There is no reason that your average person needs to know HTML or CSS, as those should be handed over to DESIGNERS, people skilled with making things look good.
Unfortunately, those designers probably don't actually know HTML and CSS, but rely on Dreamweaver to spew out pretty layouts with invalid markup, horrible semantics, and antiquated boilerplate javascript, and have no practical knowledge of any UI design principles.
Web design involves a lot more than just graphic design.
The average person who does anything on the web needs to know basic HTML (paragraphs, lists, and headings at the very least). Even when a CMS is used, John Q. Staffmember will probably end up typing in a textarea intended for HTML content. And they will probably end up pasting in some horrible junk directly from MS Word, which someone who knows HTML will have to fix, then beat them over the head with a stick that says "Do not paste directly from MS Word."
In the Constitution, See Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Which means no retroactive anything is legal. I'm amazed that the media continues to overlook this critical bit.
On second thought, no I'm not. There can be no compromise on this. The telcos colluded with Bushco to perform illegal acts, and granting them immunity after the fact is not allowed.
Agreed, this article is HTNL5 apologist rhetoric. I thought it was rather well-balanced until the author got to HTML5, where his preference is subtly revealed.
XHTML2's universal src attribute is mentioned (confusingly called a tag), but the universal href attribute is not, which allows any element to be transformed into a link. Nor is the rolse attribute mentioned, which allows a tag to be assigned a semantic meaning (like menu or header) without expanding the tag set.
TFA even admits in a roundabout way that HTML5 exists because the majority of so called "web developers" are ignorant of the current standards and incapable of effectively using them. If you need to be "clever" to use XHTML2, then perhaps no one will have to reach for the eye-bleach every time they wander into places like MySpace (where page skins are based on an exploit where browsers interpret <style> tags outside the document head, which is illegal).
I tell people "Writing web pages is easy. Writing them well is hard." This is proven by the amount of junk documents on the web that don't validate as anything but pretty, even if beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The author wisely avoided any discussion of the silly new tags (some of which are presentational, not semantic) HTML5 includes. He does mention XHTML5, which is "optional"... why should we take that step backwards?
The anti-XML-compliance people like to complain that XML is too verbose. If they don't like it, they can use something else, like RTF. Cars have gotten verbose too over the years. Those people can put their money where their moths are by buying an antique that doesn't have a radio, GPS, seat belts, padded dashboards, windows, crumple zones, suspension, electric engine starters, or any number of improvements that could be argued to be bloat.
The network cloud won't engulf 90% of computing, maybe 30-40%. Anything that's processor intensive such as high quality graphics production or code compiling will stay off the network for the most part (I'm sure few/.ers are insane enough to use distcc over the internet). Acceptance of over-the-net software will only happen where it makes sense to the user base.
SaaS (software as a service) is a paradigm shift that most people (especially in business) won't latch on to. I prefer to keep my documents off the net until I'm ready transfer them, and I'm sure most individuals and corps agree. I especially don't want to send them over the net to edit them. If MS is going to dictate how SaaS works, then one only has to look at their track record (WGA, and in general) to get a hint of its fate. Also, look at how DIVX (not the codec) failed. Miserably.
I'm sick of hearing the "if they fix IE, thousands of sites will break" excuse.
Let's face it, those sites are broken too, in ways that apologize for and accommodate the broken state of that browser.
If gcc had similarly poor c support and all programmers were forced to write workarounds in their software to get past the bugs, would it be as widely used as it is? Even if it did, would demands that gcc be fixed be met with cries of "But our programs will break?" I think not, because in that case everyone will already know what broken really means.
If MS fixes IE (really fixes it, not the laughable token effort that was IE7), then those lazy developers will be forced to learn what the standards really are, and the whining cacophony from them will be much louder than when MS pushed the pathetic "Getting Sites Ready for IE7" rhetoric.
That IE still has pitiful standards support is a statement of how incapable the W3C is at enforcing their standards.
I read WoT at the insistence of several friends, and it was good in the beginning. The opening chapter of book five marked a subtle change... this is when Jordan realized he had a cash cow on his hands and started shamelessly milking it. I stopped at book 10. Also, describing a dress on every 10th page (or more) got tedious.
In my experience, whenever an author introduces some long lost culture from across the sea bent on conquering the known lands, the series should have ended because the author obviously had nothing more to say.
What an original name! What a surprise! Who would have guessed that after IE4 came IE5,
then came IE5.5, which fixed a few things, which was replaced by IE5.6 which broke some things and fixed a few more things and was named IE6, and then IE5.7 (which fixed a few small things, thereby breaking just as many things, was called a huge improvement, and was named IE7) would be replaced with IE5.8, known to consumers as IE8, which likely will continue the tradition of hacking up a bloated, outdated rendering engine.
