I write this hot on the heels of a post I made a few weeks ago, citing my insignificant attempt at turning the world away from the Dark Side of IE. Since that started, the use of MSIE by my readers has gone down to 26%. Certainly better than 33%, but not groundbreaking by any means.

I’ve been giving the topic a lot of thought lately, because I’ve often wondered why people don’t use a browser that is clearly superior to IE (hell, I’ll push Opera on people if it means getting them off IE). I think I’ve got a real reason why people aren’t flocking to the Fox in hordes. And it’s pretty chilling.

People don’t switch from Internet Explorer because it is familiar and it is already there.

Check out the About Me page. I actually got around to writing it. And I made it a little different by using a special stylesheet.

Here’s the thing. I <3 productivity. So, as I’ve yelled about Java’s exceptions before and how time consuming they are to write, I decided to do something about it.

And so, I present to you, the Exception class generator. It’s command-line, because I roll like that. It’s very easy to use, and it’s RIT coding standards compliant. Here’s how it works:

java ExceptionCreator name author [description]

Let’s look at that. Say I wanted to create an exception called HeadUnlikeAHoleException. I would be the author, and for a description, I’d want something like “This exception gets thrown whenever the head is unlike a hole.” Here’s how my command would look:

$ java ExceptionCreator HeadUnlikeAHoleException "Steve Streza’" "This exception gets thrown whenever the head is unlike a hole."

Here’s the output.

Again, this class is 100% RIT coding standards compliant. I’m sure they might yell about the fact that you’re generating code, but its an exception. You’re practically copy-pasting every time anyway.

Think it’s too good to be true? Check it out yourself! (You’ll note that that class is very much not RIT coding standards compliant by any means. Think of it as my little attempt at fighting the man.

While poking through my logs, I noticed that. What I’d like to bring attention to is the large number of people who visit my site using Internet Explorer. I tend to discourage such behavior, as there are many browsers on the market that do web browsing so much better than IE.

So, here’s what I did. If you’re using Firefox, Safari, etc., you’re not going to notice anything. However, if you’re using IE, you’ll now notice a red bar right below the header. If you click on that, it’ll take you to a web page with some alternate browsers for you to check out. At the same time, I realize that some people might be viewing this at work or something where they can’t just up and download a new browser. So, if you click on that little X button, the bar will go away (fade away, actually), and, if I programmed JavaScript correctly, and you have both JavaScript and cookies enabled, you won’t see that bar again for a year. And if you change browsers by then, you’ll never see it again.

As you can no doubt see (unless, of course, you’re subscribed to the RSS feed), I’ve got a new theme going on. It’s called K2. I saw it earlier today and decided I needed it. However, before I could use it, I needed WordPress 2, and I was using WordPress 1.5. So, I upgraded WP, added the new theme, and modified it.

Why did I need it, you might ask? This theme, aside from being a lot nicer on the eyes than the stock Kubrick, has a lot of Javascript ties in it to change a web page without reloading it. For example, try searching for something on the right. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Wasn’t that awesome?!

I’ve been gradually working on the CSH Drink widget for some time now. Well, last night, I decided that I hated – hated – the old widget’s UI. Here’s why.

• Overkill. All the widget had to do was display a name and price for each drink.
• Size. The freakin’ thing was huge!
• Feel. It didn’t feel like a Dashboard widget. It felt more like a Mac app that got squeezed into a widget (which, while it works, wasn’t very good).
• Look. I’m not a UI designer, although I try to be sometimes. I failed.

With that in mind, I redesigned the widget. It’d have a smaller footprint in terms of pixels. It’d tell you what you needed to know, and that’s it. It’d be less ugly (although I’m still working on de-uglying it). And, it’d feel like a widget.

I doubt I actually accomplished much of my goals, but hey, it’s not a pro thing. It’s for geeks by a geek. And it gets the damn job done. With that in mind, here’s a screenshot of the new Drink Dashboard widget it action.

As you can see, it’s drastically smaller than the original – in fact, it takes up 45% of the original widget. The buttons are smaller. The whole thing fits much better into Dashboard than the other one did. And I don’t hate it.

To make it less ugly, I’m going to putz around with the shadows some more, as well as add a darkening gradient to the blue area. I’m mostly concerned with functionality at this point, as most of the design/implementation work on this has happened in the last 48 hours.

I spent about two hours of my life mixing together and awesome remix. It’s the music from Straight to Video by Mindless Self Indulgence, combined with the awesome lyrics of Fett’s Vette by mc chris. Even if you’ve never heard of either/both, its awesome.

Download the Fett’s Vette Remix