Category: Writing

Just writing

Categories
Photography Web Writing

Color management support in browsers

With the addition of support for color profiles built into Firefox 3, it’s time to take a closer look at how the popular browsers support color management. First though, a quick refresher on the importance of color profiles.

If you’ve every worked with a photo in a photo editor, only to have the rich colors leach out when the photo shows in your web page, you’ve run directly into what happens when your editor supports color profiles, but the browser does not. Color profiles are a mapping between device and color space, in such a way that a photo that looks richly colorful in Photoshop, still looks richly colorful in your browser, across multiple operating systems and devices.

The following are two sets of photos, each incorporating different color management. The first in the series shows the photo as I would normally create a photo for publishing on the web: I’d calibrate my monitor, set the gamma half way between PC and Mac, and then set my tool’s color space to the LCD. Then, when I work with the image, the result I get will end up looking relatively decent in both Macs and PCs. The second photo in the series hasn’t been manipulated at all. The third was created after I set the photo editor’s color settings to sRGB, and then converted the photo to this color space. When I saved the photo, I incorporated the color profile.

The first sequence of photos are screenshots taken when the photo is loaded into Firefox without color management. Though a screenshot doesn’t necessarily capture the nuances of color, I think you can see that the color of the last photo from the first sequence of three differs from the color of the last photo in the second sequence of three, which consist of screenshots from Safari 3.x, which does have built-in support for color profiles.

screenshot one screenshot two

The following are the actual photos used for these screenshots. The first shows the photo without any color manipulation and not using color management.

bird with pink feathers

The second photo was made using my old LCD color trick.

bird with pink feathers

The last photo was not manipulated in the photo editor, other than to scale the image. The sRGB color profile was embedded into the photo. I could have also embedded the Adobe RGB color profile, but I stayed with the popular sRGB color profile.

bird with pink feather

If you look at this page using a browser that doesn’t support color management, the first and third photos should be very similar. However, if you look at the photos using Firefox 3 with color management enabled, Safari 3, or other browser or device that supports color management, the last photo should appear more colorful than the first. To get an even better idea of the color variations, the following are screenshots of color swatches in a web page— opened in both a color managed browser, and in a browser that doesn’t support color management. The difference should be noticeable.

Currently, I know of only a few browsers that support color profiles: Safari 3.x, in both Windows and the Mac, supports color management; supposedly Omniweb also supports color management, as did the older version of IE for the Mac (IE 5.5), though I’ve not tried either tool. Now, Firefox 3 supports color profiles, but not without a caveat: color profiles are disabled by default.

The reason Firefox 3 is releasing without color profiles on by default is primarily because of performance issues. Turning on color management in Firefox 3 can really slow load times of a site that uses color profiles embedded in pictures, especially larger pictures. In addition, according to John Resig there are some real concerns about plug-ins, such as those for Flash and Silverlight, that don’t do color profile support, and which can lead to incorrect renderings.

I can understand the issues, though I am disappointed. Support for color profiles with Firefox 3 would go a long way to encouraging color profile support in other browsers. I hope that Firefox 3.1 works through the performance issues and we get support for color profiles by default. You can still take advantage of color profile support in Firefox 3, now, but you either have to set a custom option using a less than friendly procedure, or make use of a color management add-on.

Do I use embedded color profiles in images at my site? I have started to, though not across all sites. If I use color management, I won’t use my LCD trick, which means that the photo won’t look as good for those people using browsers that don’t support color profiles. At the same time, I would really like to encourage better graphics support in our browsers, which means using the functionality we want the browsers to support. We’ll never progress if we keep designing for the lowest common denominator.

For more on color profiles, check out the International Color Consortium web site.

Categories
SVG Writing

Off Painting

We’ve finished up proofs on Painting the Web this week, and I have my first snap of the new cover. I embedded a version of the cover that’s been converted into SVG over at Burningbird, but have included a JPEG below.

Now I can turn my attention to the new book, as well as the site changes and book support sites. I’ve closed down my experimentation at Burningbird, leaving it for now with an appropriate background image. Red is not normally my color, but I rather like the warmth of the color and the new background SVG works exceptionally well in a flexibly sized environment.

Something will happen to RealTech, I’m just not sure what. Only the Feeds know what lurks within the hearts of online writers. Mwahaha, or something to that effect.

Spring has arrived here in St. Louis, though reluctantly and wetly.

Painting the Web

Updated: O’Reilly went with a Golden Oriole rather than a Prairie Chicken.

