Categories
Writing

JavaScript Cookbook on way to printers

We just finished the last of the quality control checks on the JavaScript Cookbook, and it is now on its way to the printers. The Table of Contents should be showing soon at the O’Reilly book web site, but I’ll give you a taste of what I covered:

  • The usual suspects, such as String, Date, Math, Function, and so on
  • Creating JavaScript objects, including the new ECMAScript 5 object methods
  • The new HTML5 and WebApps 1.0 material, including drag and drop, worker threads, postMessage, and the local storage options
  • Debugging JavaScript, working with a library framework, such as jQuery, and packaging your libraries for reuse
  • Working with media and graphics options, such as SVG, Canvas, and the new audio and video elements
  • Complex performance functionality, such as currying and memoization
  • JavaScript out of the box, including working with desktop-like applications using client-side file access
  • Working with interesting data formats, such as RDFa, microformats, even ePub
  • Ajax, including working with XML and JSON formatted data
  • Debugging and using JavaScript test tools
  • Working with ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and creating accessible dynamic applications

I devoted one chapter to ARIA and integrating accessibility into dynamic solutions. Because we now have access to an open source and freely available screen reader (NVDA), we can easily test our use of ARIA for dynamic applications. In addition, most framework libraries now incorporate ARIA support, so we need to understand how to use this rich and simple-to-use accessibility enabler.

I also covered ARIA because of my interest in semantic web technologies: ARIA is way of recording rendering semantics, which opens the door for interesting possibilities.

The JavaScript Cookbook should be in the stores in less than a month, and is available for pre-order. It’s a largish book—21 chapters and 530+ pages. The format is cookbook style, where I provide “recipes” in a Problem/Solution/Discussion format. All the code bits are included in example files, so you can play along, as you read.

One thing this book does not provide is support for IE6. Now that major sites and companies are no longer providing support for IE6, it’s time to stop wasting book space on an insecure, broken, and badly outdated browser.

Categories
Burningbird

Evidently, the web is like the petroleum industry

here are times I really miss the mark. From a past writing I stumbled across when looking for something else:

if the web were any other industry—petroleum, pharmaceutical, airline, auto, electrical utility, and so on— allowing the companies who produce products in the industry free and unfettered reign to define the standards for their industries, would draw howls of protests, and a demand for accountability.

From If the Web were the Petroleum Industry.

Categories
Just Shelley

Spring Cleaning

This weekend we spent going through the house and creating four piles:

  • books to donate to the library
  • computers and electronics to recycle at the electronics recycling place
  • stuff for Goodwill
  • a recycle/toss pile.

This will be the first time I’ve recycled computers. In the past, I’ve found homes for older machines while they were still useful. However, the first generation PowerBook and the 11 year old PC laptop are too old to be useful, and have developed problems making them useless, even as Linux machines.

They still run, though, and have working hard drives. In order to prepare them for recycling, I spent yesterday writing zeros and random writes over the PowerBook, and used Darik’s Boot and Nuke over both. I’m also paying the ten bucks each to have both hard drives shredded at the recycler.

The other material I’m donating/discarding is like a microcosm of computer technology. We found that floppy drive and zip discs are plastic surrounding a thin film, which is easily cut with scissors. Old CDs make deadly frisbees; I don’t recommend using them as such. Then there’s my first, bulky external CD burner, ethernet PC cards, a wireless router that doesn’t work, a couple of external USB hard drives that hold only a little data, an old inkjet printer, and various other devices that have me scratching my head as I try to remember what the heck they are.

The last of the photographic film stuff is also going, as I’m now completely digital. The same could be said for many of the books, though I always keep my favorites. Since we eliminated all landline phones, I’m also donating phones and a mile or two of phone wire. We get all our video from the internet or over the air, so there goes the coil of cable wire.

I don’t know if life is simpler with today’s technology, but it certainly is less cluttered.

Categories
JavaScript Writing

Future. Perfect.

I finished copy edits on my JavaScript Cookbook, which now enters the production process.

The first half of the book focuses on the basic components of JavaScript, while the latter half gets into the more complex material. I touch on the basic JavaScript objects, such as String and Number, but also spend a considerable amount of time covering new ECMAScript 5 and HTML5 scripting features: HTML5 drag and drop, postMessage, the Files API, worker threads, the wonderful new object methods, and so on.

I devoted one chapter to covering ARIA, Accessible Rich Internet Applications, as well as some other accessibility features. The more I work with ARIA, the more I view it as more of a rendering semantics than something purely for screen readers. For a data person like myself, ARIA is a very comfortable technology to use. I’ll have more on ARIA in later writings at MyTech.

Speaking of which, I’ve added ARIA landmarks to my web sites. Use View->Source to look for the role attribute, which is how ARIA landmarks are added. It was easy to update the Drupal templates to incorporate the new material. Unfortunately, the pages don’t validate, but I no longer care about validation. Frankly, the days of trying to code your pages to meet some validation criteria are over. Nowadays, pragmatism is the word in web development.

