I printed it and took it with me on the train home last night, and so far I’ve read about one third of it. The level is good, and I think it will appeal to seasoned web developers as well as people new to the business. The interview with Shaun Inman was especially good, and I wish that piece had been a lot longer.
I’ve been a bit busy lately, and therefore haven’t written about things I wanted to. So here’s a little sum-up of three things I think deserve mentioning:
I’ve used it for a little while, and it offers functionality as good as the one that can be found in the Web Developer Extension for Mozilla-based web browsers. However, what I really like about this one is the screen ruler; it’s a great way to fast measure an element’s size or similar, without resolving to making a screen dump and check it in Photoshop or to have a third-party program. What I also love with it is to automatically get an outline for elements, only when hovered with the mouse. The two gripes I have, however, are lack of keyboard shortcuts for tasks like validating the code (or hell, even View Source!) and that if I have displayed the screen ruler, it sometimes seem to hijack the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + R after that (which I use for reloading a page).
I’m sure it’s a cool product and a great gadget, but it disturbs me that Steve Jobs for a long time has said that he doesn’t believe in it, the last time in a statement two weeks before its release.
The value of a blog
There’s a very hypothetical way to calculate how much a blog is really worth. Nevertheless, it’s always interesting to speculate! 🙂 Apparently, this blog is worth somewhere between $ 40 000 and $ 65 000. A decent amount for having written it for seven months in my spare time, purely out of interest. 🙂
For my Swedish-speaking readers: this morning I read two columns I really liked, one funny and worth a second thought, one very strong and emotional. So, I though I’d share them with you here:
Man, it’s been itching in my fingers to write again! Last week, I really wanted to post a couple of posts, but didn’t, since I wanted maximum attention on the previous post, the letter to WaSP. But here I go again!
Friday last week, I took the train down to Gothenburg for a meeting. And not the fast train, no, I went on the one that takes five hours from Stockholm. My Project Manager calls it the Orient Express, and with all rights; you get to see every part of Sweden before you reach Gothenburg. All different kinds of people will get on the train, you’ll pass through parts that stink of manure and through “towns” you didn’t even know existed. But actually, five hours isn’t as bad as it sounds. One gets the time to read a book and other things, listen to some music and generally just chill.
Trains are really my preferred way of traveling, if not going by car is an option. It’s usually pretty comfortable, one can walk around, there’s a restaurant where one can get some food and drink and the toilets aren’t as cramped as on an airplane (however, I’ve never heard about any 2-metres high club for getting it on in a train bathroom…). However, doing number two isn’t really a walk in the park when the train lurches, take it from me…
The reason I went to Gothenburg was for a meet-up with a company to discuss web standards and accessibility in their product. Also present at the meeting where Roger Johansson and Kalle Wibeck (Kalle, get your blog going now, here’s your first link :-)) and a representative from another Swedish company. It was great sitting down with Roger and Kalle since they’re really into what they’re doing and they definitely know what they’re talking about.
The product developing company we had the meeting with had asked for us specifically, and I really want to applaud this company for taking such a measure, that they care so much about their product that they make sure that the web standards, CSS and accessibility aspects are also as focused on and equally important as the product’s other areas. After sitting down for a number of hours with these guys it was pretty clear to me that this company is most likely going places. It was a long time since I met such ambitious people, and hearing them talk about their product with such love and dedication was truly inspiring.
Afterwards, we went for pizzas and beer at a restaurant called Mezza luna (what else kind of place would IT people go to calm down? :-)) and had a good time. Thank you to the company paying for beer, and thank you to the one paying for the pizzas. The ever-friendly Roger and his lovely girlfriend Pernilla was kind enough to put me up for the night, and Saturday morning I got on the train to go back home again. On the train there was this really talkative guy drinking beer and talking to his friends about different concerts, how drunk you should be to get the most out of a gig, and about other things. He seemed like a harmless and nice guy, but the sheer volume he was talking with got a little bit overwhelming after five hours…
Finally back home, I played around with my daughter. It’s always hard to be away from her and with her seeming to have actually missed me, it felt even better to be back! Sunday, my friend Veljko arrived from Serbia (thanks for the beautiful gifts!) and he spent the afternoon together with me and my family. Great having him here again!
What company we met up with? That’s a story for another day… 🙂
A couple of weeks ago, Paul Scrivens posted the 80/20 And The Design Blogosphere piece, which has its origin in a post by Cameron Moll back in April 2004. Basically, it’s about who were the big names then and who were influencing a lot of the majority of people out there.
I occasionally frequent a couple of those web sites mentioned in the list, but definitely not 80% of them. However, people’s blogs that I do try to follow on a regular basis are:
I have to confess that I really liked the X-Files. Sure, not all episodes were up to standard, but when it was good it was really good. One needs these kind of mysteries, these things we don’t understand. We need to ponder, to have our conspiracy theories, just for the sake of it. So when it finally ended, a void arose that needed to be filled.
It took some time, but then Lost came along. And if you ask me, it’s splendid! It was long time since I heard so many theories about a show, and found so many web sites discussing every little detail of every episode. I’read about the most unlikely tie-ins, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them were true.
