Goodbye 2007 – Happy New Year!

The year 2007 has come to an end, or rather, it very soon has. I thought I’d write a summary of what happened me as well as on the web during 2007, to have a closure for the year that has passed.

I’ll start with what went on in my life during 2007 and mention some of the posts I wrote, and then I’ll go on the rest of the world. 🙂

What happened in my life 2007?

These are some of the events that happened to me during the year:

Getting a new job

In May, I quit my work at my employer and started working for Valtech instead. So far, so good. Unfortunately, I’ve spent most of time at the location of one of the company’s clients, but from my interaction with my colleagues, they seem to be very knowledgeable, humble and last, but not least, committed to what they do.

Summer leave

During June, July and August, the entire family was having time off from kindergartens, work etc and we spent it it all together. Overall fantastic, sometimes chaotic, but definitely something I’d recommend to any family that get the chance. Summer 2008, I plan to be alone home with the two girls, while Fredrika start working again. I can’t wait! 🙂

Almost no .NET work

I have many years behind where I’ve exclusively have worked in .NET environments. Beginning at the end of 2006, and almost all of 2007, I have spent maybe only a few weeks with .NET. Otherwise, it has been PHP, Ruby on Rails and JSP all the time, and it has indeed been refreshing. I’m sure you can deliver great things with .NET, and it is a very good base for a System Developer.

Alas, it’s not that fun for an Interface Developer. I’m frankly tired of having to convince all the other team members in project after project to make sure the framework spits out good and valid code, why they shouldn’t use some controls, why a form element surrounding the entire content of a web page sucks for so many reasons. Therefore, it has been a well-needed break from Microsoft projects, and to be honest, I hope it stays that way.

During this fall, I’ve made the acquaintance of BEA WebLogic, and trust me, that’s not a walk in the park either. While the interface code isn’t as violated as with .NET, in my project for a long time I had to compile HTML, CSS and JavaScript code each time I changed anything. Imagine the time spent trying to fix IE bugs… Luckily, this situation has been sorted out now, though.

Also, in all projects, except the .NET-based ones then, Subversion
has been the tool for source control. I really like Subversion, very few hassles, and it has been working out great!

Going to @media Ajax

In November I went to the @media Ajax conference in London, and it really restored my faith in web conferences. I learned a lot, met some great people and it was wonderfully organized. The only gripes I have is that I think that all presentations should have been collected and made available from the event organizers (so I didn’t have to hunt them down myself for @media Ajax – the presentations), and that the presentation of each speaker was just a mumbling.

DOMAssistant meets the world

In January I released my first version of DOMAssistant. Since then, I’ve put in a lot of work for it, with the latest 2.5 release now in December. I really do like what I have achieved, and I use it a lot in my daily work. If you haven’t tried it, please give it a spin.

FlashReplace – Insert Flash movies into web pages

In April, I also released FlashReplace, which is a small script to insert Flash movies in an unobtrusive fashion into your web pages. Good thing is that the file size is very small, and in my opinion, it’s very easy to use as well.

My best posts

These are (a few of) the posts of mine which I’ve liked the most, and if you have the time, I’d appreciate if you were to read them. To find every post I’ve ever written, please visit the archives. Here goes, in chronological order:

Is the web, as we know it, crumbling?

At the end of the year, there were a lot of blog posts about W3C, web standards, how can we move further etc etc.

Basically, it all started with Opera bringing Microsoft to the European Commission about Internet Explorer and Web standards support (or rather, lack thereof). Then followed by Andy Clarke’s thoughts about the CSS Working Group. It all caught fire by then, topped off with a Molotov cocktail from Alex Russel in The W3C Cannot Save Us.

From here on, there were a number of probably more balanced posts, writings which would acknowledge the problems described in the ones mention above, but also pointing out that things aren’t as black and white and easy to address as first expressed (or, at least interpreted as). In order, some very good posts were written:

Every link I have in this section is indeed a great read, and I recommend everyone to go through them to try to understand the problems we’re facing, what we actually have accomplished so far, and how we can try to handle and shape the future. Fantastic writings by very very smart people, so suck it it, let it rub off on you, and form your own opinion.

People who passed away

I though it would be a good time to mention notable people who have passed away during the year, in chronological order:

Anna Nicole Smith
Well, everyone probably had some strong opinion about her, and she died soon after her son had passed away. I wrote about this in Dead celebrities.
Boris Yeltsin
Boris was the first elected President in Russia, and made many substantial steps towards a more open country.
Ingmar Bergman
He was one of the most well-known directors in the world, and has probably influenced a majority of the large film directors we know today.
Luciano Pavarotti
One of the best tenors in the world passed away in September, due to pancreatic cancer.
Jane Wyman
Growing up, watching Falcon Crest, this strong woman immediately made an impact. Of course she did a lot more during her career, and was once married to Ronald Reagan as well.
Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan, real name James Oliver Rigney, Jr., is best known for being the author of the fantasy book series Wheel of Time, and was an outstanding writer. Great tragedy.
Ike Turner
Most people only seem to know Ike from his stormy relationship with Tina Turner. What they miss, though, is the enormous impact he had on music and popular culture.
Benazir Bhutto
The loss of Benazir Bhutto was just such a waste, and it will have a tremendous effect on that region.

Happy New Year

With this, I’d like to say Happy New Year! See you in 2008! I hope to start writing around January 7th again, so stay tuned!

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