Thoughts From Eric Archive

In just under a couple of weeks, the fifth annual NOTACON will be held right here in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio.  You’re going, I know; you’re super-über-cool like that, and you don’t need to be reminded of your coolness.  But I’d like to mention the show here for posterity, so that our descendants will know just how completely they missed out.

Notacon straddles, like a Colossus built entirely out of recycled motherboards, backtech chips, and loops of soldering wire, the middle ground between regular conferences and BarCamps (though Notacon predates BarCamp by a couple of years).  It’s not free to attend, but it is very inexpensive.  What it lacks in slick advertising and corporate sponsors, it makes up ten times over in raw, unfiltered geekiness and fascinating material.  This is the kind of event where presenters will hold forth on the depths of digital security, the physics of wireless networking, homebrew chip architecture, the coolness of HyperCard, online society dynamics, and more.  There’s a running contest called Anything but Ethernet, where you get bonus points for having one of the links in your network architecture incorporate barbed wire.

Yeah.  It’s like that.

The speakers will be as wildly diverse as the audience.  The lead engineer for the C64 Direct-to-TV (a C64 in a joystick!); the man behind The Daily WTF; some of the folks putting out 2600 magazine; the woman behind CrochetMe.com; and many more.  I’ll be there as well, talking about the bleeding edge of CSS and web design, ripping apart some recent projects of mine at top speed while discussing where I think we’ll be in three years.  Plus Drew Curtis of FARK fame will be back, as he always is, this year sponsoring a FARK party.  The mind fairly boggles.  Boggles!

As you’re no doubt gathering by now, it’s hard to describe Notacon in a quick, concise summary—and that’s a big part of what makes it so awesome.  For my contemporaries: see you there!  To you future historians: okay, you missed out, but drop everything right now to find out when the next one is and I’ll see you there!

• Notacon: Not to be Missed was published on Monday, March 24th, 2008.
• It was assigned to the Cleveland, CSS, and Speaking categories.
• There has been one reply.

If there’s a downside to becoming a cyborg, it’s the aftermath.  I’m not talking about the dystopian corporate-state shenanigans: those are fully expected.  No, it’s the painkillers that really suck.  They basically do their job, but at the cost of mental acuity.  That is not a trade I’m happy to make.  Granted, there were some interesting physical hallucinations that came along for the ride, but that’s nowhere near enough to balance the scales.

Here’s what I mean on that last part.  At one point yesterday, lying in bed as I had been all day, I decided it was about time to straighten out my legs, which were crossed at the ankles and starting to feel a little funny.  When I sent the relevant signals to my legs, nothing really happened.  Slowly I came to realize that nothing was happening because my legs weren’t actually crossed at all.  Furthermore, it gradually dawned on me that if the sensoria I’d been getting had been correct, it would have to mean that my legs were not only crossed at the ankles, but also attached to my body backwards.

So anyway, I thought I’d write up some of my observations (thus far) regarding IE8 beta 1.  What?

I’m going to say basically the same thing I said about the first betas of IE7: test and report, but don’t fix.  That is to say, you should absolutely grab it and run it across all your own sites, and all your common destinations.  Find out what’s different, broken, or just plain strange.

But don’t start searching for workarounds.  Not yet.  Submit bug reports, yes.  Boil down the problems you hit to basic test cases and submit those, if you like.  (I do like, but I’ve got kind of a history with that sort of thing.)  Just don’t think that beta 1 represents what we’ll face in the final release.

No, I don’t have some sort of inside track; never have.  That conclusion simply seems obvious to me just by looking at how this beta acts.  For example, there’s no support at all for :first-line and :first-letter.  That’s not just a glitch.  That’s a lack of support for a CSS feature that’s been present for three major releases.  I just can’t see that omission persisting to final release.

Another problem I noticed is evident here on the home page of meyerweb.  In the sidebar, each list item has a left margin and negative text indentation, creating a classic “outdent”.  Like so:

#extra .panel li {margin-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;}

In each of those list items is a link of some kind, usually text.  The fun part is this: the hanging outdent part of that text isn’t clickable.  So the first couple of letters of each sidebar link are inactive.  They’re colored properly, but do nothing if you try to click them.  If you click on the active part of a link, the focus outline only draws around the active part.  And, for bonus yay, scrolling the page will wipe away any outdents that are offscreen.  So as you scroll down the page, you end up with all the sidebar links having their first few letters chopped off.  Whoops.

Again, that’s something I just can’t see going unaddressed in the final release.

