August 31, 2001
The real way to get complete separation of design and content is
to use a content management system and to forget about HTML pages and
CSS files. Blah.
I think Content Management scares [web designers] because no longer
are folks who hand-code HTML in charge of content. No longer can these
designers justify their $100,000+ salaries just to code pages...when a
company puts content management software in place, it removes the
HTML'ers power.
If you're using Macromedia's Homesite (or Microsoft's
FrontPage, or Adobe's GoLive, or Macromedia's Dreamweaver) to
build a single Web site you're soon going to be irrelevant.
Ha. Ha ha.
Hahahahhahaha.
HTMLers, in charge of content? Why, I thought that was the realm of the content manager. Or the PR firm. Or the legal department.
Nevermind the fact that CMS is usually the sole dominion of the IT department, who have far more important things to do than sully their hands with HTML.
CMSes alone don't separate content from presentation. They organize content. Period. Someone has to create those templates with all that useless CSS and HTML.
In the real world, the job of designing a website is never finished. A content-rich website is always evolving and changing. There is always new catagories of content to fit, new features to add, the user experience that needs to be rethought and restructured, the client that suddenly decides at the eleventh hour that the navigation should be on the right instead of the left.
And one might argue that there really aren't any HTMLers anymore. The days when you could make a decent salary on HTML alone are long gone. Everyone still in business is a multispecialist. A little graphic design here, and litte HCI theory there...
So, all hyperbolic references to $100K salares aside, I would venture that in the real world outside of the academic mudbog, the challenges of designing for a truly content-rich site are much more demanding of HTMLers skills than, say, your average Manila-hosted blog. Still, bellow on, Moose! You're still my new favorite.
August 30, 2001
Best music video ever. Guaranteed to be the most linked-to thing today, so I might as well get it out of the way now.
Ironically, if you're using IE6 on WinXP, you might not be able to watch it. Um, sucks to be you, I guess.
August 29, 2001
So, my goal this summer was to see as many blockbuster movies as I could. I failed miserably, but still managed to see quite a few. Many, many of them were bad. So bad, in fact, that I have put together my own ratings system which ranks each movie against what is universally accepted to be the Absolute Worst Movie of All Time, Battlefield Earth.
Each movie has been assigned a "Battlefield Earth Score" -- a positive or negative point value that reflects their relative suckiness compared to that of the Travolta-helmed juggernaut of suck. Although since B.E. is the cinematic equivalent of absolute zero, it's nigh impossible to score anything less than two or three*. In no particular order:
The Mummy Returns - nice attempt, but it's one of those movies where you can tell the money men had too much control. I could just imagine them, huddled around some boardroom table with a frazzled screenwriter: "What we really need is two villains. Can we do that? He's gotta be fiercer than Imhotep. How about something with scorpions? We have just the guy, the Rock's agent says he's looking to break into films. Okay, we need some comic relief, a fall guy, this whole thing's way too serious. Can we get Chris Rock? No? Someone like him then, whatever works. Make him silly. Maybe he's a pilot. But not a plane, lessee...how about a blimp? Yes, let's do the blimp thing. And let's put the two chicks in chainmail bikinis and have 'em fight with daggers. Cool. Can we make the villain more scorpion-like? No, not the mummy guy, the other guy..."
Battlefield Earth Score: +5
Swordfish - Oh God, this was SO bad on so many levels. I'm not articulate enough to express exactly how exquisitely awful this movie was. Travolta once again proves that as a villain he's as menacing as your average dachsund. Hearing Hugh Jackman (Wolverine!) utter lines like "I used 1024-bit encryption! Not even I can break through the firewall!" was just embarrassing. And there was something just wrong in the film's utter disregard for human life for the sake of cool death scenes (a hostage and two rescuers get blown to bits so we marvel at the carnage in "bullet time") which left me wanting my money back along with the ninety minutes of my life I spent watching.
Battlefield Earth Score: +3 but only for the "Virus Construction Set" scene.
Jurassic Park 3 - again with the raptors. See also my earlier comments.
Battlefield Earth Score: +5 because Spinosaurus can kick T. Rex's ass any day.
Moulin Rouge - Well, that was interesting. By and large, this was the movie you either loved or hated. I think I enjoyed the supporting cast much more than Nicole Kidman and Ewan MacGregor. The "Like A Virgin" number was a complete showstopper, but I won't give away the best suprise song that comes out of nowhere. You'll know when you hear it. Sad, crappy ending though. Rent it.