I am at work on my next book, but it’s not going to be for O’Reilly. Instead, I’m going to try my hand at self-publication, which is why I’m spending so much time working with ePub and other eBook formats. I’m also trying to strengthen my self-editing skills. After 18 books, I’ve become dependent on copy editors—my writing has become sloppy, and full of typos. Speaking of which, I strongly recommend, Paula LaRocque’s “The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well.” LaRocque’s book has proven invaluable as I root out my bad writing habits.

Categories
Just Shelley

Thirty years ago: Mount St. Helens

Thirty years ago I was living at my Dad’s in Yakima, going to college. That Sunday was a beautiful day, and Dad was outside in the garden as I was getting ready to go to work. I worked for a photographer, who had a studio in the Yakima Mall. I liked working Sundays. Sundays were always quiet, especially when the weather was nice.

I heard a loud boom, but didn’t think much of it. Yakima was right next to a military training center, and it wasn’t too unusual to have a hot dog pilot break the sound barrier. Some minutes later, my Dad yelled for me to come outside. I ran out and saw this ugly dark brown/black cloud rolling towards the town. We knew that Mount St. Helen’s had erupted.

We ran inside and quickly shut everything up, as fast as we could. My boss called to jokingly tell me that I didn’t have to go into work. Little did we both know that the Mall didn’t shut down the air intake system quickly enough, and when we were able to get into the studio three days later, all of my employer’s cameras would be ruined.

The day suddenly begin to turn into night. The ash started falling all around us. It was quiet, except for the ash, which made a slight hissing sound when it fell—like a snake who is only going through the motions. We turned the TV on, finding it interesting to see our quiet little town being the top story for most of the major networks. The President flew by. We waved.

My cat was still outside. Well, I say “my” cat, but Bonzo was really Dad’s cat—a case of love at first sight between those two. I thought he would come back when he saw the cloud, but evidently, the ash must have panicked him. I told my Dad I had to go find him. Dad was torn between wanting to keep me inside, and being worried about Bonzo. Go find him, Baby Doll, he said, But don’t stay out too long.

Yes, he called me Baby Doll. Dad’s been dead a few years now—I don’t mind telling you he used to call me Baby Doll.

I put on a plastic rain coat I bought on a lark, once, and never wore. It ended up being a perfect cover for the ash fall. I wet a handkerchief to wrap around my nose and mouth, though it didn’t work as well as I hoped.

Walking through the streets, looking for my cat, was like walking on the moon. The ash was very fine, but so persistent. It covered everything, though it slithered off the plastic of my coat. After about half an hour, I couldn’t handle the ash anymore and came home— hoping Bonzo would be smart enough to find cover.

During the day, the ash cloud would sometimes thin out, leading us to hope the worst was over. Then the ash would thicken, the day darken again. I must admit to being more than a little worried about how long the ash would fall. Would we be evacuated if it fell for days?

Were we in danger?

Towards evening, we heard a faint meow at the back door. I opened it, and there on the step was a mound of ash with two brilliantly blue, and really pissed off eyes. Bonzo had made it home.

The ash fell throughout the day and into the evening. The darkness was oppressive, the acrid smell overwhelming at times. Sometime during the night, though, it finally stopped. When we woke the next day, we woke to another world. Ash covered everything.

I used to smoke in those days. I had run out of cigarettes, and we also needed milk and some other odds and ends. We couldn’t drive because of the ash, but there was a neighborhood store a couple of blocks away. I knew the store would be open—you’d have to bury that store under lava for it not to open—so I again donned my plastic coat and set off.

If the walk during the ash fall was unnerving, the walk the next day was surreal. You could see tracks of animals, including that of a bee that had become so weighted down, all it could do was squiggle along the sidewalk. Bird tracks, cat tracks, other small critters—no people though.

People were out and about, primarily shoveling ash off roofs, because the weight was enough to cause some real concerns. Others, seemingly indifferent to the effects of mixing ash and engine, were out driving, and their cars would send up clouds of acrid dust. Some of our more enterprising neighbors built a speed bump of ash mixed with water, which worked pretty good, until the street crews knocked it down.

For the next three months we cleaned up ash. In the beginning we wore a lot of masks, and some folks took off for ashless climes. Silly, really, because bad stuff happens everywhere. If you’re going to leave a place, you leave it before the bad stuff happens. Otherwise, you’re just moving from bad stuff to bad stuff, like a ball in a pinball machine.

My Dad used some of the ash from around our place to mix into cement for a new sidewalk. Other people created souvenir statues from the ash. I bought a t-shirt that said something about the mountain and Yakima, but I can’t remember the words now. Probably something that seemed clever then, but would be stupid, now.

A day by day account at the Yakima Herald Republic.

The Boston.com Mount St.Helen’s photo essay.