AirSharing doesn't even come close to being a thumbdrive replacement as the only way to connect to it from another device is through WiFi. Most desktop computers don't have WiFi, so basically the only computers you could interface with are laptops.
That's incorrect, I don't know where you got that idea; I suppose from the fact that you need a wifi network for the iPod/iPhone.
The only thing you need is a local network that the iPhone can join via wifi (desktops can connect however they like, via ethernet usually). It just starts up a lighttpd server on port 8080, and lets clients connect via webdav.
Thus it comes very close to being a thumbdrive replacement - if you have a wifi network available (That's not the same as having a wifi enabled desktop). If not, then it's of no use, but personally I haven't been to any clients who have wired only networks in a few years, and all home users I know have one. YMMV.
Not the original coward, but they're probably talking about the SDK agreement (supposedly still under NDA I think - pah).
The SDK agreement disallows various things, including
Running interpreted code
Running any executable code outside your app binary not provided by Apple
Downloading extra features/functionality (in fact much of the software already accepted violates this one in that it downloads data, but Apple have chosen to look the other way).
What it does not say is that they reserve the right to remove your app if it competes with them.
Apple are feeding all this speculation with their pointless NDA on the SDK agreement, so I guess it's partly their fault.
Anyway, this device is locked down tight, and yes, the only vector for app distribution (if you want to ever get anything on the official store, and not rely on users cracking their phone) is via Apple, as spelled out in this agreement (NB it is not the one you linked to)
You can't bundle libraries (save by compiling into a monolithic binary), you can't use plugins, you can't interpret code (though what they mean by code I'm not sure, since this could disallow all kinds of things - many kinds of data are close to code).
So writing a browser which doesn't use the javascript interpreter from Apple would appear to be out of bounds. As would games which use scripting files written in lua for example. Which is a real shame as it limits what people can do for no good reason.
Presumably Apple has done this to prevent people porting java apps, but it's more than a little heavy handed. They could allow java apps and still not allow any other distribution mechanism. I prefer native apps, but the limitations on loading other code make it difficult to do certain things, and more difficult to port software from other platforms than it should be.
This restriction on interpreted and/or bundled code is putting a severe crimp on which apps are developed (along with the bizarre decisions on which apps get accepted and which don't), and Apple deserve to be called out on it.
Now perhaps they're not breaking any competition laws (I seriously doubt it myself), but they are hurting their reputation with their customers and developers, as they did when they introduced the iPhone at a developers conference and said 'We have a really sweet solution for development on the phone - web apps'. Treating your developers and customers as a necessary evil is not a good way to earn respect long-term.
cell phone, pocket PC and thumbdrive. Sometimes I also carry a Nano
I carry an iPhone, with a few jailbroken apps, and Air Sharing (as a thumbdrive replacement), which seems to cover all the bases. Haven't found the screen size to be a limitation, save perhaps for reading books. The only area that it's really lacking in is the camera, which is pretty rubbish, but I think I'll always prefer a real camera for that.
My bet would be on phones (not necessarily the iPhone) as the next convergence device - when we have slightly more power, and ubiquitous wireless keyboards/screens (I hear they're coming just after flying cars), all you'd need would be to plug your phone in and you'd have the equivalent of a desktop system of yesteryear.
OpenID is just so damn unintuitive that nobody really gets it. It is a fucking login. Why can't it be an email address? Why can't it resolve the right place to conduct authentication business via DNS the same way SMTP gets it's MX record based on everything after the @domain.com?
Apparently millions of people get it and use it every day. I hardly think entering a url is unintuitive - it's how you got to this page after all. OpenID is really very simple, but if you don't like it, or it makes you throw spontaneous hissy fits like those above, don't use it (or use sites that do).
OpenID could use the email address for login, but it doesn't.
The iPhone API is sufficiently abstracted from the hardware (certainly for things like a data connection) that there is no difference for the developer between the two devices. They run the same hardware, but without camera, GPS, bluetooth (which is crippled anyway at the moment) and the cell hardware (which you can't access directly anyway).
You can even access location information on the touch via the same API, it just won't be as accurate as it's skyhook only. So for a developer, the differences between the platforms are mostly irrelevant (I'm sure most do test on a phone via beta testers, but not everyone needs to buy a phone to develop apps which don't rely on phone hardware).
You might not like the fact that the SDK is limited, but it is remarkably coherent and easy to develop for across devices, which doesn't seem to be the case for J2ME (see other comments on this story), and this may be a problem with Android encounters too, simply because of all the disparate hardware.
As I understand it, you can only run Java code, that's what I meant by development being locked down (i.e. you have to use their SDK and program in Java, you can't compile native apps). This isn't such a burden, and is looser than the restrictions on the iPhone, but it is quite a serious restriction compared to compiling native apps.