The cover of my newest book, rendered in SVG. I used Vector Magic to convert the raster image to an SVG vector drawing. I then “combined” it with another image that I had vectorized.

Categories
Copyright Web Writing

Something for nothing

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I like Andrew Orlowski, though he offered me a writing job once and then yanked it. I don’t always agree with him, and I don’t always agree with how he phrases some of his material, but he typically has a good point.

Take the recent Nine Inch Nails album release. Several songs for free, and the rest of the album costs $5.00. What happens? It’s immediately dumped on Pirate Bay. Bandwidth issues aside, as Radiohead found out, people won’t pay.

The anti-copyright crowd kicked at the music business, because it was complacent, wasteful and reactionary, and no digital download services were available. Then they kicked at DRM-locked music, because DRM was there. Then DRM died, and they’d indiscriminately kick at the music business – indie or major – simply because there was a middleman. But now, with no middleman, they just kick the creator directly. They can’t stop kicking. These zombies are unstoppable. Are they incurable, too?

This goes beyond copyright. Too many people expect immediate access to anything on the Net, or anything that could possibly be put on the Net. They want something for nothing. This isn’t free speech, this isn’t Free the Mouse, this isn’t anything to do with not stifling creativity: people assume a privilege for themselves they, frankly, don’t deserve. Their cry is, “gimme gimme gimme”, existing in a state of selfishness to bring down the band. And by their selfishness, they’ll probably screw things up for the rest of us. After all, DRM doesn’t exist so you can’t copy a song on to your iPod.

Excuse me, while I go put my DRM locked movie into the DVD player.

Categories
Technology Writing

Tasks, transcripts, and semantics

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m spending the rest of the week creating plug-ins that will XHTMLate WordPress. I’m not sure how far I can get with plug-ins, but the end result could be both interesting and useful. I still feel that XHTMLating WordPress is at least partially philosophy, as much as it is code. I can’t seem to communicate this clearly, though, so I am dropping the subject and just focusing on code.

I also have a design for my “Painting the Web” book web site, and need to create a lovely SVG paintbrush, as part of the design. Since my artistic skills are more along the lines of telling a program to draw a line from A to B, the effort may take some time. However, the medium I’m using (SVG) is compatible with my skillset, so perhaps the effort will be trivial and the result good. Better yet, I’ll be able to find a paintbrush at Wikipedia to use.

I did want to point out an interview that Paul Miller of Talis had with Tim Berners-Lee. Unlike most other podcasts, this interview also has a written transcript as well as published show notes. I really wish more video and audio podcasters would spend the time transcribing shows into text, as well as providing more in-depth information about the show than posting a video window and telling people, “Hey! Cool Stuff!” In the meantime, I’m going to watch this podcast via my Apple TV, since the Talis series is also listed at iTunes. I wonder if it’s in HD? (Later: oops! It’s not in video. Darn. I was looking forward to seeing Sir Tim in HD.)

In the write-up on the interview, Miller wrote:

We talked for a fascinating hour during which we ranged from past to future, from technology to policy. We covered specifications such as RDF and SPARQL, and we talked about the pressing need for more accessible texts to explain the Semantic Web to mainstream business.

My book, “Practical RDF”, is out of date, and I and my editor have been talking about a new edition. However, a new edition would not be focused entirely on RDF, and probably wouldn’t cover certain aspects of RDF, in order to be a bit more comprehensive. RDF doesn’t function alone in the world, and a book that covers semantic web technologies needs to cover not only RDF, but also all the complementary technologies. This, in addition to the new tools, data initiatives, and companies.

Now is actually a rather exciting time to be creating a new edition of a book on semantic web technologies. I remember when I wrote “Practical RDF”, which was published before the final release of the RDF specification, I had to stretch a bit to find tools and technologies focused on RDF and/or the semantic web. Now, the semantic web is hip, and the challenge is less on finding good material and more on ensuring that the book isn’t too big, or covers too much.

I don’t think the new edition will be called the same, but we’ll be keeping the “Practical” in the title in some way. Maybe something along the lines of “Practical Semantic Web”. I am nothing if not a practical person, and the “practical” component of the title will also be the overall theme for the book. However, even with this constraint I visualize a book bursting at the seams.

We’re also planning a new edition of Learning JavaScript, too. Unfortunately, the first edition was on a bit of a fast track, and I made mistakes in the book; more than I’d like to see with any of my books. I’ve made corrections via errata, but it will be nice to create a new, updated version.

I’m also helping out with a new edition of a third book, but this would be more along the lines of contributing commentary on organization and some chapters than being sole author.

