This is my goodbye. For now. Starting today I will be on a four-month parental leave, from work and any other responsibilities, to spend time with my daughter Emilia. I truly couldn’t think of anything better to do with my life.
During this time I might write some post, but then again I don’t find it likely. My idea right now is to start writing here in September again, if I feel like I want to and that I can contribute in any way, but please don’t take that as a promise.
I would just redirect a big thank you to the numerous people reading, commenting and helping me out in any way. Also, you have all made me become a better web developer, writer and person.
Thank you, all. Take care of yourselves, and of others.
There seem to be some kind of worshipping of certain personalities online, and at the same time, well-known web people who misuse their position. I don’t know if it’s me becoming jaded or if it’s an accurate impression of the state of the web, but here goes…
I will be featured in the next issue of Internetworld . There will be a two-page spread called The Pro’s Choice, where I list three web sites that I like and the reason for choosing them.
Next Geek Meet will take place June 8th at adocca entertainment, Södermälarstrand 57B, floor 6, and the time is 18.30. Please write a comment and provide a valid e-mail address if you know you can attend.
Last night we held the first Geek Meet in Stockholm. In my experience, it was an immense success, if for nothing else, at least compared to my expectations.
Pretty much everyone that had signed up actually came, about 17 persons in total. After a rough start with a lot of unexpectedly locked doors in the building, people getting lost, one person held up by a robbery in downtown Stockholm etc, everyone seemed to really enjoy it.
Forgive me if I’m missing some basic point here, but something I truly wonder over is if we actually need antivirus software. I mean, no matter the name of the operating system, isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with it if has got security holes that allows one to infest your computer in such a way that it becomes unusable?
Firewalls I buy. Naturally no one should get unapproved access to your computer. Same thing if you download some installation package from a dodgy web site: you’ve got yourself to blame.
But, in the case of Windows at least, you need to have some antivirus software running all the time that eats a lot of performance from your computer, and writing/downloading files to the hard drive takes forever since every file has to be scanned, it needs to constantly update its definitions etc.
Out of curiosity, I’ve unplugged the network cable on some computers and just tried doing some basic tasks and also transferring files over USB from an external hard drive. The performance experience is staggering!
And part of me starts to wonder if all these antivirus software vendors are riding the wave of people’s fears, that their product will be bought just out of “better safe than sorry”-panic. Sure, certain operating systems have some serious flaws, but shouldn’t those be fixed by the operating system vendor before the system is released to begin with?
Sure, of course there can be some glitches in a product, but none should be as serious as to threaten your computer in the ways it is now possible.
PS. If anyone knows of any good light-weight antivirus program for Windows (free would be great :-)), then I’m all ears. DS.
Yesterday I went to visit some fellow consultants at their assignment for a sub company/department of one of Sweden’s largest banks. We had a talk about AJAX in general and different ways of how to implement it, and one of them opened his web browser to navigate to some AJAX-based web sites.
Something interesting followed next that really baffled me. Most web sites he went to had empty white patches where no content showed up, and some web pages even went completely blank. We knew for sure that JavaScript was enabled in his web browser of choice (IE, but still almost a real web browser… ;-)) so that couldn’t be the problem.
Then, naturally, we had to go test my ASK script to see what was going on. The version that we got there was the fallback version that works without JavaScript, but instead with regular links reloading the entire web page, meaning that no JavaScript events were applied.
After some digging, we found out that the JavaScript file was completely blank! The reason for this, apparently, is that the proxy server they had to go through to access internet totally cleansed any JavaScript file that contained this text:
new ActiveXObject
So much for object detection and every other approach we recommend to web developers. Not a single line of code was left behind in the file. And the problem is that it won’t throw an error or show the content of a noscript tag either; everything just stops working.
My initial reaction was that if they have such a tight security environment doing that, I really don’t want to care to cater to them. But as my boiling blood got calmer (kind of an exaggeration), I realized that this company was too big to ignore the fact that all their users got shut out.
