Year: 2009

Categories
SVG XHTML/HTML

Whipping boy

I noticed a passing twitter message from Laura Scott. It said One word: standards. Firefox follows w3c standards. Internet Explorer does not. She wrote it in response to another Twitter message from tutu4lu, who was having problems with a web page appearing differently with IE than Firefox.

It is true that Firefox implements more standards than IE, especially in when it comes to some of my favorites, such as SVG. And I appreciate the fact.

Firefox does not necessarily get an A+ for all of its effort, though. In particular, if Microsoft’s lack of implementation of XHTML has been one force against broader implementation of XHTML at web sites, Firefox’s own handling of XML errors in XHTML is another, more subtle force against XHTML.

Here’s an example. I added an ampersand (&) to a URL in one of my posts, which generates an XHTML error. The following are three screen shots from Chrome, Opera, and Safari, respectively, that demonstrate how they handle the error:

XHTML error in Chrome
Opera XHTML error
Safari error

Safari and Chrome are both built on WebKit, which handles XHTML errors by parsing, and rendering, the document up to the error. This has the advantage of providing some content, as well as being able to more quickly find the error when you’re debugging.

Opera doesn’t render the document, but it does provide a display of the source with highlighting where the error occurs. This is extremely helpful when you’re debugging a larger document. In addition, Opera also provides an option to render the document in HTML, rather than XHTML, which is helpful for everyone else.

Contrast and compare these screenshots with the following, from Firefox.

Firefox error handling

The Firefox XHTML error handling is also known as YSOD, or Yellow Screen of Death. It’s harsh, abrupt, and somewhat punishing in nature, with its sickly yellow background, and bright red text. The message is typically cut off by the edge of the browser window, so one can’t easily see where the error has occurred. It’s most definitely intimidating for readers who accidentally stumble on to an XHTML page currently in a broken state.

All four of the browsers do support the XHTML standard, and all stop processing the XHTML when an error occurs, as is proper. But where Safari/Webkit, Chrome/Webkit, and Opera try to provide a useful web page, Firefox picks up a ruler and gives the owner of the web site a good whacking.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of blaming all web development and design problems on Microsoft and IE, and to use IE as a whipping boy—to the exclusion of looking, critically, at the other browsers in the web space. If the lack of support for XHTML in IE is a primary inhibitor of the spread of XHTML, Firefox’s YSOD has to take the second place prize. Support for XHTML doesn’t end at the parser.

Categories
HTML5 W3C

Going non-standard

As you may have noticed and will continue to notice, my sites are changing. Sometimes not for the better, as I try something out and it doesn’t work. All of this effort is for my new book, which will include coverage of web page markup, in addition to other technologies, though the book will end up being more of a narrative than the tutorials and how-tos I’ve done in the past.

Currently, this page is set to XHTML5, and I’ve even added a nav element, though not the script that will “trigger” its inclusion in IE. I’m trying to work out how one can use X/HTML5 elements without being forced to incorporate JavaScript, which is not a progressive solution.

Without getting into too many details on the book, it does get into discussions on the future of the web, though I find that when it comes to page markup, I’m having an increasingly difficult time determining what to include. I find I have little faith in the ongoing effort at the W3C and WhatWG on a new HTML, especially after recent discussions in the IRC and mailing lists.

For instance, the web site Last Week in HTML5 snarkily points out IRC entries from Mark Pilgrim, where he accuses Sam Ruby of being either intentionally divisive or stupid in relation to a mailing list item that Sam posted *suggests if Sam Ruby had posted the item, it would be intentionally divisive, but since Chris Wilson from Microsoft posted the item, it’s just plain stupid. I thought at one time Sam and Mark were friends, but obviously those times are in the past. Regardless, such petty bickering only undermines the credibility of the entire effort. Is this demonstrative of a new “hip” professionalism in the web world? If so, I can understand now why some Ruby/Rails folk thought it acceptable to incorporate soft porn in a technical presentation. Frankly, I’m finding this whole “rock star on the edge” thing is getting old.

Immaturity of actions aside, there is obviously a split between the leadership of the HTML effort in the W3C, and the editorial leadership in the WhatWG, and though perhaps this is the “norm” in these efforts, it fills me with dismay about the future of web markup. A Hatfield-McCoy type of feud makes for great Americana, but lousy standards.

What adds to my overall sense of discouragement about the HTML5 effort, is knowing that there is no longer even a pretense of openness in the effort. Today, I read in the whatwg IRC (and continued into the microformats IRC channel) a discussion between Tantek Celik and Ian Hickson, where Ian basically lets Tantek completely control what happens with the so-called “microdata requirements document”—a move which demonstrates Ian’s bias, and an absolute disdain for an entire group’s (RDFa) efforts. Not to mention a disdain for the Creative Commons effort, too, which Ian condemns for its “license proliferation”.

