Posts in the Tech Category

From macosxhints, via xlab: how to restore Mac OS X to a little more sanity in the form of switching the keyboard shortcuts for “New Folder” and “New Finder Window.”  Contrary to the tip’s assertion, you will need to restart the Finder for the change to take effect, but it does indeed work.  Also, since the tip is somewhat ambiguous about what you should have in your com.apple.finder.plist file when you’re done, here’s what I have:

<key>NSUserKeyEquivalents</key>
<dict>
	<key>New Finder Window</key>
	<string>@$N</string>
	<key>New Folder</key>
	<string>@N</string>
</dict>

Those seven simple lines are all it took to remove one of my last major complaints about OS X: now I can hit cmd-N and get a new folder instead of a new Finder window.  I shed a tear of joy.  All I have to do is figure out what to hack so all of my new windows open in minimized List view, and I’ll be pretty much golden.

(As I also discovered, you can alter your shortcuts with TinkerTool‘s “Menu Shortcuts” panel, but I prefer directly hacking the OS.  It makes me feel all tough and manly.)

Now for a tear or two of sorrow.  Thanks to Jeffrey Zeldman, I went and read the New Yorker article about post-conflict Iraq, “War After the War.”  I’m pointing to the printer-friendly version, which should be a lot easier on the eyes than the narrow-column main article.  It’s a disturbing, disheartening piece that will likely not go over well with many in the right wing of the audience, but not because it’s slanted left.  It isn’t.  It’s a factual, first-hand report of what’s going on, in detail and from the mouths of soldiers and diplomats, in Iraq.  Some of those mouths are already stilled forever.

The personal downside is that, if you read the article all the way through—and it’s a long, involved piece, so don’t expect to rip through it in five minutes—you may have the same reaction I did, which is an almost overwhelming mixture of sorrow, anger, frustration, and helplessness.  Even worse, I’m not sure anything can be done at this point; even replacing the current administration would likely be too little, too late… and that assumes that the Democrats put up someone I would regard as a better choice than Bush, which is by no means assured.

Meanwhile, the sister-in-law of a friend of ours just got shipped to Iraq on almost no advance notice.  This person is a member of a National Guard unit that was classified “non-deployable.”  Whether or not such a distinction should exist, apparently it did.  Now the unit is being deployed, the very thing she was told would never happen, which is the only reason she decided to enlist; she has a husband and three children that she had no intention of leaving even temporarily.  When I hear such things, it makes me wonder if maybe the news from Iraq is more positive than the situation warrants.  Why else would the military choose to deploy a “non-deployable” unit?  That’s the sort of act I associate with desperation.

• Now That’s A Switch was published on Thursday, December 4th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Mac and Politics categories.
• There have been no replies.

If you’re on the east side of Cleveland and want a nice warm caffeinated place to get online, the new Arabica on Lee Road, just a block or so south of Cedar-Lee, is the place to be.  The network SSID is 2WIRE173; it is a closed network but they’ll tell you the password at the counter.  Note to Mac users: you’ll need to enter the password as a 40-bit hex key, not as a plain password.  Something about their security setup causes this, although neither I nor they knew exactly what that might be.  I figure it’s no big deal, since once you enter the information and add it to your Keychain, you’ll never have to worry about it again (unless of course they change it).

• Hot Steaming Internet was published on Sunday, November 23rd, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Cleveland and Tech categories.
• There have been no replies.

Thanks to those of you who wrote in with the answer to my Dock question.  It turns out that I’d been trying to drag folders into the same Dock region that holds my application entries, and that’s no good.  Folders can be added in the area where the Trash can, minimized windows, and running applications not already in the Dock sit.  It hadn’t even occurred to me to try to add them there, because that’s where active stuff (and the Trash) goes.  Static links to resources go in the other area, as far as I’m concerned.  Just another little shove toward jettisoning the Dock and registering DragThing.

As for iPhoto plug-ins, I did find BetterHTMLExport pretty quickly, and the 2.0 version has exactly what I want—and about ten times that in stuff I won’t ever need.  If I were creating galleries, it would be a godsend.  I’d register it.  But all I really want is a plugin that lets me set the size and image quality of exported JPEGs, and that then exports them with smooth scaling instead of the jagged scaling iPhoto uses.  Frankly, iPhoto should do all this without needing a plug-in, but it doesn’t.  This seems like a simple little widget, one that could be created quickly and released as freeware.  Anyone have any leads on one that exists, or interest in creating such a tool?  Heck, point me at a good beginner’s resource on how to analyze and create iPhoto plug-ins and I could take a swing at it myself.  In my copious spare time, of course.

