Today is the big day!  Obviously, all of you are aware that Firefox 3.0 was released at 1:00 pm, EST today, and that Mozilla was eyeing the Guiness Book of World Records record for most downloads in a single day, right?

Sure!

Well, the point is, if you haven’t yet: get Firefox.  As a Mac user, I am blown away by the improvements in speed and memory management in 3.0.  I honestly did not enjoy the Firefox 2.0 Mac experience, and used Safari as much as I could.  Windows users on the other hand, should already be using Firefox (boo, Internet Explorer), and 3.0 should be an upgrade.

The Firefox download site was down earlier today (did they not expect the traffic?!?) but we managed to get access by the end of the day.  I couldn’t wait that long and used BitTorrent to download what turned out to be an Italian version of 3.0 (I’ve sense switched back to English).

I’ve already stated my initial reactions.  The new look is great, too, it really opens up some more screen real-estate, which is something we always wrangle with as designers.

Compatibility-wise, there are updates availble for the Google Toolbar, Web Developer Toolbar, and the YSlow Firebug extension.  Firebug itself has a beta that works with 3.0, but the Firebug site has been down for the past few days.  You can find a mirror that has the code and a list of Firebug mirrors here.

Other than that, I’ve been enjoying the new experience.  I’m sure other AWP-ers will chime in over the next few days.

Did I mention boo Internet Explorer?  (explanation of previous link).

More flood updates, for anyone who’s keeping track.

As I mentioned earlier, eastern Iowa is experience record flooding. Cedar Rapids is getting hit particularly hard, with the Cedar river flooding at roughly twice the previous record, and destroying their downtown and city hall.

Iowa City, my home, luckily does not have its downtown near the river, but the University of Iowa has the majority of its arts quad right in the current flood plane, and is getting hit pretty hard. My Dad works in the Voxman Music building, seen here:

As you can see, it’s pretty bad. The river isn’t supposed to crest until today, though they more storms yesterday, so I don’t know how that will change things. Sandbagging in continues at a frantic pace, as they are now trying to protect the UI Main Library from the increasing flood waters.

From my Dad:

Here’s some history to put it in perspective. Cedar Rapids had their worst flood in 1920 when the river crested at 20 feet. This flood was predicted to crest at 22 feet, it actually crested at over 31 today, and thankfully is now slowly receding.

Iowa City had it’s worst flood in 1993, where the Iowa River crested at 19 feet. This flood is predicted to crest at 26 feet. That’s 7 feet higher. In addition, due to bridges and other factors, the level of the river near the UI campus could be as high as 29 feet or more. It’s just mind boggling that water could get that high, but after what I’ve seen in CR, nothing seems impossible.

Most of the bridges across the river are closed. As far as I know, there is one bridge that sill allows traffic (Burlington Bridge) which may or may not close today. If that bridge closes, Iowa City is essentially cut in two, and to get from one side to the other will require an hour-long drive looping around several highways.

Above is the bridge across what used to be City Park. I have more photos from my Dad posted up in my Flickr account. It’s pretty amazing. Here’s what that bridge usually looks like:

Today, the bridge looks even worse.

More updates as I have ‘em.

We use the Blueprint CSS Framework a lot here at AWP. It’s saved us untold amount of time worrying about Cross-browser compatibility issues (I’m looking at you, IE6), and the typography settings are fantastic.

There’s a lot of times, though, where the standard Blueprint setup just doesn’t work. Maybe you want a site thinner than 950 pixels, or need larger spacing between columns, or any number of issues that are a pain with the standard Blueprint setup. Usually, to change things like this, you have to go and recalculate your column sizes widths and margins, and then write them all in by hand.

But hey, someone went and did the hard work for you, and though this is linked off of the Blueprint Code site, it needs to be better known: a javascript page to generate your own Blueprint CSS Grid. Just type in your max size, number of columns, desired margins, etc, and it creates it all for you, it even has a compressed version.

Nice.

It’s finally happened! Ancient Wisdom Productions is now officially AWP (short for Ancient Wisdom Productions). It’s just a little easier to say, easier to write, and takes up less space in your Browser Location bar.

So Yeah! We’re AWP, website: http://www.awpny.com

You may also notice our fantastic new logo by Tyler (one of our star designers). I’ll let him go into the details about it later, but suffice to say: it rocks. We turned a lot of heads the other day at the Tompkins County Showcase.

We hope you enjoy the brand-new, beautiful, WebTree-powered site of ours. We spent a lot of hours in the past few weeks putting this together, and it debuted yesterday. We’re still working out a few kinks, but it’s mostly there. Make sure to check out the brand new project portfolio page, and our new Welcome Video on the home page.

With the new site, you’ll see a lot more content from us, including regular WebTree tips by Casey, essays on design and process, and more details about our company, from its people, to its products.

So go forth and enjoy the new site. If you haven’t worked with us before, you should! Give us a heads up at our project inquiries page, or drop us a line through the feedback form if you just want to say hi.

So relax, browse around, and welcome to the new AWP.

I don’t know how many of you remember the great flood of ‘93. My guess? Not many. It sticks out strongly in my mind, though, despite being 11 years old at the time.

I grew up in Iowa City, which is cut down the middle by the Iowa River. Most of the time, things work out ok. The river behaves, and you can boat on it. Everyone wins. Occasionally, though, it can out of hand.

This year we’re flooding again. My parents, luckily, live on high land, and are not affected by this, however, large portions of the performing arts center, the city park, and several main streets are. My Dad, who tends to know something about the performing arts scene in Iowa City, took these photos yesterday:

I’ve heard that the flooding this year may be worse than ‘93. Hopefully this will not be the case.

And to think, last year was a drought.