Category: Web

Web technology

Categories
Web

The turbulent waters of RSS

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I was pleased and rather surprised to see so many comments attached to my posting on RDF. As to be expected with recent discussions, the thread soon turned to issues of RDF/RSS. That’s cool.

What isn’t cool is something such as this by Morbus Iff and Dave Winer’s absolutely atrocious response. Saying something such as:

Anyone who works with Hemenway or Kearney should be aware that these people are nothing less than monsters, who will stoop to any level to get their way. Their perversion may even be the reason they’re involved.

Over the line. What I especially can’t understand with the essay is why Dave brought Ben Hammersley into this particular discussion. The reason looks to be because Ben didn’t include Radio in the RSS aggregators discussed in an article he wrote for The Guardian. Dave called Ben’s article tainted just because Radio — which is a weblogging tool, not a pure news aggregator — wasn’t mentioned.

Calling Morbus on inappropriate joking is one thing. Publishing Morbus’ name, attacking Ben, and calling Bill and Morbus ‘monsters’, is another.

The RSS discussion continues I gather over at Blogroots as well as RSS-Dev.

Time to move on. Let Userland have RSS if they wish. The folks involved with RDF/RSS should come up with a different name, as simplified a syntax as possible that is still valid RDF, and let folks use what they want. If some folks want to use XSLT to transform RDF/RSS to Userland RSS, or the reverse, fine. But this is a technical trick and kludge and shouldn’t even be considered as part of a specification.

I would also strongly recommend that the newly renamed and reformed RDF/RSS working group define the intent and focus of RDF/RSS so that it doesn’t become “one XML to rule them all”, in their interest of creating the perfect syndication format. And since the group would be in the process of many changes, I would also suggest that the RDF/RSS working group move their discussions to another venue other than Yahoo groups, with all its many annoying ads. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to follow the threads: the quotes from previous messages overwhelm the new content, the mix of discussions about spec minutia and group working matters with grand overall schema changes is perplexing and off putting to new people getting involved, and on and on.

It’s also past time for the RDF folks, other than just Dan Brickley, to start getting involved. In particular, I wouldn’t mind seeing the RDF working group folks with weblogs. I have found this to be an excellent format for opening conversations with one’s target audience.

As for myself, I’ll only support an RDF-based aggregation newsfeed at my web sites because I believe this is the better approach. If this means my feeds aren’t readable by some aggregators, okay, I can live with this. This will be an unfortunate side effect on not being able to pull reasonable people together to come up with a combined specification (and note that I don’t consider that a lot of the players in this little farce to be ‘reasonable’, a statement thereby pissing off all participants equally).

Personally, I think a widening of this particular rift is a positive rather than a negative event.

Postscript: You know, there are no women involved in the RDF/RSS working group or the RDF working group. I think this should change. Perhaps I should lurk less and talk more. Any other lady techs in the audience wish to join me?

Categories
Standards Web

Issues of accessibility

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Mark Pilgrim’s Thirty Days to a more Accessible Web. The series covers basic steps we can take to make sure our weblogs and web sites are accessible.

His first tip is on DOCTYPES.

I tested my weblog against the 508 accessibility test at Bobby and according to the results, not necessarily trivially easy to read, I should meet this standard. However, I don’t meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 standard.

Does anyone meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 standard?

Once I’m settled, I’m enlisting the help of experts among my virtual neighbors (weblog translation – I’m whining, begging, and groveling for help because everyone knows I’m a back-end developer and know shit about front end stuff) to make sure my weblog and web sites are accessible.

If you have a weblog, don’t you have something to do about now?

(And once you’re done with that, move your tushie over to AKMA’s and give him some requirements and suggestions for Thread the Needle.)

Categories
Web

Congrats, Sam Ruby

I consider Apache to be an excellent example of what the computer industry can accomplish when it pulls together to create a truly open product. When I heard that Sam Ruby was just elected to the Apache Board of Directors, I had to post a note about the event.

