If you made the mistake of buying a PC laptop in recent months (like me) then you are stuck with Windows Vista. As a web developer who needs to test on IE6 (aka the spawn of Satan), I can’t use MultipleIE with Vista. This lead me to find IETester which is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

It’s in Alpha phase right now but works pretty damn good, so make sure to check it out.

We all hate Internet Explorer and we all love to use transparent png’s. As you know IE6 is a piece of junk and doesn’t render png transparency correctly. There are a lot of methods out there to fixing this problem, but I present you with the last png fix you will ever need to download: Unit PNG Fix. Why is it the self proclaimed last png fix you will ever need? Here are a couple pretty good reasons…

• Very compact javascript: Under 1kb!
• Fixes some interactivity problems caused by IE’s filter attribute.
• Works on img objects and background-image attributes.
• Runs automatically. You don’t have to define classes or call functions.
• Allows for auto width and auto height elements.
• Super simple to deploy

Check out How To Implement sIFR3 Into Your Website - NETTUTS. It gives a great intro and tutorial on how to use sIFR on your website.

What is sIFR you ask? sIFR replaces plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed. It does this by using a combination of JavaScript, CSS, and Flash.

As a non-flash alternative to sIFR you can take a look at Facelift Image Replacement. This is the description from the website:

“Facelift Image Replacement (or FLIR, pronounced fleer) is an image replacement script that dynamically generates image representations of text on your web page in fonts that otherwise might not be visible to your visitors. The generated image will be automatically inserted into your web page via JavaScript and visible to all modern browsers. Any element with text can be replaced”

If using a certain type of font is critical to your design, then take a look at these tools. Both are very easy to use and definitely should be in your developers toolbox.

*UPDATE: for a tutorial on how to use FLIR check out this link.

If you are ever bored or in the mood for an extremely addictive game, check out Desktop Tower Defense. Once you start to play this game, the hours just seem to fly by. Enjoy!

I am finally back! But I still have some work to do on this blog…