So, the Internet Explorer team has proposed that as of IE8, if you want the latest and greatest features you’ll have to opt-in. (Note: Microsoft have changed their mind.) You can do this by way of an http-header, or using a meta-tag:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

I can see under­stand why they’ve chosen this direc­tion. IE6 was absolutely chock-full of bugs, but was left to stagnate for so long that web-developers began to rely on it’s quirks in order to make pages render correctly. Eventually IE7 came along and fixed many of those bugs. Consequently, many pages that were reliant on IE6 bugs broke in IE7. Microsoft don’t want to see that happen again.

The rest of the world doesn’t seem so keen on the idea. The web has gone wild, shout­ing about the myriad technical problems. Representatives from Mozilla (Firefox/Gecko), Apple (Safari/Webkit) and Opera have all said they don’t like the idea (and won’t be imple­ment­ing it in their browsers). The big issue that stands out for me isn’t technical at all though. It’s education.

Getting the word out

Somehow, Microsoft need to get the word out to exist­ing web design­ers and developers. They need to tell newcomers to the industry. They need to let educat­ors know. I’m strug­gling to see how they’re going to do that. Why?

A quick look around the SitePoint forums reveals that people are still tripping up on using the doctype element to switch between quirks and stand­ards modes (the last attempt at provid­ing backwards compat­ib­il­ity to legacy web pages). They were first intro­duced with Internet Explorer 5 for Mac the best part of a decade ago. Over the years, every major browser has taken up the techno­logy, count­less people have blogged about it, written tutori­als on it, put it into knowledge bases, included it in web design books, podcas­ted it, and people are still strug­gling to get their heads around it.

I reckon Andy Budd hit the nail on the head:

No matter what great leaps forward the Internet Explorer team make from now on, the major­ity of developers won’t use them and the major­ity of users won’t see them. By doing this the Internet Explorer team may have created their own backwa­ter, shot themselves in the foot and left themselves for dead.

Things move quickly on the web

Of course, while I was writing that, the story developed a bit further.

It turns out that using the new HTML5 doctype will trigger the new super-standards-mode in Internet Explorer 8. What’s more, Ian Hickson thinks he knows a way to make an HTML5 compat­ib­il­ity layer for IE7 (see the last paragraph).

My inter­pret­a­tion? Microsoft are trying to make HTML4 and XHTML1 legacy formats (unless you specify other­wise with the X-UA-Compatible header) and push HTML5 as the stand­ard for content going forward. I’ll be very inter­ested to see how all of this plays out.

Lemurs

Katemonkey has gone and rendered everything I’ve written here irrel­ev­ant: The “X-UA-Compatible” Controversy — As portrayed by toy lemurs.

Some time later…

Microsoft have decided to do the right thing: IE8 now will use standards-mode by default.

A little over a month ago, I bought some replace­ment shock bushings for the Cannondale. I took the bike apart only to discover they were the wrong size. GAH! The follow­ing day, a replace­ment for the knackered headset arrived. I took half the old one out, then hit my thumb with a hammer (the moral here being to use the right bloody tool for the job), threw a bit of a strop and gave up for the evening.

It’d been hanging on the work-stand, looking sorry for itself for weeks. Yesterday I finally caved in and finished the job. The bushings are still wonky and I still haven’t adjus­ted the front mech to allow me to use the granny ring, but it’s bike shaped again. So today I went out for a quick spin up Leckhampton.

All that time off the bike, combined with the excesses of christ­mas have taken their toll on my fitness. I was painfully slow and my legs were scream­ing WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!? all the way to the top.

It was worth the pain though, because the descent back home was ace. I wasn’t riding especially well, or pushing the outer limits. Nope, it was just plain mud-splattered, two wheeled fun. I rolled off the top, boost­ing down the rocky chute, before jumping into the steep trails down to the lime kilns, getting mighty sideways down a new trail near the s-bends, burst­ing out into the open and flying off the natural rise in the grass before rolling down to the car-park and onwards to the old tramway.

I nearly lost it on the roots at the top (as per usual), before pinning it down the steps, racing through the switch-back, holding it high out of the rut, dropping back in and nearly high-siding into the hedge. It’s a good job I met the smiley lady jogging up the trail where it widens out or it could have been messy. Now, fly off the step and pinball down the rest of the trail.

Fun. My legs hurt.

The time had come. No turning back now. I was set for a front row start in a race format I had never entered before. There were 160 riders all start­ing at the same time on a 50-minute downhill.

Andrew “Needles” Neethling looks back on Megavalanche Réunion Island.

Ah, Megavalanche. It’s one of those events that most people see as complete insan­ity. The organ­isers plot an hour-or-so long route from the top of a mountain to the bottom. It’s off-road for the most part, taking in the most challen­ging downhill terrain they can find along with a few nasty climbs for good measure. With the course all marked out, they ferry hundreds of mountain bikers to the top and get them all to race to the bottom. At the same time. Cue carnage.