Also, if they have a situation like this, it’s likely that many other large companies have a similar solution.
Conclusion: if you want to develop AJAX apps, make sure that it works without JavaScript as well, apply all the scripts in an unobtrusive fashion. I’m just glad that ASK passed the test with its accessible groundwork and then building AJAX functionality on top of that (Actually, the Google Analytics code of the ASK page did in fact throw an error when we tested it, but I think it was just a consequence of the proxy server doing it’s job…).
I guess most of you, one time or another, has had the need to find out what style was actually rendered on an element. The easiest way to do this is through the style property followed by the specific value you’re looking for:
var intPosLeft = document.getElementById("left").style.left;
However, this only works if the CSS has been applied inline on the element. As we all (or at least most of us) have realized, having inline styles isn’t a very good and efficient approach. So then we move all our CSS to an external file and suddenly the style property return no values when checking it.
What the hell happened?
The style property is reserved for inline styles (ridiculous, if you ask me), so you need to find another way to do it. Of course, then, there’s one standard way and one Microsoft way.
I have put together a function named getStyle (yes, the name is supposed to be funny) to solve this issue for you:
I’ve updated one line for IE per zcorpan’s suggestion. The previous code worked fine as well, it’s just a matter of personal preference when it comes to code syntax.
The first parameter is an object reference to the element you want to check, the second is the CSS name of the property you want to know the rendered value for.
Interesting to know is that specific values will return a value even if it was applied by shorthand in the CSS. For example, this will work just fine:
/* Element CSS*/
div#container{
font: 2em/2.25em Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
var elementFontSize = getStyle(document.getElementById("container"), "font-size");
An other interesting thing is that Firefox, Opera and Safari will returned the actual pixels of a font size applied with em, while IE only return the value in em.
Web browser compatibility
This script has been tested to work in the following web browsers:
IE 5.5+
Firefox
Safari
Opera 8.5
The reason that it doesn’t work in IE 5.0 is having a function in the replace method as a second parameter. You might want to put this in a try...catch clause if you expect any users with that version, like this:
try{
strCssRule = strCssRule.replace(/\-(\w)/g, function (strMatch, p1){
return p1.toUpperCase();
});
strValue = oElm.currentStyle[strCssRule];
}
catch(e){
// Used to prevent an error in IE 5.0
}
Is Web 2.0 as hyped as dot-com businesses were? Are some people in every company/organization/movement more interested in fucking each others’ butts patting each others’ backs than actually doing something worthwhile? Is the web still immensely exciting? Does Microsoft have a bad reputation? Are people still blinded by different technologies as opposed to focusing on the actual goals of a product?
My whole life, as long as I can remember, I’ve been afraid of dying. The fear seems to hit me in waves, but it’s always there, constantly reminding me of my mortality.
As we grow up, most of us reach a time when we start to think about life, death, universe, why we’re here. Some think about it while lying in their beds at night staring out into the darkness, some share it with friends when drunk and some just try to suppress these thoughts as soon as they surface. What almost every person seems to have in common with each other, though, is that we desperately try to find a reason for living, a meaning with our existence.
One person might find cause through religion, while others find comfort in trying to understand as much as possible of the science we use to try to explain this phenomenon we refer to as life. But almost everyone seems to strive for an answer, a reason, a motivation to keep going.
Why am I afraid? I can’t even begin to fathom that my life will end, that my body will stop functioning and that all the thoughts, love and sorrows I bear with me will vanish. That I will cease to exist, and that I will be just gone.
I’ve heard that the older one gets, the more one comes to term with the fact that life isn’t endless. That we have been given a certain amount of time to live, and all we can do is try to make the best out of it.
You might look upon these thoughts as the ones of an unhappy man; on the contrary! My life is beyond my wildest expectations! I have a wonderful girlfriend, and a daughter that I love so much that no words of man are worthy of describing such strong feelings. I have seen so many things, been to numerous places and have met so many interesting people in my life. In my line of work I have reached a moderate success and respect, and I constantly want to become better at what I do. I also sincerely hope to constantly keep evolving into a better and less selfish human being.