Panther’s been pretty cool so far—it certainly feels much snappier than Jaguar did—although there are (as always) things that annoy me.  The behavior of drag-selecting in the List view changed, and not for the better.  The reintroduction of labels (and where were they until now?) is nice, but I would have preferred a better presentation of them in OS.  Then again, Exposé thoroughly rocks not just the house, but the neighbor’s houses as well.  The fact that I can shuffle just those windows associated with the current application is just too darned awesome.  Exposé also revealed that Mozilla-based browsers create a small hidden window offscreen, one that you can’t really access but is still there.  It comes zooming in from the upper left when you invoke Exposé, and zips away when you un-expose everything.  I wonder what it’s doing.

In case you didn’t see this pointed out elsewhere, the main page (at least) of the Sprint PCS site is an XHTML+CSS layout now.  One of these days I’m going to have to compile a list.

• Panther Patter was published on Thursday, November 20th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Mac and Standards categories.
• There have been no replies.

In rummaging through my pictures from last weekend’s trip to San Francisco, I came across another picture I just had to share: the laundry machines where Jeff Veen‘s clothes get washed and dried!  They seemed bigger than normal machines, somehow.  As if they were mighty colossi of laundry machines, towering over the cleanliness landscape and emitting peals of spin-cycle sounds that shake the skies like thunder.

Then again, I could just be projecting.

So what’s with all the pictures all of a sudden?  Partly it’s me messing around with the export features in iPhoto, which are frankly not the greatest.  It generated tons of “jaggies,” and in JPEG images, no less.  I need to find some tools that do a better job, or at least some decent plug-ins for iPhoto.  I think I said that some time back.  It’s more true now than it was then.  (Speaking of which, is there a trick to adding folders to the Dock?  I can’t seem to figure it out.)

Over the past few days I’ve run into two very familiar forms of grumbling:

• XHTML is bogus because it’s so much pickier than good old HTML.
• CSS layout is bogus because it can’t do everything possible in table-based layout.

These aren’t new complaints, by any stretch.  Heck, I myself whined long and loud about how XHTML forced everything to be lowercase—I called it “xhtml” for the longest time—and those trailing slashes looked stupid.  Over time, I realized those were silly reasons to dislike a language, especially since HTML is still around and quite available.  (What’s this site authored in?  Hmmm…)  I realized I was ambivalent toward XHTML not because it was pickier, but because it was a reformulation of HTML in XML.  That was exactly its point, and while I could see some utility in that effort, I thought (and still think) it a mistake to abandon all further work on HTML and push forward with XHTML.  I couldn’t come to that conclusion, however, until I stopped carping about things being different and took the time to understand why things were different.

As for CSS-P, of course it has limitations.  So does table-based layout.  The question is which set of limitations you’re willing to accept, and conversely which features are more important to your current project.  I still fail to understand why people have to treat everything as being a binary situation.  It’s not a question of only using tables, or only using CSS, for layout, forever and ever amen.  Some projects do well with one, some with the other, and some call for both in the same layout.  I don’t know how many times I’ve said this over the years, but I guess I’m saying it again.

And if you object to something simply because it’s new and doesn’t act like the stuff you already know, take it from me: that form of resistance isn’t going to work for long.  If you can’t deal with change, you’re on the wrong planet, and if you’re a Web developer/designer then you’re really in the wrong line of work.  Things will always change, whether it’s due to new browsers or new standards or new critical patches from Microsoft or just plain new thinking.  Your best bet is to learn as much as you can so that you can make the best possible decisions about what to do, and why.

• Lather, Rinse, Repeat was published on Wednesday, November 19th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the CSS, Mac, and Web categories.
• There have been no replies.

The title of the post exists mostly because I vowed in a public setting to use it, but there is a story behind it.  I just don’t remember the details right now, because it happened more than 24 hours ago and I’m very tired.  I remember that a small group had gathered at Crepes on Cole for brunch yesterday, and the conversation kept veering wildly from highly geeky to very much the opposite. At some point, the subject of Tantek being in trouble (for a comment? an action? a bug in IE/Mac?) came up, and it was asserted that he needed to be spanked.  (“Oh, yes, yes!  A spanking!  A spanking!”) Then it was observed that we should probably check first with his girlfriend to see if that was acceptable.  So I turned to her and said, “So, is it okay with you if we spank him?”

Her reaction was so priceless (and his nearly as amusing), I ended up teasing both of them about it several times, and I wasn’t alone in the effort, either.  She never did answer the question, so we still don’t know where she actually stands on the subject.  It was a weird day.  Relaxing, but weird.  Early on we were discussing relationships and the subject of polyamory came up.  I speculated that the increasing practice of polyamory might be linked to the rising incidence of attention-deficit disorder.  It’s so crazy, it just might make sense.