I’ve seen the whole first season and recently saw the first episode of season 2. Man, was it good! I can’t wait to see the next episode!
Yesterday I found out about the company clear:left, which consists of web developing pro’s Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith and Richard Rutter. These three are extremely experienced and have had a great impact on web developing. If I were working for a company in the UK, this is the company I’d contact for web development work.
I wonder what they charge, though… However, quality costs, and in the long run you will definitely save a lot of money if the job was done properly the first time around.
This made me wonder if there should be a Swedish equivalent of such a company, one with the best people we have to offer in this field. I know what people I’d like in that compnay (but that I won’t tell)…
So what do you think? Should there be a Swedish company with the big names we have?
Finally, the Opera web browser is for free. That means no more ads, no nothing. I expressed my opinions about Opera almost six months ago, and except for the getting paid-part, I think the other arguments still stand.
However, what’s good about this is that Opera, most likely, will see an increase of users, and this is what I like. If web-standards compliant web browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Opera gain more and more market share, this will force web developers to write valid and correct code, instead of just relying on Internet Explorer’s error handling for code that should’ve never seen the light of the day.
I can just imagine projects where there will be conversations like:
- My code only works in Internet Explorer! Crying
- That's because you didn't do the job properly
the first time! Stop writing such sloppy code
to begin with, and learn your profession!
I guess the future will tell…
Anyway, if you like Opera, rock on! Download away and have a good time!
And there we go again. Recently, Microsoft has made a lot of good decisions, especially when it comes to collaborating with WaSP about having their products, such as .NET, generating more valid and accessible code. This also includes in getting their next version of Internet Explorer to implement a better support for web standards and CSS. All this is great news and very good for the future. The developers at Microsoft seem to really try to do a good job.
But then Steve Ballmer comes along with this quote in Business Week:
We won the desktop. We won the server. We will win the Web. We will move fast, we will get there. We will win the Web.
This has already been discussed by, amongst others, Molly and Roger Johansson. And yes, I know that Ballmer is a business man, he’s got to have this cocky attitude.
But the problem is, especially in light of all the good things Microsoft have done recently, these kind of statements just ruins the goodwill created, it just annoys people who have recently started to think about changing their opinion about Microsoft and to forget the past.
Ballmer is probably just doing this to spite, or to get Microsoft investors all aroused. But please, some balance…
I’m such a copycat. But hell, if something’s good, I want to take part of it as well. I’m now officially a member of the 9rules Network.
Recently, two high-profile bloggers in the form of Molly and Roger Johansson joined, and that’s when I really got my eyes opened for the 9rules Network. I read up on it, and checked out the other members. Liking what I saw, I got in touch with mastermind and 9rules Network CEO, Paul Scrivens, to discuss about me becoming a part of it. And now I am!
I’m constantly looking for getting the greatest exposure possible and for ways how to increase the traffic to this web site, and this seems to be an excellent approach.
Make sure you check out the 9rules Network and its other very interesting members!
Always wondered where the term bug came from? Been pondering what debugging is about? Well, here goes:
One day in the 1940s, Harvard’s famed Mark I–the precursor of today’s computers–failed. When the Harvard scientists looked inside, they found a moth that had lodged in the Mark I’s circuits. They removed the moth with a pair of tweezers, and from then on, whenever there was a problem with the Mark I, the scientists said they were looking for bugs. The term has stuck through the years.
I though I’d share a little book-tip for those of you who speak Swedish: Stockholmssägner.
The structure of the book is something like the movie Short Cuts, with short stories about many different topics that intertwine with each other.
It’s a very interesting take on our society as it is today, from the little wonderful things to cynicism. Written with a lot of self distance and, at times, a great sense of humor.
Also, you don’t have to live in Stockholm to appreciate it, only difference is that you’ll recognize some names and places if you do.
Why do we have to fight to be allowed to make things right? I mean, really? Look at all the web standards advocates out there, fighting to get their message through; People lobbying for stylesheet-driven web sites and accessibility.
And all these battles are not about trying to have something in line with cool scripts animating things all over the page, not about doing something to show off to your friends. These things are about keeping development costs down, vastly reducing bandwidth usage by having all presentation in CSS files that will be cached in the visitor’s web browser, and reaching a lot more potential customers with web sites that are accessible.
I can’t believe I’m using my spare time, as do many other very talented persons, fighting to get the message across. Everyday, there are web sites/blogs all over the internet showing you how to better adhere to web standards, to write the leanest and most efficient CSS and tutorials and recommendations how to reach a higher accessibility (thus also gaining goodwill as well, which will result in even more business).
But we’re met by a wall of decision makers and Project Managers that just don’t understand what it’s about (or are to weak to take the discussion), tool manufacturers whose products deliver terrible code because they lack the skill to do it correctly and it’s too much of a hassle to learn and to eventually set things right (because no one asks for it).
I mean, even Microsoft, with its history, understands the importance of this. Next version of Internet Explorer will have a greatly improved web standards and CSS support, next version of the .NET environment will encompass web standards and accessibility improvements and their MSN Search is the only search engine out there that delivers valid XHTML code and where the presentation is contained in its own CSS.
