Posts from 2003

Having owned a digital camera for less than two months now, I find myself taking random pictures of interesting patterns, just on the off chance I might use them some day.  Why not?  But the dark side of this activity is the creeping impulse to establish a photo gallery where I can display these abstract patterns and images for all the world to see.

“Go ahead,” my ego whispers, “it will show you’re a Renaissance Man with diverse interests and talents.  People will love it.  You’ll get invited to show stuff in art galleries, just like Josh Davis.  Trust me!”  Meanwhile, the more pessimistic (or, more likely, realistic) portion of my brain sneers, “Yeah, just what the Web needs, another collection of pseudo-pretentious almost-art shots.  Like it hasn’t been done a thousand times before.  Would it kill you to be original for once?  I mean, honestly.”

I don’t know exactly what all this means, but it might mean that one day I’ll add “Gallery” to the navigation links of this site.  If so, please feel free to shake your head in sorrow for me.  Then  invite me to display my stuff in an art gallery.

Late last week, I was writing e-mail to a friend when I realized I’d changed the phrase “I’ll write down some ideas” to “I’ll type up some ideas.”  Now I want to know how, in the long slow evolution of the English language, two such similar activities ended up going in totally opposite directions.

• Images and Words was published on Monday, June 9th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been no replies.

There’s a great theme at the Zen Garden: What Lies Beneath.  It’s very non-traditional (hint: you don’t scroll like normal) but very well done, nice and earthy.  There have been several other contributions since I last mentioned the site, all of them quite interesting.  The design process behind one of them has been explained in some detail by its author, Doug Bowman, who knows quite a few things about the power of CSS-based design.

Meanwhile, the Literary Moose has taken advantage of the CSS3 definition of content to show how text can be replaced with an image in a gracefully flexible manner.  If you just see plain text for the headline, follow the link to the screenshot, which was taken in Opera.  If more browsers supported this behavior, we could stop using <span>-based image replacement hacks such as those employed at the Zen Garden and other sites.  I’m not slamming said sites: such hacks are necessary if certain effects are to be achieved in today’s browsers.  It’s still good to have someone pointing out where we might be able to go tomorrow.

As you might have guessed, I’m back from TODCON MX Vegas, which was a real kick on many levels (but not the literal one).  That is one seriously unhinged and fun group of folks, and I’d like to thank Ray West for finally getting me there.  It seems my presentations were all very well received, which is always preferable to the alternatives, especially the ones involving torches and pitchforks.  I hope to get my files online in the next few days, particularly the ones from the “Redesigning” talk.  Pictures from the conference are already appearing over at DWmommy.com, and I’d bet there will be plenty more to come.

I think that of all gifts one person can give another, trust is the rarest and most precious.  In a way that few other gifts do, trust creates a bond that is at once strong and fragile, and that very paradox is part of what gives it so much beauty.  The next time I’m feeling downcast about myself, I need only think of all the people who have trusted me with their thoughts, their feelings, with pieces of their lives.

• Zen, Now, and the Hereafter was published on Friday, June 6th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the CSS and Speaking categories.
• There have been no replies.

Greetings from fabulously hot Las Vegas, where TODCON MX is about halfway to done.  Another few degrees and it’ll be burnt.  Kat and I walked off the plane and the jetway was quite toasty, and then as we left it for the cool airport terminal, we were greeted by several rows of slot machines blinking and booping and warbling.  Right there in the terminal.  Within five steps I turned to Kat and said, “Okay, I officially hate this place.”

I feel the same way every time I’m on a casino floor.  Fortunately I’ve been able to largely avoid them, and concentrate on things like conference activities and wireless access.

So far I’ve given one talk and have two to go, the next one coming just after lunch today.  The brilliant and beautiful Angela Buraglia seems to have liked my keynote, which was nice to see—especially since her son also appears to appreciate my work.

This has been a particularly interesting conference because, with the exception of Molly, every one of the attendees is someone I’d never before met in person.  Many of them I know from online work and correspondence, of course, but it’s always good to associate a physical presence with a name.  Or, in this case, a whole bunch of names.

As for dinner last night… well.  This is definitely a fun group of folks, that’s for sure, and surprisingly difficult to offend.  The advertisements all claim that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I may soon have some photographic evidence to the contrary.  (Insert evil chuckle here.)

• Hot Hot Hot! was published on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Speaking category.
• There have been no replies.

I’m off to Las Vegas to speak at TODCON MX, so come say “hi” if you’re there!  I did a quick check of the weather forecast for Vegas and the high temperatures are projected to be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day I’m down there.  Holy mother of pearl, that’s hot… especially for a pale Northern boy like me.

So apparently Internet Explorer for Windows won’t be developed as a standalone product any more, but (if I read the article correctly) will instead be bolted even more deeply to the operating system than it is already.  Yeah, that sounds like a great plan.  Because, you know, the security of their existing products has always been so exemplary.

