May 2011 Archives

I have a confession to make. I am a terrible, insensitive web developer.

I was working on a brand new, snazzy HTML 5 design for my personal web site, but could not get it to look half decent in Internet Explorer 6 (a 10 year old browser at the time of this writing) and Internet Explorer 7 (a 5 year old browser) without bogging down my web page with hacks and work arounds.

After wrestling with the markup and CSS for weeks, I finally threw in the towel and decided that people using IE6 and IE7 do not deserve to see my new web site.

I added the following configurations to Apache in httpd.conf (.htaccess works too)

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !upgrade*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "MSIE 6"
RewriteRule . upgrade.php [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !upgrade*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "MSIE 7"
RewriteRule . upgradeagain.php [L]

Which serves up the following 2 pages depending on the browser being used by the visitor.

Internet Explorer 6 users are treated to Tandy Kitteh:

While Internet Explorer 7 users are treated to baby IE7 Kitteh:

The Reddit secret santa craft exchange gift I sent won the following gift awards:

Favorite Geeky Gift

Favorite Arts and Crafts Gift

Favorite Meme Related Gift

Pretty neat for my first time participating, I just hope my recipient wasn't offended by my mischievousness.

The gift that I received was quite impressive too:

• Felted scented soap rocks
• Soap plate
• Knit scarf
• Black pearl earrings
• Cute user's manual describing how all of the above items were lovingly hand made