November 2003 Archives

Take HTML Seriously!

A few days ago I accidentally found myself being interviewed for a job.
The role was a design and HTML / CSS development role with an emphasis on standards and accessibility. In fact, the job description was a perfect match with my skill set.
These specific jobs don't come along very often (not in London anyway) and as the interview drew to a close it was clear that supply was just as rare as demand as I was told I was the only candidate they had seen that really fitted what they were looking for.

As far as I can tell most people think HTML is easy - 'anyone can do it'. It is a language that most potential web professionals will learn first before moving on to something 'more difficult' such as ASP, JAVA or whatever. But I have been specialising in these technologies for around five years now and I still find challenges every day. The basics may be easy but to really master HTML, CSS, standards, semantics and the separation of content from presentation is a great challenge and I for one enjoy HTML and I am proud with what I can achieve with it.

It isn't a surprise to me that there aren't more specialists when the speciality isn't taken seriously by employers who then don't see the need to seek such specialists.

But why don't they take it seriously? Whatever happens on the back end, HTML and CSS are usually what the server spits out at the user and the more streamlined it is, the faster it will load and the more cross-compatible it is, the more people will be able to see it and the more accessible it is, the more people will be able to see, or as the case may be, hear it.

This is important stuff.

Sunday 30 November, 2003 ( 6:33 PM GMT) | Comments (15) / Permanent Link

Drop the 'www.'?

Three siamese-twin sheep From a link on Mezzoblue I found myself on no-www.org, a site promoting the deprecation of the 'www.' part of URL's.

My first thought was 'Yes! Of course! How very stupid of me not to take on something so obvious! - All of the websites I work on should drop the www!' and then my brain churned for a few seconds before oozing out some almost as obvious reasons why it's not so cut and dry.

"Double-ewe, double-ewe, double-ewe" (prizes go to the first person to get the picture pun) is a bit of a mouthful and apparently unnecessary when most modern day websites will work at whatever.com as they will at www.whatever.com.

When you're writing it to appear in print, sure, drop the www. If your web server is configured to show your website at whatever.com just as it is at www.whatever.com then the '.com' is enough for people to recognise that it is a URL and typing that directly into most web browsers will do the job just fine.

But when it comes to writing a URL in some electronic form, you can lose out. The thing is that popular email programs and instant-messaging software will convert anything beginning with 'www.' to a functional link. From a usability point of view, this is much more preferable because a user is more likely to simply select a link than cut and paste it into their browser.
These programs will also usually convert something beginning with 'http://' into a functional link, but I have to say, for clarity's sake that I'd rather write just 'www.' and let the browser figure out the more annoying and less recognised 'http://'.

Conveying a URL by speech or in print: whatever.com.
Conveying a URL by electronic means: www.whatever.com.

Tuesday 25 November, 2003 ( 3:34 PM GMT) | Comments (4) / Permanent Link

Being Constructive in Criticism

Peter-Paul Koch, self-styled 'JavaScript guru' has written a piece bashing A List Apart's JavaScript Image Replacement article.

I take issue with his over emotional response. While I agree that the article is not great and is perhaps not up to the standard of many articles on ALA, the aim of the site is to educate and the personal hostility is ridiculously over the top. It does not read as constructive criticism but rather 'this person took my idea and didn't do with it what I want'. Much more would be achieved if the arguments were a little bit more focussed rather than clouded in anger and used to demolish someone else's efforts to educate. The emphasis is on how his method was butchered and childish comments such as "this article sucks" or "I'll tell you to get lost" only add to an air of bitterness.

He has many good points that illuminate how the ALA article is flawed, but they are not well presented and it would have been more appropriate to use the ALA discussion forum to put forward his arguments directly to the relevant audience, rather than to simply post an advertisement for his own site

He goes on to criticize ALA's coverage of JavaScript in general, saying "I feel that since J. David Eisenberg's July 2000 article DOM Design Tricks II ALA has not published any good programming article... The point of the JavaScript articles is vague, the content, mediocre, new viewpoints, absent". I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet and I would never be as audacious as calling myself a 'guru', but the JavaScript technique that is central to 'Suckerfish Dropdowns', the ALA article written by myself and Dan Webb is as sound as you like.
ALA's specialities do tend to be issues of standards, HTML, CSS, accessibility and alike, but that doesn't mean there has never been anything of goodness outside of these areas.

