My excitement continues to build for the upcoming An Event Apart in Chicago. An Event Apart is put together by the fine people at A List Apart and hosted by none other than Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman. AEA Chicago will be covering many topics including design, accessibility, CSS, JavaScript, selling designs, working with clients and much more. Honestly I do not know what will be more exciting the great lineup of speakers or the opportunity to meet and rub elbows with so many other talented individuals attending.

I finally created a new design for Just Bloggin’. I still have many small details to work out like link and text colors but the main layout and backgrounds are up. Yeah!

No…that was not a mistype. Apple is working on releasing a Windows version of the Safari Web browser. For starters we can ignore the fluff advertising Apple has on Apple.com about their “Glorious” browser. We will skip right the heart of the matter…the rendering engine. I will start by saying it WILL NOT RENDER THE SAME AS SAFARI MAC. I’m sure Apple will try to lead us to believe this but it will not be able to. Safari’s rendering engine is based off the WebKit by the Webkit Open Source Project. WebKit itself began as an HTML & JavaScript extension of the KHTML and KJS libraries from the Linux Desktop environment KDE. Which features the Konqueror Web browser built off the KHTML rendering engine. The WebKit Open Source Project is primarily responsible for the majority of the porting of the WebKit framework over to Windows from Unix/Linux. The big reason why Windows Safari will not be able to render exactly the same as Mac Safari is because of WebKit’s use of the operating system’s fonts, measurements and graphical rendering elements. The rendering may be similar but in a production environment where the quality is number one….Windows Safari WILL NOT be substitute for Mac testing.

Safari Web Browser for Mac & Windows:
Apple Safari Web browser

Download Safari Web Browser for Mac or Windows:
Download the Safari Web browser

More information on Safari Development from Apple:
Apple’s Safari Developer Connection

A List Apart is making an effort to put together some statistical information about those of use who make the web go around. A List Apart plans on release their findings based on this information sometime after May 22, 2007 when the online survey will close. There will also be prizes drawn from survey participants. Prizes include admission to An Event Apart, a 30 GIG video iPod and a ALA T-shirt.

Cashboard and Side Job are two GREAT tools for estimating, invoicing and job tracking. Cashboard is FREE for tracking on active project at a time and offers very reasonable licenses that allow you to manage more than one project to run at a time. Side Job on the other had is a COMPLETELY FREE tool with no restrictions. Both look like very promising tools for the freelancer with big needs and a little budget.