Time keeps on turning; today it’s my birthday, and I turn 31.
My birthday wishes? Since eternal life for me and all my loved ones, being invulnerable and economical freedom to do anything I want seems hard, if not impossible to accomplish, I then wish for health, happiness and more time together with my wonderful family and friends.
My web-related wishes are:
More skills
I want to get better at what I do, especially when it comes to the accessibility area.
Meeting people
Since I started blogging, I’ve gotten in touch with a lot of interesting people, famous internet personalities as well as unknown cool persons, that are way too many to mention here. I really wish for a chance to meet all of them in real life one day!
Getting a reply
I hope Derek Featherstone will send me a reply to some questions I e-mailed him a while ago (Sorry Derek, this is such an internal one :-))
Have a nice day, everyone! π
PS. Tommy linked to me yesterday, calling me a “A voice of reason”. I just love being labeled as that! π DS.
PS2. Since I feel extra Santa Clausy today, I offer a GMail invititation to anyone that writes a comment. I use it personally and think it’s the best webmail on the market. Having a 2.5 GB mailbox with POP 3-access really does it for me. π DS.
First, I guess you need to check the description of equilibrium in the dictionary. Done? Great, let’s go to my rant.
I get tired when people criticize the hell out of Microsoft all the time, just for the sake of it. I’m not a Microsoft lover, and I do think they definitely deserve some of the bashing they get. But take a look at these examples:
Microsoft bundles their own web browser, IE, in Windows
While Microsoft are in courts, trying to not get the company split up, Apple bundles their own web browser, Safari, in Mac OS X. No one says anything.
Microsoft includes Windows Media Player in Windows
Microsoft has to battle in the European Union Court to find a compromise. Concurrently, Apple includes iTunes in Mac OS X, and I don’t see anyone raving about that either.
How long will it take before someone sues Microsoft for having the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer in Windows XP (and the same time no one will even mention iPhoto)?
I know Microsoft are huge, I know some of the things they do stifle competition. But to me, either something’s good business practice or bad business practice, no matter who does it. So please, give me a break; be consistent (and have some self-distance) when it comes to your criticism.
Last week was a lot of hard work for me. We had a deadline and it was, to say the least, a little bit chaotic (I think my contract forbids me to disclose any further details, which is probably for the best). Pretty long days, not too long, but every minute was very intense. But Friday night I came home and was met by beautiful smiling daughter, being happy to see me and just laughing along.
At that moment, I thought:
Fuck web standards; to hell with accessibility; who cares about semantics anyway.
Let’s focus on life!
Hmm…
Kind of a Molly-esque post, don’t you think (with that I mean writing about something beautiful in life)?
For a long time I’ve wanted to write about the PDF format, this post idea has been in my drafts list for a while. But if one hesitates, of course someone else beats you to it; this time it was Joe Clark. He recently wrote an article for the redesigned A List Apart: Facts and Opinions About PDF Accessibility.
The article has aroused many reactions, and amongst them are Tommy‘s interesting Et Tu, Joe?, which raises the never-ending discussion that accessibility isn’t only about disabled, and making a web site accessible to disabled isn’t supposed to be done with the cost of decreasing the functionality/availability of the web site for others.
But back to the PDF trail. Joe writes:
The complaint that you have to use a “special program” to read a PDF document is bogus. You’re already using a special program to read an HTML document. It’s just that you use that program so much it no longer seems special.
While this might be true, to me it doesn’t justify opening an application whose footprint is two to three sizes bigger than the web browser itself just to view a document that could’ve easily been coded with HTML (this is the case when using Adobe Acrobat, I know there a lots of other options, but most people seem to be using Adobe Acrobat for it). Jakob Nielsen finds PDF:unfit for human consumption and Charl van Niekerk states PDFs Considered Crap.
Personally, I definitely think there are cases when PDF files are the right format for the task, but generally they are/have been terribly overused on the internet. However, now at least we have a guide how to make them accessible when we have to use them, thanks to Joe.
PS. This is my third post today. Am I on fire, or what? π Granted, not very long posts, but still! Make sure you don’t miss the other two. DS.
The interface is quite trimmed and sleek and I like the look of it. I miss emoticons, though. π
Also, I guess I need to add this to my list with speculations about the future of Google.
Last night I went to see the Swedish edition of the Mamma Mia musical, which is based on the music of ABBA. The evening was a gift from my parents in law so they, me, my girlfriend Fredrika, her brother and his girlfriend had a nice dinner before we went to the Cirkus arena.
