Thoughts From Eric Archive

A while back (so I’m slow), Andy Clark did a bit of digging and compiled a list of the most common ID names used to label pieces of layouts.  I’m out of step on every count except for the footer.  Does that mean I march to a different drummer?  Probably, given my musical tendencies.

Andy’s work interested me quite a bit, not least because he actually sifted through the markup of forty sites (this one among them) to compile his list.  I was also happy to see someone taking a practical approach to the question of naming conventions.  From time to time people ask me about CSS best practices.  While Andy’s conclusions aren’t necessarily the final word on naming best practices, they are a useful starting point for such inquisitors.  Some complained that by listing the ‘best’ (read: most common) names, Andy is stifling creativity, which strikes me as being faintly absurd.  Does the existence of blueprints for ranch houses stifle architectural creativity?  I mean, yeah, maybe sometimes they should, but in general I think the world is safe for Dutch Colonials and skyscrapers.

There’s certainly room for more detailed and extensive work on the subject of naming conventions, as well as other best practices (apparently people are souring on that term, but until I hear something better I’ll stick with it).  I just hope that more people do work like Andy’s, looking at what’s been done as opposed to endlessly theorizing.

Andy also mused:

Is it right to stick to ‘content’ and ‘main-nav’ for the sake of our users’ control or is that just too boring? And do we want to make it easy for others to change our precious designs on a whim?

I’m all for it; giving users the ability to restyle this site on a whim is what led me to propose CSS signatures, and employ one on this site.  Does my site design not serve your needs, or bore you?  Create something better suited to your tastes!  I promise I won’t mind; in fact, I’d like to see what you devise.  If a set of ID naming conventions does firm up, I’ll likely adopt it here so visitors can restyle my site consistently with others that use the same nomenclature.  This is, it seems to me, the least I can do.

• Elemental Nomenclature was published on Friday, June 18th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been twenty-one replies.

I hate (American) sitcoms and soap operas.  That’s a sweeping generalization, a trend that seems to be sweeping the Web of late.  No choice but to continue.

The majority of American sitcoms derive their humor—or, from my perspective, “humor”—from characters getting into embarrassing situations and then trying frantically to get out of them.  The laughs are generated by watching this person be humilated, often at length.  Generally, the humiliatee is receiving some form of just desserts: they got themselves into the situation through selfishness or arrogance or some other form of hubris, and end up paying the price.  In any event, they get to squirm and flail before our eyes and it’s funny!  Only it isn’t.

I dislike American soap operas not because they’re harshly lit and seem like community theater writ large.  I have no issues with the acting, which is actually fairly impressive in terms of the quality-to-quantity ratio.  I dislike soap operas because they’re nothing but sturm und drang, one melodramatic setpiece after another.  The number one rule is, nobody gets to be happy for long.  Anyone who does find happiness is just being set up for a major, major trauma, likely at the hands of whoever is currently making them happy.  (Although death is far less traumatic in soap operas than in real life, as people come back from the dead and aren’t even zombified when they do.  Which I suppose is good news for the power grid.)  There’s only so much of the constant chest-heaving, garment-rending dramatics I can handle before I glaze over and start to closely contemplate my cuticles.

Now why would I be talking about this when everyone else is talking about validation?  It’s a mystery, I agree.

• Valid Concerns was published on Thursday, June 17th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Standards category.
• There have been three replies.

Chris Adamson has an interesting post over at the O’Reilly Network about code in books and articles.  In summation: should code be given a special license, separate from the actual text?

While CSS isn’t code, exactly, the same basic questions apply to the stuff I’ve written.  Let’s take my most recent title, More Eric Meyer on CSS.  It contains a copyright statement that says, in effect, you can’t reproduce the book’s text, in part or in whole, without permission.  There is no distinction there between the explanatory text (“Margin collapsing is an interesting problem in some cases, and here’s why, blah blah blah…”) and the styles.  Taken literally, the copyright statement says that you can’t re-use any of the CSS I created in your own designs.