It's great they've released the source to the OS as well though.
As an iPhone user, I'm really excited about this phone. It's the first real competition to the iPhone with a decent OS, and having these two companies competing in this space is marvellous - who would have predicted it 5 years ago? It's a shame that development on both phones is locked down to the extent that it is, but hopefully competition between the two will slowly chip away at this.
Hopefully this move will force Apple to be a little more open with their developers (e.g. on arbitrary rejections), and a little more open to suggestions from their users (e.g. copy and paste!). Sounds like a good phone with some really interesting UI ideas - I love the swipe from left or right to open up new windows.
Instead of making a play against Microsoft on the desktop, Google are making it here on phones, which is interesting. It's a space in which MS is historically weak, and if Google can control the direction of the platform they'll be able to put their ads in front of a huge number of customers.
What was wrong with an external USB floppy drive - I'm sure those were available at the time, or very shortly after?
Floppies were obsolete, and they deserved to die. The only way to do it was to remove them from a popular model - and it worked! Just as they removed serial ports early and replaced them with USB, or moved to LCD screens across the line.
Apple removing Firewire from iPods, and then from *consumer* targeted macs is just telegraphing the signal that they have accepted the defeat of Firewire, and are going to move on. Eventually in a few years when there is a clear replacement even for pro work they'll probably remove it from everything, and people can keep an old computer round for compatibility if they have to.
Firewire was a better standard in some ways (though more expensive), but the better standard doesn't always win, and in the face of a market which has clearly decided to move to USB en masse, Apple have decided to concentrate on things which matter more. If you don't happen to agree with them, that's ok, there are plenty of other computer manufacturers out there, and a good, free alternative OS.
The Turing Test is way past it's [sic] prime by this point.
On the contrary, and you skirt close to this conclusion in your post by enumerating all the questions provoked by such a simple experiment, the Turing test cuts to the quick of the question - What is it to be human/intelligent?
The subtlety and power of the test lies in the fact that the requirements will change over time - initially people are willing to be amazed by a simple expert system able to churn out answers in a certain domain, later they demand that it play chess, experience time passing and store memories, and eventually they demand situational awareness, self-awareness and emotions.
Before *everyone* is convinced that a computer in a black box is equivalent to a human, it will have to be intelligent enough to be aware of its situation in the world, and to fake certain parts of its behaviour (as all humans do) to fit in with others or to trick questioners. It will have to be indistinguishable from a human save for appearance. I can think of no better test for AI, can you?
We have a long way to go before the Turing test becomes an academic question, and we are nowhere near getting programs to pass the test with any sophisticated questions in text, let alone speech, dealing with images etc., which are the natural extension of this kind of test once the first text/teletype only boundary is reached.
What I find kind of humorous is the effort to make a competing piece of software and then ask YOUR COMPETITOR to distribute it for you. Without getting into the mechanics, ethics, legality, or "moral" implications of Apple's chosen distribution model, that fact alone tells me it is such a developer, not Apple, who is shooting themselves in the foot.
If you can't see the problem with the platform vendor becoming a competitor to the very developers it's trying to encourage onto its platform, nothing we say will persuade you.
That's why this is an issue, for users and for Apple. Long term no one wants to develop for a platform where the vendor tries to shut you out, and Apple desperately needs those developers to go head to head with Symbian and Win Mobile in the coming years - without them, they're in trouble.
The right thing for Apple is to restrict only those apps which cause problems for users, stability, or the network, and to have a clear framework in place for dealing with denials, but whether they'll see this or not is open to question. Hopefully with the right encouragement from their users/developers (as opposed to lengthy apologias), they will see the light.
I've worked on plenty of websites, the designers have only ever decided how it looks, not how it works.
You weren't working with designers then, but layout artists, and I maintain that you lack understanding of what good design should be, and also of your own job, if you think that design is a gloss to be added at the end to your 'functional' work (which cannot be at its best unless it considers design).
Your dichotomy of function/form divides two things which should not be divided, and places undue emphasis on function without considering the medium used to convey that function to the user.
Yes, I know. I heard this, and then realised that Google, in spite of all their cool web apps, are still in the Windows dark ages. Some of their other apps are also Windows only (e.g. Picasa). If any Chrome engineers are reading this - shame on you for ignoring other operating systems.
Perhaps it's because the browser which causes them the most problems and is made by their biggest competitor is also on Windows, and that's the market they want to target.
I fail to see how Google making their own browser is any different than IE 1.0. The goals are the same from this chair. Get people away from using the market leader in order to benifit our own profits.
Google are not Microsoft - they don't make money by locking people in and destroying the competition (in the case of IE, the competition was the web). They make money by encouraging use of the web.