I never thought I would someday write that I long for the stodgy, pedantic W3C of yore, where the smallest detail is meticulously discussed and recorded, excessively so at times—a process I felt was comparable to fingernails across a chalk board. However, I have seen the other side now, on IRC and in the mailing lists, where individuals casually scratch their various itches in public, and the result becomes part of the specification we’ll be stuck with for years.

An end result of such shenanigans is that web page validity no longer means what it used to mean. And is no longer as important, either. In the future, to get a “valid” stamp means that we have to adhere to a small, controlling group of people’s interpretation of what the web should be, and I’m just not willing to go there. Not for a stupid graphic that states “This page is valid in crappy biased markup”; markup, whose only purpose now, from what I can see, is cool, oversexed, overscripted Ajax applications, and stuff Google wants.

Obviously, this state is acceptable to the representatives from Mozilla, Opera, Apple, and Microsoft, not to mention other members of the W3C. If it weren’t, the companies would, I presume, use their collective clout to tell the members of this effort to grow the hell up. No, these companies would rather go off and do their own thing, in competition, rather than in cooperation, and we will face a future of the web, where cross-browser issues are the norm, rather than the exception. Yup, keep your eye on the ACID prize, and just forget about the real world, where people have to make things work.

As for the SVG working group, and the RDFa working group, not to mention MathML and Web Accessibility groups, and others that have tried to incorporate some form of extensibility and usability, not to mention accessibility, into this mishmash of a standard: I admire your patience and determination to look beyond the pettiness in order to appease one small group’s idea of what is an ideal web, but I can’t help thinking that if you bend over backwards too much, you only end up kissing your own ass good-bye.

*Sorry, misread the original IRC entry.

Categories
Diversity Technology

Open Arms

Regarding the recent Golden Gate Ruby Conference…

Sara Allan

The second low point was Matt Aimonetti’s talk “CouchDB + Ruby: Perform Like a Pr0n Star.” It is unfortunate that he took this joke too far. What might have been a short, juvenille, eye-rolling bit of humor continued throughout the talk to become increasingly disturbing. Amidst this normally warm, welcoming community, I spent an uncomfortable half hour wondering if I had somehow found myself in 1975.

…

If he had left it at a few introductory jokes, I would be writing a very different post. Instead the porn references continued with images of scantily-clad women gratuitously splashed across technical diagrams and intro slides. As he got into code snippets, he inserted interstitial images every few slides (removed from the slides below). The first time it happened, he mentioned that he wanted to keep everyone’s attention. It had the reverse effect. This technique was distracting and disrespectful to an audience who, frankly, is turned on by code.

Audrey Eschright

Here’s another problem in this tangle: Ruby (and Rails in particular) loves the rock star image. You see it in job posts, how people talk about their work, and the way Rubyists rant on their blogs. It’s macho, it can be offputting to both genders, and it makes it easy in this kind of situation to say, “what’s your problem? I’m just busy being awesome”. It’s also a significant barrier to adoption for people who aren’t already a part of this culture, and don’t find it appealing.

Mike Gunderloy

For what it’s worth, I think the original presentation was an inappropriate and regrettable mistake. However, far more disturbing to me are the reactions to the discussion on the part of some of the Rails community.

Folks, the idea that women are disproportionately underrepresented in engineering and software in general, and open source development in particular, should not be new and controversial in 2009 – anyone who cares to look can find such things as the FLOSSpols findings, or any amount of academic literature on the subject. Anyone who cares to take the time to actually talk to the women who are a part of the open source community will have no trouble getting an earful about how challenging it can be to participate.

…

But unfortunately for me, in parallel to the public discussion there have been private ones. I can’t reveal details without breaking confidences, but suffice it to say that a significant number of Rails core contributors – with leadership (if that’s the right word) from DHH – apparently feel that being unwelcoming and “edgy” is not just acceptable, but laudable. The difference between their opinions and mine is so severe that I cannot in good conscience remain a public spokesman for Rails.

Victoria Wang, in comments

DHH’s attitude seems to say that the more we lower ourselves to the most base level of marketing scum in the name of entertainment, the better, even if at the end of the day there are no more women, or anyone worth knowing, in the room. It kind of makes me want to never touch Rails code again.

Rev Dan, in comments

What chaps my ass about the whole thing is that it’s doing little more but reinforce the bullshit “developers are immature, overgrown 14-year-olds” stereotype. I’m sick to death of that one, especially because I run into that type of jackass more often than I care to.

We kinda have a “chicken and egg” scenario going on here… unless there are more women who attend these things then the few women who do will always feel like outsiders… but if the few women who attend now are offended, then why will more attend?

Matt Aimonetti’s response

In the case of my talk, people knew what to expect, they *picked* the talk, and were warned by the organizers before I started that I would be using imagery potentially offensive to some. The topic of my talk was obvious, and I would have hoped that people who were likely to be offended would have simply chosen not to attend my talk or read my slides on the internet. It’s like complaining that television has too much material unsuitable for children, yet not taking steps to limit their viewing of it. You can’t have it both ways.