With a wide-ranging, informative site such as Quirks Mode, Koch clearly wants to be helpful, but on this occasion his good points are lost in a rant that is unfortunately ugly and self-gratifying and as a result is not as helpful as it could be.

Criticism is good. It helps us learn. But it needs to be focussed and it needs to be constructive.

A guru is not only a person who knows a topic inside out, a guru is a wise teacher and a teacher that should not be so offended or, in turn, offensive.

UPDATE (7:30 PM): Following some debate in the ALA discussions, PPK has updated his article and it is now much less hostile and as a result much more helpful. He has left the original version on-line, of which this post and it's initial comments are based on.

Monday 24 November, 2003 (12:24 PM GMT) | Comments (13) / Permanent Link

CSSVault

Just a few days ago I stumbled across CSSVault, a well presented collection of links to CSS designed sites and also CSS resources. Paul Scrivens has been good enough to add HTML Dog to that list of resources and so I'm repaying the favour. There's some unnecessary use of graphical text where functional text would be fine (and perhaps more appropriate for the promotion of CSS), but that's just me being picky. The most important thing is that it's a great place to be inspired by and learn about CSS.

While I'm at it, check out Paul's quality web-focussed blog, Whitespace too.

As I come across more and more sites that I think HTML Dog readers would be interested in, it makes me think I should update the links page some time soon.

Saturday 22 November, 2003 ( 8:39 PM GMT) | Comments (1) / Permanent Link

Google Ads

Every time I find myself on the Accessify website, Google AdWord adverts manically flicker for a few seconds as I wait for the pages to load. The flickering gives me a brief headache and makes me feel glad I don't suffer from epilepsy. It's quite likely some form of browser bug, but I take it as an omen. 'Doooon't uuuuse Gooooogle aaaaads' a ghostly voice whispers to me.

HTML Dog has turned out to be much more successful than I had anticipated and I would be lying if I said the thought of putting a few ads on the pages in an attempt to cover some of the hosting costs hadn't crossed my mind. But I'm really not convinced and Google ads, which seem to be on more web pages than they're not haven't gone any way to change my mind.

I like the idea of text rather than graphical adverts but I don't like the srewey JavaScript code and I don't like the inability to customize the code (like to use XHTML and CSS for example).

No ads for HTML Dog. Not just yet.

Thursday 20 November, 2003 ( 7:01 PM GMT) | Comments (9) / Permanent Link

CSS Best Practices

Dave Shea has opened a discussion about CSS best practice techniques on Mezzoblue.

He's looking for simple single-sentence rules and brief explanations that will make up a CSS guideline resource. There are already a large number of comments that bring up a lot of interesting and helpful points.

UPDATE (11PM): Mr. Shea has pulled on the reins to bring a bit of focus on the idea and has put together an updated version of the list.

Wednesday 19 November, 2003 (11:00 AM GMT) | Comments (2) / Permanent Link

Enter... PTG's Dog Blog

PTG's Dog Blog logo The latest addition to the HTML Dog website is the very thing you're reading now - PTG's Dog Blog. I thought a web log ('blog' for short for those who don't know) to complement the site would be a good idea. It's a place for me (that's Patrick Griffiths - the bloke behind HTML Dog) to bang on about web stuff, reporting news, reviewing sites, voicing opinions etcetera etcetera etcetera...

The idea is to stick to the loose subject of the web, particularly HTML and CSS, keeping the personal stuff out. I don't think there are that many people out there interested in my life, but there are plenty of people interested in building websites and hopefully there will be something of interest popping up now and again to people here and there. You will be able to comment on most blog entries - whether you agree or disagree with something or if you just think you have something interesting to say, please say it - comments could well become more interesting and useful than the entry itself.

Tuesday 18 November, 2003 ( 5:28 PM GMT) | Comments (3) / Permanent Link