This is clearly in opposition to what I think most of us would agree is the expectation, which is that you can use styles (or code) as you see fit but you can’t take the ‘narrative’ text and pass it off as your work.  But where’s the dividing line?  Suppose that, for whatever reason, you really like one of the designs in Project 4.  We can agree that you should be able to re-use the styles presented, but a whole design?  Is that fair?  I can imagine many arguments both for and against, many of them variants on the classic slippery-slope argument.

In my particular case, the situation is even less clear.  As anyone who drops by the book’s site will discover, the project files are freely available for anyone to download.  You aren’t even expected to own the book as a condition of using them.  That makes them less protected, I would think, than if they were on a CD that accompanied the book—but how much sense does that make?  Again, I can envision several arguments on both sides of the issue.  The same questions would arise for any author that provided code samples for download, as many do.

There’s also the question of what rights can or should be granted to the reader with regard to code.  I might hypothetically make the styles all freely available to anyone, but only under the condition that attribution be given to the source (either me, the book, or both).  Wouldn’t you, as a reader, find that rather annoying?  I would.  “You mean I have to give Eric credit just to use two CSS rules that create this cool effect?”

I’ve always operated on the principle that any markup or CSS I write about is fair game, because otherwise what would be the point of writing about how to use it?  I can see it now: “use of the CSS presented in this tutorial, including any derivative works, without the written consent of the author is prohibited.”  Yeah, right!  That would be something like a dictionary prohibiting you from using any words you look up, including all modifications and misspellings.

So should books contain an explicit license regarding use of the code?  If so, what kind?  I expect readers and publishers will have different viewpoints, although the more clueful publishers probably won’t be too far away from the typical reader perspective.  There’s a part of me that wonders why we even have to be explicit about this at all—after all, there’s been a sort of tacit acceptance of code re-use to date—but in a litigious DMCA world, this is an issue that probably has to be addressed sooner or later.

As I ponder the subject, I’m currently contemplating putting all my code samples under a Creative Commons ShareAlike 1.0 license, both now and into the future, just to make sure the bases are covered.  Then again, perhaps an explicit Public Domain license would make more sense.  Which one would be better, or is there a superior approach I haven’t considered?  Let me know.

• Code Constraints was published on Monday, June 14th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Books, CSS, and Tech categories.
• There have been eighteen replies.

Earlier this morning, I obtained a Continental OnePass account for Carolyn.  She’s six months old, and she has a frequent flyer number.  Even if our schedules remain absolutely static from now until the end of 2004, Carolyn will have earned close to 10,000 miles toward Silver Elite membership before she reaches her first birthday.

I can’t decide if this frightens or amuses me.

• Air Baby was published on Saturday, June 12th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Carolyn and Humor categories.
• There have been no replies.

Yesterday afternoon, in a small court room on the twenty-second floor of the Franklin County Courthouse in downtown Columbus, Ohio, Kat and I legally finalized our adoption of Carolyn.  There were just two witnesses to this event: the legal representative for the adoption agency, and the magistrate who conducted the proceedings.  The entire proceeding was recorded using a PC to digitally capture the audio, which I thought was rather advanced for a government agency.

To get to the courthouse, we drove two and a half hours through bursts of rain and heavy interstate traffic.  The hearing took less than twenty minutes.  After taking some pictures with the magistrate, we drove back to Cleveland.  After an hour or so to rest, we celebrated this milestone yesterday evening at our favorite restaurant, Matsu, with a small gathering of friends.  For the first time in my life, I ordered a Big Boat o’ Sushi (I’ve always wanted to do that), and with the help of everyone at the table the decks were pretty well cleared.

Until now, I haven’t said anything here about Carolyn being adopted, although it might have been possible to infer it by reading very closely between the lines of some early posts.  To a large degree, this silence was dictated because the adoption wasn’t legally complete.  In a legal sense, we were just borrowing her from the adoption agency on a six-month trial basis.  During that time, we were regularly visited by a social worker who, I assume, was making sure that all was well, that she was thriving both physically and mentally, and that we hadn’t done anything that might be considered unsafe, such as setting up a crystal meth lab in the kitchen or acquiring a pet grizzly bear or something.