Categories
Writing

Kindled

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I can’t say enough about the new Kindle ebook reader. I just received mine last week, and have already loaded about 30 books, though I’ve only had to pay for four of them.

I debated quite a bit about buying the Kindle. I wasn’t sure about a first generation product, and the screen size seemed very small for a book reader. What decided me was finding so many of books from my now long gone library available for the Kindle, and all cheaper than buying the book in hard copy. I also like the idea of having my library fit in my pocket.

The Kindle is based on electronic paper, which uses a specialized ink with particles that react to an electric field to form the letters. Once the letters are formed, you can turn the device off, and the letters will remain. The Kindle has a long-lasting battery because it doesn’t need to use power to maintain a page.

The electronic paper reflects like regular paper, which means you can read the device in sunlight, and need some form of reading light to see the print. I thought the Kindle was a little dingy at first, with its light gray background, and dark gray text. However, under a stronger reading light, I found that it really does match the paper found in a typical paperback.

The page turning generates a flash that’s a little disconcerting until you get used to it. The small screen also takes some time to get used to, but once you do, doesn’t impact on the reading experience. If there was one thing I’d change about the Kindle, it’s the long “Next page” button on the right side. I keep hitting this when I shift in the chair or the bed, even when I’m using the cover in the proper format to hold the device. I think that someone at Amazon got a little carried away with the buttons.

I tried out the experimental services, including music and basic web services. The Kindle has a tiny little speaker, as well as a headphones plug-in. You can listen to music or audio books, though the iPod does a better job.

The web browser is decent, considering the fact that the Kindle is grayscale with a small screen. I was pleased to see that both of my sites loaded nicely in the device, thanks to my mobile stylesheets.

When you read a book, you can add a bookmark, and you can also place the cursor on the line and look up words in a built-in dictionary. There’s a way to capture clippings from books, which you can then download to your computer. No more having to hand type out a longish quote that you want to include in a weblog post.

The power of Kindle, though, is that quick access to the Internet for books, and not just to the Amazon store, either. I’ve found at least two sites that provide free, Kindle formatted books, drawing on the vast pile of books available at Project Gutenberg. My favorite site is Feedbooks, with its associated Feedbooks Kindle Downloading Guide. This book is full of links to formatted classics. All you have to do is position the cursor at any link, click the item, and the book is downloaded to the reader.

The Guide doesn’t just have older classics, it also has newer books that have been contributed to the public domain or released with Creative Commons license. Books such as the recent Firefly fanflic novel, and several short and long stories from Cory Doctorow and other writers. Currently, among the publications I have loaded are:

  • Allan Quatermain by Henry Rider Haggard
  • Animal Farm by George Orwell
  • Sun Tzu on The Art of War
  • A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf
  • Walden: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
  • My Own Kind of Freedom based on Firefly, by Steven Brust
  • Emma by Jane Austin
  • Acts of God: the Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America by Ted Steinberg

Another book currently loaded is Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn, a modern fantasy book recommended by someone who knows I’m fond of Mercedes Lackey. I found Vaughn’s first book for only 3.99 for the Kindle version. That was cheap enough to give the book a try, which demonstrates Kindle’s impact not only on how we read, but what we read.

When we have to check a book out of the library, pick it up at the store, or order it on Amazon, we may not be as willing to try an unfamiliar author or go with that first impulse of interest in a book. With Kindle, it’s five minutes from hearing about a new book to having it downloaded and ready to read. If I had to order the Vaughn book, pay the higher price, and wait for delivery, I’m not sure I would have purchased it. With the Kindle, I figured if I don’t like her writing, no real harm done; I’m out the cost of an AppleTV movie rental. If I do like her novel, though, I’ll have another author whose work I like.

More importantly, Ms. Vaughn, who is not as established an author as Lackey, has a chance to extend her audience. In fact, any author can reach a new audience, and you don’t have to have a publishing company behind you.

Kindle is based on a proprietary e-book format, which gives one pause–especially when considering that it’s going up against a Sony proprietary ebook format. Unfortunately, it’s also only available for the US at this time. However, rumor has it that the Sony ebook reader is going to be sold in Europe soon, so I imagine that Amazon is also pursuing this option. Where and when is hard to say. The Kindle is also not the cheapest toy around, though it is less pricey than an iPhone. However, my Kindle has paid for itself this week, as the weather swiveled from blizzard to thunderstorm and back to Blizzard, and I expect it will continue to pay for itself way into the future.

Besides, how can a person who writes under the name “Burningbird” pass on a device called Kindle?