This is an entirely different situation and their motives are completely different. They just want a viable delivery platform for cloud apps, and current browsers aren't quite there yet. I imagine they'll start saying to people who complain that IE doesn't support things like their off-line mode for email - oh, why don't you try our new browser. To construe this as an attack on Firefox is to misunderstand its function; it may rival Firefox, but it certainly isn't an attack in the way that IE was an attack on Navigator (and with things like Active-X, and later Silverlight, an attack on the open web).
Didn't you caution me about making assumptions a few posts ago?
Yes, I did, this was a repeat of that message. I don't develop fat clients, and thus your paragraph probing in that direction was irrelevant.
You think in terms of grids (or tables, or anything else with rows and columns.) That's ok IMO, it's a perfectly logical way of thinking. The difficulty that people have with designing for the web is the preference for a grid type layout prevents them from seeing layout as being fluid.
I don't think exclusively in terms of grids, they're just a useful tool, and grids can also be fluid. Look at the page these words are on - it's designed on a grid, (2 sidebars, main content). Almost every web page is designed on a grid, and yet we have to hack around a lot with CSS to get something so simple.
If you take a look at the source of this page, you'll see a whole series of nested div - div - div which should not be necessary, but are there to work around complications with CSS. This is in my view a good illustration of the inappropriate 'features' of the CSS layout model.
I do really grok CSS (as I said, all sites I've done in since CSS1 came out have used it, I've always written them by hand), and I happen to think it's a bit of a mess. You persist in imagining that I don't know what I'm talking about, simply because I disagree with you. Strange.
Inline(character) and block(paragraph) layout flow is fine for *text layout* - they originate in laying out text on series of lines, with inline images glommed on. They are not a viable way to style anything other than text, and most of the effort designers put in to using CSS is in fighting the inline with blocks model, plus of course to work around various browser bugs.
The whole box model with padding adding to the width of elements is also completely counter-intuitive. Here's an article explaining this bizarre misfeature for beginners :
The design pseudocode you wrote above wouldn't work in a browser, or at least wouldn't be practical. What size is the browser window? You don't know.
That's why the widths were in percents (to adjust with the window), and yes, it would work if CSS had a sane layout model. Why wouldn't it be practical in your opinion?
And do you really want your menu to shrink down past a certain point?
That's what a min-width/max-width specification is for - obviously those styles weren't complete, it's just a simplified example of something very very common that CSS does very badly and requires lots of nested divs for and a fair amount of CSS hackery.
That you can't simply and easily layout a website using columns is a serious failing of CSS, given that almost every website uses this model. That you can't add padding to an element without a nested div is also a failing in my opinion; one which stems from the model's origins as a text layout model, centred on text blocks rather than box elements. I prefer it to the other options (tables, or no layout at all), but it is ugly in some respects, and not at all elegant (save perhaps the idea of separating content from presentation).
I think that many, not all, people who don't like CSS are more used to developing fat client apps.
I don't care to speculate on people who don't like CSS, unless you actually have some data to back up your preconceptions? I'll ignore the veiled insults and try to elucidate the areas I feel CSS is weak on.
Multi-column layouts in css is not intuitive at all - you have to nest columns in a particular order and in a container, set overflows, and if you want padding and column backgrounds to work you have to add extra divs inside your columns (insanity!). It should be as simple as something like (inline css used for brevity)
It's not. Given that multi-columns on a grid is the default layout mode for most of the web, and for most design elsewhere, it's interesting that the default layout mode for CSS is inline, with blocks which are essentially inline elements with paragraph breaks, which I suspect is a throwback to the origins of the spec as a text layout model. CSS has no concept of baselines or grids (a basic element of design), and doesn't make it intuitive to lay things out on a grid. I my opinion the layout model is broken and needs to be radically simplified by adding simpler layout models and deprecating the mess we have currently.
For those who have used CSS a long time (NB, I have too, and feel at ease producing CSS layouts and adjusting for broken browsers), the pain may seem part of the process, but it should not have to be, and compared to other areas of design (for example print layout, PDF), it's needlessly byzantine. The problem lies with the spec, which is over-complex and is a mish-mash of too many layout models (inline, float, absolute, relative, text-align), not just with the browsers.
I much prefer it to the alternatives, but it's definitely the lesser of evils.
If that's the choice, no thanks. Each website/book/whatever only needs 3 fonts, but each person would choose a different 3; that's why we have so many.
I see where you are coming from, but don't blame CSS on bad implementations. Once you learn proper CSS and enforce some standards (such as avoiding inline stuff and class bloat) then it is very elegant. People who don't like CSS and decry it as ineffective haven't implemented CSS layouts. Oh sure, they use some CSS to lay out their pages. But they don't truly do CSS layout.
