Posts from January 2010

MIX Judging

Published 14 years, 1 month past

I was recently honored to be asked to be a judge for the MIX 10k Smart Coding Challenge, running in conjunction with Microsoft’s MIX conference.  The idea is to create a really great web application that totals no more than 10KB in its unzipped state.

Why did I agree to participate?  As much as I’d like to say “fat sacks of cash“, that wasn’t it at all.  (Mostly due to the distinct lack of cash, sacked or otherwise.  Sad face.)  The contest’s entry requirements actually say it for me.  In excerpted form:

  • The entry MUST use one or more of the following technologies: Silverlight, Gestalt or HTML5…
  • The entry MUST function in 3 or more of the following browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or Chrome…
  • The entry MAY use any of the following additional technology components…
    • CSS
    • JavaScript
    • XAML/XML
    • Ruby
    • Python
    • Text, Zip and Image files (e.g. png, jpg or gif)

Dig that:  not only is the contest open to HTML 5 submissions, but it has to be cross-browser compatible.  Okay, technically it only has to be three-out-of-five compatible, but still, that’s a great contest requirement.  Also note that while IE is one of the five, it is not a required one of the five.

I imagine there will be a fair number of Silverlight and Gestalt entries, and I might look at them, but I’m really there — was really asked — because of the HTML 5 entries.  By which I mean the open web entries, since any HTML 5 entry is also going to use CSS, JavaScript, and so on.

The downside here is that the contest ends in just one week, at 3pm U.S. Pacific time on 29 January.  I know that time is tight, but if you’ve got a cool HTML 5-based application running around in your head, this just might be the time to let it out.


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