Fredrika and I saw it in London in 2000 so it was especially interesting to see it on home turf now, here in Stockholm. I love the music of ABBA and the composers Benny Andersson and BjΓΖΓΒΆrn Ulvaeus are, to me, pop music geniuses. The show is great and we had a really pleasant evening!
It was also some time since I saw a musical, and every time I go I really feel glad that I did. When I worked in New York City, I tried to see a few musicals on Broadway, and the ones that really stand out are Phantom of the Opera and Jekyll & Hyde, the latter with former Skid Row vocalist Sebastian Bach.
Musicals are a great experience, seeing actors/musicians in real life! I really should go as often as I do to concerts.
At the end of July, there was a huge fuzz when Microsoft released beta one of its upcoming version 7 of Internet Explorer and it basically just contained new interface features and two CSS bug fixes. As a web developer, I was very saddened by this in my review, but only a few days later, Chris Wilson wrote a post about all the standards support goodies beta 2 will have (and yes, I agree with what many people have said, beta 1 should have been called alpha since it was far from feature complete).
And this got me thinking: from a business perspective, why should Microsoft care about supporting web standards? The reason Microsoft had to release a new version of Internet Explorer is because other web browers, I guess mostly the ones in the Mozilla product suite (Firefox etc), gained some user percentage and attention. But to the end user, seeing the new additions added to beta 1 of IE, that should be enough to slow down/stop people from switching to its competitors. I mean, most people don’t give a damn what web standards a web browser supports. Like above mentioned beta 1: if it contains tabs, popup blocking and RSS support like the other web browsers being available, while being as secure as well, that should be sufficient.
People started using other web browsers than IE because of security flaws and lack of some features, not because they weren’t satisfied with how IE handled standards.
Most users’ demands on a web browser is that its secure, contains the interface options they like and that web sites work in them. With the sorry state of most web pages out there today and Microsoft being allowed to bundle IE in Windows, I think, business-wise, that what they added in beta 1 would be enough to maintain most of the web browser market for a long time. End users don’t need more proper web standards support in their web browser than was implemented in IE 6, until most web pages are properly coded and take advantage of (or even, in some cases, rely on this to give the user the maximum experience of the web site in question) the things possible with CSS 2.1, correct DOM event handling and so on.
Don’t get me wrong here, I for one is very happy that Microsoft has decided to improve its standards support, and I guess we owe our thanks to the dedication of the IE developing team. But a part of me can’t help thinking that it wouldn’t have been necessary to keep their web browser market share.
My detox from blogging and being a stat whore is over for this time; it has been a well-needed rest, and I feel eager to get going again. The first two weeks, the weather in Sweden were suckier than ever, but the last week was spent on one of Sweden’s “large” islands, Öland, and the weather was perfect.
The initial bad weather, however, didn’t disturb me at all. I had two goals with my vacation; spend time with my daughter and girlfriend, and read books. And these were basically the only two things I did the first two weeks. I haven’t used a computer at all for three weeks and hardly no TV watching either. And it felt great! To me, life without computers feels like time better spent, more quality to it. At least if you use the time playing with the cutest kid ever, and drifting away in imaginary worlds in books! π
This is the fifth book of seven in Stephen King’s magnificent Dark Tower opus. Only two books left now, and I just ordered the sixth one before I wrote this post (and waiting for the seventh one to be released as paperback, I really prefer that format). Incidentally, two persons who I really respect seem to be hooked on the series too, although they seem to have completed all seven books (Roger about books , Tommy’s summer summary)
Now I’ve read all four of Dan Brown’s novels, and I started reading him just before the The Da Vinci Code-hype (although that book being the first I read from him). Of course his stories might stretch the truth sometimes, and it can get a bit annoying when his characters are extremely handsome and supersmart and brave like no one else alive etc. But if one looks past that, the books are also exciting and grip your attention. Personally, I like Angels & Demons the most of his books.
Anyway, now I’m back and boy, do I have a lot of things to write about! Tomorrow, I start working again and I have to get back in the loop with things, so expect my next post on Tuesday 23rd. And oh, it’s about Microsoft, so don’t miss it… π
, which is based on the music of ABBA. The evening was a gift from my parents in law so they, me, my girlfriend Fredrika, her brother and his girlfriend had a nice dinner before we went to the