It's a bit impractical and...well, kinda touchy feely, but csszengarden.com is a good working example of a true CSS layout. And yes, this can be done in a way that's practical in a business environment.
I have done lots of CSS stuff thanks - I use CSS exclusively on web pages. Whenever you find yourself saying 'People who...' you should step back and question your assumptions.
The reason I'm criticising it is I have used it extensively, on many sites. The default is inline for many elements, and the inconsistent handling of padding and margin by browsers indicates to me that there is something very wrong with the spec (confusing). It's not intuitive, particularly if you add floats and relative/absolute positions to the mix, and takes a while to master, so no, I wouldn't say CSS is elegant, and the comment is not born of ignorance.
For example, the only way to get columns to fill with colour at 100% height in all major browsers is to make them overflow and cut them off - hardly intuitive. Getting a multi-column layout to work well has taken a lot of effort from talented designers - given that's one of the most common layouts, it's insane that CSS makes this difficult - search for multi column holy grail, and then consider why they used that figure of speech - 'holy grail' for something that should be humdrum.
cssgarden is a really nice demo, and the *idea* of CSS (separating view from model) is great, but the layout model of CSS is not well done.
I did say that CSS deals with page layout poorly, but it doesn't seem a fundamental failing to me.
In a module whose primary purpose is page layout (not markup), I'd say it's a pretty important failing. What they have tried to do is as you suggest - solve it by adding better layout controls, but it's now quite a confusing message of models (absolute position, floating, inline, block), with the default being a confusing mix of inline and block, and without any fine control on vertical alignment.
Still, it's a nice idea to have presentation files separate from the content, so I suppose you could say that the original idea is sound, but the implementation leaves something to be desired.
The mixed up models of inline, floated and block content, which have organically grown from the web's origins as a set of lines of text, and been hacked to sort-of work as a layout algorithm, but CSS is hardly elegant.
Page layout is supposed to be its job, and yet it's still very difficult to lay out simple multiple column layouts in CSS with consistent results. Padding and the box model are so byzantine as to confuse even the browser vendors.
On top of that the handling of typography and other niceties of design is appalling (and not just because of browser inconsistencies, because it wasn't considered important).
Well, yes, that's basically how many of the Adobe fonts are made after all - they are based on scans of older font outlines - see the various Garamond fonts, etc...
While creating type can take a long time (sometimes years for a single typeface), apparently the foundries are determined to stick to their old models of selling each family $200. If they sold them for $2 a weight there wouldn't be any point in trying to copy designs, and they'd sell infinitely more fonts. As it is they mainly sell to institutions and companies.
Foundries are going to have to adapt or die, and this initiative from MS is aimed at keeping them in the dark ages. It's going to appeal to no one but the foundries. And if the foundries persist it issuing silly EULAs which forbid use of fonts on the web, people will just route round them by creating their own fonts - there's nothing to stop someone producing high quality copies of some classics but the time it takes to set up kerning etc.
Indeed - support for @font-face is already here in Safari and is being considered for Firefox.
font-face (not this MS EOT font stuff) is a real boon for web typography - I just wish the W3C had asked some designers/typographers their opinions earlier in the standards process, as currently type on the web is really poor. As for EOT - they tried that years ago, and it didn't take off because of.... DRM. I don't see what they think will be different this time round.
Here's hoping other browser manufacturers simply ignore Microsoft.
This idea has been around for a few years - I remember reading about it back in 02001 or so.
I'd love to buy one, however they aren't actually producing or selling them - if you want one you have to cough up 25000 USD to support their foundation - no idea if anyone actually has one yet or if this is just a hypothetical. Which means they're not going to be ubiquitous any time soon, and undermines their whole purpose.
In my opinion this is far more useful than anything else they're engaged in, including the clock. Even if they made disks with a cheaper process that lasted only 1000 or so years in normal conditions, and could sell them for 100 USD, they'd be a great asset for future archeologists and a very provocative statement in our society, which more than ever values the present over the future.
My point is the API and the language are a mess, as evidenced by functions with the same name prepended with 'real', and the function should have been doing that in the first place. Managing this sort of growth and periodic pruning are what allows languages to become more coherent or to dissolve in a confusing morass of similar but deprecated APIs.
The entire API is an organic, messy rag-bag of functions, which makes working with PHP more than a little frustrating and encourages copy and paste coding. I'm fine with using it for small stuff, but there are definitely flaws in PHP which encourage crappy code.
Slashdot Mirror
AirSharing doesn't even come close to being a thumbdrive replacement as the only way to connect to it from another device is through WiFi. Most desktop computers don't have WiFi, so basically the only computers you could interface with are laptops.
