Someone pointed me here yesterday. I would like to write a publicly viewable letter:

Jason,

Thank you for making this. It is fairly obvious that I don't actively maintain DD_roundies. I became very disheartened about doing so when I saw it really put through the wringer when used in a large RIA at work, especially when the traffic was through HTTPS.

I had honest intentions to pick it up again, as my last development was during IE8 RC1. When coming back to the project during a really boring weekend, IE 8 final was out, and I saw how much different it was, and got a bad feeling... particularly after reading some enlightening observations on the subject by Rémi Provost, I threw up my hands in disgust.

Every email I get on the subject is invariably "Hey, great work on DD_roundies, but (here's some shit that is massively broken that you don't know how and no longer care to fix)."

I really hoped someone with better programming habits (as in, more documentation than NONE AT ALL) and dedication would pick up the project and run with it. However, I thought it a foolish hope.

I'll keep my project up for posterity, but will refer to your project because it looks very mature and active, and generally bitchin'. I looked at maybe half of your source code briefly this morning, and it's awesome.

Thank you for the flattering comparison in your documentation area, I had a big smile on my face to hear that I inspired someone. That has been a tough area for me this year as I have felt very "blah" about programming lately and have spent time wondering about another career, so, at a time when I felt so uninspired, it was great to hear that I had the opposite effect on someone.

Keep up the fine work.

Sincerely,
Drew Diller

PS The above, in emoticons for brevity:

Hey, Drew. I can tell you that at one of the largest web dev shops in Vancouver that it's common for one of the developers to mention "Drew Diller's work", usually in the context of "Yeah, we're able to do that now because of Drew Diller's work."

For example, DD_belatedPNG is the first ACTUALLY WORKING IE6 alpha PNG fix that I came across, and I've been around and looked at lots. That, in itself, was revolutionary for our design process. I'm hoping that more of that script will be incorporated here. (See: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45) Yes, you've inspired many.

-Matthew

Thank you for the very kind words, Drew. I'll echo Matthew: You've made a lot of people's lives easier, and in my circles as well your name is pretty much universally known. In a good way.

It saddens me that you've been feeling discouraged. I can understand where you're coming from though; it's human nature for people to keep quiet when they're perfectly happy with something and only pipe up when there's a problem, so you end up only hearing a constant stream of "but"s. It's tough to see all the bug reports and not get overwhelmed. I've been trying to keep convincing myself that for every person with a problem there are (dozens? hundreds? more?) people using it perfectly happily. Who knows if that's actually the case, but it helps to keep my sanity.

I'm very glad you'll be keeping DD_* posted, even if you're not planning to continue development on it. While there's a lot of overlap with PIE, there are definitely advantages to both (yours is much smaller and targeted, doesn't have the .htc quirks, etc.)

I have to ask: would you be at all interested in helping me with development on PIE? I think in this world there are few people with the knowledge of VML that you have, especially in this sort of context, and I would be extremely grateful for any help you'd be so generous to give.

Drew, you're the best. I've happily used DD_belatedPNG until recently, when I decided to actively drop support for IE6.
If you team up with Jason I'm sure you could do really powerful things which will help tons of web developers.

Thanks for your continued effort No BUTs.

Dude, a Drew + Jason team would be UNSTOPPABLE.