Simon Willison’s Weblog

The History of Python: Adding Support for User-defined Classes. Guido designed the run-time representation first, and tried to design the syntax to include as few new parsing concepts as possible. The origins of explicit self are also explained. 18th February 2009, 11 pm

Conditional classnames. Yahoo!’s internal coding standards still recommend CSS hacks over conditional comments because a separate stylesheet for IE imposes an additional HTTP request. Paul Hammond points out that you can use conditional comments to write out an extra class=“ie” attribute on the body element and use that to target the IE specific fixes in your stylesheets. 17th October 2008, 1:32 pm

Transitioning from Java Classes to JavaScript Prototypes. Peter Michaux shows how JavaScript’s prototypal inheritance can run rings around traditional Java-style classes once you figure out how to take advantage of it. 10th February 2008, 3:10 pm

Using multiple classes within selectors. Pretty much definitive guide to using multiple classes in a CSS selector, including problems with IE 5 and 6 and one way of addressing them using conditional comments. 11th November 2007, 11:07 pm