That's incorrect, I don't know where you got that idea; I suppose from the fact that you need a wifi network for the iPod/iPhone.
The only thing you need is a local network that the iPhone can join via wifi (desktops can connect however they like, via ethernet usually). It just starts up a lighttpd server on port 8080, and lets clients connect via webdav.
Thus it comes very close to being a thumbdrive replacement - if you have a wifi network available (That's not the same as having a wifi enabled desktop). If not, then it's of no use, but personally I haven't been to any clients who have wired only networks in a few years, and all home users I know have one. YMMV.
Not the original coward, but they're probably talking about the SDK agreement (supposedly still under NDA I think - pah).
The SDK agreement disallows various things, including
What it does not say is that they reserve the right to remove your app if it competes with them.
Apple are feeding all this speculation with their pointless NDA on the SDK agreement, so I guess it's partly their fault.
Anyway, this device is locked down tight, and yes, the only vector for app distribution (if you want to ever get anything on the official store, and not rely on users cracking their phone) is via Apple, as spelled out in this agreement (NB it is not the one you linked to)
You can't bundle libraries (save by compiling into a monolithic binary), you can't use plugins, you can't interpret code (though what they mean by code I'm not sure, since this could disallow all kinds of things - many kinds of data are close to code).
So writing a browser which doesn't use the javascript interpreter from Apple would appear to be out of bounds. As would games which use scripting files written in lua for example. Which is a real shame as it limits what people can do for no good reason.
Presumably Apple has done this to prevent people porting java apps, but it's more than a little heavy handed. They could allow java apps and still not allow any other distribution mechanism. I prefer native apps, but the limitations on loading other code make it difficult to do certain things, and more difficult to port software from other platforms than it should be.
This restriction on interpreted and/or bundled code is putting a severe crimp on which apps are developed (along with the bizarre decisions on which apps get accepted and which don't), and Apple deserve to be called out on it.
Now perhaps they're not breaking any competition laws (I seriously doubt it myself), but they are hurting their reputation with their customers and developers, as they did when they introduced the iPhone at a developers conference and said 'We have a really sweet solution for development on the phone - web apps'. Treating your developers and customers as a necessary evil is not a good way to earn respect long-term.
cell phone, pocket PC and thumbdrive. Sometimes I also carry a Nano
I carry an iPhone, with a few jailbroken apps, and Air Sharing (as a thumbdrive replacement), which seems to cover all the bases. Haven't found the screen size to be a limitation, save perhaps for reading books. The only area that it's really lacking in is the camera, which is pretty rubbish, but I think I'll always prefer a real camera for that.
My bet would be on phones (not necessarily the iPhone) as the next convergence device - when we have slightly more power, and ubiquitous wireless keyboards/screens (I hear they're coming just after flying cars), all you'd need would be to plug your phone in and you'd have the equivalent of a desktop system of yesteryear.
OpenID is just so damn unintuitive that nobody really gets it. It is a fucking login. Why can't it be an email address? Why can't it resolve the right place to conduct authentication business via DNS the same way SMTP gets it's MX record based on everything after the @domain.com?
Apparently millions of people get it and use it every day. I hardly think entering a url is unintuitive - it's how you got to this page after all. OpenID is really very simple, but if you don't like it, or it makes you throw spontaneous hissy fits like those above, don't use it (or use sites that do).
OpenID could use the email address for login, but it doesn't.
Deal.
You obviously haven't looked at this SDK.
The iPhone API is sufficiently abstracted from the hardware (certainly for things like a data connection) that there is no difference for the developer between the two devices. They run the same hardware, but without camera, GPS, bluetooth (which is crippled anyway at the moment) and the cell hardware (which you can't access directly anyway).
You can even access location information on the touch via the same API, it just won't be as accurate as it's skyhook only. So for a developer, the differences between the platforms are mostly irrelevant (I'm sure most do test on a phone via beta testers, but not everyone needs to buy a phone to develop apps which don't rely on phone hardware).
You might not like the fact that the SDK is limited, but it is remarkably coherent and easy to develop for across devices, which doesn't seem to be the case for J2ME (see other comments on this story), and this may be a problem with Android encounters too, simply because of all the disparate hardware.
As I understand it, you can only run Java code, that's what I meant by development being locked down (i.e. you have to use their SDK and program in Java, you can't compile native apps). This isn't such a burden, and is looser than the restrictions on the iPhone, but it is quite a serious restriction compared to compiling native apps.
It's great they've released the source to the OS as well though.
As an iPhone user, I'm really excited about this phone. It's the first real competition to the iPhone with a decent OS, and having these two companies competing in this space is marvellous - who would have predicted it 5 years ago? It's a shame that development on both phones is locked down to the extent that it is, but hopefully competition between the two will slowly chip away at this.
