Posts in the Writing Category

Yesterday, Jeffrey Zeldman was nice enough to point people toward meyerweb’s redesign, and also to say some kind words about yours truly that he’ll probably regret some day.  I know I have already, because when goofy rendering errors were reported in IE6/Win, I kind of felt obligated to do something about them instead of just shrugging and saying, “Eh, not my problem.”  Curse you, El Jefe!  I shall be revenged!

Two days ago, I got an e-mail message that had me falling out of my chair, I was laughing so hard, and I simply can’t resist sharing it with you.  I’ve edited the text a bit for clarity, and the name has been removed to protect—well, the guilty, really.  In a legal sense, I mean.

I’ve spent some time reading and working with several CSS books….  and I have to tell you that Eric Meyer on CSS is the best…. if I want to know how to do something and refer to the pile of books near my left hand, it is the one that most easily produces the answer.

It has one other great advantage over all the others as well:  it is by far the best book to roll a joint on.  Shape, size, thickness, glossiness, flexibility, and color are all excellent and [far] ahead of the competition.

It’s amazing how a well designed book serves all purposes.

Well.  Glad I could help out.

A day or two before that fascinating bit of e-mail arrived, I was standing in clothing store located in a brand-new shopping mall just recently built a couple of miles from our house, when the following lyrics came over the store speakers:

Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

…and I thought to myself, “Is someone trying to be ironic?”

• We Live To Serve was published on Wednesday, June 11th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Books, CSS, Humor, Redesign, and Writing 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.

Regional linguistic variations are funny.  The BBC News UK Web site has an article with this lead paragraph:

US President George W Bush has launched his bid for re-election, filing papers declaring his intention to contest next year’s vote.

Here in America, the usual meaning assigned to “contest,” at least in this context, would be “challenge” instead of “strive to win”—so to us Yanks, the implication is that Bush is already preparing to challenge the results of the next election.  Sounds like an Onion story, doesn’t it?

Speaking of linguistic variations, I now have in my possession copies of Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide in Polish, Bulgarian, and Korean.  Two of each, in fact.  The surreal part is that all the examples and screenshots are still in English, while the main text is in something not English.  I have to wonder how that affects the book’s utility for local readers.

So not only will I be speaking at The Other Dreamweaver Conference (TODCON) next month in Las Vegas, I’ll be giving two technical sessions and delivering the conference keynote.  Some other speakers you might know will also be there, including Molly Holzschlag, Murray Summers, Massimo Foti, and Angela Buraglia, among others.  It should be an interesting time, what with me giving talks to all those Dreamweaver power users when I, you know, don’t actually use Dreamweaver.  Haven’t touched it in years, in fact.

We’re headed off to see The Matrix Reloaded tonight, and as expected it’s already causing hugely polarized reactions among those who’ve seen it.  I have pretty low expectations, so I ought to be all right.  As with the first one, I expect a lot of goofy exposition and nonsensical backstory mixed in with some eye-popping special effects sequences.  Hey, it worked well enough the first time, so why not draw from the same well?

• Advance Planning was published on Friday, May 16th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Books, Politics, Speaking, and Writing categories.
• There have been no replies.

I’m back from User Interface 7 West, which was a most excellent time; and a four-day vacation at Ragged Point, which was a more excellent time, but in a completely different and much more relaxing way.  Upon my return, my personal e-mail account contained 2,280 messages, of which almost precisely half were spam.  The work account had 1,300+ messages, and I’d already downloaded 500+ while on the road.

I’m a little behind, is what I’m trying to say.

If you sent me a message recently, odds are it will be a while before I respond.  If I don’t respond in the next couple of weeks, your message was probably lost in the spam, so consider resending it after that time.  Yes, I know, Spam Assassin, Cloudmark, blah blah blah.  It’s more fun to complain about the spam, really.  Besides, deleting it manually is a good workout for my speed-reading and snap-evaluation skills.

I did notice a number of messages about webreview.com rerouting to Dr. Dobbs Journal, and the disappearance of the CSS support charts (a.k.a. “The Mastergrid”).  Yes, the charts are now offline, although since they hadn’t been updated in over two years this is not what I’d call a deep tragedy.  Fans of the charts will be glad to know I’d already been working (slowly, ever slowly) toward finding the charts a new home and getting them updated.  I’ll certainly make an announcement here once there is actual news, but for now, let’s pause a moment in silent tribute to the late, lamented Web Review.  They gave me my first paid writing gig and the charts a home, and I’ll always be grateful to Dale, Chuck, Derrick, and all the rest of the staff.

Oh, and for those interested in my RSS feed, you can pick the flavor you like best from the Eric’s Archived Thoughts page.

• Deluged was published on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2003.
• It was assigned to the CSS, Personal, RSS, and Writing categories.
• There have been no replies.

There’s an interesting review of Eric Meyer on CSS at Linux Journal.  Instead of just reviewing the book, Russell Dyer also asked me some interview questions and wove my responses into the review.  I really like the format; it allows him to make points about how and why the book was written in a certain way without just guessing.  It also means that a reader will get a better sense of the book’s purpose through the author’s words.

Thanks to Nick, I found out what operating system I am.    I’m wondering how much time constitutes a passage, since I don’t feel that old.  Yet.  As for few understanding me, that’s no surprise.  Nobody gets me.  I’m the wind, baby.