MS: We have loads of new eye candy, and your old software won't completely work with this new version.
Customers: Ooh, pretty. Will it help me be more productive?
MS: That'll be one arm and one leg, please.
Customers: Is this verison more secure?
MS: Oh yes, it's the most secure software evar. That'll be one arm and one leg, please.
Customers: I dunno, that seems kinda steep.
MS: Our software has all the latest new features.
Customers: How does it compare against Linux and OSX?
MS: You can't play the latest and coolest games with all that inferior software. That'll be one arm and one leg, please.
Customers: I was thinking that your product could be improved by...
MS: That's a great idea! We're always looking out for our users' best interests. [deliberately fails to make note of the suggestion] That'll be one arm and one leg, please.
Customers: Ok, then. [empties pockets]
MS: Thank you! Would you like to buy a service contract for the low, low, price of your remaining limbs and your head?
So where will be the next place in the US to get XO's? Mississippi, West Virginia, or El Paso Integrated School District?
Probably not EPISD, they're too busy not giving the kids school lunches ("Nutritional mid-day snack"?) while taking the Federal school lunch program money. Among many other types of incompetence.
Just the fact that HTML5 makes XML compliance optional is enough to keep me away from it. Never mind the bloated tag set and the inconsistent return of presentational tags.
I hope the author speaks of HTML in a generic sense. HTML4 has long since been deprecated, but is still in use because some developers can't be bothered to upgrade their skills, or they don't really have any skill at all because they're incapable of writing markup by hand (I call them Dreamweaver monkeys). XHTML is the now, and XHTML2 should be the future.
Most web developers are self taught... if they have any formal training, it's on tools^H^H^H^H^Hcrutches such as Dreamweaver or graphics software (Photoshop, Fireworks, or god forbid, Flash). It depends on the developer's level of interest in their skills as to how capable they are. There's no training available for the less concrete, but more important topics such as usability, accessibility, or semantics.
The format isn't bloated and shitty (it's a subset of PostScript), it's Adobe's reader that's bloated and shitty, and they want to make it as shitty as possible. There are alternatives out there, like FoxIt.
PDF as a format isn't going anywhere, since it's becoming the de facto standard format in the print industry.
More cheaper people who have 15 years.NET experience, 20 years Java experience, and some experience with [pick random set from list of every possible skill].
That are too obsessed with what they want, and ignore the developers who know what they need and how to mesh want and need together.
The site I launched last week (prematurely, at the client's insistence) had no content, but it did have the oh-so-necessary splash page with a 5 meg flash video (with sound!) embedded in it that to the casual observer looks like a trailer for a new Batman movie. All the issues I'd brought up since the project began suddenly became important after the site went live (except the lack of content).
Do people go to the dentist and demand that their fillings are candy flavored lead? No. But when that person wants a website, they demand every poison they can think of (splash page, ambush the user with audio, flash navigation that search engines can't follow, giant flash ads for themselves on every page, no content) no matter what the "doctor" recommends.
The best clients don't assume they know the web, and will explain their business model, then ask the developers what should be done.
It worked for web browsers and maybe mouses - but their efforts to penetrate the consumer electronics market in any meaningful way have so far failed to gain any traction.
MS was only able to blow away the competing browsers because they loaded their inferior product (which they purchased and hacked up... IE) into a huge cannon: Windows. (ME and Vista being bombs is beside the point.)
There's nothing to carry something like Zune on its back. What are they going to do, drop one into the box with every Dell? Doubtful. Many OEM's have their own music players.
As for mice, all I can say is that I don't think I know anyone who owns a Microsoft mouse.
MS is about as nimble as a beached whale carcass. I'm impressed that they're only a year behind.
MS has a long record of not caring what users want, instead assuming that the public will gleefully accept whatever MS produces. They think they can win at consumer electronics by playing like the monopoly in a market they just entered and have no chance to control, even if they played smart by carving a niche for themselves instead of assuming the market will shift according to their will simply because they enter it.
There is valid and invalid HTML, there is no "acceptable" gray area.
IMO, browser tolerance for bad HTML is part of what got us into this mess. IE takes this to an unnecessary extreme. As a consequence, many de[velop|sign]ers failed to actually learn HTML (properly, if at all), and think XHTML is hard because it has rules.
Give Adobe a little break, they've only owned Macromedia for a couple years. It's Macromedia's fault for producing what competent developers know is a shoddy tool.