Hopefully this move will force Apple to be a little more open with their developers (e.g. on arbitrary rejections), and a little more open to suggestions from their users (e.g. copy and paste!). Sounds like a good phone with some really interesting UI ideas - I love the swipe from left or right to open up new windows.
Instead of making a play against Microsoft on the desktop, Google are making it here on phones, which is interesting. It's a space in which MS is historically weak, and if Google can control the direction of the platform they'll be able to put their ads in front of a huge number of customers.
What was wrong with an external USB floppy drive - I'm sure those were available at the time, or very shortly after?
Floppies were obsolete, and they deserved to die. The only way to do it was to remove them from a popular model - and it worked! Just as they removed serial ports early and replaced them with USB, or moved to LCD screens across the line.
Apple removing Firewire from iPods, and then from *consumer* targeted macs is just telegraphing the signal that they have accepted the defeat of Firewire, and are going to move on. Eventually in a few years when there is a clear replacement even for pro work they'll probably remove it from everything, and people can keep an old computer round for compatibility if they have to.
Firewire was a better standard in some ways (though more expensive), but the better standard doesn't always win, and in the face of a market which has clearly decided to move to USB en masse, Apple have decided to concentrate on things which matter more. If you don't happen to agree with them, that's ok, there are plenty of other computer manufacturers out there, and a good, free alternative OS.
The Turing Test is way past it's [sic] prime by this point.
On the contrary, and you skirt close to this conclusion in your post by enumerating all the questions provoked by such a simple experiment, the Turing test cuts to the quick of the question - What is it to be human/intelligent?
The subtlety and power of the test lies in the fact that the requirements will change over time - initially people are willing to be amazed by a simple expert system able to churn out answers in a certain domain, later they demand that it play chess, experience time passing and store memories, and eventually they demand situational awareness, self-awareness and emotions.
Before *everyone* is convinced that a computer in a black box is equivalent to a human, it will have to be intelligent enough to be aware of its situation in the world, and to fake certain parts of its behaviour (as all humans do) to fit in with others or to trick questioners. It will have to be indistinguishable from a human save for appearance. I can think of no better test for AI, can you?
We have a long way to go before the Turing test becomes an academic question, and we are nowhere near getting programs to pass the test with any sophisticated questions in text, let alone speech, dealing with images etc., which are the natural extension of this kind of test once the first text/teletype only boundary is reached.
Yeah, I had a friend bought a laptop with only one screen - crazy!
What I find kind of humorous is the effort to make a competing piece of software and then ask YOUR COMPETITOR to distribute it for you. Without getting into the mechanics, ethics, legality, or "moral" implications of Apple's chosen distribution model, that fact alone tells me it is such a developer, not Apple, who is shooting themselves in the foot.
If you can't see the problem with the platform vendor becoming a competitor to the very developers it's trying to encourage onto its platform, nothing we say will persuade you.
That's why this is an issue, for users and for Apple. Long term no one wants to develop for a platform where the vendor tries to shut you out, and Apple desperately needs those developers to go head to head with Symbian and Win Mobile in the coming years - without them, they're in trouble.
The right thing for Apple is to restrict only those apps which cause problems for users, stability, or the network, and to have a clear framework in place for dealing with denials, but whether they'll see this or not is open to question. Hopefully with the right encouragement from their users/developers (as opposed to lengthy apologias), they will see the light.
I've worked on plenty of websites, the designers have only ever decided how it looks, not how it works.
You weren't working with designers then, but layout artists, and I maintain that you lack understanding of what good design should be, and also of your own job, if you think that design is a gloss to be added at the end to your 'functional' work (which cannot be at its best unless it considers design).
Your dichotomy of function/form divides two things which should not be divided, and places undue emphasis on function without considering the medium used to convey that function to the user.
Designer's role is secondary to function.
This sentence betrays that you have no idea what design means, or what it involves.
Yes, I know. I heard this, and then realised that Google, in spite of all their cool web apps, are still in the Windows dark ages. Some of their other apps are also Windows only (e.g. Picasa). If any Chrome engineers are reading this - shame on you for ignoring other operating systems.
Perhaps it's because the browser which causes them the most problems and is made by their biggest competitor is also on Windows, and that's the market they want to target.
I fail to see how Google making their own browser is any different than IE 1.0. The goals are the same from this chair. Get people away from using the market leader in order to benifit our own profits.
Google are not Microsoft - they don't make money by locking people in and destroying the competition (in the case of IE, the competition was the web). They make money by encouraging use of the web.