Of course Microsoft still has a long way to go, but at least they’re on the right track. And if they can go through this, with their immense size as a company, what holds you small companies back from upgrading your skills? From learning how things are supposed to be done and how you will make much more money? From having some tougher demands on your web developers and tool manufacturers to deliver something that isn’t ghastly?
If you agree with me, give me a “hear, hear”, put your foot down and tell your managers that this can’t go on anymore. It’s business suicide to be in the web development business producing web sites, without even having the know-how or even interest in creating a good, effective front-end layer.
I had plans about writing another post today, but I just though I’d check my RSS feeds first. I was taken aghast of what I found in the feed from the Autistic Cuckoo: a goodbye note.
Tommy’s writing and support has meant a lot to me, and I find him to be one of the most eloquent bloggers out there. He has authored many very important articles and has had a great affect on the web developing community. I think that Tommy could write about just anything and I’d be spellbound with how he masterfully plays around with words.
I recommend everyone to visit his web site and to browse around to find the golden nuggets that are there to find.
Tommy, I won’t try to persuade you to start writing again. However, the link in my blogroll will definitely stay put, as a tribute.
Hmm… Well, it doesn’t look good, does it? I wonder if this is just a way to sell even more songs through the iTunes Music Store? Anyway, I guess this guy feels a little bit stupid now. 🙂
Ok, maybe I’m trippin’-flippin’-smoking mushrooms here. Those of you who come here to solely read about web developing, and don’t want to know a rat’s ass about me or my personal opinions will probably be scared away. But hell, I’ll try anyway.
Still with me? Good! Here’s the deal: I love movies. I always have, I probably always will. So my idea here is to have very short reviews of movies on a part of this web site, with the possibility for you to comment on what you thought about it, if you want to recommend it to someone else and so on. And the point with this is definitely not about being pretentious, it’s just about sharing movie experiences.
I think that you, my readers, are a very broad spectrum of interesting and cool people, so I really want to know about your takes on these movies. No registration needed, just express your opinion.
Yes, I know that the Star Wars saga, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and their likes aren’t in that list. If you miss them, or want any other movie reviewed, just contact me through any of the means mentioned in my About page.
On the other hand, if you’re only interested in movie reviews, you can check back any time at the movie page.
That’s all for now. Please write at least one comment on one of the movies! 🙂
PS. These first reviews are extremely short, probably since I was writing them all at the same time. In the future when I write more reviews (if anyone comments and appreciates these reviews, that is), they’ll most likely get at least a little bit longer. DS.
I’ve done my research, pondered my options and my conclusion is: just say to no to 608X.
Now you’re probably thinking: What’s this? What the hell have I missed? Is this some new standard that should’ve known about? Haven’t I done my job properly? Is there an upcoming vote?
Calm down, you’re doing just fine. 608X is a new “direct” bus from the suburb I live in north of Stockholm, Vallentuna, in to the Stockholm city center. There’s at least 14 stops on this “direct” route and under the best circumstances it takes 52 minutes (given no traffic problems whatsoever). Now you’re probably thinking:
Whoa, Robert, you live far away from the city.
Thing is, I don’t. It’s only about 30 kilometers and we’ve already got a train that only takes 25 minutes to the city, and to get the to the place where the bus stops, it’s about 10-15 minutes walking or by subway. So, before this fall when they introduced the bus route, it took about 35-40 minutes to get where I wanted. But now they’re telling me that they’ve found the perfect way, now they will breathtakingly improve my commuting.
Sounds like the release of a software company, or the Emperor’s new clothes…
But fear not, my fellow Vallentuna citizens! The train’s still there and it still goes (a lot) faster and is more comfortable. So say no to 608X. 608X sucks (or “608X suger”, as we would say here in Sweden).
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.
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? 🙂 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. 🙂
Also, I guess I need to add this to my list with speculations about the future of Google.
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! 🙂
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… 🙂
Yes! Finally! Time for summer vacation! Unlike my friend Roger, I will not be away for five weeks, but I hope my “mere” three weeks will get me rested too. No computers, just spending time with my family and friends and having a great time doing it.
During this summer, I’ve been an eager beaver(eh… or something), so while I’m away I’ve put together a list for you with good reads (or you can just browse through the June and July summaries, or go to one of the most popular posts listed to the right).
The other day, Molly asked Why We Blog, but I was too tired to write a comment then so I thought it deserved a post now to explain my view on it.
First, and foremost, I do it because of my very strong interest in web developing. I want to stay on top of things that are happening in the web world, and I love that I have the opportunity to have a job doing something that’s actually my hobby!
When I first started out learning how to develop for the web, there were, already back then, many web sites with information, tutorials and discussions that helped me become a better web developer. Most people that I got in touch with were eager to help and very humble about it. Now that I have 6-7 years under the hood, I feel ready to start giving something back, and I really hope that people gain knowledge and perspective from my blog.
Another reason that motivates me is getting comments that actually make me laugh out loud (not just writing the nowadays almost mandatory “lol” in a chat or something similar), things like Krijn’s comment and Chris’ comment. Make me laugh and you’re my friend, life’s too serious anyway!
