Hey Zoners...I just finished up a Web site for a photographer of "meditative landscapes"...at least, I thought I was finished, until reports started coming in of people having trouble with it. Naturally, all I'm hearing are reports like "can't connect" and "didn't work", and that's not nearly enough to get a handle on the diagnosis.

It works fine for me, of course, in IE7 and FireFox. I'm getting a handle on the Apple Safari problems, using the new beta Windows version; prior to that, there was just nothing I could do to ensure Safari compatibility. Near as I can tell, the people having problems are using IE and FireFox too. One relevant variable may be connection speed--as a photographer's site it's very heavy on imagery, and that eats bandwidth. I wouldn't be surprised if it chokes at dialup (56K), but I'm pretty sure most of these people have better connections than that.

It's a puzzler, and a nasty one, not only because the client's unhappy, but because I need to use it as a showpiece to get the next project.

So, I'd appreciate it very much if people could go check it out, and report back on the experience. The site is Mark Shaffer Mitchell Photography. Please let me know about your browser, computer, and connection speed, and any problems you have. The problems reported are pretty basic (in an all-or-nothing sense), but if you get in, please browse around. Feel free to order prints through the PayPal shopping cart (Disclosure: I get a commission ;-) ). If you like Mark's work, tell your friends.

A little more background: I'm really pushing the technology envelope on this one. It's full of cutting-edge buzzwords like "AJAX" and XML and XSL and "Web 2.0", widgets, "RESTful", and all that neato stuff. Pushing closer to the edge means a greater chance that something will break in some combination of computer, browser, and connection speed, and I'm tearing my hair out.

This is the technology that'll be the basis for the long-awaited and much-postponed new HabitableZone design. Possibly a similar visual design, too, based on a series of widgets representing each board. The Catch-22 is that I've been developing it for a long time, and need to make some money applying it to be able to take some time off from scratching for bread to apply it to the Zone. I'd have preferred to use the Zone as the first testbed, but reality rears its ugly head. How's that for an appeal to a Zoner's self-interest?

Awrighty then, guinea pigs, to work! Oh, yeah, and thanks in advance!