Battlefield Earth Score: +8
Shrek - over-simple, predictable plot that teaches children that freaks should only become romantically involved with other freaks. Wait, that's not right. That ugly can be beautiful to others just as ugly as you...um, that's not right either. Anyway, something about how computer graphics are cool and stuff.
Battlefield Earth Score: +6
You know what? I lied. I made absolutely no attempt to see the following movies, to which I will now assign completely arbitrary scores based on second-hand knowledge, knee-jerk emotion and what little I could glean from the trailers:
Final Fantasy: +4
Pearl Harbor: +5
Tomb Raider: +2 (because I'm sick of the stories of how she and
Billy Bob get all freak-kay)
Planet Of The Apes: +6
A.I.: +4
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: +4 (intentional lower score to piss
off diehard Kevin Smith fans)
Atlantis: The Lost Empire: +5
American Pie 2: oh geez, whatever.
I should mention that the whole moviegoing experience was a very important factor in determining these scores, and some films might have ranked slightly higher if not for the constant chattering, the ringing of pagers and cell phones (and the yapping of people who actually answer them in the middle of a freakin' movie), the wails of three-year-olds at R-rated shows, the obnoxious biological odors of unknown source, ad infinitum. The American moviegoing experience, for lack of a better word, bites. Oh wait, there's lots of better words.
I hate movies.
*and there's no upper boundary to cross over into "good", either. On this scale, everything relatively sucks, just as all food tastes relatively like chicken.
August 28, 2001
The second part of my article Dynamic Content with DOM-2 is now up at Apple's Internet Developer Connection. this part deals with manipulating element attributes and style properties with the DOM interface.
Finally, a fairly comprehensive DOM reference for the Mozilla browser. This one also covers the window and frameset object models. (via Grant MacKenzie)
August 27, 2001
Internet Explorer 6 Final is released. Remember, this will probably overwrite any other version of IE you have installed, so proceed with caution. There's a nice thread about it over here at MetaFilter.
Only twelve or so more days until the Walkingbirds' Fray Day show. I have to admit I'm more than a little anxious about the whole thing. It's been a very long time since I performed live. I used to be pretty good at it. If you plan to be in San Francisco for Web2001 that weekend, you have no excuse for not coming out to Fray Day 5, goshdarnit.
I won't be at Web2001, but if you're going, be sure to check out the panels hosted by my DHTML Bible co-authors: Eric Meyer (CSS Theory and Application, et al.), Eric Costello (Using Next-Generation Web Technologies Today, et al.) and Steve Champeon (Dynamic HTML: Today and Tomorrow, et al.)
August 24, 2001
For a limited time, you can post to this blog with the JavaScript XML-RPC client. Play nice.
UPDATE: the script has been added to the implementations page at xmlrpc.com.
You may want to check out Ruben Daniëls' vcXMLRPC library, a similar JavaScript implementation that uses real DOM objects to make RPC operations in IE5 and Mozilla.
August 22, 2001
Aaron at YoungPup outlines a case for web standards in his piece Iconologic and Standards.
August 21, 2001
One more chapter to go! Well, that and a huge DOM reference. And maybe a few additional chapters to help the group catch up.
In the meantime, you might be interested in playing with my Latest Endeavor Of Questionable ValueTM, a browser-based XML-RPC message builder and client.
...um, and what is XML-RPC, some of you ask? Well, you can read all about it here, but in a nutshell, it's a way of expressing and exchanging data in an XML format, similar in many ways to SOAP. This particular tool takes JavaScript data, like strings, arrays, objects, etc. and creates a string of XML describing that data.
The "RPC" part of XML-RPC stands for "remote procedure call," which means that you can pass this XML message to an XML-RPC server that returns some sort of response data. For example, if you're using the new Blogger XML-RPC interface, you can use this tool to format your blogging actions using JavaScript, without having to write XML-RPC messages yourself. There's a very nice XML-RPC tutorial here.
Why? I dunno, it seemed like a fun idea at the time.
August 15, 2001
Excerpts from the latest Word From The WaSP:
If a designer has the ability to create a site that supports
standards, but chooses not to, the WaSP has no problem with that. We
don't know what your site logs look like, or your marketing plan,
or your target audience. You do, and you should gear your site
accordingly.