Where it truly matters, of course, things haven’t really changed.  Our love for Carolyn is as deep today as it was yesterday—maybe a little deeper, because as every day goes by it seems that we love her (and each other) a little bit more.  All that happened in Columbus yesterday was that the state officially and irretrievably recognized what was already true: Kat, Carolyn, and I are a family, with everything that implies.  We will share joys and sorrows, work together and play together, overcome obstacles and support each other.  We will love each other for the rest of our lives.

I’m not sure what I did to be granted such a wonderful daughter and wife, but whatever it was, it must have been really, really good.

• Adoption Day was published on Friday, June 11th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Adoption and Carolyn categories.
• There have been three replies.

Okay, Ronald Reagan died.  I got it the first six hundred times.  I grew up in the Eighties; I remember the Reagan years quite clearly.  He did a lot of good things, a lot of bad things, and a lot of ambiguous things while President, just like every other President I can remember, but frankly, at this point I think people are starting to go a little overboard.  As usual, Jon Stewart nailed it squarely (if I may paraphrase): “The ones I pity in all this are Ford and Carter. Because they’re watching this and thinking, ‘When I die, no way am I getting that.’  My advice to them: die while saving a baby.”

Still, I think the way the Liberal Media has totally ignored his death is just a travesty, don’t you?

• Reagan’s Dead? Really? was published on Wednesday, June 9th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Culture and Politics categories.
• There have been no replies.

Whether you love or hate it, “Garfield” is incredibly popular.  However you feel, though, you’re likely to really enjoy the Random Garfield Comic Strip Generator.  You can go surrealist, or try to get a coherent story out of the script—the latter actually tends to be a lot funnier.  I’ll point you to my favorite result so far, but by all means create your own (and let us know what they are in the comments).

Found via Ferrett, who got it from someone else, and so on.

• Having a Garfield Day was published on Wednesday, June 9th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been thirteen replies.

A brief sampling of vignettes from this week’s trip to Iowa City:

• I got my picture taken with a bunch of people who’d driven from Wisconsin to be at the Web Camp.  As the picture was being taken, I felt like we were all bunched together to a degree that would have made a modest person blush.  The photo makes it look like the people on my side of the group were fearful of catching contagious diseases from each other.  Weird.

• While walking around downtown Iowa City with some folks from the conference, we passed a Mexican restaurant called “Gringo’s”.  A block away, we passed an ice cream parlor called “Whitey’s”.

  Do I even have to tell you that I’m not making this up?

• Tuesday night we had dinner at an Italian place, and when the hostess asked me if I’d like some freshly grated cheese on my entreé, I said I would.  “Just tell me when,” she said as she started.

  There was a short pause as she grated away.  “More?” she inquired.

  “You bet,” I replied.  “Did you ever see the TV commercial with the huge pile of—”

  “Oh, yes,” she said with authority, still grating.  “At my last job, that’s all anybody ever said to me.”

  “I think that’s enough,” I told her.  “And thanks for so thoroughly shooting down my lame, unoriginal attempt at a stupid joke.”

• Iowa City, and for that matter the Cedar Rapids airport, are dotted with “Herkeys”, which are four-foot statues of the local sports mascot that have been ‘enhanced’ by various artists.  The statue outside the Museum of Natural History, for example, was covered in fur and titled “Bigfoot Herkey”, while the one in the airport sports a business suit, travel bag, and cell phone.  What I found interesting is that none of the Herkeys I saw had been structurally modified, either by addition or subtraction, but were simply decorated in some fashion.  I wonder if that was a participation constraint, or if perhaps the mascot is so revered that nobody even considered performing artistic surgery.

• Just past the Museum of Natural History I glanced up at the roof of a building to see the American flag at half-mast.  I actually had to think about it for a second before I made the connection, but I thought I’d check.  “That’s to honor Reagan, I assume,” I said to Mark Hale, the conference organizer.  “How long are flags going to be lowered for him?”

  “I heard thirty days,” he said.  “Although I think ten of those might be in memory of the Democratic Party.”

• Live From Iowa! was published on Wednesday, June 9th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor, Speaking, and Travel categories.
• There have been six replies.