In both these cases, flipping IE8 back to IE7 mode makes the weirdness go away.

I’ve seen more serious problems on the wider web.  Google Maps is currently busted beyond any hope of usefulness in IE8, as many have reported.  Also, I came across a site where loading the home page just locked up IE8 completely.  I had to force-quit and relaunch.  Every time I hit that page, lockup.

Flipping to IE7 mode allowed me to browse the site without any trouble at all.

These things, taken together, have really driven something home for me: there really is a new rendering engine in there.  I don’t just mean in the sense of fixing and adding enough things that the behavior is different.  I mean that I believe there’s truly a whole new engine under the hood of IE8.  And if the Acid 2 results and public statements of the IE team are to be believed, there’s a whole new standards-based rendering engine under that hood.

That’s kind of a big deal in any event.  The last time I remember a browser with an extended release history replacing its old, creaky, grown-over-time, crap-piled-on-crap engine with (what the browser team felt was) a new, improved one was the transition from Netscape 4.5 to Netscape 6.0.  And remember how well that went?  Yee haw.

I really shouldn’t be surprised about this.  Chris Wilson, for example, used the exact words “our new layout engine” during the WaSP roundtable (transcript).  I guess I’d been assuming that was verbal shorthand for “our much-improved version of our old layout engine”.  I guess I was wrong.

So I would personally argue that this release was mislabelled.  This is not a beta release.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s an alpha, even under the kinds of old-school naming conventions I prefer.  I’m not going to go around calling it that, because that would just be unnecessarily confusing, but it’s how I’m going to think of it.

Now I’m wondering just how long it will be until final release, given the kinds of distances one usually sees between alpha and final.

Unfortunately, I just took the 6pm set of painkillers, so I’ll be wondering at about one-third speed.

• Drugs, Bugs, and IE8 was published on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008.
• It was assigned to the Browsers category.
• There have been twenty-one replies.

As dinner came to a close, Carolyn asked if she could have yogurt for dessert.

“Sure, sweetie,” I said.  “What flavor do you want?”

“Banana.”

“Okay, sure.  Go ahead and get a cup from the refrigerator.”

“Banana cake!”  She started giggling.

“Wait, I thought you wanted banana yogurt.  We don’t have any cake.”

“I know,” she said as she walked into the kitchen, “but I want some banana cake.”  Judging from her tone, this was the most painfully obvious fact in the world.

“Um, okay.”

She came back to the table, yogurt cup in hand, and started wrenching back the foil top.  With the way clear, she picked up her London cabbie spoon—a gift we brought back from one of our rare trips away from her—and splunked it in.

“This is banana cake,” she said gleefully.

“Wow, you got banana cake?  Cool.  It’s pretty handy that it comes in a yogurt cup like that!”

She leaned toward me and said, conspiratorially, “I’m just pretending it’s banana cake, but it’s really banana yogurt.”

“Ah, got it.”

“Banana cake!” she chortled once more.

I looked across the table at Kat and said, grimly:  “The cake is a lie.”

• Cake Fake was published on Thursday, March 13th, 2008.
• It was assigned to the Carolyn and Humor categories.
• There have been eighteen replies.

For those of you using Microsoft Expression Web, a free pre-release trial version of CSS Sculptor for Expression Web was announced by the WebAssist folks on Wednesday at MIX08.  So now you don’t have to put up with those snooty Dreamweaver users throwing you the mëtäl hörns every chance they get—throw ’em right back!  Røck!

If you’re curious about CSS Sculptor, I posted in some detail about it when it was first released in August 2007, and there’s of course plenty of enthusiastic copy about it on the WebAssist site.

One thing that’s different about the Expression version as compared to the Dreamweaver version is that it doesn’t have an “Apply” button to apply the input CSS ito the preview window.  Instead, changes are instantly reflected in the little preview.  It’ll be interesting to see how users react to that, since it could mean that the previewed design shatters as the CSS is updated, and then snaps back together upon further changes.  Is that good or bad tool usability?  Hard to say; it could scare people into undoing the shatter-change and never pushing forward, but it could also help users more quickly gain a deeper understanding of CSS by seeing how things come apart and then go back together.  I guess we’ll find out!

• Expressive Sculptor was published on Thursday, March 6th, 2008.
• It was assigned to the Projects, Tools, and Web categories.
• There have been six replies.

I woke up this morning (duh DAAAH dah DUH) and yesterday’s announcement was the first thing on my mind.  No doubt it’ll be a recurrent topic, at least for a little while.