I thought about incorporating a graphic displaying the current U.S. Homeland Security Advisory System level into my site design, but in the end decided I didn’t want John Ashcroft getting anywhere near my Web site.  Thus I continue to shore up a pleasant illusion that he couldn’t have someone crack into the server’s file system and download everything in about nine seconds if he felt like it.  All in the interests of defending liberty from those who would destroy it, of course.

Although it occurs to me to wonder who that someone might be.  The Department of Justice?  The National Security Agency?  (Side note: one of the funniest things I’ve seen lately is that the NSA has a privacy and security notice on their Web site, and it’s sort of a shame that it doesn’t just say: “You have none.  Get over it.”)  The Department of Homeland Security?  Probably any of them.  It bothers me that the only safeguard to my personal privacy could well be an interdepartmental fight over who gets to invade it first.

• New Review, Old Author? was published on Monday, February 10th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Books, Humor, Politics, and Writing categories.
• There have been no replies.

Simon Jessey has confessed he wrote the Amazon review I mentioned on Thursday, and furthermore says he pictures me mostly as Li Mu Bai with a little Jen Yu thrown in.  Hmmmm… that’s definitely an interesting image.  Anyway, I’ve created a new presentation option for the site to celebrate being called “The Li Mu Bai of Cascading Style Sheets”: please enjoy wo hu cang long.  Note that this new theme has a layout bug in IE5/Mac which appears to be related to the alternate-style switch, and not the CSS itself.  There isn’t much I can do about it, as the bug doesn’t happen in static test documents.

On the other hand, Robert Kirkpatrick wrote in to advise me that I should work to be the Cheng Pei-pei (who played the Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) of CSS.  Of course, we’re mixing actual people and characters here—in the movie, of course, Li Mu Bai is the more skilled, but in real life it’s likely Cheng is more skilled than Chow.  Either way, I’m flattered.

I’m also feeling under the weather, which is ironic given how nice a day it is today.  Off to the couch for tea with lemon and maybe a movie.  The Killer is always a good choice.

• Green Destiny was published on Sunday, January 12th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Books, CSS, and Writing categories.
• There have been no replies.

In response to my rantings yesterday, David Hyatt has stated unequivocally that the Safari team did not, in fact, co-opt Netscape evangelism efforts during development.  I’m really very glad to hear that’s the case, and if I hadn’t had such a bad day Tuesday, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned the rumor in the first place.  Then again, the end result of my ranting is a negative rumor laid to rest, so perhaps it was all for the best.  That’s what I’ll tell myself to feel better about the whole situation, anyway.

To make it formal: I apologize for casting any unwarranted aspersions on the Safari team, Apple, etc.  With any luck this will help stamp out the rumors that were reaching me.

On to more trivial matters!  This is quite possibly the coolest review I’ve yet received:

Last year, I watched “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and I was amazed at the swordsmanship on display. Swords were no longer weapons, but extensions of arms – as if they were new appendages grown especially for the task. Eric Meyer can wield CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in just the same way as those actors could wield swords.

Being a big fan of the movie, I can’t help but be deeply flattered.  I’m just wondering if said reader pictures me as Li Mu Bai, Yu Shu Lien, or Jen Yu.

• Lookin’ Up was published on Thursday, January 9th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Books, Browsers, Web, and Writing categories.
• There have been no replies.

Remember the redesign competition I mentioned (along with a lot of other people) a while back?  They’ve announced the prizes up for grabs, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the Grand Prize package includes a copy of Eric Meyer on CSS.  I do have to wonder how much use it will be to someone who can successfully restyle another person’s site with CSS… but hey, no complaints here!  Good luck to all the entrants.

Contrary to what Zeldman has to say, I generally don’t wish I were not writing a book.  When I’m writing a book, I enjoy it because it’s something I like to do and because I wouldn’t have agreed to do it if I weren’t excited about the project.  When I’m not writing a book, I enjoy the time off, but usually get back to the authorial keyboard within six months or so.

Rewriting a book, though… that’s a whole other story, and one with distinctly fewer comedic overtones.  I hate having to revise my own work, because my deep-seated impulse to tinker usually drives down the quality of the text.  The dread spectre of endless revision is tempered by the glimmer of needed new material, but to me, it’s like mixing chocolate syrup into a thick vanilla milk shake: the end result isn’t as awful as it could have been, but Lord, it sure isn’t good.

(It may help your understanding of the previous paragraph to know that I loathe chocolate.  No sympathy is necessary, because believe me, I’m not missing out on anything.  Call to mind a food that you truly despise; something that, if you accidentally got a mouthful, you would instantly spit out and then try to scrape off your tongue.  That’s what chocolate is like for me.  Kat couldn’t be happier, because I never try to steal her dessert.)

Reviewing other people’s work isn’t bad.  I’m currently reviewing two books, and this morning I started getting severe dèjá vu.  The chapters I was reviewing for both books referred to the same sites, and even had screenshots of those sites that were taken on the same day.  I’m about 98% certain it was all just a big coincidence.  Either that or the computers that run the Matrix are getting less creative.

• Getting Mixed In/Up was published on Saturday, January 4th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Books, CSS, W3C, and Writing categories.
• There have been no replies.