Which leads me to the topic of writing posts that aren’t about web developing. I do it pretty sparsely, but there are times when I want to write about a concert, something funny or about anything else that I like to share. I don’t see this blog as a web development-only one, I also want to share other parts about me and I hope I entertain you while doing it! 🙂
Something I regard as being very important when you blog is to show the common courtesy to reply to people’s comments and e-mails. It doesn’t matter if you’re a high-profile blogger with thousands of visitors every day, your visitors are one of the reason you are there in the first place. I think that one’s obliged to answer serious e-mails to you, when time is given, even though you’re stressed and feel that you have no time. No need to write a novel, just a sentence or two to acknowledge that you’re read their question, criticism or what it may be.
Some rockstar bloggers are still very humble and good at this, Molly being one of them, and some aren’t.
My opinion is: show respect and you will gain respect.
Conclusively, my dear readers, I hope this blog helps you in web developing and that you also find it amusing from time to time. Thanks for reading!
Yesterday, when I got out to take my bike to the train station, I realized that I had a flat back tire. Well, shit happens, so I took our worned out borrowed second car instead. No sweat.
After I’d worked for a couple of hours, it was time for my team’s 10.00 meeting. It was with the Marketing Director of the company where I’m currently doing some consultant work, a semi-large and well-known company here in Sweden, with around 1500 employees in the nordic countries.
I was sitting in the meeting room when the Marketing Director came in, held out his hand to me and said:
-Hi, good to meet you, Johan.
(Say what?)
-Eh, well, my name is Robert.
We shook hands, and the introductory part of the meeting was over. We talked for maybe an hour or so, planning a new web site and the development for it during this Summer. At the end of the meeting, he turns to me, and says
-So, Patrik, when's your vacation?
(Surely, he must be kidding now)
-Robert. My name's Robert.
-Uh, oh well, sorry.
Worked for about an hour after that and then we went to lunch. We frequently go to a pasta/salad place that have really good food, and usually I use my credit card to pay. Since it’s a pretty small restaurant, it’s stressfull (naturally), so their routine is to take the credit card, swipe it when the line’s gone and then return it to your table, and for you to sign the slip.
After lunch, we walked back to the office in the tremendous heat that has been present in Stockholm for about two weeks now. Once back, trying to get out my key card to get into the office, I realize that I never got my credit card back…
A 20 minute walk later, sweating fervently now, I got the credit card back and once again went back to the office.
On the way home from work, it’s always a hassle since the commuting company here in Sweden, SL, have very few departures per hour since everyone and his mother here go on vacation in July. I got out of the subway and walked briskly to the train station. The train was already in and I ran to the door and pressed the opening button. Nothing happened. Then I saw the conductor board the train through one of the other doors and it left. Next train was due in half an hour…
I’m normally pretty intense and engaged in what I do, people usually notice me. I like to see myself as the Henry Rollins of web developing (sorry for the comparison, Henry :-)).
Ever had one of those days when it seems like no one notices about you? Like you don’t do any impression at all?
Of course there are many obstacles in the way, and most likely the products won’t be perfect. But still, it’s such a good initiative and if it only delivers half of my hopes the web will be a much much better place!
I was actually smiling on the way home from work yesterday, after finding this out. WaSP and Microsoft, please make me smile in the future too.
PS. I really like Summer and all, but this morning, when I was riding my bike (“riding my bike” sounds a hell of a lot cooler than “bicycling”) to the train station, I got a bug the size of a B 52 in my eye. After a long train ride it finally just came out of my eye, and my colleague was astounded by the size of it… DS.
An old colleauge of mine, Oscar Berg, has started blogging. Oscar is well-experienced as a Business Analayst and Usability Designer, and I have to admire him for finding the time to start blogging with having two kids (and a third on the way).
He is one of the people behind the initial launch of the hugely successful hitta.se, and I actually wrote the very first HTML prototype of it. But unfortunately the company that owned the technical part of the project decided that they knew enough to code the interface themselves. If you look at the web site’s code, apparently they didn’t…
Anyway, for those of you interested in the business perspective on things, I strongly recommend a visit to his blog.
I’m back! Feels good to be home again. Actually, I’ve been home a little bit over a week, but that week has been spent going to a party with my new employer, attending a wedding and also starting at my new job. During that week, I have also been building and setting up our Rome trip web site, optimized for IE 4 and later (just kidding, ok?). We had a great time and you can find travel stories, pictures and video clips in the web site!
Since people found out that I had come home again, they started asking me when I was going to start blogging and write my next post. This makes me really happy, to see that people appreciate my writings!
A friend of mine, Per at Gamepepper, pointed out to me that I have at least reached #3 in the Lifecycle of Bloggers. 🙂
However, I must confess that I’ve flirted with a lot of the other points as well…
I have come to the conclusion that I won’t be writing a new post every day, Monday – Friday, but maybe somewhere around 2-4 posts per week. This is not due to not having enough topics to cover or lack of motivation, rather just that I have to spend more time with my family and doing other things than just sitting in front of the computer (no, this is not a faux “retire”).