This is an entirely different situation and their motives are completely different. They just want a viable delivery platform for cloud apps, and current browsers aren't quite there yet. I imagine they'll start saying to people who complain that IE doesn't support things like their off-line mode for email - oh, why don't you try our new browser. To construe this as an attack on Firefox is to misunderstand its function; it may rival Firefox, but it certainly isn't an attack in the way that IE was an attack on Navigator (and with things like Active-X, and later Silverlight, an attack on the open web).
Didn't you caution me about making assumptions a few posts ago?
Yes, I did, this was a repeat of that message. I don't develop fat clients, and thus your paragraph probing in that direction was irrelevant.
You think in terms of grids (or tables, or anything else with rows and columns.) That's ok IMO, it's a perfectly logical way of thinking. The difficulty that people have with designing for the web is the preference for a grid type layout prevents them from seeing layout as being fluid.
I don't think exclusively in terms of grids, they're just a useful tool, and grids can also be fluid. Look at the page these words are on - it's designed on a grid, (2 sidebars, main content). Almost every web page is designed on a grid, and yet we have to hack around a lot with CSS to get something so simple.
If you take a look at the source of this page, you'll see a whole series of nested div - div - div which should not be necessary, but are there to work around complications with CSS. This is in my view a good illustration of the inappropriate 'features' of the CSS layout model.
I do really grok CSS (as I said, all sites I've done in since CSS1 came out have used it, I've always written them by hand), and I happen to think it's a bit of a mess. You persist in imagining that I don't know what I'm talking about, simply because I disagree with you. Strange.
Inline(character) and block(paragraph) layout flow is fine for *text layout* - they originate in laying out text on series of lines, with inline images glommed on. They are not a viable way to style anything other than text, and most of the effort designers put in to using CSS is in fighting the inline with blocks model, plus of course to work around various browser bugs.
The whole box model with padding adding to the width of elements is also completely counter-intuitive. Here's an article explaining this bizarre misfeature for beginners :
http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/css_horizontal.html
That article should not be necessary.
The design pseudocode you wrote above wouldn't work in a browser, or at least wouldn't be practical. What size is the browser window? You don't know.
That's why the widths were in percents (to adjust with the window), and yes, it would work if CSS had a sane layout model. Why wouldn't it be practical in your opinion?
And do you really want your menu to shrink down past a certain point?
That's what a min-width/max-width specification is for - obviously those styles weren't complete, it's just a simplified example of something very very common that CSS does very badly and requires lots of nested divs for and a fair amount of CSS hackery.
That you can't simply and easily layout a website using columns is a serious failing of CSS, given that almost every website uses this model. That you can't add padding to an element without a nested div is also a failing in my opinion; one which stems from the model's origins as a text layout model, centred on text blocks rather than box elements. I prefer it to the other options (tables, or no layout at all), but it is ugly in some respects, and not at all elegant (save perhaps the idea of separating content from presentation).
I think that many, not all, people who don't like CSS are more used to developing fat client apps.
I don't care to speculate on people who don't like CSS, unless you actually have some data to back up your preconceptions? I'll ignore the veiled insults and try to elucidate the areas I feel CSS is weak on.
Multi-column layouts in css is not intuitive at all - you have to nest columns in a particular order and in a container, set overflows, and if you want padding and column backgrounds to work you have to add extra divs inside your columns (insanity!). It should be as simple as something like (inline css used for brevity)
[div style="width:'80%';display='column';"]
Content
[/div]
[div style="width:'20%';display='column';"]
Sidebar
[/div]
It's not. Given that multi-columns on a grid is the default layout mode for most of the web, and for most design elsewhere, it's interesting that the default layout mode for CSS is inline, with blocks which are essentially inline elements with paragraph breaks, which I suspect is a throwback to the origins of the spec as a text layout model. CSS has no concept of baselines or grids (a basic element of design), and doesn't make it intuitive to lay things out on a grid. I my opinion the layout model is broken and needs to be radically simplified by adding simpler layout models and deprecating the mess we have currently.
For those who have used CSS a long time (NB, I have too, and feel at ease producing CSS layouts and adjusting for broken browsers), the pain may seem part of the process, but it should not have to be, and compared to other areas of design (for example print layout, PDF), it's needlessly byzantine. The problem lies with the spec, which is over-complex and is a mish-mash of too many layout models (inline, float, absolute, relative, text-align), not just with the browsers.
I much prefer it to the alternatives, but it's definitely the lesser of evils.
You only need 3 fonts.
But which 3?
Georgia (ugh)
Verdana (passable)
Courier (yugh)
If that's the choice, no thanks. Each website/book/whatever only needs 3 fonts, but each person would choose a different 3; that's why we have so many.
