Society elsewhere on the 'Net.
Includes:
29 July 2009
Chris Heilmann unveils an online book that explains how to be a developer evangelist. Tons of good advice here. Read it if you're eager to talk about the stuff you're doing and want to convince other developers to use it.
Blogging, Business, Conferences, Education, Professionalism, Public speaking, Skillset | Permalink
4 May 2009
Jeremy Keith is very upset about the slow and agonising death of Geocities.
You may not care about Geocities. Keep in mind that this is the same company that owns Flickr, Upcoming, Delicious and Fire Eagle. It is no longer clear to me why I should entrust my data to silos owned by a company behaving in such an irresponsible, callous, cold-hearted way.
Frankly, I think the fault wholly lies with people who put their data only on an external site. If the data is important to you, keep a local copy.
That's exactly what I do with my presentations. Although I recently joined SlideShare and will continue using it, the official, canonical PDFs of my slides are stored right here on QuirksMode.org. That automatically solves any future problem that might occur with SlideShare.
So I disagree with Jeremy here; if you don't want to lose your data, retain a local copy. Simple as that.
Society | Permalink
7 April 2009
18 March 2009
Nate's presentation on what our profession is and how we should go about it.
Professionalism | Permalink
13 March 2009
lang="nl" Nederland is een online magazine over (web)design, usability en front-end rijker. Er staan al enkele artikelen op; ik hoop dat het een mooie aanvulling op Naar Voren wordt.
Heren van HeeftStijl; succes!
Society | Permalink
24 February 2009
A large overview article in ComputerWorld about the current state of the browsers. I was interviewed for it. There are also articles about browser sniffing and problems in the W3C standards.
Every web developer will know 90% of what's in the articles, but it's still good to see that interest in correct web development practices is growing.
Browsers, Society | Permalink
2 February 2009
A survey of screen reader user. Very useful!
Screen readers, Surveys | Permalink
WebDirections now also runs a web developer survey, one that focuses more on the technical side. Excellent idea; the more we measure the more we know.
Professionalism, Surveys | Permalink
Andy Budd ponders social media and its use by clueless clients. Although his point about social media consultants being essentially useless is well taken, my conclusion would be slightly different: the social thingy hype is at its peak and can only go down from here.
Not that the social part of the Web will disappear; there's obviously a need for it, so it will stay. Nonetheless, it will become just one more tool in the box of the Web professional instead of the Alpha and Omega of web use.
The real question is: what comes after social media?
Society | Permalink
29 July 2008
It's that time of year again: Mr. Z asks us what we, as web developers, do, want to do, feel, and earn. Please take the 2008 survey. (I already did.)
Surveys | Permalink
17 April 2008
Jason Ryan of the New Zealand State Services Commission has posted an interesting ten-principle approach to blogging by public servants.
(Via Web Directions Blog.)
Blogging | Permalink
11 February 2008
Jonathan shares his tips and tricks for building a good comment spam blocker. Some are obvious, others less so.
Blogging | Permalink
10 January 2008
Thomas Vanderwal tries to define the elements that social software has to enable. An interesting read.
I couldn't resist applying his ideas to myself and my blog, and in general it seems they fit quite nicely. It seems that this has a broader application than just social software (unless you count blogging software as social; something I don't do).
However I'm wondering about Relationships, since I feel they can be asymmetric. A person comments on my blog, and tries to establish a relationship, but I consider him a bore or worse and decline the offered relationship. Does that fall within Thomas' definition of Relationship? Probably, but I feel that there's a loose end here. (On the other hand, I could be totally wrong. I'm not really used to thinking in these terms.)
Society | Permalink
Funny idea. Maybe this is the solution to the low comment quality problem.
Via Andrew Dupont.
Society | Permalink
6 November 2007
Derek Powazek gives advice to budding web developers. Just make websites! Don't worry about degrees; even work experience matters little.
Skillset | Permalink
Rachel Andrew asks what people expect from an advanced CSS course (or book). I'd like to know the same.