But all that just makes the fear even worse to handle. To one day lose everything I’ve fought so hard for; to not be around to help and aid my family, in sorrow and in joy. At times, I can just neglect the various thoughts, and then at other times I desperately stare out into the vast emptiness hoping to find some way to be strong enough to withstand the psychological terror a fear of death brings to you.
Ever had a dream that felt more real than life itself? I’m sure you have, one time or another. Some of mine have been dreams of actually dying, waking up in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat and literary screaming my anxiety out into the room; my mind boggling and my body shaking with reluctance against the implication of death.
Maybe we do have souls, perhaps they do live on forever; maybe we’re all incarnated from who knows how long back in time. There is the slightest chance that we might remember and carry with us who we are, and that’s the fraction of hope I cling on to. Nevertheless, my fear is still there.
This article is co-written with Anne van Kesteren, W3C Member and contributor to the WHATWG and Opera specifications, R&D and QA person.
When developing a web page, DOM methods are generally the way to go when dynamically altering elements’ attributes and performing other operations. But what about adding content to a web page in the most efficient manner, both code- and performance wise? We claim that innerHTML is unmatched by any DOM methods available and that it is in most, if not all, situations the best option.
People seem to have this feeling that innerHTML is evil. Instead of one line of innerHTML you would use about twenty lines with calls to the DOM. Every such line making one change. However, innerHTML is actually not that bad. The web browser pretty much parses it much like it parses the original page and builds some DOM nodes out of it which are then inserted at the requested location. Some mutation events are dispatched for the few who care and all is fine.
When it comes to having greater scalability in a web page, especially in AJAX scenarios, innerHTML offers unmatched flexibility. There has also been benchmark tests verifying that innerHTML is more efficient compared to using DOM methods.
The fact that it is not in a standard is simply because nobody got around to it. If you read the mailing list of the W3C Web API’s Working Group you can see that Opera, Mozilla and Apple want it to be standardized and we bet Microsoft would like the same thing. New entrants in the web browser market are probably interested as well given that it has to be supported anyway. That it’s not in a standard is probably its biggest problem, apart from the name which doesn’t really scale well. On the other hand, people complain a lot about document.write() as well which is part of DOM Level 2 HTML.
So, go on! Start, or continue, to use the best tool available for the job!
As all of our lives, or rather the services we use, become more and more web-based and moving away from being locked down to one specific computer, online storage capabilities is definitely a huge part of that transformation. Sure, one can drag an USB memory stick around or a MP 3 player with a hard drive etc, but I prefer just getting online and downloading things.
As of lately, I’ve been testing the Box.net service, which has a nice sleek interface and is easy on the eyes.
The general features are:
1 GB storage for free (with prices starting at $4.99 per month for 5GB)
Private sharing
Public sharing
Desktop Sync software (upcoming)
Work groups
Uploading
There are two basic ways to upload files: through Flash and through drag and drop, and since I’m a big fan of drag and drop, that’s the option I use.
Flash upload dialog
Drag and drop upload dialog
Sharing
One great feature is sharing your files. You can either share them privately with other Box.net users or you can share them at a public URL for anyone to download, with optional password protection. Very handy, as opposed to e-mailing large files, sending them over IM or something similar.
The Public sharing dialog
What I miss
I would love to have FTP access to my account, for easy and swift uploading. Sure, Desktop Sync might happen, but I’d like to have free access to my file structure and to use my FTP tool of choice.
Conclusively, I think Box.net is going places. They’re still working on some minor issues, but they’re also very humble and open for feedback, so just let them know if you have any questions.
Except from a good service, Goowy‘s file sharing is based on the Box.net API and they have also become a module in Netvibes, so they seem get their share of attention. 🙂
The creators of Box.net also blog about the service and what’s going on in terms of competitors’ services, for anyone wanting to stay on top of things.
