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 / classes, guido-van-rossum, python

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 / classes, conditionalcomments, css, html, paul-hammond, yahoo

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 / classes, inheritance, java, javascript, pete-michaux, prototypalinheritance

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 / classes, conditionalcomments, css, ie, ie5, ie6, russweakley