If language compilers, databases, or any other critical software were as forgiving as browsers are, the IT industry would be a shadow of what it is.
...he created with the iPhone. If not for that, Leopard would have been out in June, and Apple could have blitzed the back-to-school computer sales rush, and the holiday rush.
Web developers increasingly grow weary of having to put so much effort into designing their sites according to the whims of the Google search engine.
I don't, because having good content and using correct semantics does most of the search engine work for you. Google and the other searches eventually figure out how sites game them, which is why Google ignores meta tags and penalizes sites with hallway pages. Many other tricks are harder to detect, though... for now.
If Google was the king of search, and all others worked largely the same way, would we be developing two search-specific versions of every site? No, but amazingly that seems to be the case when browsers are considered.
If you're not developing sites for humans to use, you've missed the point of the internet. Search engines are little more than a flawed proxy. It's sad the they are seen primarily as pull-based yellowpages.
Technically, MGM owns the production rights to The Hobbit. New Line and MGM currently have a partnership agreement to produce The Hobbit, but the rights revert back to Saul Zaentz sometime next year if principal production hasn't begun. Since Michael Shaye (president of New Line) has been such a dick to Jackson in recent months, it makes total sense for MGM to stall the process until the rights revert, then MGM and Jackson can repurchase the rights and make the film(s) Jackson wants, which will please the fans and cut New Line out of any revenue from it.
The fans, MGM, and Zaentz all want Jackson to direct.
Zaentz bought the film rights for all of Tolkien's works in 1971 so the Professor could pay back taxes. Tolkien didn't believe any part of Middle Earth could be done justice on the big screen.
America's educational system is modeled on a militaristic system developed in Prussia during the 1840's. It's primary goal is not to impart knowledge, but rather to keep the students subservient to the faculty.
It certainly doesn't make learning tolerable (never mind fun) and the curriculum for the grade levels is still what it was when developed in the 1940's (if not earlier). Between reiterating the previous grade's who, what, when, and where (the fact vomit) for a third of the next grade, and increasingly ludicrous methods* being taught which are harder to comprehend, there's little room for teaching any why or how, which are a necessity for comprehending math and science. No wonder why American kids can't build simple circuits, but they sure can deafen themselves or talk themselves hoarse with their keen grasp of technology.
* I just recently helped my fiancee's 9 year old daughter with her math homework: multi-column addition. Apparently kids can't carry anything other than books in school, because the method she learned begins with the leftmost column, and filling in the resulting rows with zeroes.
I tried to explain to her that this was like building a house and starting with the roof instead of the foundation, and promised to show her the easier way when this chapter was done.
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Unfortunately, those designers probably don't actually know HTML and CSS, but rely on Dreamweaver to spew out pretty layouts with invalid markup, horrible semantics, and antiquated boilerplate javascript, and have no practical knowledge of any UI design principles.
Web design involves a lot more than just graphic design.
The average person who does anything on the web needs to know basic HTML (paragraphs, lists, and headings at the very least). Even when a CMS is used, John Q. Staffmember will probably end up typing in a textarea intended for HTML content. And they will probably end up pasting in some horrible junk directly from MS Word, which someone who knows HTML will have to fix, then beat them over the head with a stick that says "Do not paste directly from MS Word."
In the Constitution, See Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3:
Which means no retroactive anything is legal. I'm amazed that the media continues to overlook this critical bit.
On second thought, no I'm not. There can be no compromise on this. The telcos colluded with Bushco to perform illegal acts, and granting them immunity after the fact is not allowed.
Agreed, this article is HTNL5 apologist rhetoric. I thought it was rather well-balanced until the author got to HTML5, where his preference is subtly revealed.
XHTML2's universal src attribute is mentioned (confusingly called a tag), but the universal href attribute is not, which allows any element to be transformed into a link. Nor is the rolse attribute mentioned, which allows a tag to be assigned a semantic meaning (like menu or header) without expanding the tag set.
TFA even admits in a roundabout way that HTML5 exists because the majority of so called "web developers" are ignorant of the current standards and incapable of effectively using them. If you need to be "clever" to use XHTML2, then perhaps no one will have to reach for the eye-bleach every time they wander into places like MySpace (where page skins are based on an exploit where browsers interpret <style> tags outside the document head, which is illegal).
I tell people "Writing web pages is easy. Writing them well is hard." This is proven by the amount of junk documents on the web that don't validate as anything but pretty, even if beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The author wisely avoided any discussion of the silly new tags (some of which are presentational, not semantic) HTML5 includes. He does mention XHTML5, which is "optional"... why should we take that step backwards?