Most web sites out there don’t abide to web standards, use table-based layouts and are JavaScript-dependant. If you work with web development and you still haven’t got a clue, I think all hope is gone. Then you must be sincerely devoted to not doing a good job, or stray from conventions just to spite.
If you write valid and semantic markup, and add JavaScript in an unobtrusive fashion, your web site has come a long way when it comes to accessibility and SEO as well. It’s all there, one big package of building something great.
If you don’t do it that way and aren’t willing to learn, I won’t bother you anymore. It’s your problem, and something you have to deal with.
Law enforcement
Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t believe in laws enforcing accessibility. They can never be a 100% fair and balanced, and it’s a highly subjective matter. What is truly accessible? On the other hand I understand that when it comes to the public sector there has to be some regulations, when we’re dealing with matters about informing and facts that every citizen has a right to be able to get to. That I support.
For the private sector, however, I sincerely hope that reaching more visitors – thus getting more customers, getting a better search engine ranking, goodwill and actually doing the right thing should be incentive enough.
In the end, if companies choose to make their web sites inaccessible, it has to be their call. It’s their web site and they can do whatever they want with it. They will probably get bad press, like with Target, but I don’t think suing helps. Ultimately, my belief (read: vision) is that the market will cleanse itself; if you do things bad, people will choose another company to do their business with. Easy as that.
Accessibility consultants
On the other hand, we have people fighting for accessibility. Most of them good people doing it for a good cause, but sometimes their critique gets too harsh or is taken as being elitist, and that doesn’t help. Instead, companies being pointed out in such context don’t take it as constructive criticism, but instead as an attack and choose to ignore the people pointing out their flaws. It has to be done in a more respectful manner.
Also, critique is always aimed at the companies who it feels good to point the finger at. I’ve never seen anyone lash out at Flickr or Google Maps, although they don’t work properly with JavaScript disabled. The slideshow just goes dark in Flickr and Google Maps redirects you to a web page telling you that your web browser isn’t fully supported
Flickr slideshow with JavaScript disabled
The Google Maps redirect page if JavaScript is disabled
Why people leave them be? My guess is that people like Flickr so much and that Google Maps has got such a great API for building mash-ups, that they’re willing to overlook such things. Don’t. Be consistent.
A great initiative
Accessibility is often looked upon as something holding web development back, which isn’t true if it’s implemented in a correct manner. Also, some think that trying to make a web site accessible for people with any disabilities and/or platform means that it has to work exactly the same for everyone. It won’t. But make sure it degrades nice so everyone can at least partake of the information being given.
To me, just bashing inaccessible web sites doesn’t seem to do the trick. The people responsible just seclude themselves in their own shell, and hope the problem will go away. Instead, I applaud such initiatives as Accessites.org, which is about premiering good looking and functionally-wise excellent web sites that are at the same time accessible. I think that’s the way to do it, to show that something can be great and accessible.
To be hit by a meme is usually quite entertaining, and I like the nostalgic feel of the latest one. First Faruk got me and then Jonathan Snook took a stab so I have nothing else to do but abide and share some parts of my history.
One year ago
Just a little over a year ago I wasn’t entirely pleased with my employer, so out of boredom/curiosity I started this blog. It was then on Bloggerand in Swedish. When I signed up I had to choose a name for it, and in a panicky fashion I choose the corny name “Roberts prat” (which loosely translates to Robert’s talk), and it just stuck around. After a few weeks I realized that I knew a number of English-speaking people who would be interested in reading too, plus the fact that it would make it easier to reach out, so I translated the posts I had written so far into English.
My wonderful daughter Emilia was about 8 months old then.
Five years ago
I had fairly recently gotten back from my New York stint and been working for some months for a company called iBizkit. Very valuable lessons were learned and I left the company to travel around the world in 2002.
