Internet Explorer Developer Tools Not Visible

I know that software has to be gotten out and on time, thus we have to triage bugs and sometimes leave a bug in a product because it doesn’t crash it and there is a workaround, but I don’t agree with leaving this one in IE8 Developer Tools.

Here’s the story: 

I try to open the IE8 Developer Tools (F12 or “Tools > Developer Tools”) and nothing happens.

I hunt around and find that the app appears in the taskbar and in the Alt-Tab list but when I select it, nothing happens.

I Google the issue and find this IE 8 Developer Tools not working In Windows?

Some of the suggestions don’t work.  Here is what worked for me in Windows 7:

1. Select IE in the taskbar
2. Right-Click on the Developer Tools icon and select “Maximize”
3. Click on the title bar and pull the app down so that it changes its size to a non-maximized window (It doesn’t work to double-click the title bar, it just minimizes again)
4. Now close the tools and close IE8
5. When you open IE8 again open the tools and the app should be a window and not minimized.
6. I had to do this a few times to get it to work so it’s possible step 4 should be “close IE8 and then close the tools”.

If you find that the tools are somehow off your screen then try this:

1. Select IE in the taskbar
2. Select the tools app
3. Press Alt-tab and then “M” (this opens the application menu and activates “Move”.
4. Use your keyboard arrow keys to move the app into view.
5. I haven’t had that problem with the tools, but have with other applications

Sheesh!  What a pain in the butt!

If Microsoft wants to persuade web developers that IE is not the anti-Christ they are not going about it in a very smart way.

A new Y2K?

As the US Government pumps trillions of dollars into the economy week after week the inevitable outcome is inflation.  The national debt is currently 11 trillion (or it was last time I looked,  maybe it’s already up to 15).  Then there are all the liabilities which are going to be due in the future which add up to roughly another 60 trillion.

If you have ever seen some of those old news reels showing what happened in Germany between WW I and WW II, when it became necessary to push around a wheel barrow full of paper money in order to buy a loaf of bread, then you will have some reality on what happens when a government goes hog wild on printing money.  (And when I say “print” I mean in the electronic sense too.)

So what has this got to do with software?  Well, think of it this way:  When a loaf of bread costs $10,000,000,000 (as recently happened in Zimbabwe) then all those 32 bit ints that were being used to hold currency will be too small.  Of course if the developers of a system used Decimal or Double types to hold their currency then that system will probably be okay.  But if they didn’t … Sounds like we could hit another “Y2K” sort of problem.

Anyway, I’m hoping that someone in the government has a sudden attack of common sense and stops creating money and passing it to their friends in the banking industry to burn.

BTW, don’t blame me, I supported Ron Paul.

Why do Wikipedia articles rank so high in Google?

Is it because Wikipedia provides the most accurate data?  Or maybe because a huge number of links refer to the article?  Or is it some other logical explanation? 

The answer seems to be “None of the above.”  Read this article about the “SearchFest 09” conference and about 3/4 of the way down the page you’ll see this:

Dan Boberg quoted Google CEO Eric Schmidt as saying, “Wikipedia is mankind’s greatest gift to mankind.” I can’t find that quote online, so make no guarantee of authenticity; I am quoting Dan Boberg, not Eric Schmidt.

But if true, that is certainly revelatory as to WHY a lame Wikipedia article, written by people with an axe to grind or an apple to polish, rank so highly.

Because Eric likes Wikipedia.

I personally am not a fan of Wikipedia for the same reasons the writer of the article gives. I think it is way overrated. I find it helpful at times when I can’t get the data from elsewhere, but this slavish acceptance of Wikipedia as the ultimate “authority” on all human knowledge seems to me very foolish.

If you really want to know about something then find several sources, don’t just lazily click on the Wikipedia link.  It is important to know the source of your information but on Wikipedia you don’t know who wrote the article and you don’t know if they have “an axe to grind or an apple to polish.”  So think twice before blindly accepting Wikipedia articles as gospel truth.