CSS, Skillset | Permalink
23 October 2007
Back in June 2006, Nate Koechley invited me to come to Yahoo! one day, and last Friday I was finally able to take him up on that offer during my first ever visit to San Francisco. He also invited me to give a presentation.
For various reasons I was unable to create a unique presentation for Yahoo!, and therefore I translated my Dutch slides about Fronteers, the Guild of Front End Developers we're setting up in Holland, and repeated the presentation I've given three or four times back home, though without the really tricky subjects such as finance.
Fortunately the Yahoo! people were very much interested in this subject (in fact, Nate's working on professionalisation, too).
Of course Yahoo! recorded the event, and the record has now gone live. Since I absolutely hate seeing and hearing myself on any kind of screen, I haven't watched the video myself yet. Eventually I will, but only in the privacy of my own house. (Right now I'm at the VTM conference.)
Nonetheless, I assume that some of my readers are interested in what I had to say. Please excuse the accent and the slightly ... well ... quirky presentation style. I still have a depressing amount to learn.
Professionalism | Permalink
17 October 2007
At last! Interesting read. I don't entirely agree with all the extrapolations (for instance, "Hispanic" has no meaning in a European context), but that's quibbling about details. The main thing is that Zeldman cs. have done an astonishing job that very badly needed to be done.
Thanks!
Surveys | Permalink
14 September 2007
Alastair Campbell on blog comments. He acknowledges the problem, but would like to continue allowing comments. Therefore he proposes a comment policy:
This site is my own, it is not a democracy. If you want freedom of expression get your own site. Having said that, comments are welcome provided that they are:
- On topic, i.e. you have read the post and are commenting on the same topic.
- Adding something to the post, i.e. “you suck” and “you rock” are equally useless.
- Polite, or at least professional.
- Not overly promotional or outright spam.
Any comment that does not fulfil these criteria will be removed at my discretion.
If a comment is largely good with a mistake or two, I may correct it.
If you provide a valid email address, I will try to inform you of a removal or correction.
Sounds interesting. I may apply it to my own site, except for the last line.
Blogging | Permalink
29 August 2007
Interesting meta-survey of blogging.
Quoted quote (2004):
Indeed, a survey of taxi drivers, pub landlords and hairdressers ("often seen as barometers of popular trends" according to Reuters, though God alone knows when hairdressers became barometers of anything), by ad outfit DDB London showed that 90 per cent of barometers have not the foggiest idea what a podcast is, and an impressive 70 per cent live in blissful ignorance of blogging.
(Via Paul Boag.)
Blogging | Permalink
1 August 2007
Spurred on by my Guild post the WSG seems to have taken a stab at defining a front-end programmer. The mail thread contains a few interesting thoughts.
Skillset | Permalink
21 July 2007
Joel Spolsky explains what's wrong with the current commenting system on blogs.
When a blog allows comments right below the writer's post, what you get is a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed, followed by a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody ... nobody ... would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.
I agree passionately. See also the follow-up by Clay Shirky:
I have long thought that the freedom of speech argument is dumb on blogs — it is the blogger’s space, and he or she should feel free to delete, disemvowel, or otherwise dispose of material, for any reason, or no reason.
Even though Clay Shirky doesn't quite believe that any more, I do. I'm the absolute dictator of my own blog, and I can do whatever I like.
Blogging | Permalink
17 July 2007
Interesting article about corporate web standards; i.e. corporate web sites that are standards-aware in principle, but not-quite-perfect in practice.
Basically, the message is that in a corporate environment you can't yet produce perfectly standards-compliant websites, but that a not-quite-perfect site is light years better than old-fashioned tag soup. I fully agree; for the moment this is the best way to make corporations and web standards live together in harmony.
Working in a large company, there are likely to be a lot of little things that keep you from producing—and more importantly, maintaining—a picture-perfect standards-compliant website. It’s not just one big issue, but multiple factors that contribute to a greater whole, and it can be a bit intimidating when taken altogether.
The answer is to take baby steps. Stop and have a look at all the problems that prevent you from doing the work you want to do, then start figuring out which ones need to be fixed first.