I was also (finally) living within Stockholm city, in the great Södermalm part, together with Fredrika. I was also working out a lot of the time.
Ten years ago
Ten years ago it was still seven months till I would purchase my first computer. I had moved away from home to my own apartment located in the area of Mariehäll in Bromma, 43 square meters/51.4 square yards consisting of one room and a kitchen.
I was working for UPS and had just been internally promoted to dealing with their key accounts in the terms of billing and any accounting queries they might have. I left this job at the end of 1997 to travel around in Australia for a couple of months.
Who’s next?
I had to do some serious pondering when it came to this. I wanted to choose persons that don’t normally get memes, to give them a chance. So, therefore, I proudly pass it on to Carl Camera, Stuart Colville and Shane Shepherd.
As of recently, I’ve had enough of trying to keep track of appointments and other assorted obligations. Fredrika writes things for hand in her little secret calendar, which means there’s no way I can stay on top of things going on or actually double-check when I’m not actually in the same room as here.
This led to me starting to look around for web-based calendar services, where one can enter data and it will be available from any computer at anytime, and also get reminders. Just as I was testing some services, Google were kind enough to apply to my needs and released Google Calendar.
Google Calendar has got the look and feel of GMail and other Google applications and you can just start using it with your existing Google account.
Different views
Google Calendar supports five different views:
Day
Week
Month
Next 4 Days
Agenda
Creating events
It is very easy to create an event: just click the desired date/time and enter a subject. You can then drag and drop existing events to move them to another date/time.
Notifications
It’s possible to get a notification through an alert box, e-mail or a SMS text message. I would love that last option, but it seems like it’s only available for US citizens.
Sharing
You can also share your calendar and events with others, which is a great thing! This lets you have your own calendar, share some or all events and then also color-code your and other calendars’ events to easy distinguish whose appointment it really is. Your calendar with the events labeled as public is made available at a public address, and there’s also a private address you can use in other calendar applications.
Missing features
I would love some way to synchronize the information with a PDA or cell phone and be able to use it offline.
All in all, a great service that is yet another step for me from being dependant on just one specific computer.
If you’ve ever met Chris Mills, you won’t forget him. His physical apparition is something that lingers in your mind for a while, and if you actually talk to him, it makes things even more exciting.
He’s tall, very beardy, eloquent, the Senior Editor of friends of ED, loves heavy metal, plays in two bands, has got a freakish sense of humor and is always up for adventures. What’s not to like? 🙂
And now he has started blogging with bloggEd, which, of course, is a very entertaining read. My only worry is that he’ll probably have more readers than I have within a week (if he doesn’t already), and that I’ll be superfluous very soon…
Oh well, I have to be the bigger man here and still say: go read! You won’t regret it.
I’ve done a very minor change to the event handling to cover up for a bug in IE’s garbage collector (something I hear will be addressed automatically in IE 7). In 99,9% of the cases you won’t notice any difference, but if you use it in a very advanced web site/web application it might make things better and less resource intensive.
Updated October 25th 2007
I get a number of e-mails asking how to start the slideshow as soon as the page is loaded. Add this code to the end of the jas.js to make it happen:
(The setTimeout is to avoid a content parsing bug in Internet Explorer)
Pretty much everyone wants to display and show images to other people, right? So many use Flickr for it, and while I think it’s a great idea and that it has got some wonderful features, my main gripe is that if I present images, I want to do it in my own web site.
People who do it themselves, on the other hand, always think Flash is necessary just to have fading and a nice little slideshow. Not true.
Therefore, I created JaS – JavaScript Slides. It is a highly customizable JavaScript library for easily turning your images into a collection viewable as a slideshow, and with fading effects, if desired. It also supports automatic thumbnail creation and tagging of images, so the viewers can find the exact images they’re looking for.
Humbly described, it’s like your own little mini-Flickr that you can use wherever you want to, and skin and brand it the way you feel appropriate. It’s also a way to showcase the independence and separation of the interaction and the design of a web page.
