source ~/.bashrc”) so that both the OS X terminal and X1 got all my bash set-up stuff.
• I added “export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0” to my new .bashrc
• I copied the contents of my Basecamp/Parallels install font folder to my ”.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts/”

So now I can just run IE through X11 for my day to day testing. I didn’t get IE7 running, because the betas of that had some issues on OS X, but when they have it polished I’ll give it another shot.

I know we are not supposed to attribute to malice what could be covered by stupidity, but…. Unless they put someone who couldn’t tie their shoelaces, without almost choking to death on them, behind a keyboard as a key contributor, I can’t see how they managed some of the feats they did, other than out of a seething hatred for web developers to come.

Here is how to shrinkwrap a block level element around its contents, for instance.

#yourelement {display:inline-block;}
#yourelement {display:inline;}

Ya, that’s right, the second declaration on the exact same element doesn’t actually overwrite as it does everywhere else in CSS, but in a completely unprecedented move*, it combines with it in some unholy way to create a Frankensteinian abomination of css.

Basically the first declaration triggers hasLayout, and that combined with setting display to inline, in the second one, causes inline-block behavior.

WTF, mate?

* No really, where else in ALL of selector style programming does overwriting a value not overwrite it. Hell in any programming that is a little bit of dark magic. Now I’m picturing the IE lead making a Faustian bargain to get his job, and then doing Mephistopheles bidding once he was there.

I looked into it a little more this morning, and came up with how to still get the submit button disabling, to avoid double-posts, without having to rework anything substantially.

<%= submit_tag 'Submit', :onclick => "$('commentform').onsubmit();this.disabled=true;Element.hide('preview');return false;"%>

You first call the form’s onsubmit, since IE won’t call it if you submit the form via JavaScript, then you prevent browsers that don’t cancel the form when you disable the submit button from double-submitting, by returning false at the end.

This should still work with javascript off, if you have the “Allow non-Ajax comments” setting turned on.