...building a standards-compliant site does not mean that you have to
switch to CSS or stop using FONT tags. For instance, a site that uses
FONT tags and an HTML 3.2 DOCTYPE can be a perfectly valid,
standards-compliant site. And if that's what's appropriate for
that site's audience, do it.
Pascal has written a series of tutorials on how to write a DHTML arcade game with a DOM-supporting browser (IE5/NS6/Mozilla only, please).
Apparently, the independent coffeehouse where Megan and I first met is closing down and being replaced with a friggin' Starbucks. The world is a stupid place.
August 10, 2001
Apparently, this guy likes his rabbit a lot.
An update on the Walkingbirds gig at Fray Day 5: looks like we'll be hitting the stage around 10:00 pm PST for a half-hour set. See the Fray Day 5 site for more details.
August 8, 2001
Netscape 6.1 for Macintosh is out. Thanks to Matthew Arieta for the tip.
Dan Steinman, the man behind the DynAPI library, he who brought DHTML to the unwashed masses, is looking for work. It is your patriotic duty to hire him.
August 7, 2001
It's startling, but this site still looks pretty good in Delorie's LynxViewer. Better than I expected.
And while I heartily agree with Megan that Proof Of Life sucked, I do recommend renting Tim Burton's Monkeybone for a cuddly sinister time. Get the DVD so you can watch the "Secrets of Monkeybone Revealed!" special features.
I just spent the better part of an hour tinkering with code to dynamically update a table cell in Netscape 4, something that takes a few seconds to write for IE and Mozilla. Why does this suck so? Because people still insist on supporting Netscape 4, following the tired mantras of "must support all browsers" and "must degrade gracefully" and the like which have been ingrained in our heads after years of attentive listening to web design gurus.
It's really not the fault of NS4. It's an old browser. Its CSS support and object model are primitive. What I can't understand is why we insist on treating NS4 as an application platform when it doesn't even do CSS right. We believe in the cause of standards and a future where web pages have become web applications, even as we throw out the better tools in favor of a lowest-common-denominator web experience. Because that's what we've been told to do.
If you're happy with a simpler design and functionality reduced to a series of forms, that's great. A lot of clients will insist on more. The more application-like the project, the harder and costlier it will be to maintain support for NS4. This may be worth something to a giant like eBay and maybe nothing at all to a company intranet. Browsers are becoming application environments. Perhaps that's not their intended use to begin with, but there's no going back now.
August 2, 2001
A new article by yours truly is up at the Apple Developer Connection: Dynamic Content With DOM2. The first of two parts, this article deals with using the DOM2 core to insert, remove and otherwise manipulate HTML in your page.
Damn damn damn! After three months of on-and-off slaving over hot PHP and MySQL, half-heartedly trying to put together some sort of better CMS for this site, Dean Allen has to go off and build this beautiful thing, which looks like it pretty much does everything I need, and does it way more elegantly. More screenshots here.
Book progress: we're pushing the 50% mark. I have a feeling it's a downhill slide from here. The rest of the chapters I'm primarily responsible are short on words and heavy on sample code (I'm building most of the widgets), so I've spent the last week tinkering with different things, trying to distill it all into a unified approach that doesn't borrow too heavily from what's already been done.
Netscape 4 makes everything harder.
August 1, 2001
I spent some time yesterday oohing and aahing over Doug's copy of the new Praystation Year 2 CD
ROM. It comes packaged in a rather foreboding charcoal-grey
plastic HD box and an awesome full-color booklet that covers the
various Flash experiments on the CD. Oooh, cool Flashtastic goodness.
In other news, Praystation's evil
DHTML twin Assembler has resurfaced at a different URL,
although I believe its proprietor still has no intention of
maintaining the site anymore. In any case, I'm extremely happy
it's still available in some form. Assembler resoundingly proves
that DHTML is not a "broken" technology. The best part IMO
is that Assembler takes a wonky thing like DHTML and instills an
artful aesthetic, in opposition to most of the barely-designed
wonk-minded DHTML sites out there (this one included). In a sense,
Praystation is the opposite, introducing programming to the
design-minded, with fantastic results.
John Weir has released a version of Clippings, a
DOM-only DHTML utility that allows visitors to a site to collect links
in a personalized list for later browsing. I can see this being used
on sites that have lots of rotating linked content, such as a news
site. It's a lot like regular bookmarks, except specific only to
that site. John is the architect of the now-famous IHT site layout.