Until this week, I hadn't experimented much with the Google Maps API. Sure I was a heavy user of the web interface and the map integration built into the iPhone, but didn't tinker with the nitty gritty details yet. I decided that since I'm working on an updated version of the website for my parent's restaurant I may as well try something new. With much of the site well underway, one of the missing sections was the contact page. My thinking was that I could create your run of the mill contact page and then for people that aren't familiar with the area, well, let them enter their address and allow Google Maps to do the rest. Easier said than done as usual.

My apologies for not blogging in quite some time, ever since the new year I've been quite busy with several other projects. Most notably, leveraging Craigslist to get rid of some excess furniture, preparing for our upcoming Colorado ski trip, enjoying the sweet victory of the New York Giants winning the Super Bowl, and working on the design for a new version of a website for a restaurant. But fear not, I'm still alive and rocking some new Rails code with the help of my faithful Textmate and ever so creative Photoshop software.

For the past year or so I've been deluged with questions from friends and co-workers asking me when that darn website of mine will be done. It's done when it's done, alright! Designing a website is one thing, developing one in a new language is another challenge, and being pleased with the overall project itself, well, I'm a stickler detail, so every little thing gets under my skin. I won't even go into my normal speech about making it compatible with Internet Explorer, you may remember that from a previous blog.

Talk about sending so humor my way just at the right time. My friend Allen and I are heavy users of del.icio.us. He happened to use the 'from' feature to send me an image that not only made me start laughing out loud, but depicts exactly my struggle with web design. I'll share that in a moment, but let's focus for a second on the pains of being a web designer.

It just so happens that at least once, usually more frequently, per day I'm complaining about designing my website so that it's compatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. I guess it's more than a complaint, it's a 10-minute violent rant on why I wish I could put a hole through my computer. Basically, I only design for these three browsers because that's about all I have time for.

As you know, I've been ahem working on the music section...as if you didn't know that already. Well, I wasn't satisfied with the interface to the albums and tracks. If you hadn't noticed, it was a little crowded, especially with long album or track names. After about 12 hours of IE, Photoshop, and CSS hell, I've managed to brute force my way into what I think is a better design. Of course, I'll let you be the judge and jury since I'm always up for new and interesting opinions! If you now navigate your way to view a track or an album, I've added some new features and a few yummy tabs (as svi would say). Introducing first, the 'Album' interface.

• Larger album art
• Less crowded design
• Track listing including popularity of the tracks on each album (read the fine print)

Up second, we have the nifty 'Track' interface.

• Larger album art, just like the album version
• Less crowded design, umm, just like the album version
• Recent play dates (Tab interface)
• By this artist (Tab interface, including album art thumbs)
• On this album (Tab interface)

That sums up what took me about 15 hours to complete. There may be a few bugs here and there, so if something doesn't look quite right, let me know.

Alright, so when I originally designed this site in Photoshop, I got a bit lazy towards a few of the sections, including the Music Billboards. Rather than think of something creative, I simply made a table and listed the most popular songs row by row. But hold on now, I did include alternating row colors in the original design.

Any whoizzle, I didn't like the look and feel it had, it was somewhat boring and really didn't stand out. I decided to take some time today to revamp the Billboards section.

Since I'm about 95% complete with the blog section and it's 100% valid in XHTML transitional mode, I decided to do the compatibility test across three browsers: Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. I must say, for the most part, it looked fine in all three browsers. However, as usual, there were a few discrepancies between them.

Safari and Firefox seemed to do most of the right things and I was quickly able to diagnose and fix some of the differences between these two browsers. Then came the brother from another mother, Internet Explorer.