• Yeah, But It’s a Dry Heat was published on Saturday, May 31st, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Personal and Speaking categories.
• There have been no replies.

This afternoon I wrapped up an interview with a guy from Radio New Zealand’s Digital Life programme, who was calling me from tomorrow morning.  (They’re eighteen hours ahead of me.)  I noticed almost no lag despite the distance; after watching the one-second-plus pauses in conversations between anchors at CNN Center and field correspondents in the Middle East, I expected a similar effect.  There was a very slight delay, it seemed, maybe a quarter-second or less, but no more.  We were separated by roughly ten thousand kilometers (six thousand miles) of linear distance and probably thirteen thousand kilometers (nine thousand miles) of surface distance as we talked, and yet the conversation was no different than if he’d been sitting across town.  Just wow.  I’ve been promised a transcript of the interview, so I hope I was reasonably coherent.

Yesterday’s entry drew some responses, all of them basically telling me to stop worrying.  I appreciate that.  I think I’ll still fret for a while anyway, just because it forces me to think about what I really want to do.  If I find other things more interesting than CSS, then I need to admit that and move on.  If not, then I need to stop dithering and get back to work.  Probably the latter, but one should take stock every year or so.

On this, the second anniversary of starting at Netscape, Microsoft agreed to settle an antitrust lawsuit by paying AOL a large pile of cash, and furthermore let AOL continue to use IE in the AOL client for the next seven years for free.

Well.  Perhaps the reflections upon my career and its future will come in handy after all.

• Spanning the Globe was published on Thursday, May 29th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the CSS and Interviews categories.
• There have been no replies.

I’m continually amazed by what interests people.  The most recent examples: Simon Willison’s CSS tutorials and Stuart Robertson’s “The Search For the Missing Link.”  This is in no way a denigration of the work either man is doing—it’s top-notch stuff, and is not only well presented but is obviously striking a chord with readers.  I’m just saying that it never would have occurred to me that people would be interested in those kinds of things, so even if I’d had the ideas, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to write them up.  (Exception: Simon’s CSS makeovers of the Winer and JWZ sites, which I wish I’d thought of first.  Oh well.)

This bothers me, because it hints at a personal failing.  If I’m not talking about the things that interest people, if I’ve lost touch with what people want to know, then how can I be an effective teacher and author?  Why should anyone bother to listen to what I have to say?  For a communicator like me, this is a real problem.  I thrive on the exchange of information, both incoming and outgoing.  Of course I can always consume knowledge, but that isn’t enough.  If I can’t provide it as well, the meal is unsatisfying.  The important thing is the sharing.

Am I bored with CSS, and having that stunt my abilities?  Is this a lurking fear of being eclipsed by newer (and generally younger) contributors to the field and eventually forgotten?  Have I just been in the game too long to stay in touch with the audience?  I’m sure people out there would be happy to tell me that I could still see what the audience wants if only a massively swollen ego weren’t blocking my sight, and for all I know they’re correct.  Maybe it’s time to move into a different area of study, and see what happens.  I hear they’re taking applications at that truck driving school.

It was two years ago tomorrow that I started work for Netscape, by the way.

• My Dull Surprise was published on Wednesday, May 28th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the CSS and Writing categories.
• There have been no replies.

The W3C‘s HTML validator has a new beta that includes a significant change.  It will now attempt fallback validation if it can’t find a DOCTYPE or character encoding.  In other words, if you run a legacy document through the validator, it will warn you the document is invalid because it couldn’t find the stuff it needed, but make a guess at the right DTD and character encoding to use and try validating against those.  See, for example, the validation run of a “non-DOCTYPE” test page.

Personally, I think this is great.  It makes the validator a lot more friendly without giving people the idea that their invalid documents are okay.  It removes one more annoyance from the path to validation, and that can’t be a bad thing.

I spent the three-day weekend producing a few metric tons of screenshots, pounding my head against the desktop over the inline formatting model (again), blowing up some virtual giant robots, and all the other things that make for a good holiday weekend.  Last night Kat and I went with some good friends to see A Mighty Wind, which we all thought was a hoot.  Or, more properly, a hootenanny.  Eugene Levy’s character, Mitch, was just amazing.

• Valid Relaxation was published on Tuesday, May 27th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Standards category.
• There have been no replies.

Do you still avoid PNG images because IE/Win doesn’t support the alpha channel?  If you’re like most Web designers, the answer is “yes.”  Thanks to Owen Briggs, I came across a petition asking Microsoft to change that.  Will it change anything?  Who knows?  We can but try.  You will have to allow a cookie (to prevent petition stuffing) and give them an e-mail address, but you can withhold your e-mail address from public exposure.  If you want to see real and widespread PNG support on the Web (and any designer should, once they fully understand what PNGs can do) then you should go sign the petition.  It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s important.

• Be Heard was published on Thursday, May 22nd, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Browsers category.
• There have been no replies.