I never thought I would be enjoying a cup of Starbucks coffee in a Microsoft branded cup while sitting at Microsoft’s Mountain View compound. Why am I here, you ask? For the first annual west coast jQuery conference!

P.S. I am posting this on my Android phone so please ignore any glitches.

• include multiple methods for contacting me
• incorporate microformats
• use clean, modern code that is flexible enough for quick styling
• use progressive enhancement
• create a strong design and organize intelligently
• share a little something about myself

It took me all day last Saturday to design and code, but I finished in time to enjoy a beer or two and watch a movie. Please take a look and and post your feedback. Be sure to dig under the hood as well if UI design is your sort of thing.

Please view the page at www.erikphipps.com.

My new business card, front.

My new business card, back.

I plan on using the new logo design and colors on my blog some time in the near future after I wrap up a freelance project.

I know what you are thinking, that JavaScript sniffers are outdated and go against all that is web standards. I agree. However, as IE6 fades into the past, isn’t it time we started ignoring instead of bending over backwards for its lack of standards support? This is where a JavaScript browser sniffer comes in!

Others have probably used this technique and expanded it to other versions of Internet Explorer as well. For this post, I am just going to discuss the IE6 version since it is very simple to expand it to all other versions of IE.

Drop this javascript snippet in a script tag in the head of your document:

var browserSniffer = {isIE6 : false}

Then, inside an IE conditional comment targeted at IE6, change the value of isIE6 to “true”. Like this:

browserSniffer = {isIE6 : true}

What you end up with is a non-global variable that is always equal to false unless the browser is IE6, then it is true. You can then easily dis-invite IE6 to the web standards party!

if (browserSniffer.isIE6 == true) {
	// fix some bug in IE6
}
else {
	// Do something sweet in other browsers
}

Standalone example – IE6 conditional comment javascript browser sniffer

Once I realized my mistake, I took survey of all the blog postings that were similar to my own, and there were many. Some were from small-time bloggers such as myself, and others from larger web design communities. I think from now on I’ll Google potential title’s just to see what’s out there. Maybe I’ll use them and maybe I won’t, but it will be a good exercise in understanding search results. After all, the writer in me could not go on living if I was blacklisted due to plagiarism!

I’m sure every first-time blogger goes through a similar experience that goes a little something like this:

1. Start your blog
2. Google the title of one of your postings
3. See many blogs with the similar titles and:
   A. Get stressed about the sheer volume of competition
   B. Get stressed about the prospect of being called out for plagiarism
   C. Give up blogging.
4. Blog about it (or not if you fall under 3 – C)!