November 30, 2000
Okay, this is just a travesty. Danny Goodman is a respected technological writer. He's the author of numerous bestselling books, including The JavaScript Bible and O'Reilly's Dynamic HTML, two must-have tomes for any web developer. And on top of that, he's just a nice guy. Today I was looking for a particular Goodman-authored article I saw online awhile back, and out of curiosity typed in www.dannygoodman.com Only to find someone cybersquattering on the domain name. What?!?
Yep, the wonderful folks at BinaryBeachFront are squatting pretty on Danny's name, no doubt hoping that someday he'll come crawling to them and pay some exorbitant amount for the use of his own name. Isn't that nice of them? Among web developers, Goodman's name is practically a brand, and he can't even own his own name as an address?
Let me tell you a secret: If you're a cybersquatter, you suck. If your idea of striking it rich in the tech sector is grubbing names from hard-working, respected individuals and waiting for them to ask pretty-please and hand you a check, you're scum. Twenty years from now, when people ask you "how did you make your dot-com millions? Did you invent a new technology? Did you help pioneer the Web?" I hope they laugh and throw their expensive drink in your face when you say "Nah, I just stole a bunch of people's names and sold them back to them." You are a pariah, an undesirable, almost as low as spammers. You are steerage on the Titanic that is the Information Economy. You freakin' pathetic bottom-of-the-food-chain loser, you. 3:48 AM §
November 27, 2000
Bryan: "If you really want to issue a meaningful critique of our culture, do it in the form of your own Best Recipe, your own color choices covering your walls, by adding a special touch to the table you're refinishing, or at the very least by starting a cafe press store." 2:23 PM §
Happy Monday-After-A-Long-Weekend to you, too. I'm tired, cranky and generally unhappy that I have to spend nine or more hours of my precious life in front of this screen every day for the next week. Last night I dreamt that I was building a log cabin out the middle of a big snowy forest. I distinctly remember seeing my own breath as I chopped at a medium-sized elm with an axe. I was darn happy about it, too. Stupid Internet! Stupid sizzling information economy! Go visit Megan. 1:32 PM §
November 22, 2000
It's snowing in Cleveland! Ah, how I miss Ohio snow. The blinding whiteouts. The bumper-to-bumper traffic. The sooty crust that builds up on the sidewalks. Via Colin, God bless 'im. (requires QuickTime)
We're off until Monday. Happy Turkey Day. Be thankful. 12:49 PM §
November 20, 2000
More Netscape 6 goodies: the folks at WebReference.com have upgraded their popular browser detection script to support Netscape 6. Elsewhere, RichInStyle.com has provided an easily-read and comprehensive list of known Netscape 6 bugs, which focuses primarily on style sheet support. I highly recommend bookmarking it.
Also, two important documents from Netscape (via Glish): the Netscape 6 Release Notes
and the Netscape 6 Developer Release Notes, which outline many of the existing bugs. 10:53 PM §
November 16, 2000
This week I've been bombarded with emails from people asking where to find info on DOM/CSS and Netscape 6. Here are some resources for your bookmarking pleasure.
Firstly, there's my stuff:
- DHTML First Aid For the 6.0 Browsers
- Scripting For The 6.0 Browsers
- Seven Deadly DHTML Sins
Danny Goodman, author of O'Reilly's Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference and IDG's JavaScript Bible, 3rd Edition has written a number of articles on the DOM and 5.0/6.0 browsers:
- Getting Ready for the W3C Event Model
- Getting Ready for the W3C DOM
- More articles by Danny Goodman
Some informative articles by Eric Krock at Netscape:
- Updating Your JavaScript and CGI Scripts for Version 5 Browsers
- Transitioning from Proprietary DOMs and Markup to W3C Standards
Neat stuff from A List Apart:
- DOM Design Tricks 1
- DOM Design Tricks 2
If you know of any good online resources or documentation pertaining specifically to DHTML or scripting for Netscape6/Mozilla, please drop me an email with the URL and I'll add them here. 1:41 PM §
November 13, 2000
Sorry. I just haven't had much to say recently. What a boring country this is. So boring, nothing going on. Nope. Nothing at all.
What do you call something -- a TV show, website, video game, anything -- that eats away at the precious, irreplacable seconds of your life? Why, you call it a chronovore, because that's what it is.
More scathing wit and insight to come. Really.