Pretty much the opposite of ADD is the viewpoint espoused by the Long Now Foundation, which aims to get people thinking about the next ten milennia as opposed to the next ten minutes.  Tantek and I met up at the Herbst Pavilion to see Brian Eno give a free talk on the Long Now, and there turned out to be an even Longer Line.  With space for 700, and probably 750 in the hall by the time they closed the doors, there were very likely three or four times as many people in line as were eventually admitted.  The talk itself was interesting, and Mr. Eno’s presentation style was done in such a calm, deliberate, paced manner that I felt a little more in touch with the Long Now by the time we left, which may or may not have been done on purpose.  The instant the talk was over, Tantek and I headed out a side door and toward the parking lot at a jog so we could the crowd to their cars; we had no desire to get stuck in a traffic jam trying to leave.  This would be ironic except for the statement I remember from the presentation, that the Long Now perspective is meant to make the world “safe for hurry” by slowing other parts of life a long way down.  So we hurried safely, and benefitted from the effort.  Yay us!

In many ways, I’m intrigued with and approving of the Long Now concept.  If we as a society could take more of a long-term view, we might make different (and hopefully better) choices about how we relate to our surroundings.  If you knew that you’d be around for five centuries, how would you live your life differently?  If you knew humanity would occupy the Earth for the next ten milennia, how might that alter your patterns of behavior?  I’ve generally lived my life employing a long-term perspective, but the longest term I employ tends to be my lifetime.  While I might plan for retirement and how I’ll pay for the education of children I don’t even yet have, I don’t generally make plans that are centered on my great-great-grandchildren, because I will almost certainly never live to meet them.  Does that make them any less real, or worthy of consideration?  Maybe it does, but even the act of deciding that will require a longer view than I usually take.

Clay Shirky’s recent essay on the Semantic Web has stirred enough attention that I had non-techie friends forwarding me the URL.  I found it interesting, especially since over the last few months I’ve been working with a few sharp people on a way to address one of the points Clay touched upon.  We’re almost ready to make our work public, so watch this space for details as well as an addition to this page.

• Tantek == Spanking? was published on Sunday, November 16th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Personal, Travel, and Web categories.
• There have been no replies.

This completely and utterly rocks.  I’m going to set up a Virtual PC drive just to try it out.  But Matt Haughey’s question is worth considering: why didn’t we know about this sooner?

• One System, Many Explorers was published on Thursday, November 6th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Browsers and Standards categories.
• There have been no replies.

Robert Scoble has said that Ryan Dawson isn’t a Microsoft employee, which I all but said he was in my last post.  Robert also said that Ryan hasn’t seen Longhorn, and thus can only be making guesses about it.

My apologies for the misunderstanding concerning Ryan’s affiliation, and the nature of Longhorn Blogs, which I had taken to be a Microsoft-sponsored site.  It isn’t; it’s a community site where anyone can get a blog and start posting.  Presumably about Longhorn.

As for the rest of my post, where I expressed my concern over what might happen in Longhorn and how that might affect the Web, my thoughts were not based solely on Ryan’s post, but were instead the end product of several months of thought and information from a number of sources.  If anything, Ryan’s post was simply the trigger that got me to fully express them in public.  I hope to one day be able to point back to that post and say, “Wow, was I ever off the mark there.”  The nature of speculation is that it is often proved incorrect, and I can accept that if it happens.  I’d far, far rather be wrong than right in this case.

Regardless, we’ll get our first taste in a few days.  It will be interesting to see what people think.  It’ll be even more interesting to see if Longhorn is limited to Intel architectures or not.

• Whoa, Big Fella! was published on Saturday, October 25th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Standards category.
• There have been no replies.

I was going to talk about the CSS class I start teaching tonight at Cuyahoga Community College.  That’s been trumped.

Microsoft blogger Ryan Dawson spent a little time talking about XAML last night.  What’s XAML?

The quick and dirty: XAML is a way to create applications in the browser (or out for that matter).  For example, imagine a text editor with the rich UI of Windows, but portable in the browser.  XAML doesn’t even have to be an application; it could be your existing website in a more structured manner.

The quick and dirty (2): It is basically an XML structure with CSS and JavaScript.  The CSS defines the appearance and the JavaScript dictates behavior.

Go read it.  I have some thoughts, many of which have been stewing for a while, so come back if you’re interested.

(…pause to idly wonder if XAML is pronounced “zammel” or “camel”…)

Okay.  This all looks fantastic, although it’s less groundbreaking when you realize Mozilla already did it with XUL (“zool,” in case you were wondering, just like in Ghostbusters).  Think of it: a rich development and Web services environment built entirely out of open technologies like XML, CSS, JavaScript, and so on.  It’s like a dream come true.

