Thoughts From Eric Archive

Lists seem to be my topic-of-the-moment, but this is about a different kind of list.  It’s hard to believe this, but it was a year ago today that the mailing list css-discuss was launched.  By my slightly rough count, the list carried 17,455 messages to its subscribers in calendar year 2002, and has nearly reached 19,000 messages total.  Just over one thousand of those messages were sent in the first eight days alone, which sent a lot of early subscribers running away in horror, and caused me to wonder if I was going to be crushed by the flood.  Due to overloading problems, we had to switch servers twice before finally migrating to the current home, graciously provided to us by evolt UK.  The list averages about fifty messages per day, both at present and as a lifetime average,.  Even though we moved the list to a new server and required people to actively re-join the list at that time, it has nearly 1,500 subscribed accounts.

I’ve worked hard to keep it a practical list with a high degree of signal, and I’d like to think those efforts have paid off.  We have the occasional hiccup, and every now and again a thread gets out of hand, but overall I think the list has been a lot more worthy than not.

I’d like to extend my deepest thanks to John Allsopp of Western Civilisation, which provided the list its first home; to John Handelaar of Userfrenzy and evolt UK, who manages the server where the list now resides; and to all the members of the css-discuss community, who make it useful through their contributions, discussions, and continued respect for one another and the list itself.  No community can be truly great without active support from its members, and the members of that list are very active in making it the kind of place I’d hoped it would be.  My thanks to you, one and all.

• A List, A Year, A Look Back was published on Friday, January 24th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been no replies.

Douglas Bowman ruminates over the use of list elements (i.e., <ul> and <ol>) as the basis for navigation links, tabbed interfaces, weblogs, and just stuff in general.  Is it okay to use an unordered list to hold the lists that drive your site?  Should a weblog just be an enormous ordered list?  If you do those things, does the semantic meaning of the list change to the point that it’s no longer really a list?

Well, kell co-ink-e-dink!  Tonight’s talk at COMMUG deals almost entirely with ways to take lists and restyle them to get panels, tabs, flowchart-like structures… pretty much everything Doug was talking about.  I’d even been planning to talk a bit about the semantic joyride such approaches can mean, at least to some people.

So here’s the short version of what I think: looked at a certain way, pretty much everything can be represented as a list.  The U.S. Census, the Solar system, my family tree, a restaurant menu, the stuff I did yesterday, all the friends I’ve ever had and lost—these can all be represented as a list, or a list of lists.  So the question isn’t really whether we should be putting all this stuff into lists.  The question (at least at this stage of the game) is whether or not the markup structure meets the job, and helps with accessibility concerns.

Now, should we have markup structures that meet the jobs more closely?  Maybe.  XHTML 2.0 has the <nl> (nestednavigation list) structure, which comes closer to making the markup name match the structure’s intended role.  I’m not convinced this is necessary; it’s already possible to just take nested lists and turn them into menu systems using CSS, assuming a sufficiently capable user agent.  It’s still a topic worth consideration and exploration.

• Listing Toward the Future was published on Thursday, January 23rd, 2003.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been no replies.

Just when I thought it was all going to go to smash (and of course it probably will anyway), a tiny sign of sanity has peeked its head out of the murk to give me a moment of hope.  A lawsuit alleging McDonald’s is responsible for two consumers’ obesity has been dismissed.  Oddly enough, suddenly I have a craving for a McDonald’s hamburger.  With fries.  Mmmmm….

Of course, it’s absurd to think that fast food is good for you, and I’m not trying to say that it is.  I worked at a very busy McDonald’s for a couple of years, so I know what goes into that stuff.  It’s not healthy.  I don’t think it’s supposed to be, and in fact the offering of salads and yogurt at McDonald’s still gives me moments of cognitive dissonance.  The whole super-sizing trend isn’t the greatest thing to hit the waistline, either, and it seems to be moving into the home.  But nobody’s forcing us to super-size anything.  We choose to go for the Big Gulp, and Value Pack, the Combo Deal, the what-have-you outsized portion.  We could as easily choose not to go for them, if it were important to us.  In the meantime, people should stop blaming nebulous external forces for everything wrong in their lives.  Personal responsibility may be a neglected art these days, but it’s one well worth reviving.

Speaking of junk-ish food, did you know that if you leave rainbow sprinkles in a vanilla milkshake overnight (in the refrigerator, of course!), they semi-disintegrate into a sort of sandy, crusty consistency?  Neither did I, until lunch today.  And for those wondering why I would be drinking a milkshake in our current weather, the nightly lows are still positive Fahrenheit values, so it’s not all that cold.  Besides, a really good milkshake is worthwhile in any weather, and Dottie’s makes really good milkshakes.  Not quite as good as Tommy’s, perhaps, but still really darned good.

If you’re in the central Ohio area and would like to see some fun stuff done with lightweight markup and creative CSS, remember that I’ll be speaking at the Central Ohio Macromedia User Group meeting tomorrow evening at 7:00pm.  We’ve made sure to leave time for audience questions, so come on down!

• Hold the Pickles was published on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Politics and Speaking categories.
• There have been no replies.

For those who have interest in my physical-world activities, I’ve posted updates to the Speaking page.  In two days I’ll be presenting in Columbus, Ohio, and two weeks after that I’ll be speaking here in Cleveland, so you Ohio folks get plenty of opportunities to come heckle!  Details on both talks are now available, and while one of them isn’t free, it’s still pretty darned cheap to get in.  Usually when I present, it’s at some conference that costs you an arm and a leg to attend.  Speaking of which, I’ve filled out the details on my SxSW panel, so if you’re going to be there and want to know more, check it out.

• See Me… Hear Me… was published on Tuesday, January 21st, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Speaking category.
• There have been no replies.