8:12 PM §
November 6, 2000
I'm having one of those days where I wish I didn't know anything about the Internet. So many sites, so many things to learn, so many new buzzwords, so many people babbling into the ether, myself included. Sometimes, I just get worn out on all the sound and fury signifying nothing. P2P. B2B. B2C. Weblogs. XML-RPC. Wireless and WAP. User interface theory. Flash. Jakob Nielsen. Ana Nova. Vertical e-Hubs. Managing client expectations. Shut up shut up shut up shut UP. Every week, some shiny new magazine appears on the stands, declaring some company's the latest junkware/business model x to be the next trend, the new standard and woe be unto ye who ignores their pronouncements! You'll be obsoleted, defunct, utterly destroyed. Your company with crumble, your family will starve, you'll join the ranks of those who don't get it. Oh, you'll be sorry you went to bed at 2:00am instead of staying up all night learning the latest edition of QuikZoomBlastoPro! from VaporSoft, because, y'know, that 14-year-old genius next door is already a pro and he'll work for free as long as we give him free T-shirts and allow him to keep his nose ring!
You'll be a technological pariah. Even kittens will hate you.
Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that I had a life before the Internet, and it wasn't so bad.
3:08 PM §
Megan and I attended the Take Back San Francisco protest/concert yesterday. This is my impression of the crowd:
2:08 PM §
November 3, 2000
A small afterthought from Kottke, posted live during the Web2000 conference (where I wish I was right now):
"One of the disadvantages of DHTML as compared with Flash is the lack of a development environment."
I have to admit it's true. To my knowledge, there is no full-featured drag-and-drop environment for DHTML. DHTML requires deep knowledge of the browser (all browsers, actually) and some proficiency at scripting languages. Sure, Flash 5 is scriptable (with ActionScript) and I understand that you can now create objects in Flash. But the thing is, you don't have to. You can always just open up the Symbol Library and choose a button, set a few parameters with a handy dialog box, and plop it into your project. Dreamweaver has a leg up on the competition in this aspect, with its set of DHTML behaviors. But it's still not as easy or...fun?...as Flash.
With the advent of DOM/CSS support (see yesterday's rant), the door is wide open for some smart company to come up with a DHTML development environment that rivals that of Flash, and blow the roof off. 12:46 PM §
November 2, 2000
The Browser War: Nobody's Fault But Yours
Please excuse the angry tone of this lecture. My hands still hurt from hours of debugging reams of HTML and JavaScript that supposedly works cross-browser.
If you believe everything you read, especially if everything you read nowadays comes in some sort of punditry from the Web, you already know the cry: Netscape is dead. Microsoft rules.
I'm here to tell you a little something. If you're a web developer, listen close:
It's YOUR fault.
You look hurt. Why? This is what you wanted, right? After all, it was you lamenting the fact that none of the cool tricks Internet Explorer provides aren't available in Netscape. It was you who downloaded the beta of Netscape 6, watched in dismay as your Dreamweaver-generated code fell apart, and immediately went to the nearest BBS to proclaim your loyalty to Microsoft. It was you, who nodded in agreement when one self-styled guru or another claimed that the Mozilla project was a ghost ship with no captain at the wheel.
After all, you just wanted to do your job, right? Your job is to make things for the Web; wind them and watch them go. Your job is to make the client happy by giving them what they want. Your job is to make money. You don't have precious time to waste.
But you're still a rebel, right? Deep down inside you believe you're still a member of the subversive Internet underground. You run Linux on a box you yourself configured. You use Jabber instead of AIM. You know ASP but would rather use PHP or Perl. You were hip to Napster from day one. AOL is for chumps. Information should be free!. Hack the planet! Et cetera.
The only difference is that you've given up when it comes to the browser. Frustrated with not being able to take full advantage of technologies like CSS and proprietary doodads like the IFRAME tag, you've thrown in the proverbial towel.
I suppose this is to be expected. After all, no other browser commands more business desktops. We don't need fancy stats to prove this -- we know. We're developers, the ones in the trenches. We know that among business users, the desktop of choice is overwhelmingly Microsoft-driven. Today's busy executive has neither the time nor inclination to learn how to use anything resembling a command-line interface. They use Outlook for email, Excel for spreadsheets, and for the company intranet, Internet Explorer. It doesn't exactly help our rebel cause that this software comes bundled along with Windows on nearly every PC that goes to market.
Microsoft was won the browser war, you say. Maybe this time.
But you're not off the hook yet. You see, there's a new opportunity. Another chance to win back some control, and at the same time, help build the next phase of the Web.
But you're gonna have to stop whining and work a little harder. [continued...] 2:47 PM §
November 1, 2000
Of course, MP3 won't be around forever. Eventually, broadband will come -- huge, fat, high-speed pipes pumping godzilla-bytes into everyone's home. Then the whole issue of MP3's lack of "CD quality" sound will be moot, as we'll be swapping huge WAV file master recordings over the web, along with DVD movies, PS2 games and whole e-books. What then, when every creative endeavor can easily be converted to crystalline-perfect digital format, compressed and replicated a hundred, a thousand, a million times?
8:01 PM §