I see where you are coming from, but don't blame CSS on bad implementations. Once you learn proper CSS and enforce some standards (such as avoiding inline stuff and class bloat) then it is very elegant. People who don't like CSS and decry it as ineffective haven't implemented CSS layouts. Oh sure, they use some CSS to lay out their pages. But they don't truly do CSS layout.
It's a bit impractical and...well, kinda touchy feely, but csszengarden.com is a good working example of a true CSS layout. And yes, this can be done in a way that's practical in a business environment.
I have done lots of CSS stuff thanks - I use CSS exclusively on web pages. Whenever you find yourself saying 'People who...' you should step back and question your assumptions.
The reason I'm criticising it is I have used it extensively, on many sites. The default is inline for many elements, and the inconsistent handling of padding and margin by browsers indicates to me that there is something very wrong with the spec (confusing). It's not intuitive, particularly if you add floats and relative/absolute positions to the mix, and takes a while to master, so no, I wouldn't say CSS is elegant, and the comment is not born of ignorance.
For example, the only way to get columns to fill with colour at 100% height in all major browsers is to make them overflow and cut them off - hardly intuitive. Getting a multi-column layout to work well has taken a lot of effort from talented designers - given that's one of the most common layouts, it's insane that CSS makes this difficult - search for multi column holy grail, and then consider why they used that figure of speech - 'holy grail' for something that should be humdrum.
cssgarden is a really nice demo, and the *idea* of CSS (separating view from model) is great, but the layout model of CSS is not well done.
I did say that CSS deals with page layout poorly, but it doesn't seem a fundamental failing to me.
In a module whose primary purpose is page layout (not markup), I'd say it's a pretty important failing. What they have tried to do is as you suggest - solve it by adding better layout controls, but it's now quite a confusing message of models (absolute position, floating, inline, block), with the default being a confusing mix of inline and block, and without any fine control on vertical alignment.
Still, it's a nice idea to have presentation files separate from the content, so I suppose you could say that the original idea is sound, but the implementation leaves something to be desired.
The mixed up models of inline, floated and block content, which have organically grown from the web's origins as a set of lines of text, and been hacked to sort-of work as a layout algorithm, but CSS is hardly elegant.
Page layout is supposed to be its job, and yet it's still very difficult to lay out simple multiple column layouts in CSS with consistent results. Padding and the box model are so byzantine as to confuse even the browser vendors.
On top of that the handling of typography and other niceties of design is appalling (and not just because of browser inconsistencies, because it wasn't considered important).
Well, yes, that's basically how many of the Adobe fonts are made after all - they are based on scans of older font outlines - see the various Garamond fonts, etc...
Read all about it here
While creating type can take a long time (sometimes years for a single typeface), apparently the foundries are determined to stick to their old models of selling each family $200. If they sold them for $2 a weight there wouldn't be any point in trying to copy designs, and they'd sell infinitely more fonts. As it is they mainly sell to institutions and companies.
Foundries are going to have to adapt or die, and this initiative from MS is aimed at keeping them in the dark ages. It's going to appeal to no one but the foundries. And if the foundries persist it issuing silly EULAs which forbid use of fonts on the web, people will just route round them by creating their own fonts - there's nothing to stop someone producing high quality copies of some classics but the time it takes to set up kerning etc.
Indeed - support for @font-face is already here in Safari and is being considered for Firefox.
font-face (not this MS EOT font stuff) is a real boon for web typography - I just wish the W3C had asked some designers/typographers their opinions earlier in the standards process, as currently type on the web is really poor. As for EOT - they tried that years ago, and it didn't take off because of.... DRM. I don't see what they think will be different this time round.
Here's hoping other browser manufacturers simply ignore Microsoft.
This idea has been around for a few years - I remember reading about it back in 02001 or so.
I'd love to buy one, however they aren't actually producing or selling them - if you want one you have to cough up 25000 USD to support their foundation - no idea if anyone actually has one yet or if this is just a hypothetical. Which means they're not going to be ubiquitous any time soon, and undermines their whole purpose.
In my opinion this is far more useful than anything else they're engaged in, including the clock. Even if they made disks with a cheaper process that lasted only 1000 or so years in normal conditions, and could sell them for 100 USD, they'd be a great asset for future archeologists and a very provocative statement in our society, which more than ever values the present over the future.
...and your point is?
My point is the API and the language are a mess, as evidenced by functions with the same name prepended with 'real', and the function should have been doing that in the first place. Managing this sort of growth and periodic pruning are what allows languages to become more coherent or to dissolve in a confusing morass of similar but deprecated APIs.
The entire API is an organic, messy rag-bag of functions, which makes working with PHP more than a little frustrating and encourages copy and paste coding. I'm fine with using it for small stuff, but there are definitely flaws in PHP which encourage crappy code.