Then again, maybe it’s a nightmare.  I said in “Checks and Balances“:

…the whole Eolas situation probably doesn’t have the Microsoft folks in a benevolent frame of mind regarding standards.  If they just abandoned the public Web and moved everything into a closed, proprietary sandbox of some kind, they might be able to avoid these sorts of problems altogether.  That’s exactly what I expect them to do in Longhorn, and the expectation worries me.  If the whole world moves into the sandbox—and let’s face it, in an e-commerce sense, IE/Win is the whole world—what reason would there be to pay any more attention to the Web?

We might say hey, fine, let’s get Microsoft and its partners the hell off the Web so we can go back to developing it the right way; let’s take back the neighborhood.  That would make about as much sense as rooting for Flash to be the technology used on every Web site in existence.  When one company owns the medium, everyone else loses.

These thoughts were largely fueled by rumors I’d been hearing over the last few months; those rumors were obviously about XAML.  I also wondered if Dave Winer had been hearing similar rumors when he made his famous “locked in the trunk and going over the cliff” comment about the Web.

Remember, this is a very large corporation we’re talking about here, never mind that it’s Microsoft.  They will develop technology in a way that increases profits.  Their goal is pretty obviously is to build rich capabilities directly into Longhorn, so that Windows users get all kinds of cool stuff for “free.”  Picture it: when you open the “Search” application and type “flights from Cleveland to New York,” it returns airfares for you right there in the search results box.  But from where are those airfares going to come?  Orbitz?  Not bleeding likely.  How about Expedia?  Yeah.  Just maybe.

Now, think about searching for a band like Our Lady Peace.  You get links to fan sites as well as links to buy their albums.  Who’s going to supply those e-commerce links?  If I were a betting man, I’d say a Microsoft partner.  In hotly contested e-commerce sectors, the bidding wars over those partnerships will be outrageous.  Microsoft gets the best of both worlds: a transaction fee for purchases their OS users make in the Longhorn Corral, and whatever money Amazon or Buy.com or whoever pays them just to have the chance to pay them transaction fees on those sales.

Now consider the issue of who will supply news links, which can lead to major ad revenue when users follow the link to a story.  MSN is the obvious venue, of course, and whoever’s partnering with them gets their ads on the Longhorn desktop.  So when it comes to sports scores and headlines, for example, ESPN is pretty set up—as long as they can stay a partner.  How much will that privilege cost them in five years?

And where will AOL be then, now that Netscape is effectively dead and Mozilla‘s been spun off?  As Dave Shea wrote from 2009, “AOL executives surprised to discover ‘foresight’ carelessly crossed out of their dictionaries.”  More recently, Simon Willison said:

On the negative side, this looks set to represent the ultimate browser lock-in – in a few years time when IE 7 comes as standard on new PC s I wouldn’t be surprised to see the corporate software development world moving almost exclusively to this technology – after all, it’s going to be extremely easy both to develop and to distribute and it will have all of the benefits of a web application without the downside of the restricted GUIs offered by HTML.

Exactly so.  Microsoft, having learned what it needed to know from playing in the public Web space, is now positioning itself to pick up all the e-commerce and go home.

Permit me to repeat myself: “When one company owns the medium, everyone else loses.”  Everyone from design firms to tool vendors to browser makers will have to dance to Microsoft’s tune.  We have until about 2007, maybe 2008, to prevent that from happening.  Can it be done?  How?  By whom?  If XAML lives up to its potential, Microsoft won’t need the W3C any more.  Why should they play by the open community’s rules when they can create their own very lucrative and highly controlled gated community?

I want to be wrong.  I want to think that XAML will be open, interoperable, available for anyone to hook into whether or not they’re a partner or Longhorn developer.  I want to believe that Safari and Mozilla will be able to surf the XAML sea just as effectively as Explorer.  I also remember my history, and the past behavior I recall doesn’t bode well for the future.

I’ll admit that a lot of my concern is self-interested.  If XAML locks up the Web, then I’ve got a lot of scrambling to do.  I can very likely stay employed, since CSS is apparently a big part of XAML, and probably do pretty well for myself.  I’m not sure if my heart would be in it, though.  One of the things I love about the Web is its big, sprawling, open nature.  I’ve fought against fragmentation for years; I’ve been fighting the open standards fight for longer than I care to remember—for longer than a lot of you have been working with the Web, in fact.  That all stands in jeopardy now.  I may, at long last, be caught in the crushing, extending embrace.

If that’s so, I suppose I’ll have plenty of company.

• Corralled was published on Friday, October 24th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Standards category.
• There have been no replies.