Spot on.
Business, Professionalism, Standards/W3C | Permalink
21 June 2007
Molly presents some unscientific and probably not-quite-representative numbers on the standards awareness of MS conference visitors in Budapest, Amsterdam and Zürich. (Incidentally, the local patriot in me is gratified that the Amsterdam visitors scored best, or at least, least bad.)
Molly wonders how to continue the standards movement. We have to reach these people, that's clear, but exactly how are we going to do that? Education, obviously, but that's pretty hard to set up due to university bureaucracy. But do we have more options?
One, I feel, is making clear to everyone that front-end programming (or whatever you want to call it) is a separate discipline that cannot be left to designers or database programmers, because they already have a demanding job and don't have time for another one.
As soon as this realization becomes common, we'll find our task becoming much easier. In another year or so, companies may start to understand that if they want to offer front-end development to their clients, they need to have competent front-enders on the payroll. That would be an important step.
And yes, I'm currently working on such an approach. More news when I have it.
Society | Permalink
15 June 2007
Chris wonders about company bashing. Personally I haven't really noticed this problem. Apple deserves to be bashed because of its outdated secrecy nonsense; W3C deserved (past tense!) to be bashed because of its inactivity, which is fortunately disappearing; and long ago Microsoft deserved to be bashed because of its strategy of doing nothing, which has been succeeded by a strategy of doing rather a lot of things.
So personally I'd say this is not as huge a problem as Chris thinks it is. On the other hand, that's just my opinion, and maybe I'm missing something because I don't work for a large company.
Society | Permalink
13 June 2007
Stephen Hay on vigilantism, self-censoring, and the ethics of responding to site piracy. Interesting!
Society | Permalink
30 May 2007
Stephen Hay comments on my recent ALA article. His main question is how to sell web standards to companies. First of all, you don't sell it to clients, you just do it. Selling it to large website creation companies is trickier, but basically my proposal is to make standards fashionable, after which they sell themselves (I hope).
Business, Society | Permalink
24 May 2007
Chris continues to discuss professionalism; not the coding side, but the "soft" side.
Skillset | Permalink
6 May 2007
Silly answers to serious CSS/JavaScript questions:
Me: How do I add a style sheet to my HTML document?
Him: Simple. You click on 'Insert' on the menu bar, and click on "Style sheet".
It would be very funny if it weren't so sad.
Fun, Skillset | Permalink
2 May 2007
Chris on professionalism among web developers; not about the standards this time, but about how you should approach working in a company.
Skillset | Permalink
27 April 2007
Zeldman rocks!
Question: If web design makes the new information age possible—if it creates new markets and new products, generates significant global cash flow, changes the way companies and non-profits interact with the public, and employs untold legions of specialists—why, until now, hasn’t anybody tried to find out more about it as an industry?
Hypothesis: No one has tried to measure web design because web design has been a hidden profession.
He follows up with a few examples. Zeldman is definitely on to something, and I hope he'll continue his investigations. I might even do the same thing on a smaller scale here in Holland, if certain plans I have work out.
Business, Professionalism | Permalink
24 April 2007
Anil Dash has gathered some useful links about Google's new Web History thing. Personally I don't like it for beans and I will definitely NOT allow Google to store my surfing data. Too Big Brotherish for my tastes.
Linkdumps, Society | Permalink
ALA presents the web design survey, meant to increase understanding of the position of web developers, especially those who are not white and male. Please take the survey, I already did so.
Surveys | Permalink
21 April 2007
Happy Cog commissioned a fact-finding research about women in the IT. Preliminary conclusions:
Note that this is about the entire IT industry. Unfortunately it was not possible to study the web design/development industry in detail. Based on my own, thoroughly non-scientific and non-representative observations in the past nine years, I venture to suggest that woman participation in the Web is slightly (though not much) higher than in IT in general, but that women are concentrated in interaction design, project management, and administrative support jobs.
Society | Permalink
Dustin lands at Google, and I wish him good luck.
In his entry he mentions one important thing:
Don’t bloggers go there to die?