Needles took fourth spot on his first attempt, finish­ing behind Nico Voullioz (the best downhill racer of all time), Remy Absalon (former winner of the event) and Rene Wildhaber (winner of Megavalanche Alpe D’huez this summer). Not bad going.

Far more import­antly though, our own Garry Higgins and Charlie Williams were flying the flag for local team The Hills Have Eyes. Charlie finished 46^th overall, beating mountain bike legend (and new friend) Eric Carter in the process. Meanwhile, Garry grabbed his second Mega podium this year, finish­ing third in Masters II (he took the Masters III win in Alpe d’Huez). Very nice work lads.

The full results are up on the Avalanche Trophy site.

Web access­ib­il­ity can be hard to get your head around. It’s all very well talking about best practise, but without personal exper­i­ence it can be very diffi­cult to under­stand the day-to-day issues people face.

I’m lucky, in that my eyesight is still 20/20. Yet today I ran head-on into a common web access­ib­il­ity barrier. I got a (diluted) taste of what it’s like to use a screen magni­fier to browse the web (like many vision-impaired users).

I was playing on the Wii and when I’d had enough of Super Mario Galaxy for the day, I jumped over to The Internet Channel (or Opera for Wii as us web monkeys know it).

I loaded Google Mail. Alas I have a relat­ively small televi­sion by today’s stand­ards, so the on-screen text was rather small. Thankfully, on the Wii it’s very easy to zoom in on a certain parts of the screen, so I did. I scrolled across to the Labels part of Google Mail and clicked one. Just as you’d expect, it updated the conver­sa­tions part of the page. No problem.

Well, no problem except for the whole zoomed in bit. Because the site is built using Ajax, there hadn’t been a full-page refresh. It meant I had no way of knowing something had happened elsewhere on the page until I zoomed out again.

Now, Google also offer basic HTML versions of their web applic­a­tions. These don’t use Ajax, so you get the full-page refresh (and hence you’re aware that the page has changed). That’s one way to solve the problem, but creat­ing separ­ate web applic­a­tions for differ­ent groups of users isn’t always an option.

I’m not saying Ajax is a bad thing — rather point­ing out one of it’s side effects. I’m not yet sure how I’d work around the problem (and I’d love to hear sugges­tions), but it’s certainly food for thought when design­ing for the web.

It’s the middle of the night. It’s cold; I can see my breath on the air. Yet here we are, deep in the forest, cutting a swathe through the blanket of leaves. The three of us, lights burning away the darkness, tyres slicing through the singletrack.

We reach the shrine and stop for a breather. The trails are fun from here on down. Garry pedals off into the dark, followed by Brett. I ride down after them, with nothing but the the noise and the glowing red beacons on their backs to follow. The trail soon cleaves in two, Garry going to the right, Brett and myself the left. Brett loses the path within three corners and slows in a cloud of branches, leaves and swear­ing. I spy G’s lights through the darkness and set a course for where I think he’s heading.

I’d never do this during the day. I can’t see the dangers now though, so I just straight line it, ragged as hell.

I’m really moving now, leaves and twigs crack­ing below me, ducking and diving through the overhanging branches. WHOA! Hop the front wheel over the fallen tree and let the back of the bike clatter through. Really must learn some technique one of these days. Not now though, I’m gaining on Garry.

BOOSH! I’m back on the trail! Keep it going, stay with him, up here, around the tree, dive down, now pedal like a bastard. Pump through the dip, then hard left, then ARGH! I’M BLIND! Brett and his power­ful lights are coming in on a colli­sion course. I’m not having that though, a couple of extra pedal strokes and I get in ahead of him. I’m right on G’s tail now.

WAHEY! His back wheel steps out on a root, but he carries it off as if nothing’s happened. I hit the same root, and the same thing happens. Keep it loose, no problem.

Next corner, Garry cuts in tight and he’s through, smooth as silk. I can take it tighter though. Lean it in, get off the brakes and BOOSH! High-side! The back wheel catches a root, leaps sideways and tries to overtake the front. Garry disap­pears off into the dark. Brett cuts inside and is past. I’m left jumping awkwardly across the trail, strad­dling the bike.

The chase is lost.

Next time, G-Dog. Next time.

The first four of Alex Rankin’s Earthed mountain bike films have been consist­ently ace. The fifth in the series is due out in mid-November. Here’s the trailer:

You can pre-order it here.

Reading Khoi Vinh’s Passing on Periodicals made me stop, put down the Mac and pick up the latest copy of Dirt magazine. I spent most of the evening engrossed in it. One article, Jumpers for Goalposts, got me thinking.

It got me think­ing about fitness. It got me think­ing about fun. It reminded me that the best days are the ones where you push the envel­ope that little bit further than usual.