The geek meet has gotten a sponsor that offers a place to be, food and drink. Not bad, eh? 🙂 The new location is: adocca entertainment, Södermälarstrand 57B, floor 6, and the time is 19.00.
Ok, this idea might crash and burn so hard, therefore I just felt I had to do it! 🙂
The idea is to have a very informal gathering of people located in, or visiting, the Stockholm area who are interested in web standards, semanctics, accessibility etc. It will be a time for people to meet and discuss, get to know people and share experiences. The meeting will take place on April 25th at 17.00, most likely at my employer’s office in Kungsgatan adocca entertainment, Södermälarstrand 57B, floor 6, and the time is 19.00.
Does this sound interesting to you? If yes, please write a comment letting me know if you’re coming!
So, if this doesn’t fail miserably, I really look forwarding to meeting you then! 🙂
Today I have a debate article in today’s issue of Computer Sweden, and already in page 2 (meaning that everyone will read it :-)). It can also be read here: LÃ¥t användarna pÃ¥verka webben . Most of it is just stating the obvious about focusing on end users and caring to all different kinds of accessibility needs, but I also manage to throw in a little comment regarding what I feel about the Web 2.0 hype.
Nevertheless, reaching 130 000 readers is never bad. 🙂
In Stockholm we have two morning papers for free, Metro and Stockholm City . Since I have about one hour to commute one-way, reading these really helps to make the journey to my job as pleasant as possible.
What stands out, though, is one columnist from each paper: Nima Daryamadj writing for Stockholm City and Stephan Mendel Enk writing for Metro. Both are very eloquent, and skilled enough writers to throw in just the perfect amount of humor to be entertaining and spellbinding while at the same time driving through very important and serious standpoints. Examples can be found in Nima’s excellent Ska kungen kalla oss â€Âsvennarâ€Â? and Stephan’s Brottsmoral lär sig barn i sandlÃ¥dan .
If any of these would ever produce a book with a collection of their columns or something of the like, I’d love to read it (actually, Stephan has previously released the book Den problematiska manligheten if anyone’s interested).
So, Nima or Stephan, thank you!
If any of you ever read this and are in the Stockholm area, please contact me and we’ll do lunch, ok? 🙂
As soon as the Intel-based Macs were revealed, people started to find ways to run Windows XP on them. The most spoken about resulted in a contest where the winner would get the money that a lot of people had contributed with. Naturally, it succeeded. To get down and dirty with the result, please visit OnMac.net.
I guess some people’s desire to run Windows XP on a Mac was to finally have a lean good looking computer with the OS they prefer; for some people it was about having it all, being able to dual-boot Windows and Mac OS X on the same machine. Some prefer one OS over the other, and some need both in their daily work.
An interesting twist came yesterday. Apple has officially launched a tool to run Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac. The days of wonder are apparently still here… The name of the tool is Boot Camp and for the moment it is in beta but offered for download by Apple. The final release is said to be shipped with the next major release of Mac OS X: Mac OS X Leopard.
What you also need to do in order to run Boot Camp is to update the firmware in your Mac. The different downloads are:
An alternative solution to this problem is my FlashReplace library.
Although news of this has been around for a while, many people seem to have missed it and/or didn’t think it was worth reading up on. On the contrary, the implications of this are huge and will most likely affect a lot of web sites. Due to the patent case with Eolas, Microsoft has been forced to update how ActiveX components behave in web pages.
This dreaded update, named Microsoft Security Advisory (912945), has been available for a couple of months, but on April 11 it will be forced out en masse through Windows Update so we have a few days till all hell breaks loose. If you want to test your web pages before that, you can download the patch and install it right now.
The gist of the patch is that no interaction with ActiveX elements will be initially allowed until the user has enabled the ActiveX by clicking it or tabbing to it and then pressing spacebar or enter. When hovering the ActiveX element the user is presented with a tool tip text that reads:
Click to activate and use this control
Examples:
Naturally, no one wants your Flash movies, videos and the likes to be presented to the end user like that. “Luckily”, there’s a fix for it, which I guess is because of some kind of glitch in the patent. If you create the ActiveX object, in most cases this means an object tag, through script, then you will bypass this security warning.