That’s a stereotype. A stereotype, however, that I once believed as well. I believe blogging is good for my soul, and I always love sharing what I learn. I will continue to blog, but of course under restrictions of not sharing private company information [...]
I noted the problem of Google employees not blogging any more a while ago, when Erik Arvidsson and Douglas Bowman entered Google and basically stopped writing on their blogs, both of which I read with interest.
Now this may of course be a coincidence; both Erik and Douglas may have decided independently of each other and of Google that they wanted to take a break. Nonetheless I worried a bit. Now that Dustin's going to Google, too, I again worry a bit, because his is one other blog I don't like to lose.
Nonetheless Dustin is very clear: he will continue blogging. For me, this is a sort of test case. If Dustin, too, falls off my radar, I'm afraid I'll be forced to conclude that there's something about working for Google that doesn't mix well with independent blogging. Let's hope I'm worrying about nothing.
Blogging | Permalink
19 April 2007
20 tips for writing a better blog. Tip 2: Encourage comments. For a starting blog, possibly. For a mature blog, who knows? Maybe 'discourage comments' would be a better tip for them.
(Via Paul Boag.)
Blogging | Permalink
Zeldman on blog comments. He, too, focuses on spam, but does not say much about quality.
Blogging | Permalink
Jonathan Snook expects spam commenting to become an even greater problem than it is today. Although that's quite possible, I feel that he almost ignores the second possible cause of death for comments: quality (or rather, lack thereof).
Blogging | Permalink
11 April 2007
Roger gets annoyed at people who offer silly excuses for not following web standards, and offers a veru useful overview of the excuses themselves. Now we have to write rebuttals of every excuse.
Skillset | Permalink
2 April 2007
Tim O'Reilly calls for a Blogger Code of Conduct. His proposals are:
I find 1 interesting; I never thought of responsibility for comments, but it makes excellent sense. To me, 2 is something I decide in private, because I find it hard to articulate my exact tolerance, and it depends on my mood anyway. I implement 4 by deleting trolls.
(Via Tim Bray.)
Blogging | Permalink
20 March 2007
Always an interesting question. Right now the answer seems to be 'web developers', but Patrick rightly points to the role of clients, authoring tool developers, as well as the disabled people themselves.
Accessibility, Professionalism | Permalink
8 March 2007
Scott Andrew's ways of detecting newbies at work in JavaScript.
I've learnt one other trick for distinguishing newbies and pros: ask them the difference between this and self. Usually people who just claim to be excellent scripters don't know the answer, while real pros do.
JavaScript, Skillset | Permalink
8 February 2007
One of the better descriptions of "web developer" I've read.
[...] e-commerce developers wrote web applications in Java. HTML was just beneath them, and it was a task well suited for the most junior member of the team.
This is one of the largest problems in building web sites with a strong server side component.
Web development isn't one skill, its an aggregation of many skills and knowledge - almost anything used in the context of the web counts as a web development skill.
True. I generally use a narrowed-down definition (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), but Isofarro names several related techniques that you're going to need one day—and are going to need a specialist for. This specialist is also a web developer, though with a different skillset.
Skillset | Permalink
19 December 2006
Jeff Veen showcases a few ways of falsely correlating data. Funny, but with a message: especially when using graphics, you can correlate anything you want.
Society | Permalink
19 October 2006
John Allsopp feels that blogging will change fundamentally in the next year or so. Where previously people followed several popular blogs, which as a result became even more popular, they'll increasingly pick the entries that interest them; and never mind which blog they appeared on.
I'm not sure I agree; before finding a good entry, someone first has to find the blog that contains that entry. But if everyone only reads the blogs that everyone else reads, it's hard to find a good entry on a less well known blog.
I'm afraid the blogosphere has reached a state of equilibrium that's hard to upset. People have to start looking outside the well known blogs, but the problem is that there's so much boring and outright bad stuff out there that most people will hurriedly return to the well known blogs.
I mean, there's a reasons some blogs are well known and others aren't: constant quality. Not just one good article, but a whole series of them stretching over months; sometimes years.