Congratulations, Sam! The Board will be richer for your presence. Of course, you can now kiss all your free time good-bye…

Categories
Web

Dot Com Bust Redux

I’m assuming the only reason that the RealNames failure is getting air time is because the former CEO has published its business dealings with Microsoft.

I glanced through Keith Teare’s papers at his personal web site, and just can’t see the fuss.

Microsoft chose to terminate the relationship with RealNames. With the nebulous nature of the product, the overall opinion against such centralized technology in today’s market, and the business proposal I don’t see how anyone could be surprised by this decision.

RealNames owed Microsoft $25.5m on May 2nd. They didn’t have it. They issued a counter-proposal. Microsoft wasn’t interested. RealNames bites the dust.

Teare believes that Microsoft isn’t demonstrating vision in its current direction, and is seeking solutions that it can control. Maybe so, but consider the proposed future direction for RealNames: Centralized, proprietary, flat architectured Keyword technology in partnership with a company such as Verisign.

I have a hard time identifying with one proprietary, centralized, patent-holding company fighting back at another proprietary, centralized, patent-holding company.

However, I do have sympathy for the 75 people in Redwood City that lost their jobs.

Categories
Technology Web

Netscape 4.x not supported here

I have a confession to make: I’ve not always been a strong voice for standardization.

As much as I believe in the necessity of standards, I was so concerned when the Mozilla organization was strongly chastised for spending time on new innovations rather than implementation of standards that I wrote an article, The Tyranny of Standards, about this for O’Reilly.

However, there is a difference between pushing back at standards groups because of wanting to protect what I still consider one of the most innovative technology applications of this time, and pushing back because an organization or a person refuses to acknowledge that it’s time to let go of a technology that has outworn its usefulness.

With the upcoming release of Mozilla 1.0, it’s time to say good-bye to Netscape 4.x. It’s time to close this chapter in our lives. It’s time to abandon LAYER and ILAYER and BLINK and move on with our browser-based lives.

After my posting yesterday, both Allan and Jonathon wrote their own views about supporting Netscape 4.x.

Allan, who has a web development company, wrote:

Our small company, which definitely can’t afford the time, let alone anything else, to cater to the whims of an outdated browser, has explained the situation to our new clients.

And, we must have been persuasive, as they’ve all agreed to let us support web standards as far as we can for their sites.

The lavish days of the dot-com boom are gone and most development work on the web is lean and mean and pared down to the essentials. As Allan says, companies can no longer afford the amount of time and resources to expend on a browser that has been replaced by not just one but several different options — Internet Explorer, Netscape 6.x, Opera, and now, Mozilla.

And Jonathon wrote:

So why is it that Netscape 4.x users—who could easily upgrade to a standards-compliant browser—put their desire to use an obsolete browser above the needs of all other Web users? Not just above those with disabilities who benefit most from accessible sites, but above everyone who uses a modern browser. And why are they so frequently arrogant about it? As if using a tenth-rate browser is a mark of distinction.

Arrogance. Is that why Netscape 4.x users refuse to upgrade? Or are there other reasons?

I had an email from a reader who mentioned that her company can’t upgrade their browser because of security. I can see that there might be concerns about upgrading to IE, but what about Netscape 6.x or Mozilla? Or Opera?

I created an online tutorial demonstrating how to use Mozilla’s XUL that I had to remove as the browser continued through it’s many pre-release betas. With the soon to be released version 1.0, I would like to spend time with this tutorial; to update it for 1.0, to try out any new technical goodies being released with 1.0, and generally have a bit of fun with Mozilla.

I can either spend time trying to make sure that this weblog page shows equally for people using Netscape 4.x, or I can use the same time to update my Mozilla tutorial. There is no choice here — I choose to look forward, not back.

Netscape 4.x. You were a good friend at the time and you helped show us that we can do more on the web then click a hypertext link. But It’s time for you to say good-bye. And it’s time for me to post to my weblog:

Netscape 4.x NOT supported here.