Also, writing every day has lead to some people missing a few of my posts, since they just don’t have the time to visit my web site/read the RSS feed every day (however, what would be more important than that, I have no idea… ;-)).
So, with this move I hope my posts will become better and I aim to write really interesting pieces in the future!
I would be very happy if you were to write a comment what you think about the Rome trip web site, or my move to writing fewer (and hopefully better) posts!
Update! For you web developers out there: Resize your web browser window in the Rome trip web site and look at the dynamically sized masthead image. Also, take notice of the fixed navigation bar that even works in IE 5!
The old saying is true! I’m going to Rome with my family tomorrow and we will stay there for eight glorious days! I really need to spend more time with them and less with computers, so it feels good with a break. No blogging, only carrying (extremely heavy) luggage around (and seeing and doing amazing things, of course :-)).
I’ll be writing my next post in the beginning of June, don’t know any exact date. I recommend that you subscribe to my RSS feed to find out when I’m back in the saddle.
While I’m away, I recommend browsing through my categories to find something that interests you. Some of my more popular posts, and the ones I feel most content with, are:
Yesterday, I peaked again! Roughly 1270 unique visitors (or around 2100 counting the RSS feed as well), which makes me very happy. Anne, I’m coming for you! 😉
But to be serious:
Yesterday I saw many first-time visitors and I welcome you here! I really hope I will be able to write and discuss things that will make it worth for you coming back here. I write daily Monday to Friday about web developing, and sometimes I share some of my code in RobLab.
Don’t hesitate to contact me with suggestions or questions, or just to have a chat!
Sooo…
Last Tuesday I resigned from my job. I will stay with them until May 24th to fulfill some of my obligations, have some vacation and then start working for Know IT June 5th. This is something I really look forward to and I’m really eager about it!
Of course everything is relative, but the plan (for the moment), is that I will be working with packaging their CMS offer where they use the EPiServer product, and I will also be doing some general consulting work developing assorted web GUIs.
I hope to be creating stunning web interfaces that are based on CSS, semantically correct and at the same time addressing accessibility concerns.
Today I want to share a revelation I’ve just had: there are so many talented Dutch developers out there! I just wonder why it is so. Normally, it seems to depend on the climate of people’s country; for a natural reason Sweden has got a higher percentage of web developers than Italy (this is merely an educated guess, I have no numbers to back it up).
But the Netherlands? Sure, they get their fair amount of rain (and flowers, windmills and clogs), but I see no apparent reason why skilled people seem to be concentrated there. They have, as far as I know, a pretty warm climate otherwise.
Dutch developers whose blogs I try to read frequently are:
Recently, I confessed about my flirting with Mac, and right after that I got the chance to go all the way. An Art Director in the company I work for resigned, and I got (read:took) the opportunity to take over his Power Mac G5 with the Panther OS installed and 1,5 GB RAM. In short, a very competent computer.
Some more cynical people would say that it is a case of “knowing your enemy”, but that’s definitely not the way I see it, I was just very interested.
However, the things that bothered me was:
Dialogs
Since I’m really a keyboard shortcut freak, not being able to tab in dialogs beween “Save”, “Don’t save” and “Cancel” was really annoying.
The keyboard
I really like the look of the white keyboard, and it’s as nice to touch as patting a puppy, but in the long run I didn’t like typing on it. This might be because I normally use the ergonomic Microsoft Natural MultiMedia Keyboard.
The necessary connection to a PC
I have the need to develop things in Visual Studio.Net, and using the Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac to connect to my PC proved to be to too slow (over a 100 Mbit LAN), definitely a lot more sluggish than the equivalent Remote Desktop Connection built in to Windows XP.
It also resulted in other keyboard combinations to write characters like >, {, [ etc, which just became utterly confusing in the long run.
Why I didn’t use Virtual PC for Mac is because I already had the development environment I wanted on my PC, and that I didn’t want to compile things in an emulated environment.
Developing tools
Except for Visual Studio.Net, I really think Macromedia HomeSite is superior to BBEdit for writing web interface code.
Maximizing windows
To the contrary belief that PC users have their application windows maximized just because they don’t know how to change it, I really prefer having them maximized. It helps me keep focused on the thing I’m doing for the moment, and then I just use Alt + Tab to swith to any other programs I need to work with.
Closing of windows
I just find it weird behavior to keep the application running when I close the last window in it.
What’s up with the Command key (the one with the apple on it)?
Is it really necessary to have this key? Isn’t Ctrl, Alt and others sufficient? Or is to make up for the lack of an Alt Grip key?
All in all, it didn’t suit me for developing purposes, but I would have nothing against using a Mac for entertainment purposes at home.
Now when I’m back with Windows XP, and now sporting the silver color scheme, it feels just right! 🙂
PS. Thanks to Per Zimmerman at Gamepepper for helping me finding where different characters actually were on the keyboard, as well as the discussions about a real environment vs. an emulated one. DS.
This won’t be the normal kind of off-topic Friday post. It’ll be a post of gratitude towards the people that have inspired and helped me in my blogging.
