Where I’m @

20030422

Eric Meyer, who needs no appositive, is experiencing now something that nobody likes, but that everyone goes through. Some of us just hit it sooner than others.

posted by Tk at 00:54 • • sealed in amber

20030418

In a deviation from our usual fascinating talk of web developments, we’d like to announce that our expectant father friend Paul Dubanowitz has a (relatively) new band and an album for sale. The band is named Busker and the album is Gargoyle (you can catch some samples of some tracks at CDBaby). Check ’em out at The Kendall Café on on the 19th of April (tomorrow night) or at T.T. the Bear’s on the 22nd of April if you live in the Boston area and care a fig for quality pop.

posted by Tk at 09:10 • • sealed in amber

20030414

In May of last year, Mark Pilgrim made the bold claim that

“within the next 12 months, all web authoring tools will fully embrace CSS, accessibility, and web standards.”

Has anyone taken the steps to follow up on this? Seems like a job for Accessify, the WaSP, or Pilgim himself.

posted by Tk at 11:21 • • sealed in amber

20030411

Eric Meyer’s famed CSS support charts are available again, after disappearing along with the rest of WebReview (which had been dormant for some time anyway). Naturally, they’re up at DevEdge, the keen-o web development site of his employer, Netscape.

Now you can use this, along with the bug lists at RichInStyle, the hiding techniques at DiveIntoMark or Centricle, and the tricks at RealWorldStyle, Blue Robot, and The Noodle Incident to crank out great CSS

posted by Tk at 11:14 • • sealed in amber

20030409

“Our software detected that ‘cookies’ are turned off in your browser. Cookies need to be turned ‘on’ to use washingtonpost.com.”

What’s with the air quotes? And why are they on different parts of the sentence each time? Why not

Our ‘software’ detected that cookies are turned off in your browser. Cookies need to be ‘turned on’ to use washingtonpost.com.

or, more seriously,

Our software detected that cookies are turned off in your browser. Cookies need to be turned on to use WashingtonPost.com.

Why presume that your readers are lusers? Why treat words that are a common part of Web discourse as odd or unusual terms? And why, for the love of Mike, require your online readers to get cookied just to get to your stupid site? The New York Times gets it right, teasing the reader with a cookie-free home page but requiring them for the deeper parts of the site.

posted by Tk at 15:02 • • sealed in amber

20030407

ZDNet reports that Benetton has for the time being stopped its plan to embed RFID chips into its clothing. For Benetton, this would have meant gains in efficiency, as boxes of clothing could be checked into and out of inventory in greater bulk than before. For customers, this would have meant that Benetton could record (perhaps only in the aggregate; it's not clear) when they entered Benetton stores and which stores they entered, and that the data gathered could be connected to purchasing patterns or even store walk-by patterns.

Note that Benetton never said anything about doing this, and we have no interest in implying that they were going to. Rather, the embedding of identification chips in clothing means that manufacturers, retailers, and marketers could very well collude to track you even more than they do now.

It's bad enough that we had to tweak the preferences on our new mobile phone to prevent it from disclosing its location to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who requested it, but now we have to worry whether buying some sharp Sisley threads would mean that Benetton knows where we work?

posted by Tk at 10:00 • • sealed in amber

20030404

The second part of DevEdge’s interview with Mike Davidson of ESPN.com is up, and we would like to modify our earlier comments about his not saying anything particularly controversial. He says at one point (and surely this is going to be the touchstone quote for most):

Then there's validation. Telling me my site needs to validate in order to be standards-compliant is like telling me I need a flag in my lawn to call myself an American.

Something seems wrong about that, and it’s not just the easy but inaccurate metaphor for patriotism. “Standards compliance” is a definable situation, viz., compliance with the standards. If your site mostly validates, it is no more standards compliant than if it only slightly does. It does implement standards, but the situation is rather circular. Being an American, to the extent we focus on the definable part of that situation, is clearly defined in the US Legal Code, and we suspect that nowhere in there does it mention planting a flag on your lawn or even owning one (lawn or flag, take your pick). Anyone who claims otherwise is engaging in a very personal, idiosyncratic, and prejudiced means of defining American.

But “standards compliance” is a narrow-tolerance thing. Whether in the web or the physical world, standards exist as codified rules within which there is a certain amount, usually also codified, of wiggle room. The W3C validator allows for that wiggle room. If your site does not validate, you are not standards-compliant. If you manufacture screws and the thread dimensions differ from the ISO standards beyond the allowed tolerance, your screws are not compliant. They may be the best screws in the world, but they are not standards-compliant.

To extend a comment from above, a noncompliant site does not mean that you are against web standards or that your site does not follow certain of the standards. But if your DTD is XHTML strict and you use even one FONT element, you are not compliant. We applaud ESPN.com for converting their site to mostly standards-compliant markup, and we rue the confusion around web standards that would lead someone to think that those of us who are pro standards and strictly so might liken a noncompliant site to a traitor to his/her country.

posted by Tk at 09:37 • • sealed in amber

20030403

News from the Browser Front

Mozilla has released two things recently, one fairly routine and one new and different. The routine thing is the alpha build of the 1.4 version of the browser suite. The other is a new development roadmap that contains as its primary theme that the browser suite is getting too big. Future development is going to concentrate on developing components that will proceed at their own paces. This will enable the project to be more agile and push the capabilities of the rendering engine further. Translated, it would seem to mean that they recognized that development on certain parts of Mozilla was slowing down progress on other parts.

posted by Tk at 09:34 • • sealed in amber

20030401

Leaving the Rat Race

Folks, We’ve had enough. After years of (mostly) working for dehumanizing corporations ruled by faceless bureaucracy and baseless policies, after years of stewing in a country that doesn’t seem to want our kind any more, We’ve decided to opt out. While it’s a pretty big change, even for us, We think it’s going to be the best thing.

We’ve discussed it with the S.O., and she and your humble scribe are moving to Rome. She figures she can get a job teaching English, and once our Italian gets a little better, we figure we can too. Until that point, there’s bound to be good opportunities for someone of our experience. The Italians use computers, don’t they?

Since she graduates in May and finishes up working in June, we’ll probably leave then or soon after. We’ve already given our two weeks’ notice at work and are going to go on a farewell tour by automobile of these great United States immediately after, so let your friends in Dubuque know that we’re coming to town.

Until then, have a happy April first.

Update: This was timely, but Blogger had a “serious hardware failure” earlier today.

posted by Tk at 08:14 • • sealed in amber