The anti-XML-compliance people like to complain that XML is too verbose. If they don't like it, they can use something else, like RTF. Cars have gotten verbose too over the years. Those people can put their money where their moths are by buying an antique that doesn't have a radio, GPS, seat belts, padded dashboards, windows, crumple zones, suspension, electric engine starters, or any number of improvements that could be argued to be bloat.
XHTML2 is the way we should go.
The network cloud won't engulf 90% of computing, maybe 30-40%. Anything that's processor intensive such as high quality graphics production or code compiling will stay off the network for the most part (I'm sure few /.ers are insane enough to use distcc over the internet). Acceptance of over-the-net software will only happen where it makes sense to the user base.
SaaS (software as a service) is a paradigm shift that most people (especially in business) won't latch on to. I prefer to keep my documents off the net until I'm ready transfer them, and I'm sure most individuals and corps agree. I especially don't want to send them over the net to edit them. If MS is going to dictate how SaaS works, then one only has to look at their track record (WGA, and in general) to get a hint of its fate. Also, look at how DIVX (not the codec) failed. Miserably.
CSS2.1? How about they start with something simpler to fully implement, like
If there's anything I forgot, it belongs on that list. IE has never fully supported anything.
I'm sick of hearing the "if they fix IE, thousands of sites will break" excuse.
Let's face it, those sites are broken too, in ways that apologize for and accommodate the broken state of that browser.
If gcc had similarly poor c support and all programmers were forced to write workarounds in their software to get past the bugs, would it be as widely used as it is? Even if it did, would demands that gcc be fixed be met with cries of "But our programs will break?" I think not, because in that case everyone will already know what broken really means.
If MS fixes IE (really fixes it, not the laughable token effort that was IE7), then those lazy developers will be forced to learn what the standards really are, and the whining cacophony from them will be much louder than when MS pushed the pathetic "Getting Sites Ready for IE7" rhetoric.
That IE still has pitiful standards support is a statement of how incapable the W3C is at enforcing their standards.
I read WoT at the insistence of several friends, and it was good in the beginning. The opening chapter of book five marked a subtle change... this is when Jordan realized he had a cash cow on his hands and started shamelessly milking it. I stopped at book 10. Also, describing a dress on every 10th page (or more) got tedious.
In my experience, whenever an author introduces some long lost culture from across the sea bent on conquering the known lands, the series should have ended because the author obviously had nothing more to say.
FTFY.
MS' ideal dialog with customers:
So where will be the next place in the US to get XO's? Mississippi, West Virginia, or El Paso Integrated School District?
Probably not EPISD, they're too busy not giving the kids school lunches ("Nutritional mid-day snack"?) while taking the Federal school lunch program money. Among many other types of incompetence.
Just the fact that HTML5 makes XML compliance optional is enough to keep me away from it. Never mind the bloated tag set and the inconsistent return of presentational tags.
I hope the author speaks of HTML in a generic sense. HTML4 has long since been deprecated, but is still in use because some developers can't be bothered to upgrade their skills, or they don't really have any skill at all because they're incapable of writing markup by hand (I call them Dreamweaver monkeys). XHTML is the now, and XHTML2 should be the future.
Most web developers are self taught... if they have any formal training, it's on tools^H^H^H^H^Hcrutches such as Dreamweaver or graphics software (Photoshop, Fireworks, or god forbid, Flash). It depends on the developer's level of interest in their skills as to how capable they are. There's no training available for the less concrete, but more important topics such as usability, accessibility, or semantics.
The format isn't bloated and shitty (it's a subset of PostScript), it's Adobe's reader that's bloated and shitty, and they want to make it as shitty as possible. There are alternatives out there, like FoxIt.
PDF as a format isn't going anywhere, since it's becoming the de facto standard format in the print industry.
More cheaper people who have 15 years .NET experience, 20 years Java experience, and some experience with [pick random set from list of every possible skill].
That are too obsessed with what they want, and ignore the developers who know what they need and how to mesh want and need together.
The site I launched last week (prematurely, at the client's insistence) had no content, but it did have the oh-so-necessary splash page with a 5 meg flash video (with sound!) embedded in it that to the casual observer looks like a trailer for a new Batman movie. All the issues I'd brought up since the project began suddenly became important after the site went live (except the lack of content).
Do people go to the dentist and demand that their fillings are candy flavored lead? No. But when that person wants a website, they demand every poison they can think of (splash page, ambush the user with audio, flash navigation that search engines can't follow, giant flash ads for themselves on every page, no content) no matter what the "doctor" recommends.