First, I’d really like to thank Roger Johansson and Tommy Olsson who have been an immense help and source of ideas, both in comments and off-the-blog in other kinds of conversation. Their writing is truly spectacular,well-balanced between important information and teaching while keeping a respectful relationship and attitude towards the people they mention in their posts.
Something else that has been extraordinary inspiring is when people whose material I frequently read and have been strongly affected by, have come here and read and commented on my posts! To have had visitors/commenters like Molly, Milan Negovan, Faruk Ates, Jeroen Mulder and their likes have been truly amazing!
Also, an extra thank you to frequent commenters Dejan and Box.
Naturally, I’m really very grateful for all you other visitors and commenters too, that haven’t been mentioned above, and for the people that have linked to my web site.
Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have tips and/or opinions!
PS. Next (probably less sentimental) post will be on Monday. Have a nice weekend! DS.
On Monday, it was disclosed that Adobe acquires Macromedia. I have mixed feelings about this. I like most of Adobe’s software and some of Macromedia’s. And I definitely prefer the different Adobe GUIs over Dreamweaver’s.
What I (amongst with others) fear is that the competition in the market will diminish. The well-needed competitive balance was needed between those two. And what programs will they choose to move on with? Photoshop will, undoubtly, still be the there. As will Acrobat. But what will happen with Illustrator and Freehand? Adobe SVG Viewer and Flash? GoLive and Dreamweaver?
And what will they do to my beloved editing program, HomeSite?
What do you think? Is this good or bad? Will it be to our gain or is it as if Microsoft would buy Apple (well, they did save Apple financially in the past, but let’s not go there…)?
I really don’t understand why vector graphics haven’t taken off more. The power of vectors, to have lossless quality no matter what size something is and smaller code seem to me to be the saviour of GUIs. A long time ago, at the end of the year 2000, I created a prototype web site for a client that contained very advanced graphs and other vector-based elements based on VML (an introduction to VML), which was very exciting! For once, I’m going to say something nice about IE and that is that I really like the built-in support for VML. This, of course, led me to believe that instead of using old bitmaps on web sites, we’d have vector graphics all over, graphics whose content could be updated on-the-fly with scripting. Vector graphics that would also dramatically decrease the size of all web pages.
Sure, Macromedia Flash has gotten more and more popular, and Adobe have their SVG Viewer, but these two need plug-ins to work. I’m amazed that vector graphics still aren’t an integral part of the current web browsers. The SVGrecommendation was released in January 2003 (also incredible that it didn’t happen sooner) and Mozilla are working on implementing built-in support in future versions and Opera plan to have it in Opera 8.
Another interesting thing is the upcoming Avalon rendering engine in the upcoming version of Windows, which will be vector-based.
I’m just baffled that it took so long for companies to realize the strength of it.
I just have to say that Apple‘s image, design and software really seem to be the way to go. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a PC user and I’m not about to change, given certain developing tools, more software available etc for a system with Microsoft Windows (some of the reasons in Why Windows Users Won’t Switch To The Mac may also be applicable). Also, I find it terribly pricey.
However, I have been flirting with Macs for some time now since they seem to have some kind of attraction power trying to lure me in.
First of all, when it comes to the hardware design there’s, in my humble opinion, no one that even comes close to it. I find it unbelievable that no other company has ever been near Apple when it comes to design. How hard can it be?
I’m not saying that design is easy, but what I’m going for is that I can’t believe that no other company can match the Apple design. The main reason they’re so popular is their design, so it really should be desirable for other companies to beat Apple in their own playing field. I mean, compare this with these (and I really do like Dell‘s computers, but design-wise compared to Apple: come on!).
I also think the Mac mini is a great design idea, although its performance isn’t really spectacular.
With the gargantuan success of iPod, which has even been appointed to be one of 5 inventions to change your life by CNN Money, it has had an enormous effect on the market. I own one myself and love it. Plus it’s probably the closest I’ll get to owning a Mac. But many other users have taken the plunge, it seems:
The survey, which polled 400 consumers, found that 19% of PC iPod owners have purchased a Mac in the past year
When it comes to software, I really like the look and feel of Mac OS X, and I wish I didn’t need Apple hardware to use it. The interface just seems more intuitive than, for example, Windows and it’s also good for the world to see that something can look good and be functional.
I think it’s great if Apple gets more popular, I would have no problem seeing them having a 10% or 20% market share. Just as with web browsers, I’d really like to see several actors with about as much users as the other, for a level playing field and more incentive through competition to be better.
Just as a short follow-up to Why XHTML?, I thought I’d give you some read-worthy links to posts about it, and also bring up companies’ attitude towards it.
What I wonder is if companies really care about the level and quality of interface code they deliver, no matter if it’s HTML or XHTML.
As long as it doesn’t break miserably, it doesn’t matter. I used the Blogger service before swithcing to WordPress, and Blogger were always very quick to answer support mails, and during outages they seemed to work hard and efficiently to fix it.
With that said, I got a little saddened by something they wrote in a reply to my question about that the comment interface didn’t generate valid XHTML. The thing is, their templates (at least the ones I used) were coded using XHTML 1.0 Strict, so naturally I wanted my pages containing comments to be well-formed too.
