Inconsistently Insightful

For a little over a year I've been working with Microsoft on the modern.IE site. This week the site is celebrating having saved developers one million hours in browser testing. Some of the savings come from the free pre-configured VMs with real copies of the different IE browser versions. Just about all the popular VM software is supported on several different platforms. There is no substitute for using the real browser when it comes to compatibility testing, and these VMs are one way to do just that with minimal hassle. Further time saving comes from Browserstack. It provides convenient in-browser testing of just about any type of browser or device. Modern.IE offers a free three-month membership to Browserstack for IE versions. There are Chrome and Firefox plugins that make it really easy to quickly try out your latest designs on any version of IE, even if they're served off your local computer. Very slick. Most of my work on the project was done for the online compati...

I was saddened to come across this tweet by John Resig a few days ago. I know at least one of the people who has made--and continues to make--the attacks he speaks about. This person seems to have held deep hatred for John and jQuery for years. It's really unfortunate, because the attacker seems to be a smart and technically astute person. But he's also a bully. This bully's attacks tend to focus on two things: the quality of jQuery's code, and the quality of jQuery users. On the first point, it's telling that early in the project's life this bully created some tests that showed problems with jQuery. John asked whether we could use that code in jQuery's unit tests, and the answer was NO WAY. He leaves his own vitriolic form of jQuery "code reviews" around the Internet, but never makes constructive comments that might actually help jQuery improve. Helping people get productive things done does not seem to be his goal at all. Anyone can find pro...