When Software Attacks!

IE8 Rapid Fire Site Test

I can’t spend much longer playing with IE8 or my wife will skin me. However, from my cursory browsing experience I’m worried. Either the devs have a good deal of work to do or I’m going to be very busy with CSS rules for a while. Here’s the University of Bradford site in IE8: And to try to compare apples with oranges, here it is in Firefox 3 beta 3:

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Internet Explorer 8...

Well, as expected, the public beta of IE8 appeared on the web pretty much straight after the Mix08 keynote mentioned it. I managed to grab it within mere moments and I now have it installed on my trusty laptop. As announced only a day or two ago, it defaults to the new rendering mode, with a big toolbar button to toggle back to IE7 mode. I haven’t had time to test the browser with any sites yet, but I’ll try to do that in the next few days and maybe post again.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The XPERIA X1 - A Windows Mobile device that I could really get excited over

Before I joined Black Marble I had a succession of Sony Ericsson smartphones - the P800, P900 and finally a P910i. They were great - the size was good, the UI was good, the handwriting recognition was excellent (with a grafitti-style interface that meant I could really get a good turn of speed) and I could work most functions one handed with the fabulous Jog Dial. Please note that the jog dial was sadly emasculated with phones after the P910i when Sony Ericsson foolishly reduced it’s degrees of freedom to simply rolling back and forth and clicking.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, February 11, 2008

@media 2008

After sadly missing last year due to workload, I am excited to be able to attend @media 2008 in London along with Tom and Lauren from Black Marble. If you know me and you want to meet up please get in touch!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, February 10, 2008

Balancing customer needs against forward motion: IE8

I’ve watched the debate with interest but not posted anything until now. The news of Internet Explorer 8 keeping it’s new rendering engine to itself unless you tell it otherwise caused a strong outpouring of opinion around the web. I must admit, my initial reaction mirrored that of many others - that it’s just plain wrong (although my good friend Nick’s posting took some concentration to ascertain his thoughts!). Why hold back on improved support for CSS; why hide the fact that the engine now passes ACID2?

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, February 10, 2008

Spring cleaning

You know, one of these days I’ll find the time to properly redesign this blog. In the meantime, the excellent Kid Congo theme from the latest version of Community Server will suffice, albeit with the alteration of colours to match our corporate blue.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, February 10, 2008

EMEA Project Conference: Keynote Thoughts

Well, the keynote just ended and I needed to check email so I thought I’d do a quick post. A good chunk of the keynote had already been covered by yesterday’s partner-only sessions. However, Mike Angiulo publicly announced that the Office 2007 family Service Pack 1 will be available on December 11th, 2007. I guess that means we can tell the world! I’m surprised, actually, that I haven’t noticed this on any of the SharePoint blogs I frequent.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, December 4, 2007

EMEA Project Conference - Madrid

Finally, after all the excitement that Richard and Robert had in Seattle and Barcelona, I find myself in the Auditorium Hotel, Madrid for the EMEA Project Conference. According to the multilingual sales blurb in my room, the hotel is the largest in Europe, and I must say it’s very nice. We flew in yesterday and today is an MS Partner-only day before the conference itself kicks off tomorrow. Project Server is something we’re very interested in using ourselves, and it’s integration with SharePoint (MOSS/WSS) makes it an attractive solution to anybody who has already deployed MOSS for their corporate intranet, as we have.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, December 3, 2007

Project Partner Day

Well, it’s the end of day zero, the partner-only day here at the Madrid Project Conference. It’s been an interesting day. I’m not sure what I am allowed to say, but service pack 1 for Office 2007, which covers the desktop products, sharepoint, project server et al is very close to being available now. That was an interesting announcement, as we are looking at installing Project Server in Black Marble. I’d like to wait for SP1 - it makes sense - but because SharePoint will be patched at the same time I need to do some testing of our customisations first.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, December 3, 2007

Mix:UK 07 Round-up

We’re back up north after Mix:UK 07 and I thought I’d follow up my earlier post with a few thoughts on the event and it’s content. Before I do that, however, I need to give a cheer for our guys: Jonny performed incredibly in the Guiter Hero competition to be triumphant in front of his screaming supporters, and Sam, Mat, Tom and Jonny cleaned up the the goody-bagging stakes of the Swaggily Fortunes quiz!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, September 13, 2007