The best clients don't assume they know the web, and will explain their business model, then ask the developers what should be done.
MS was only able to blow away the competing browsers because they loaded their inferior product (which they purchased and hacked up... IE) into a huge cannon: Windows. (ME and Vista being bombs is beside the point.)
There's nothing to carry something like Zune on its back. What are they going to do, drop one into the box with every Dell? Doubtful. Many OEM's have their own music players.
As for mice, all I can say is that I don't think I know anyone who owns a Microsoft mouse.
MS is about as nimble as a beached whale carcass. I'm impressed that they're only a year behind.
MS has a long record of not caring what users want, instead assuming that the public will gleefully accept whatever MS produces. They think they can win at consumer electronics by playing like the monopoly in a market they just entered and have no chance to control, even if they played smart by carving a niche for themselves instead of assuming the market will shift according to their will simply because they enter it.
You forgot Memory Stick, and several others.
What's the tally on proprietary formats Sony has failed to impose on the market? 11?
There is valid and invalid HTML, there is no "acceptable" gray area.
IMO, browser tolerance for bad HTML is part of what got us into this mess. IE takes this to an unnecessary extreme. As a consequence, many de[velop|sign]ers failed to actually learn HTML (properly, if at all), and think XHTML is hard because it has rules.
Give Adobe a little break, they've only owned Macromedia for a couple years. It's Macromedia's fault for producing what competent developers know is a shoddy tool.
If language compilers, databases, or any other critical software were as forgiving as browsers are, the IT industry would be a shadow of what it is.
...he created with the iPhone. If not for that, Leopard would have been out in June, and Apple could have blitzed the back-to-school computer sales rush, and the holiday rush.
Start doing your jobs.
Sincerely,
The Citizens of the United States
If I had mod points, this would get +1 informative.
Does the ISO also have rules to place formerly P-level countries (and/or companies) on some type of probation?
Obviously ISO needs to revise their rules to prevent vote tampering, as obviously happened with the OOXML vote.
I don't, because having good content and using correct semantics does most of the search engine work for you. Google and the other searches eventually figure out how sites game them, which is why Google ignores meta tags and penalizes sites with hallway pages. Many other tricks are harder to detect, though... for now.
If Google was the king of search, and all others worked largely the same way, would we be developing two search-specific versions of every site? No, but amazingly that seems to be the case when browsers are considered.
If you're not developing sites for humans to use, you've missed the point of the internet. Search engines are little more than a flawed proxy. It's sad the they are seen primarily as pull-based yellowpages.
...if all his nerve endings evaporated.
He has no idea what users want, he only knows what he thinks they should have (DRM, no thank you).
Translation: Users recognize the non-value MS put into Vista. Even marginally technical 13 year old girls.
This should convince the remaining fanboys that Vista is a big steaming pile of FAIL, but sadly, it probably won't.
Technically, MGM owns the production rights to The Hobbit. New Line and MGM currently have a partnership agreement to produce The Hobbit, but the rights revert back to Saul Zaentz sometime next year if principal production hasn't begun. Since Michael Shaye (president of New Line) has been such a dick to Jackson in recent months, it makes total sense for MGM to stall the process until the rights revert, then MGM and Jackson can repurchase the rights and make the film(s) Jackson wants, which will please the fans and cut New Line out of any revenue from it.
The fans, MGM, and Zaentz all want Jackson to direct.
Zaentz bought the film rights for all of Tolkien's works in 1971 so the Professor could pay back taxes. Tolkien didn't believe any part of Middle Earth could be done justice on the big screen.
America's educational system is modeled on a militaristic system developed in Prussia during the 1840's. It's primary goal is not to impart knowledge, but rather to keep the students subservient to the faculty.
It certainly doesn't make learning tolerable (never mind fun) and the curriculum for the grade levels is still what it was when developed in the 1940's (if not earlier). Between reiterating the previous grade's who, what, when, and where (the fact vomit) for a third of the next grade, and increasingly ludicrous methods* being taught which are harder to comprehend, there's little room for teaching any why or how, which are a necessity for comprehending math and science. No wonder why American kids can't build simple circuits, but they sure can deafen themselves or talk themselves hoarse with their keen grasp of technology.
* I just recently helped my fiancee's 9 year old daughter with her math homework: multi-column addition. Apparently kids can't carry anything other than books in school, because the method she learned begins with the leftmost column, and filling in the resulting rows with zeroes.
I tried to explain to her that this was like building a house and starting with the roof instead of the foundation, and promised to show her the easier way when this chapter was done.