Although there will certainly be at least one high-quality blog that isn't as well known as it deserves to be, there are also millions of blogs that deserve to remain unknown. Conversely, how many of the well known blogs have seen a marked decline in quality?
I don't think we'll see a significant change, although I'd welcome a few more voices in web development land. Setting up a popular blog, however, is (and should be) more demanding than just publishing one good article.
Blogging | Permalink
11 October 2006
43 social bookmarking icons on one site? Time to get rid of the whole social bookmarking thing, I'd say. In a year or so we'll see that social bookmarking is one of those Web 2.0 concepts that just failed.
Society | Permalink
7 October 2006
Mark Boulton discusses the problems inherent in teaching good web design, and possible actions for a professional body of web designers to take.
I think this industry needs a professional body who has a narrow remit. I don’t think certification, especially web standards, is workable. I’d like to see best design, development and business practice addressed. Although maybe all three of those would be too much to bite off. I’d like to see it as membership by peer review and I wouldn’t mind paying for it annually.
I'm not entirely sure if I'm behind this idea, mainly for practical reasons. If it doesn't allow us to reach out to the 90% of web developers who don't get it, does such a body have a point?
Nonetheless, this certainly should be discussed.
Professionalism | Permalink
What can a professional body do for a web designer? Richard quotes examples from similar bodies in the design and chemistry world.
Professionalism | Permalink
20 September 2006
The web development world is predominantly white and male. How can we change that? John Allsopp ponders the question.
Society | Permalink
17 September 2006
5 August 2006
Something that's worth a formal QuirksBlog entry, but I still haven't found the time to write it.
Professionalism | Permalink
Especially interesting for its discussion of US "carriers", who seem to have a fundamentally different approach to mobile networking than European "operators". I didn't know there was a difference, but I'm very glad I live in Europe.
Mobile, Society | Permalink
25 July 2006
A first stab at defining professional web designers/developers. To be continued (I hope).
Skillset | Permalink
11 July 2006
Jeremy on learning JavaScript. Bottom line: if you want to use JavaScript, learn JavaScript. I completely agree.
JavaScript, Society | Permalink
26 June 2006
The danger of the blogosphere revealed: we tend to forget there's an entire world out there, a world where Flickr is not the largest photo sharing site.
Blogging | Permalink
Andy Budd's recommendation for drawing attention to books you like. Good idea; if you encounter my book somewhere, please turn it cover-out.
Society | Permalink
Stuart visited Microsoft and reports. Once again, it seems Microsoft is firmly committed to openness.
Society | Permalink
21 June 2006
Post by Russ Weakley about tagging. I seem to have inadvertently committed a grave social faux pas when I dissed the touristy photos tagged 'atmedia'. In any case I have some reading to do.
Society | Permalink
2 June 2006
9 May 2006
An interesting idea: just work four days a week, and the amount of work you 'need' to do will diminish.
I'm all in favour, but not right now yet
Society | Permalink
15 March 2006
To allow comments or not to allow comments. Jeremy ponders the question. 'Comments should be disabled 90% of the time.'
Blogging | Permalink
15 February 2006
Yahoo! goes community, too. It has released a user interface library and a design pattern library. Since I'm not terribly interested in JavaScript libraries, I'll spend most of my attention on the second one, which looks very promising and ties in with John Allsopp's ideas along the same line.
JavaScript, Society, Usability | Permalink
28 January 2006
17 January 2006
By Zeldman. 'It soon appeared that Web 2.0 was not only bigger than the Apocalypse but also more profitable.'
Society | Permalink
20 December 2005
Spot on.
'a powerful incentive for hosting and running an awards competition is to help make the host a center of power in the community. By creating the forum, inciting the inevitable drama, setting the rules, and (likely) helping to entrench one's friends and supporters as powers within the new community hierarchy, those who create awards are likely to reap significant benefits from doing so.'
Blogging | Permalink
9 December 2005
Adaptive Path goes bullshit generation. 37Signals rightly heckles them. In other words: A True Web 2.0 Story.
