2009 – Page 10 – fourwhitefeet

Printing crashes Internet Explorer 7

Every web developer knows that Internet Explorer does not comply with published web standards. IE7 is much better than IE6, but we still spend many hours restructuring code and/or writing specific stylesheets so that our web pages display acceptably on Microsoft’s browsers. I recently became aware of another problem with Internet Explorer; attempting to print some web pages can cause Internet Explorer to crash. If certain plug-ins, like Google toolbar are installed, “crashing” may be replaced by erratic behavior like redirection to the browser’s home page.

I learned about the crashing problem when one of my clients reported that trying to print a page on their staging site caused the browser’s home page to load; in this case Google. I ran the HTML and CSS validators on W3C with no errors or warnings, but the client was still redirected when they tried to print, and IE7 crashed on my test box when I tried to print. So basically correct, valid, accessible HTML/CSS caused a fatal error in Internet Explorer. The Google toolbar was catching and redirecting the error on my client’s computer which disguised it and made it more difficult to track down.

After much searching, I found a knowledge base article on Adobe’s site which describes this occuring with IE6. The browser “renders the page correctly but crashes when parsing code for the printer”. I believe IE7 suffers from a similar problem, although IE7 may crash on different pages than IE6. Adobe’s fix, adding media=”screen” to the css link tags, allowed the page to print from IE7 without crashing, but, as expected, all page formatting is lost.

Example of stylesheet link:

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="example.css" type="text/css"media="screen">

That is ok, even preferable, for most users. Even better would be a specific stylesheet to print a simplified version of the page with extraneous data such as background images stripped out. In fact, I have some clients who would purposely break printing of their site just to save trees, but this particular client wanted their web pages to print as closely as possible to the way they are displayed in the browser. My solution was to provide dynamic PDF generation for printing. I’ll write more details about that in another post.

Training Peaks

In January, I started using TrainingPeaks in addition to Polar ProTrainer which I have been using in some version for many years. It has been helpful for me as a Mac user to be able to keep my training log up-to-date without having to start up Windows in VMWare Fusion.

My favorite thing about Training Peaks is the Annual Training Plan. With a paid account you can use the ATP wizard. You first answer some basic questions about sports and training time, then enter your planned races and prioritize them A, B or C. The ATP wizard generates a plan for you which you can adjust manually. I was reading Base Building for Cyclists by Thomas Chapple when I started using Training Peaks. Chapple uses a similar approach to Joel Friel, who developed Training Peaks. The ATP was very helpful for backing out base building from goal events. The ATP and Friel’s “abilities” are very similar to Rob Sleamaker’s SERIOUS training for Endurance Athletes and the way he breaks up training time over the 7 SERIOUS components. I read Sleamaker’s first edition nearly 15 years ago and used a complicated Excel spreadsheet to allocate yearly training hours. The ATP wizard makes the process much easier and, if you haven’t done manual edits, you can play around with different variables to look at different plans.

Once you’ve set up an ATP you can use the Virtual Coach to recommend workouts. The VC only recommends bike and run workouts for me. Since I am doing a lot of skate skiing for base training (and fun!) I haven’t used the VC much yet.

I also really like the CNS score, developed by coach Rick Crawford, which is in the daily log section of the Classic version of TrainingPeaks. I am probably not using its full potential, but keeping track of those 6 subjective factors gives me an idea about how well I am balancing stress and recovery.

TrainingPeaks has a free trial if you’re interested and I highly recommend Base Building for Cyclists. It has more discussion of training for ultra-endurance events than any general training book I’ve read, which is not a lot, but a lot more than a single passing reference (or no mention at all), and it has a couple sample training segments for ultras. To me the big difference between Chapple and Carmichael, compared to older books like Sleamaker, Eddie B and Lemond, is not the idea of a training progression or training different skills for your sport, but the emphasis on low intensity base training. Chapple’s entire book discusses how to structure this part of your training year.

Not your average streak

Perry, the average joggler, is on day 74 of a joggling streak. His goal is to joggle at least one mile a day, but he usually runs further than that. 74 days is a great streak. I would be pretty impressed with myself if I’d run every day for almost two and a half months, but Perry’s goal is 1000 days! That’s nearly three years!

It doesn’t seem right to me that his joggling pace is faster than my running-without-juggling pace. I have yet to try running and juggling at the same time, but I imagine I would spend more time picking up my juggling balls than making forward progress. Check out Perry’s “drops” stat. After a 1000 days I wonder what his longest streak with no drops will be. I’ve already seen one of 8 days!

Winter cross-training

Yes, I’m still alive. I drove to Idaho about 10 days ago and skate skiing has taken precedence over posting to my blog.

I love winter in Southern Colorado! This is a photo from a short January 7 mountain bike ride at Pueblo Reservoir. There is a great network of trails south of the reservoir, built by Southern Colorado Trail Builders. Pueblo has nice days for riding all winter long. I also got in a 50 mile road ride near my house on January 17. The opportunity to go for a long road ride in January, between 7500ft and 9500ft, even in Southern Colorado, is not that common and it was fun to be outside on my bike in the sun. Unlike the Pueblo photo, there was snow all around, but the road was almost completely dry.

The weather in Teton Valley has been unusually mild too. On January 20th I did my first skate ski of the year, about 24km. The trail was a little bumpy, but hard and fast, and look at that blue sky!! It seemed more like March than January. I got in another 30km or so on Wednesday and Thursday, in similar conditions. Then on Saturday, the day of the Spud Chase, the weather changed. At least the snow started. The temperature stayed warm. I totally screwed up my wax. I would have been better off with dry skis, but I finished my first cross-country ski event and fourth ski of the year. Anyway, I am excited to be skating again and am hoping for more fun and better wax if I do the Boulder Mountain Tour on February 7.