One of the takeaways is what this change demonstrates about the IE team:  standards is and was their preferred default.  If it weren’t, they just would have found a way to square the IE7-default behavior with the Interoperability Principles announced late last month (slightly tricky but entirely possible).  That they initially chose otherwise speaks volumes about the pressures they face internally, and their willingness to publicly change direction speaks volumes about their commitment to supporting standards.  While I’m sure community feedback informed their decision, they pretty much knew what the reaction would be from the get-go.  If that was going to be the deciding factor, they would’ve chosen differently up front.

So what drove that change?  I keep coming back to two things, both of which were explicitly mentioned in yesterday’s announcement.

The first is, perhaps obviously, the previously mentioned Interoperability Principles.  Head on over there and read Principle II, “Support for Standards”.  If that isn’t a solid foundation on which to build an internal case for change, I don’t know what is.  I’m wryly amused by the idea that the IE team used the Interoperability Principles as a way to batter their way out of the grip of those internal pressures I mentioned.  The former aikido student in me finds that very satisfying.  True, the Principles came under fire for being just another set of empty words, but it would seem that they can be used for at least some concrete good.

As for the second, there’s a phrase repeated between the two announcements that I didn’t quote yesterday because I was still pondering its meaning.  I’m still not certain about it, but having had a chance to sleep on it, my initial reading hasn’t changed, so I’m going to quote and comment on it now.  First, from the press release:

“While we do not believe there are currently any legal requirements that would dictate which rendering mode must be chosen as the default for a given browser, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel.

And then in Dean’s IEblog post:

While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue.

Okay, so they’re on message.  And the message seems to be this: that Opera’s move to link IE development to the larger EU anti-trust investigation bore fruit.  I was highly critical of that move, and unless I’m seriously misreading what I see here, I was wrong.  I’m still no fan of the tone that was used in announcing the move, but that’s window dressing.  Results matter most.

Speaking of Opera, there’s another side to all this that I find quite interesting.  So far, the reaction to Microsoft’s announcement has been overwhelmingly positive.  The sense I’ve picked up is, “Hooray! IE will act like browsers always have, and the problem is solved!”.

But is it?  The primary objection raised by Opera and several members of the community was that version targeting is an anti-competitive move, one which will force browser makers like Opera and authors of JavaScript libraries to support an ever-increasing and complex web (sorry) of rendering-engine behaviors in the market leader.  So far as I can tell, the change in default behavior does next to nothing to address that objection.  The various versions will still be there and still invoke-able by any page author who so chooses.  Yes, the default will be better for authors, but I don’t see how things get any better for Opera, Firefox, Safari, jQuery, Prototype, et. al.

Perhaps I’ve missed something basic (“Again!” shouts the chorus).  If so, what?  If not, then why all the hosannas?

• Principles and Legality was published on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008.
• It was assigned to the Browsers and Standards categories.
• There have been thirty-one replies.

Now here’s something I didn’t expect to see when I woke up this morning:

“Microsoft Expands Support for Web Standards: Company outlines new approach to make standards-based rendering the default mode in Internet Explorer 8, will work with Web designers and content developers to help with standards behavior transition.”

Seriously, that’s the title and subhead of Microsoft’s latest press release.

About halfway through, there’s this from Ray Ozzie:

…we have decided to give top priority to support for these new Web standards. In keeping with the commitment we made in our Interoperability Principles of being even more transparent in how we support standards in our products, we will work with content publishers to ensure they fully understand the steps we are taking and will encourage them to use this beta period to update their sites to transition to the more current Web standards supported by IE8.

See also the IEblog entry Microsoft’s Interoperability Principles and IE8, where Dean Hachamovitch says:

Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do.

We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action.

In other words, the IE team seems to have used recent Microsoft PR efforts to their, and our, advantage.

I’m relieved and glad on the one hand, and a little worried on the other.  It’s not like the issues I discussed, or Jeffrey wrote about, have gone away.  It’s just that the way in which they’re handled by IE has shifted—which in some ways is a huge difference.

I think what worries me most is the possibility that when the public beta hits, there will be enough incompatibility problems that pushback from other constiuencies forces a change back to the original behavior.  I hope not.  I hope that what will happen is that any problems that come up will be addressed by spreading the news far and wide that there’s a simple one-line fix for those sites.