There’s an article on MSDN, Activating ActiveX Controls, which describes different techniques doing this. Noteworthy is that it won’t work with inline scripts in the web page, only external ones.
Updated April 6th
Tanny pointed out a serious problem when it comes to JavaScript solution; something I’d read about but hadn’t tested properly. If Disable Script Debugging is disabled in IE (the checkbox is unchecked), the script workaround won’t function either. However, I think the default setting in IE is that this is enabled, so it will hopefully not affect a majority of the end users. You find that option under:
Tools > Internet Options > Advanced, under Browsing.
What I think of this
I don’t know any deeper details of the patent case, but I think the whole idea of this sounds ridiculous. My general opinions/fears are:
Using Flash or video in your web pages shouldn’t, in my opinion, be dependant on if script is available/enabled.
There will be so many cases of poor JavaScript practices trying to add content to a web page.
I’ve done some testing and ran into problems in IE when adding param elements to an object using DOM methods. Instead, writing out the same HTML code by using the innerHTML property worked… 😐
With this, XHTML web pages served as application/xhtml+xml will probably never see the light of day, since a lot of web pages will now depend on code like document.write and innerHTML (Note: innerHTML does indeed work in Firefox when the XHTML code is served as application/xhtml+xml).
What happens if/when Microsoft manages to appeal this decision and win in court? Should we all then change the code again?
If this sounds like too much to you and you want a library/tool to do all this for you when it comes to using Flash, you can take a look at FlashObject (although unfortunately it relies on innerHTML to render the content).
How to uninstall the update
As life on the web goes, many web developers won’t be aware of this, which will result in that you, as an end user, will have to allow every ActiveX movie you see. The solution to this is to uninstall the patch (thanks to City Of Rain for the heads up.):
Go to the Control Panel
Choose Add or Remove Programs
Check the Show Updates box
Find Update for Windows XP (KB912945) and choose Remove
So, whatever you do, please read up on this. It will affect you, as a web developer, end user or when supporting your grandfather’s computer usage…
Today has been just one of those days. I had some work I needed to get done as well as posting something very interesting. What happens?
Internet Explorer dies on my computer…
It started out with Firefox opening up every URL I tried to open in IE. I restarted the computer and set IE as the default web browser instead. This resulted in that every web page was just white, no dialogs worked and I couldn’t view source. Since IE has got such a tight grip on Windows, you can’t just uninstall it and then reinstall it again, so that wasn’t an option to easy fix it.
After some long time spent to try different approaches to fix the problem, I gave up and reinstalled Service Pack 2. Problem is, when the computer restarted and before I got into Windows, the installation contained some kind of wizard in, yeah, you guessed it: HTML. A dialog came up asking me if I wanted to open the file or save it. I choose open, which resulted in IE opening just a blank white page. I closed that window and got an error message. I was stuck.
I turned off the computer by pressing the on/off button and started Windows in Safe Mode. Removed Firefox just to play it safe and restarted it again. No wizard this time, everything seemed fine and I got into Windows. Opened IE: blank white page. Ready to scream words no man should ever utter, I bit my lip and went online once again to find the solution.
Type in “rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %windir%\Inf\ie.inf” and press enter/click OK.
Locate IEXPLORE.EXE/IEXPLORE.EX_ on the Windows XP SP 2 CD (or download and extract SP 2 using WinRAR to your hard drive and point to that).
Next, then locate mswrd632.wpc/mswrd632.wp_ which is located on the default Windows XP installation CD.
After that, my IE was actually whole again. All in all, though, with all problems I had, waiting, trying to find good guides etc I wasted about three to four hours of my day. The lesson is to never tie a web browser so tight to the operating system…