A couple of weeks ago I was out riding with friends in the French and Swiss Alps (the pictures are on Flickr). I’d just spent a day getting angry with myself and my inabil­ity to pilot my bike down the various parts of Chatel’s bike park at any sort of pace. I’m never the fastest in the group but this was just ridicu­lous. It was especially frustrat­ing because just a day earlier I’d been riding out of my skin. I’d lost my self-belief somewhere.

The follow­ing morning, we got up bright and early and hooked up with the long lost Nick Maher, who took us to a little known trail somewhere near Morzine (nope, not telling). The day started out much like the last. I had no confid­ence in the bike and more import­antly, no confid­ence in myself. I just couldn’t do it.

I was riding the whole thing at a snail’s pace already, but I got to one bit and just stalled. It’s a big, steep, diving left hander and I was just plain scared of it. The really steep stuff has always been my nemesis. I was on the verge of walking down it, but something inside me said “Nope, you’re going to do this one”. Besides, my mates were all waiting around the next corner.

So I forced myself to ride it. It was slow and it was ugly, but I proved to myself I could do it.

Chatting to Garry about it on the lift back up there helped. Put your weight on the outside pedal and lean the bike into the corner. Oh, and stay off the brakes as much as you can. It all sounds so very simple, but putting it into practise was pretty bloody scary. Nonetheless, it worked. A few more of the evil hairpins and it was start­ing to come more easily. A couple more runs and I was even begin­ning to flow down them.

Of course, that was just one of the challenges await­ing me. I won’t even get started on the wildly off-camber corners, crazy chutes, rock gardens, drops, gnarled roots, north shore and so on. I learnt a lot that day. The sense of satis­fac­tion I got from being able to ride it all was huge.

Just a day later, I had to go through the same thing in a very wet, foggy Verbier. I started to get angry with myself again, but then I thought back. “Come on Olly. You were riding harder stuff yesterday.”

So I bloody well rode it. It was a real challenge just getting down some of it at all. And you know what? That made it really good fun.

Tim and I drove down to Lai’s flat in London on Saturday morning. After faffing around for a while, we jumped on the magic 137 bus which took us straight to Hyde Park. We bought slightly limp burgers, then wandered in through the gates to Hyde Park Calling. We sat on the Pepsi inflat­able sofas and relaxed in the sun until the music started.

Rushmore opened proceed­ings on the Pepsi stage. They were great — clearly enjoy­ing their moment. Their biggest cheer came when they covered the theme to The Littlest Hobo. Their bassist appar­ently has three nipples. Tim had to go one better with four.

That done, we wandered around to the main stage and there we stayed. First up were Forever Like Red. They didn’t seem to want to be there. Pity really — the music is alright, a less polished Muse if you will.

Next up were Ghosts, who were defin­itely up for it: Don’t be at all surprised if they’re the next big thing. They were a great act, really whipping the crowd up. I’ve since grabbed a copy of their album “The World is Outside” — it’s really bloody good.

I can’t really say the same about The Feeling’s first album. It’s nice enough I guess, but it just didn’t float my boat. As a live act though, they’re an entirely differ­ent propos­i­tion. Who knew they could rock out like that? They played the same songs, but they were both louder and heavier. Consider my mind well and truly changed.

I didn’t think I’d ever get to see Crowded House, but they recently reformed. Bonus! They were just as polished as you’d expect and they really seemed to be having fun on stage. They started out with all the classics, which really got the crowd going, before moving onto their new mater­ial. Sadly we didn’t get to hear much of that: They brought the weather with them (sorry).

The skies darkened ominously and then the rains came. Not just a light shower — we’d had a few of those already. This was a full on monsoon. Up went a sea of umbrel­las but we were all drenched already. It didn’t dampen anyone’s enthu­si­asm at all; Hyde Park just turned into a great big rainy party. Crowded House tried to play on, but the rain got so hard they had to give up.

Somewhere in the excite­ment Tim managed to give himself Mallet Finger, which wasn’t altogether clever. It’s only a minor injury, but it’ll keep him off his bike for at least six weeks, which is rubbish.

Last up was Peter Gabriel, complete with his Ming the Merciless goatee. He started off slowly, doing some of his more atmospheric numbers. I wasn’t wildly impressed with those to be honest (it didn’t help that I didn’t know them), but the man is a great showman and kept the crowd going. He finished off with a few hits that I did know, Steam and Sledgehammer being the ones that spring to mind. They were a great way to finish the day.

And with that it was all over. We wandered out of the park, leaving behind a sea of mud and abandoned Tuborg beer cups. We jumped back on the magic 137 bus and rode it back to Battersea, where we dined in a small Thai restaur­ant. the food was hot in every sense and was exactly what we needed after the drench­ing we got earlier.

A big shout out to the randoms we befriended — Sam, Kate and Anca (If I’ve remembered correctly), and a very big thank-you to Tim and Lai for putting me up at their flat and taking me out for a yummy Dim Sum lunch on Sunday. I’ve put some camer­a­phone pics up on Flickr.