Their reply:
However, unless it
is actually breaking functionality somewhere in Blogger or causing true
accessibility issues, it will likely be treated with a low-priority.
I think this symbolizes the general attitude of many companies: if it doesn’t break, it isn’t really that important if it is correct.
Let’s fall back on forgiving web browsers instead. But this might turn into a problem if browsers in the future will demand correct code to render it correctly.
What do you think? Are the companies right when it comes to this prioritizing, or is this exactly the attitude that holds the web back from evolving?
So finally I have my own domain! A big thank you to Henrik Box at southside.se who has been hosting my different projects during a long time!
This move will, except for an easier domain name, mean enchanced stability and functionality. I’ve left Blogger and started using WordPress. Blogger was a bit shaky and couldn’t offer all of the functionality that I was looking for, so a switch of blogging tool was due.
Search functionality is available in the sidebar to the right and all posts are categorized. I guess many of them will be labeled General, but still I hope it will distinguish certain posts from the rest, e.g. posts about XHTML.
The new commenting system requires of you to enter your e-mail adress, however it’s just for my sake and will not be publicly displayed nor given out to anyone.
It’s stability is a vast improvement from the previous one, and the color coding will hopefully make it more easy on the eye to read.
Given the discussion in Why XHTML?, this page is using content negotiation, which means that it serves XHTML 1.0 Strict as application/xhtml+xml to those web browsers who are capable of handling that, and HTML 4.01 Strict to those who aren’t.
Please let me know what you think about the new design, functionality and, of course, the content. If you find anything that doesn’t work, please let me know.
My blog peaked yesterday, with roughly 1100 unique visitors. It may or may not sound a lot to you, but it’s an amount of visitors that I’m very happy with (especially since I’ve only blogged for about a month).
So thank you everyone for visiting, commenting and linking to my web site!
Hopefully I’ll keep on writing about things that interest you and that makes you think it’s worth coming back here again.
PS. Kudos to one of my colleagues that used his brand new PSP through W-LAN to navigate to and read my blog! DS.
Regarding the problem the movie industry faces with more and
more people having broadband internet access, learning to download
movies etc, it seems like they have finally reacted in the right way. They want to create the movie equivalent of Apple‘s iTunes.
Personally,
I don’t think the witch hunt for people that download movies (or music,
for that matter) is the way to go. They gravely underestimate the sheer
amount and power of the downloading community. I don’t think they’ll
ever be able to eliminate illegal downloading that way, all they gain
is disrespect and hate for their actions that are overly tainted with
greed.
Of course they want to make money, of course they don’t
like when people download their movies without paying for it. Totally
understandable. But I think the only way for them to “win the
battle” or at least turn it around a bit, is to offer really good
downloading services for a really good price. And given the money they save on distribution, staff costs etc they will still make money, trust me.
In these times of information overload, RSS
is the only alternative for me to stay on top of things. It gives me
the opportunity to read information from about twice as many places as
navigating to the web sites. The possibility to just skim through
headlines and short descriptions really helps me find what I really
should read, as opposed to wasting time seeing banners, trying to
understand 30 web sites navigation structure etc.
So what does
RSS stand for? The mostly used definition is Really Simple Syndication
(which is also the definition for it in RSS 2.x), but for the format
RSS 0.91 it stands for Rich Site Summary and for RSS 1.0 it stands for
RDF Site Summary.
First of all, most (if not all) blogs have some kind of RSS feed (as does mine),
to make it easy for returning readers to see if anything has been
updated or if today’s/this week’s topic seems interesting enough to
read, and so on. But nowadays most news sites and other web sites
use it as well, because it offers a good way to reach out to more
visitors and also giving them another option.
Personally, I use Sage,
which is an extension to Firefox, to able to, in an easy and fast
manner, go through the updates in the RSS feeds I follow. Just press
alt+s and you get it as a sidebar, without interrupting your general browsing.
So how do I know if a web site has a RSS feed? Most of the web sites offering RSS feeds have an icon, similar to this: , and in Firefox you get an orange icon in the bottom right corner, indicating that a feed is available.
As
a developer, you can also make the feed available by inserting a link
tag in your first page/all of your pages, like this example for the
Sage project site:
In my previous job I worked for a company that have offshore development, mostly for bulk programming purposes to keep the costs down. And not in any of those more common offshore places like India or Russia. No, their offshore development is in Belgrade, Serbia.
All the developers I’ve met/spoken to in the Belgrade office are very nice, but in my opinion it hasn’t really worked out yet for them in their collaboration (due to a number of reasons that I won’t go into here).
At least in my opinion… The seminar I went to yesterday was mainly about Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0
that should officially be released this fall. Through the years I’ve
gone to a number of seminars, and I’ve always thought that Microsoft are very professional when it comes to holding seminars.
Like yesterday: A nice venue (SF Skandia
in Drottninggatan in Stockholm), good snack options in the breaks, nice
and not too pushy Microsoft partners standing outside the hall with a
considerable amount of candy…
But also because the speakers were professional, especially Johan Lindfors who I find to be a good
and enthusiastic speaker without being to perky and colored by his company. When it comes to speakers, I prefer that they come across as an individual, and not just
like a puppet preaching blindly about their company, and yesterday I got a positive experience when it come to this.