We can argue forever about morals, professionalism, ethics, respect, etc., though this is all a distraction from the real problem that was raised by Sarah, namely that we have very few minorities in the Ruby community, especially women. Minorities do need to be more represented!

Ryan Bigg

I fear that it will rip a community apart. A community that should be working together on getting past this issue and bettering themselves, not regressing to childish bickering. That’s what gives this community an “immature” stamp by the [insert other programming language here] groups.

…

All I ask for you guys is to…

Chill.

Sho Fukamachi

Other reactions include pathetic “I am being victimised” attention-seeking, lame attempts at demonstrating how much “I truly care about women” etc, hilarious “I am leaving the Ruby community and re-installing Visual Studio” threats (please do!), and every combination thereof. I cannot help but think that if Matt’s presentation has the effect of getting rid of these disingenuous wowsers then he should henceforth be invited, nay required, to present at every Rails conference.

DHH, the father of Rails



But wait…there’s more…

Alpha Male Programmers aren’t keeping Women Out

You certainly have to be mindful when you’re working near the edge of social conventions, but that doesn’t for a second lead me to the conclusion that we should step away from all the edges. Finding exactly where the line goes — and then enjoying the performance from being right on it — requires a few steps over it here and there.

update

Excellent aggregation of opinions from women in the Ruby/Rails community. Particularly liked Amy Hoy’s take in comments

If you are going to try to be edgy and push boundaries and shit, you should at least be sure you’re good at it and know how to handle that kind of content, first. Otherwise, it’s just destructive.

Categories
JavaScript Technology

Sun sells out and there goes Java and MySQL

I guess I will now be looking at how to port my Drupal installations to PostGreSQL, since Sun sold out to Oracle. The Java issue doesn’t impact me, as I saw the writing on the wall as regards to Java a long time ago.

However, support for MySQL will most likely be completely undercut, if not eliminated. Or it will go through that fine Oracle touch, which means you can’t depend on support for the database in the future—not without it being either bloated, or “monetized” in some way. This is how Oracle works.

I can hear it now: But MySQL is open source. Oracle can’t hurt it, because it’s open source!

Being “open source” will protect MySQL. Yeah, right. And I believe I’m Superwoman and can’t be hurt by bullets, so just shoot me now.

I completely forgot about Sun and OpenOffice. I use OpenOffice for all of my writing. Guess I can kiss that good-bye, too.

I’d like to just kick IBM right now, for transmorphing back into the stupid, clumsy Big Blue dinosaur of days of yore. It let itself down, by not buying Sun. And it let the rest of us down, too.

Interesting reading the old post on Sun buying MySQL AB, from last year.

I think Sun is the best possible buyer, because of the following reasons: (Note that this is of course my interpretation)

  • Sun is committed to open source.
  • Sun doesn’t have an database of their own; In other words, no risk of internal conflicts between similar products.
  • Sun understands what it means to be a virtual company where people work from home.
  • Sun has a good understanding of developers needs and there is a good chance that the integration of the two companies will be relative smooth.
  • Sun has said they will let the MySQL developers continue work as before in their own unit and without big changes (except of course changes for the better!).

Of course, the early founder of MySQL left Sun, and started another open source MySQL company. We’ll see where this goes.

Last update, but the original founder of MySQL, Michael Widenius, has posted a note on the Oracle/Sun merger and MySQL.

The biggest threat to MySQL future is not Oracle per se, but that the MySQL talent at Sun will spread like the wind and go to a lot of different companies which will set the MySQL development and support back years.

I would not like to see this happen and I am doing everything I can do to keep this talent pool together (after all, most of them are long time personal friends of mine). I am prepared to hire or find a good home (either at Monty Program Ab or close to it) for all core MySQL personnel.

The man is probably inundated with resumes right now.

Categories
Copyright Writing

My DRM-free self

O’Reilly now has DRM free versions of some of its book available for the Kindle. Among the books are my own Painting the Web, Learning JavaScript, second edition, Practical RDF, and Adding Ajax.

O’Reilly has been offering DRM free versions of the books at the O’Reilly site, but it’s only been lately that authors have been able to provide DRM free books at Amazon. Why is this important? Because all you have to do is change the book’s extension to .mobi to read the book on your Sony or other MobiPocket capable eBook reader. In other words: Some Amazon store books can be read on other eBook readers other than the Kindle, iPhone, and iTouch.

Teleread and MobileRead have started a campaign to make these DRM free books more easy to find. If a book is DRM free, just tag it “drmfree” at the Amazon site. It tickled me to be the first to tag my own books.

My books being offered DRM free doesn’t change how I feel about copyright. I still believe in the importance of copyrights. My books are still copyrighted, at least until the publishers and I decide the time is ripe to release them into the public domain. I am dependent on the royalties I make from my books, and I lose money through piracy of my books. But I have never believed in DRM, which only hurts the legitimate owners.

I’m currently working on my first self-publishing book, which I’ll be releasing as a Kindle, as well as in other formats. Regardless of how I distribute the book, not one version of the book will have DRM.