Peter Janes wrote in to point out that if I’d bothered to follow the “Official site” link on IMDB.com, I would have found the Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter Web page (part of the Odessa Filmworks site) and from there found out that the Special Edition DVD streets in the United States in eight days.  For $19.95.  With 30 minutes of outtakes and deleted scenes.  I think I need to lie down for a minute.

Shoot, having a copy of the “Star Wars Scat” sung near the end of the film is reason enough to buy the thing.  Thanks to Eclectic DVD, I can.

Oh, and don’t forget the free JCVH desktops!

Lest you think I’m a rabid fanboi here, bear in mind that I was chuckling as I typed out all this stuff.  This film is goofy.  It’s obviously a labor of love, and shows many a spark of talent.  The musical number was fall-down funny (in more ways than one, the end-credit outtakes reveal) and the ranting prophet in the bushes was genuinely odd.  If you’re uptight, this movie almost certainly will offend you, but of course that’s one of the things I liked about it.

Good thing the Bible is in the public domain, though.

• Ask and Ye Shall Receive was published on Monday, January 20th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been no replies.

So last night Kat and I headed down to the Cinematheque to meet up with Ferrett, Gini, and Jeff to see Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.  Wow!  It was… well, it was… I mean to say, it… it’s not really describable.  But it was quite funny.  I might pick it up on DVD if it ever comes available.  As Ferrett said on the way out, “Oh, I can’t wait for the commentary track for that one.”

Meantime, the recent ruling on Eldred v. Ashcroft sparked a lot of debate on a computer book authors list to which I belong.  I stayed out of it for a while, because I didn’t have much to say, and then suddenly—as is often my wont—I realized I had something to say after all.  So I said it, and I figured, what the heck, I could say it here too.  So if you want to know what I think about copyright terms, feel free to read away.  If not, no sweat.  It’s automatically copyrighted either way, as it happens, and now nobody else can say the same thing for more than a century, or something like that.  How much sense does that make?

I still don’t know why I think so, but this is darned cool.  I’m probably just jealous I didn’t think of it first.

• Oh, There’ll Be Plenty was published on Sunday, January 19th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the CSS, Personal, and Politics categories.
• There have been no replies.

Mark your calendars, Potterphiles: June 21st is when Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix is due to be released.  The book will come in at a svelte 255,000 words spread out across 768 pages, using a smaller type than previous books since sticking with the same type would have put the book at about 960 pages.  Even so, assuming the growth trend continues and the type doesn’t get any smaller, my rough calculations show the seventh book will be a bit over 436,000 words and 1,314 pages long.  It’s a bold new concept in fantasy writing: you’ll be able to experience the last year of Harry’s schooling in real time.  Just like being there!  Only with you sitting in a chair reading.

How have I gone this long without encountering Clagnut?  It’s the kind of design that I can sort of vaguely see in my head when I sit down to do something, but when I do it, the end result is never as good as I thought it would be.  Richard Rutter apparently has the ability to see things clearly from the start, and carry them through until they’re done so that they look as good, or better, when finished.  Although I do see some rendering differences between browsers due to box model problems, they somehow don’t really detract from the site’s appearance.  I’m seriously thinking of modifying some of his ideas for a theme here.  It’s about time I put together a presentation option that significantly modifies the layout, instead of just recolors the basic one.  “Wo hu cang long” was a faltering start down that path, but it’s not enough.

• Dirty Harry! was published on Wednesday, January 15th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been no replies.

I’m feeling better, thanks.  About most things, anyway.

If you’re seeing layout or other rendering bugs on this site in Safari, as some people have said they are, please use the bug icon in the browser to report the problem.  I can’t run Safari or else I’d report problems myself.  Apparently there are some weirdnesses with the navigation links in the sidebar, if nothing else.  Whatever problem you see, it’s worth reporting, so please do.

Most of you probably already know that Mark Pilgrim is upset with XHTML 2.0, and many of you may be aware that Tantek and Daniel Glazman are in agreement.  I’m broadly sympathetic with their frustrations, but since I was never that thrilled with XHTML in the first place, I can’t get too worked up about the breaks between 1.x and 2.0.  I never really got why HTML had to be reformulated as XML.  Yes, I’ve read all the arguments about later ease of conversion and all that.  I suppose there was some good in easing authors into XML authoring habits using a language they mostly recognized.  That just didn’t seem like enough.  This site has been, and continues to be, HTML 4.01 Transitional for a reason.

I do broadly agree that XHTML 2.0 is way too unrealistic for its own good.  It outright drops too many things authors find useful, like the style attribute (although I admit I’m biased there) and heading elements.  For that matter, yes, Virginia, there is a difference between abbr and acronym, so dropping either one seems like a mistake.  On the other hand, if this stuff was deprecated instead of eliminated, I’d have many fewer points of concern about XHTML 2.0.  I’d be worried that the deprecated stuff would be dropped in the next version of XHTML, but XHTML 2.0 would bother me less.

Then again, given that you can take XML and CSS and create your own documents out of whatever markup language you can invent, and use XSLT to bridge the gap between old browsers and new ones, I find XHTML to be of minor import.  If it gets too ivory, then it will be ignored, and some other XML-based language will take it place.  Or, more likely, lots of markup languages.  Either way it will be interesting, and the XHTML 2.0 advocates won’t be able to blame anyone else for the explosion of non-interoperable languages.  Which, I suppose, is the point of all the sturm und drang of late.  If XHTML 2.0 were interoperable with XHTML 1.1, people wouldn’t be nearly so upset.

Wow… all this concern over making things work together.  Can it be that the Web is getting all growed up?

• Agony and Ivory was published on Tuesday, January 14th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Browsers, Standards, and Web categories.
• There have been no replies.