Unfortunately the seminar was too little about web development for me, but I guess I have myself to blame not reading the agenda carefully enough to see that ASP.NET 2.0 wasn’t mentioned. Apparently, they’ve had seminars about that prior to
this one, but I’ve been to busy with other things to notice those. So now, when I had the time, it wasn’t a 100% right.
Anyway, it was interesting to hear about the news in the developing environment, the possibility for different roles in a project to perform their tasks through Visual Studio Team System, especially when it comes to testers who seem to get a very good environment. I was also happy to see that SQL Server 2005, among other things, offers a lean way to format XML through PATH (previously, it has, for me, mostly been about getting XML as XML RAW and then formating it with XSLT. An unnecessary step, so I welcome the new formating options).
Overall, as a developer, I have to say that I’m impressed by Microsoft’s .NET venture. I really think it’s a step in the right direction and the simplifying and possibilities that are offered to developers are very very good. Sure, ASP.NET doesn’t generate perfect code, for instance you can’t generate valid XHTML and it bothers me with their BrowserCaps that has the notion that Internet Explorer is the most superior web
browser and that all others should be served HTML 3.2 and can’t handle
any on-thy-fly changes.
But it seems they’re going to solve this with ASP.NET 2.0, at least when it comes to theformating of the generated code from WebControls.
Also inspiring to see that SQL Server 2005 uses XML Schema according to the W3C recommendations, that C# is standardized by ECMA and so on.
The only area where they appear to think that they’re above standards is with their Internet Explorer and its shortcomings. My big hope is that they will really face this problem with IE 7, and then maybe there’s hope!
Excuse me for generalizing now, but basically every girl/woman I’ve worked with has either been a developer with the ambition of becoming a project manager, a project manager that previosly was a developer. Why do all women want to become project managers?
We’re not talking about some woman that has gone through an intensive course, started to work and then realized that it didn’t suit them. No, no, we’re talking about women that have studied different technical educations in universities during many years. Did they get tired of it already while studying but went through with it and completed their education just to have an examina to lean back on? Or did they always nuture the plan of just moving another step into a leading role?
What I find a little strange about this is that women (the one I’ve met, at least) usually have a talent for logical thinking and are perfect in a developer role. But very rarely do they take the step and become system architects, instead they turn to becoming project managers.
Recently, I’ve been moving towards an attitude that I want to satisfy as many users as possible, which means that everyone should be able to see and use the web sites I build. To me, it feels kind of like a Google philosophy, to reach as many users as possible with really easy to use interfaces.
It has gone so far that I even avoid JavaScript enabled in the user’s web browser (people that have worked with me previously problably won’t believe this, I love JavaScript!). But it’s more about what it’s worth, that one doesn’t use functions, scripts, plug-ins etc just for the sake of it, but to actually use it when it is motivated and gives a necessary enchancement to the web site/page.
I mean, how many times haven’t one done very advanced things on a web page, that one has been particurarly pleased about, but then it looks different on another computer, doesn’t work in a third one just because, for instance, script is disabled and so on.
No, I have moved more in a direction where, instead of using advanced functions in the client’s web browser, try to create web user interfaces that are managed through CSS and where content and its looks is totally separated, as in the brilliant example CSS Zen Garden, where evry page has the same HTML and the CSS takes care of everything that has to do with how it looks and its layout.
Also, I really like when web sites gives the user an option to change font size for the current web site/page without the need of going into the web browser settings just to achieve that.
I’m also of the firm belief that to reach the major audience (i.e. “all” users) then it’s vital to make it as easy to use as possible for them., I believe most inexperienced users is bothered/discouraged by texts like:
“Optimized resolution for this site is 800*600”
“You need to have JavaScript enabled in your web browser to be able to use this web site”
“You have to install Flash to hear our epileptic music and to see our bouncing circles”
I think the future is to follow the W3C recommendations that most web browsers have a pretty good support for today (except for, mainly, the PC version of Internet Explorer) to reach as many users as possible.
To start thinking about the end user and show them respect, instead of just complaining about their lack of knowledge and thinking that they’re ignorant.
I suffer from lack of motivation. I mean, it doesn’t just bother me, I suffer from it. It isn’t really related to my tasks here at work, it’s just that web browsers really make me depressed.
Everything I code is tested in seven different web browsers, and, sure as hell, there’s ALWAYS something that differ between them. It’s always some pixel, always in the last web browser you look in, that ruins the day.
I’m thinking about changing my ambitions with what I want to do…
Program some more advanced things that demands a lot of logic which is tough to program, but at least then the day wouldn’t consist of: “Oh no, it pushes to the right. [really dirty word] Where the HELL did that space come from?” and so on.
I’m convinced that I would prefer working with something that makes me evolve as a person with a more logical thinking, than just having experience of what’s wrong in every web browser. All the knowledge I built up about all the bugs in Netscape 4 is really useful now…
, and in Firefox you get an orange icon in the bottom right corner, indicating that a feed is available.