I’m glad that IE will act as browsers have always done, and default to the latest and greatest in the absence of any explicit direction to the contrary.  I’m doubly glad that the IE team is willing to do that, even knowing what they have to handle.  And I’m triply glad that the proposal was made in public ahead of time, with plenty of opportunity for debate, so that we could have a chance to weigh in and affect the browser’s behavior.

• Meta-change was published on Monday, March 3rd, 2008.
• It was assigned to the Browsers and Standards categories.
• There have been forty-seven replies.

As we drove from preschool to dance class, a gentle snowfall blurred the more distant houses and cars like a thin fog.  Jack Johnson was quietly serenading us when up ahead, without warning, two white-tailed deer appeared from a treeline on the right and darted into the street, their hooves skidding slightly on the slick pavement.

“Oh, look, sweetie!  Do you see the deer?”

“Deer!? Where?” I could hear her leaning out of her booster seat to peer through the front windshield.  Within moments, the does made it off the pavement and bounded across the half-shoveled sidewalk to vanish into the subdivision.  Brake lights winked off and cars sped up to reclaim the precious, precious seconds lost to this sudden intrusion of nature into late-afternoon suburban routines.

“Did you see them?”

“Yeah”, she said distantly, still craning to look.  “Where did they go, Daddy?”

“They ran between those two houses”, I said, gesturing toward the driver’s side window as we passed the spot.

“Do they live there in those houses?”

“No, sweetie, deer live in the woods.”

“Then what are they doing in between the houses?”

“They’re probably looking for food in people’s yards.”

Silence fell for a moment.  I spared a half-glance toward the back seat and caught a glimpse of her in my peripheral vision, a half-formed vision of intense concentration.  In my head, I quickly ran through everything I knew about deer from my years of rural living, preparing for the expected questions about what deer eat and when they sleep and where their houses were.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Why did the deer cross the road?”

• Deer Trap was published on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008.
• It was assigned to the Carolyn and Humor categories.
• There have been eleven replies.

I’m going to follow the lead of the Airbag crew and mention publicly that, as per the decision I reached last March, I will not be attending SXSWi this year.  I thought about posting to that effect a few months ago and decided against it—what, am I supposed to post about every conference I’m not attending?  That doesn’t exactly scale.

But there really is something different about SXSWi.  It’s the annual tribal gathering for our field and a couple of related fields, or at least is the annual tribal gathering who aren’t freaky/insane/hardcore enough to hit Burning Man.  The default assumption is that you will be in Austin in March, which is actually a symptom of the conditions that led me to opt out this year.

I can sum up why I’m not going in just a few quick bullet points (and if you’re going to attend any panels, get very used to bullet points):

• I can’t concentrate above a certain noise level
• I don’t function well in large crowds
• I don’t drink alcohol
• I’m not single

There is a last selfish reason to go, which is to see a bunch of friends and acquaintances I don’t get to see other places.  Only SXSWi has grown so incredibly huge that I didn’t really get to do even that last year.  There were people who were there the whole time I was that I never saw, like Matt.  I don’t mean that I didn’t have enough time to talk with them, either.  I mean that at no point did photons scattered by their bodies land on either of my retinas.

Don’t get me wrong: SXSWi is a huge buzz.  You can get a geek high just standing around soaking up the ambient energy, and you never know who you’re going to run into.  I once shared a cab with Cory Doctorow and Lisa Rein without, I think, any of us really knowing who the others were until halfway through the trip.  The opportunities to meet and greet and get to know people of every kind are just incredible.  Like I said, it’s a tribal gathering.

So there is of course a part of me that’s sad I won’t be there, because the great thing about SXSWi is the people, both those I know and those I don’t know yet.  There’s a much bigger part of me, though, that’s glad I’ll be spending those five days at home with my family instead of feeling frustrated and lonely in a crowd notably bigger than the town where I grew up.

Anyway, if you’re going and especially if you’re going for the first time, I urge you to pay special attention to the wisdom of Mr. Bag:

Want to meet that OMG OMG OMG blog A-lister?! Fine, just go do it. Nobody, and I mean nobody in this industry is so huge that they can’t be bothered to say hello and shake your hand. And that’s it, done.

To which I’d only say “that OMG OMG OMG blog A-lister” should be replaced with “anyone who interests you”.  Blog A-lister, design rockstar, code guru, startup maven, whoever.  Just go up and say hi and spend a few minutes chatting.  It’s totally cool.  In fact, it’s kind of the point.

• South Bypass was published on Friday, February 22nd, 2008.
• It was assigned to the Travel category.
• There have been sixteen replies.