Fun, Society | Permalink
5 December 2005
I completely agree. Social/networking sites are just a waste of time.
Society | Permalink
26 November 2005
Cameron Adams points out we don't have have an official profession, but that this lack of formal rules, and the chance to write the formal rules for later generations, is one of the great challenges of working in the Web.
Professionalism | Permalink
24 November 2005
Isolani adds a few interesting points to the New Professionalism discussion.
Professionalism | Permalink
20 November 2005
Why the music industry and Apple have opposing interests in pricing music.
Society | Permalink
14 November 2005
Andy has an excellent approach to accessibility issues, and he shows it here.
'Those people still delivering nested table layout, spacer gifs or ignoring accessibility can no longer call themselves web professionals.'
Hear, hear!
Accessibility, Professionalism | Permalink
10 November 2005
Long but very interesting essay about chances and problems in African software development.
Society | Permalink
2 November 2005
Small but high-quality linkdump on the nonsense called Web 2.0
Linkdumps, Society | Permalink
31 October 2005
Want to use standards, but nobody else in your company understands them? Start anyway, Andy Clarke advises, and I completely agree. Just doing it will get you further than talking and talking and talking to people who're just not interested.
Society | Permalink
28 October 2005
Nick Bradbury says that the current Web 2.0 fashion (hype?) is too quick to rule out desktop applications. I completely agree; at the moment web applications are just not good enough, especially in terms of connectivity, to compete with desktop applications in their own environment: the desktop. In fact, I doubt whether they'll ever be able to compete.
Web applications are WEB applications. Their strengths are not those of desktop applications, and vice versa. Simply copying desktop applications is not the way to go.
Society | Permalink
10 October 2005
Ian Lloyd is shocked by the total absence of quality in 90% of the "Web development" books. Having browsed through many JavaScript books in my local bookstore, I can sympathize. Publishers just don't get it, and newbie web developers get wagonloads of bad advice.
Professionalism | Permalink
2 October 2005
General overview of factors that play a role with search engine ranking. These are guidelines, not in-depth explanations.
Society | Permalink
27 September 2005
An excellent initiative. I'll follow it with interest.
Society | Permalink
16 September 2005
Required reading for newbies who want to start posting questions to mailing lists or forums.
Society | Permalink
3 September 2005
Evolt has been restyled. It's an excellent website to start a career as a web development author on, since it publishes articles by all members, and the feedback and comments are usually quite good.
Since I was moderately active on Evolt from, say, 1999 to 2002, I still have a soft spot for it. I hope that the new site will attract more quality content than the previous one. Don't hesitate, submit an article.
Society | Permalink
29 August 2005
Is Google a platform? No, it isn't, and it's not becoming one, either. Is Google an Evil Empire? Not yet.
Insightful article.
Society | Permalink
27 August 2005
Jeremy bravely attempts to define the difference between 'American' and 'European' design. I suspect that 'European' design doesn't (yet) exist: we should talk about British, Dutch, Swedish, French, etc. design, since all of these countries have their own design traditions.
Nonetheless the question remains whether we can discern such 'national' design identities at all.
Society | Permalink
19 August 2005
Tim Bray explains why 'Web 2.0' is largely a buzzword.
'Open Source means something quite specific that you can explain to anyone in a sentence or two. Web 2.0 means so little, and is so vulnerable to corruption from the hypemeisters, that I suspect that if it’s a meme at all, it’ll be short-lived.'
Society | Permalink
20 July 2005
May 2004 report on the penetration of Web technologies. Contains a link to the July 2005 report.
Interesting facts:
JavaScript use: 55 % stable (I'd expected more)
CSS use: up from 35 to 44 % (yeah!)
Flash use: up from 9% to 12 % (pity)
Society | Permalink
6 July 2005
Take the survey! The survey pages include a VERY slick bit of AJAX scripting
Society | Permalink
This is the linklog of Peter-Paul Koch, mobile platform strategist, consultant, and trainer. You can also visit his QuirksBlog, or you can follow him on Twitter.
Category rchives:
Monthlies: