Nate Koechley's Blog

Opera 8: Max Value for Text Indent

Nick Rigby discovers and writes that Opera 8 has a maximum text-indent value of 32697 pixels.

Clearly this is an edge case and not all that common, but those that use the "off-left" technique might find something familiar in his quote:

There would be no need to ever use a value this large, but I happened to be using -9999em originally, which, depending on the default font-size of the document, is a lot more than this limit value. Hence, it did not work in Opera 8.

Anyways, just a little tip for your toolbox.

Faster DHTML in 12 Steps

As Microsoft's IEblog points out, their Faster DHTML is 12 Steps isn't entirely new but does have some valuable information. Obviously some of the info is quite IE-specific, but it's still worth a read.

Here are the tips included in the article:

• Batch Your DHTML Changes
• Talk to Your innerText
• Use the DOM to Add Individual Elements
• Expand Your Options in a SELECT Element
• Use the DOM to Update Tables
• Write Once, Use Many Times
• Don't Be Too Dynamic with Your Properties
• Data Binding is Good for You
• Keep Your Expando Properties Off the Document
• Avoid switching classes and style rules
• Collapse a Text Range Before Finding the Parent
• Related Topics

DOM Scripting Task Force - WaSP

Once again the fine folks at the Web Standards Project are helping us all move the industry forward, this time with the launch of their DOM Scripting Task Force as announced in their buzz archive today.

"The skillset of a front end programmer is a three-legged stool: structure (XHTML) is the first leg, presentation (CSS) the second, and behavior (DOM Scripting) the third," said Peter-Paul Koch, a prominent scripting expert and one of the founders of the task force. "These three legs should be equal, but at the moment the behavior leg is the shortest, least-valued and least-understood of the three, even though the DOM has been a W3C specification for seven years and enjoys relatively solid browser support."

They have a press release, a manifesto, and of course a website.

These topics aren't anything new necessarily, but it's good to see more and more developers picking up the torch. For more reading on this/these topics, check out these other posts from my blog: The Behavior Layer, Unobtrusively, and Semantic Markup - Create, Support and Extract.

If you eat and breath these topics, I'd love to hear from you and your resume.

DOM Scripting Task Force - WaSP

Once again the fine folks at the Web Standards Project are helping us all move the industry forward, this time with the launch of their DOM Scripting Task Force as announced in their buzz archive today.

"The skillset of a front end programmer is a three-legged stool: structure (XHTML) is the first leg, presentation (CSS) the second, and behavior (DOM Scripting) the third," said Peter-Paul Koch, a prominent scripting expert and one of the founders of the task force. "These three legs should be equal, but at the moment the behavior leg is the shortest, least-valued and least-understood of the three, even though the DOM has been a W3C specification for seven years and enjoys relatively solid browser support."

They have a press release, a manifesto, and of course a website.

These topics aren't anything new necessarily, but it's good to see more and more developers picking up the torch. For more reading on this/these topics, check out these other posts from my blog: The Behavior Layer, Unobtrusively, and Semantic Markup - Create, Support and Extract.

If you eat and breath these topics, please send me your resume.

Changes for Mozilla Extension Developers

On the Inside Firefox blog, ben writes about Changes for Extension Developers. The changes are must-know for extension developers, but also provide some nice benefits for users.

Rendering CSS Efficiently - Insider Tips from Safari

I just came drown from altitude in the Himalayas, so I'm admittedly pretty far behind in my technology reading, email maintenance and blogging. That said, in beginning to catch up I came across this complex and interesting post from David Hyatt on his Surfin' Safari blog. For those of you that have been paying attention, Hyatt is a leading browser developer, having worked on Gecko at AOL, and in his current position largely responsible for the magic in Safari and Web Core.

His post deals with the challenges of rendering CSS:

One of the most interesting problems (to me at least) in browser layout engines is how to implement a style system that can determine the style information for elements on a page efficiently.

Hyatt has created a new, more efficient algorithm for doing this (and a few other related things). For the algorithm to work, it checks ten features of each DOM node. I'm blogging this because it presents a new optimization opportunity for web developers. By being mindful of these 10 items, and not needlessly failing the 10 tests, we'll take advantage of these new rending efficiencies in Safari. These aren't revolutionary steps, but there are situations where they will certainly be the tie-breaker between alternate approaches.

There are a number of conditions that must be met in order for this sharing to be possible:

1. The elements must be in the same mouse state (e.g., one can't be in :hover while the other isn't)
2. Neither element should have an id
3. The tag names should match
4. The class attributes should match
5. The set of mapped attributes must be identical
6. The link states must match
7. The focus states must match
8. Neither element should be affected by attribute selectors, where affected is defined as having any selector match that uses an attribute selector in any position within the selector at all
9. There must be no inline style attribute on the elements
10. There must be no sibling selectors in use at all. WebCore simply throws a global switch when any sibling selector is encountered and disables style sharing for the entire document when they are present. This includes the + selector and selectors like :first-child and :last-child.

In web development there are often 6 different similar ways to do the same thing. What makes a good web developer is continually choosing the best of nearly-indistinguishable paths. These insider tips from Hyatt give us a more complete understanding of the guts of the browsers, and will help us choose the best methods.

Read about it in his own words here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_05.html#007507

NY Times Launches CSS Redesign of Article Pages

The New York Times launched CSS-based article pages this week (http://nytimes.com, then click into an article page). It's excellent to see them moving forward with such great improvements!

Congrats to the whole New York Times Digital staff for this launch. Well done.

Awesome Firefox Extensions

Anthony Lieuallen of Arantius.com has a great page called Awesome Firefox Extensions. If you're new to Firefox or extensions, or are interested in finding some great new one, definitely head over there to check it out.

One extension not listed that I would personally recommend is Target Alert. This extension adds a small icon next to any links that aren't to standard web pages. For example, it inserts a small envelope icon next to any email links, and a small PDF icon next to any .pdf links. (The PDF alert is particularily useful, since loading a PDF is slow sluggish and I often want to avoid it all together!) It offers alerts for many file extension (you can turn on and off as needed), and also alerts to links that will open new windows. The new window alert is great, because I then know to press alt-shirt to force the load into a new tab instead of a new browser window.

Anyways, I've been meaning to publish my recommended list of extensions, but this will have to do for now.

Three Weeks of W3C

Below are pointers to about a dozen activites coming out of the World Wide Web Consortium over the last three weeks. You can follow along on their homepage or with their feed. Standards-based design and development can be about more than using existing standards; in the best cases, it's about helping to create the standards in the first place! By being aware of the work underway at the W3C, you can have a good sense of where the industry and technologies are going, even if you don't get your hands dirty in any of the working groups.

Working Draft: SVG's XML Binding Language (sXBL)

2005-04-06: The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group and the CSS Working Group have released a third Working Draft of SVG's XML Binding Language (sXBL). The sXBL language defines the presentation and interactive behavior of elements outside the SVG namespace. The XBL task force welcomes comments and seeks feedback on three issues outlined in the status section. Visit the SVG and CSS home pages. (News archive)

Last Call: XQuery, XPath and XSLT

2005-04-04: The XML Query Working Group and the XSL Working Group released twelve Working Drafts for the XQuery, XPath and XSLT languages. Seven are in last call through 13 May. Important for databases, search engines and object repositories, XML Query can perform searches, queries and joins over collections of documents. XSLT transforms documents into different markup or formats. Both XQuery and XSLT 2 use XPath expressions and operate on XPath Data Model instances. Visit the XML home page. (News archive)

Working Draft: Compound Document Use Cases and Requirements

2005-04-04: The Compound Document Formats Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of Compound Document by Reference Use Cases and Requirements Version 1.0. A compound document combines multiple formats, such as XHTML, SVG, XForms, MathML and SMIL. This draft introduces compounding by a reference like img, object, link, src and XLink. Compounding by inclusion is planned for a later phase. Visit the Compound Document home page. (News archive)

Last Call: Web Services Addressing

2005-03-31: The Web Services Addressing Working Group has released two Last Call Working Drafts. Web Services Addressing - Core enables messaging systems to support transmission through networks that include processing nodes such as endpoint managers, firewalls, and gateways. SOAP Binding defines the core properties' association to SOAP messages. Visit the Web services home page. (News archive)

XML Binary Characterization Notes Published

2005-03-31: The XML Binary Characterization Working Group has released its evaluation, recommending that W3C produce a standard for binary interchange of XML. Published today as a Working Group Note, XML Binary Characterization is supported by use cases, properties and measurement methodologies. Optimized serialization can improve the generation, parsing, transmission and storage of XML-based data. Visit the XML home page. (News archive)

Upcoming W3C Talks

2005-03-31: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (News archive)

Last Call: XML Schema Component Designators

2005-03-29: The XML Schema Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of XML Schema: Component Designators. Comments are welcome through 26 April. The document defines a scheme for identifying the XML Schema components specified by the XML Schema Recommendation Part 1 and Part 2. Visit the XML home page. (News archive)

Working Draft: RDF/Topic Maps Interoperability

2005-03-29: The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of A Survey of RDF/Topic Maps Interoperability Proposals. The document is a starting point for establishing standard guidelines for combined usage of the W3C RDF/OWL family and the ISO family of Topic Maps standards. The group expects to publish Survey and Guidelines Working Group Notes based on this draft. Visit the Semantic Web home page. (News archive)

RDF Data Access Use Cases and Requirements Updated

2005-03-25: The RDF Data Access Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of RDF Data Access Use Cases and Requirements. The draft suggests how an RDF query language and data access protocol could be used in the construction of novel, useful Semantic Web applications in areas like Web publishing, personal information management, transportation and tourism. The group invites feedback on which features are required for a first version of SPARQL and which should be postponed in order to expedite deployment of others. Visit the Semantic Web home page. (News archive)

C

all for Participation: W3C Workshop on XML Schema 1.0 User Experiences

2005-03-23: Position papers are due 20 May for the W3C Workshop on XML Schema 1.0 User Experiences to be held 21-22 June in Redwood Shores, California, USA. Schema authors and users, developers and vendors of schema-aware code generators, middleware, validators, and the W3C XML Schema Working Group will gather to discuss user experience with XML Schema 1.0. The workshop goal is to arrive at plan of action for XML Schema 1.0 interoperability, errata and clarification. Read about W3C workshops and visit the XML home page. (News archive)

Last Call: Timed Text Distribution Profile

2005-03-21: The Timed Text (TT) Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP). The format enables authors and authoring systems to interchange style, layout and timing associated with text. DFXP helps to transform and distribute subtitles and captions to legacy systems. Comments are welcome through 11 April. Visit the Synchronized Multimedia home page. (News archive)

Working Draft: Compound Document Use Cases and Requirements

2005-03-15: The Compound Document Formats Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Compound Document by Reference Use Cases and Requirements Version 1.0. A compound document combines multiple formats, such as XHTML, SVG, XForms, MathML and SMIL. This draft introduces compounding by a reference like img, object, link, src and XLink. Compounding by inclusion is planned for a later phase. Visit the Compound Document home page. (News archive)

Working Draft: Timed Text Distribution Profile

2005-03-14: The Timed Text (TT) Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of the Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP). The format enables authors and authoring systems to interchange style, layout and timing associated with text. DFXP helps to transform and distribute subtitles and captions to legacy systems. Visit the Synchronized Multimedia home page. (News archive)

Call for Participation: W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services

2005-02-10: Position papers are due 22 April for the W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services to be held 9-10 June in Innsbruck, Austria. Participants will discuss possible future W3C work on a comprehensive and expressive framework for describing all aspects of Web services. The workshop's goal is to envision more powerful tools and fuller automation using Semantic Web technologies such as RDF and OWL. Read about W3C workshops and visit the Web services home page. (News archive)

More Mac, More Firefox

John Battelle points to the updated Yahoo! toolbar and let's out a big "Yeeeehaw!" because it supports Mac users via Firefox.

Those involved in promoting standards-based developments are happy with each of these wins that directly benefit users. Way to go Yahoo! Toolbar.

Internet Explorer and Accessibility

From the IEBlog:

Today I wanted to talk about three aspects of accessibility as they relate to IE and Windows in general. First is access to the Windows OS for individuals with disabilities, second are a couple of hints for users of screen readers using IE in XPSP2 and finally is a request for feedback to help guide our development in IE7 and beyond.

While it's fun to pan Microsoft, and particularily, in my circles at least, Internet Explorer, I have to give them some credit for leaving comments enabled on their blog. It would be even better if they responded to some of the comments - a comment is more valuable if it initiates dialog - but at least they're doing an ok job experimenting in the blog space. It can't be a bad thing.

W3C: Working Draft: CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders

The CSS Working Group has released a Working Draft of CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders Module. The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language is used to render structured documents like HTML and XML on screen, on paper and in speech. Replacing two separate CSS3 modules, the draft proposes CSS Level 3 functionality including borders consisting of images and backgrounds with multiple images. (emphasis mine)

It's great to see work continue in these areas. It's due to their move to modularity that components can be released independently like this. I know I'm not alone in my excitment at the possibility of better control of backgrounds and borders (since so much of CSS design comes down to backgrounds and border tweaks).

W3C: Specifying the Language of XHTML and HTML Content

The W3C's Internationalization GEO (Guidelines, Education & Outreach) Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Specifying the Language of Content. Part of a series designed for authors, the document is an aid to specifying the language of content for an international audience.

This is still a working draft, so comments are welcome!

Evolution vs Revolution in Web Standards

CNet's Paul Festa filed a story today, Fight over 'forms' clouds future of Net applications, with a subhead of "As Net heavyweights vie to define the next generation of Web applications, the Web's main standards body is facing a revolt within its own ranks over electronic forms, a cornerstone of interactive documents."

The article sheds some light on the WHAT-WG, as well as some of the players in this general saga. The most interesting section to me:

WHAT-WG members say the forms dispute illustrates a larger conflict over whether the W3C should proceed in a "revolutionary" mode, tackling problems from square one and coming up with technically elegant solutions--even if that results in the loss of backward-compatibility with older browsers--or an "evolutionary" mode, maintaining older technologies like HTML 4 and extending the usefulness of current browsing software.

I also enjoyed Steven Pemberton's comments:

"The WHAT approach works OK for small examples," Pemberton said. "But actors like the Department of Defense say 'no scripting.'"

And:

"I understand where WHAT is coming from, but they are browser makers, not forms experts," Pemberton said. "It is important to build something that is future-proof and not a Band-Aid solution. Forms (technology) is the basis of the e-commerce revolution and so it is important to do it right."

[All emphasis mine.]

News from the World Wide Web Consortium

For better or worse, I only catch up on my W3 reading every month or so. That said, here's the stuff that caught my eye recently:

• Call for Participation: W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services
• Working Draft: Glossary of Terms for Device Independence
• W3C Launches Voice Browser Activity
• 'Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One' is a W3C Recommendation

Browser Speed Comparisons

"There is a speed war on the web. Browsers compete on many fronts; security, standards support, features and speed. Most people are aware of which major browser fails on three of these, but one of them is still open for grabs. Speed."

Today’s Wrong Solution is Tomorrow’s Constraint

Layered Semantic Markup (LSM) is not a technology, but a framework comprised of HTML, XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Javascript, DOM and other Web technologies. LSM allows for appropriately implemented principles and standards.

LSM is a development framework for creating Web documents and experiences. LSM builds for the least capable devices first, then enhances those documents with separate logic for presentation, in ways that do not place an undue burden on baseline devices but which allow a richer experience for those users with modern graphical browser software. LSM supports all user agents, and is inclusive by design. (Progressive Enhancement - Unobtrusive Javascript)

LSM has structural semantic markup at its core, which provides lean, meaningful, accessible pages. This well-built core and the clear separation of structural, presentational and behavioral layers make this development philosophy superior to many short-sighted approaches.

Today’s wrong solution is tomorrow’s constraint. A holistic vision - an underlying philosophy - must guide technical decisions. LSM provides the strategy for a sound and future-ready approach.

LSM embraces Graded Browser Support by using one markup document, subsequently layered with stylesheets and scripts that provide a gradually enhanced experience across a wide variety of browsers and devices.

This approach has profound advantages over other browser support approaches such as graceful degradation. Graded Browser Support recognizes that advanced technology support is not a guarantee of the future, and that legacy software as well as alternative devices (mobile) must always be considered. Graded Browser Support defines support in terms of current capabilities, not in terms of legacy or obsolete software; it embraces accessibility, universality, and peaceful coexistence with more feature-rich browsers/devices; and it allows for adoption of new technology and strategies without leaving any browser/device behind.

Credits

This work is heavily influenced and contains directly passages from Debra Chamra's "Progressive Enhancement: Paving the Way for Future Web Design", Steven Champeon and Nick Finck's presentation "Inclusive Web Design For the Future with Progressive Enhancement", and Steven Champeon's "Progressive Enhancement and the Future of Web Design", all of which may be found here.

Thanks also to the great people who have endlessly debated and developed these topics with me: James Berry, Sean Imler, Todd Kloots, Jon Koshi, Mike Lee, Thomas Sha, Matt Sweeney, Chanel Wheeler, and Christina Wodtke; and everybody else; and to everybody who puts their ideas online so that others may be inspired. Thanks.

Analyze HTTP Headers and Smart Keyword Search with Firefox

There are several good ways to check out a file's HTTP headers. Tonight I was using http://www.forret.com/projects/analyze/, which is just a simple web form that you enter your URL into.

I know there are more snazzy ways, including Firefox's great extension LiveHTTPHeaders, but sometimes an always-available web page is a fine solution. And, while I totally love the ability to extend and modify Firefox with the ever-growing supply of extensions, I've been trying to keep my browser as lean as possible by only installing ones I really need. For services that require a query to be submitted -- a map request, dictionary lookup, feed subscription or web search -- I've been opting lately to set up Keyword Search in Firefox (as I described several months ago).

(In addition to having less extensions, I find it's just significantly faster to trigger these actions form the keyboard.)

With a few keyword shortcut's set up, my hands are liberated from the mouse to the efficiency and speed of the keyboard. My browser begins to resemble a command line interface. In addition to my newest, headers http://www.yahoo.com, I use these others constantly:

sub http://natek.typepad.com

subscribed to a feed -- fastest possible way to subscribe to an rss feed with bloglines (please don't ruin bloglines Ask!)

ys northern california hiking trails

returns Yahoo Search results page -- 100s of times a day.

wiki Thomas Frank

returns Wikipedia encyclopedia entry -- lots of info types are best answered by an encyclopedia

map [[701 N First Ave, 94089]

returns a Yahoo Maps -- always need for a map

dic efficiency

returns dictionary.com definition

the excitement

returns thesaurus.com entry

by natek

returns my company's intranet (backyard) results -- for looking up coworkers

amaz Talib Kweli

returns Amazon search results -- to grab a book cover or album track listing

imdb War of the Worlds

returns an Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB) search

how to change your car's oil

returns detailed instructions from ehow.com

techno mobilemonday.com

returns blogosphere info on who's talking about http://www.mobilemonday.com/ right now?

Did you notice the ones for Bloglines (sub)? It's great. I am generally motivated to subscribe to some feed while in the midst of being excited or engaged by the content. This time of highest engagement is the time when you least want to interrupt the session to go subscribe -- this shortcut allows me to nearly-instantly subscribe in the heat on the moment.

(In case you're curious, I was looking at headers tonight to verify that the file expiration dates were distant, so that the files would be cached by the client until then.)

Opera Interview; Opera v8 beta; XmlHttpRequest

Opera Watch (The Unofficial Opera Blog) has An Interview with Opera's Berit Hanson. It's a good read. It sounds like Opera plans to stay true to themselves, and if you read between the lines it sounds like they have some cool things just around the corner. Opera has always been the most innovative company and browser, so this comes as no surprise.

"Search and SEE the Yellow Pages with a9"

I've been meaning to comment on this, but haven't quite got around to it. As a service to my dear readers, I'll just rip Gary's content, so please show him some love and go read it over there (then come back!).

If you haven't checked out the "just released" new yellow pages from Amazon.com's a9 you really should. It's very cool. In a nutshell, a9 have already taken more than 20 million street-level photos (what a9 calls block views) of each and every establishment in yellow page directories for 10 U.S. metro area and associated these images with each entry. You can even virtually walk entire blocks. It will be a real attention getter for a9 and perhaps, even useful! It's a must see for everyone but it's far from complete at this point. You can also browse/search the yellow page directory via this url.

Again, check out Gary's wonderful ResourceShelf.

(I'll add that this isn't a new idea -- several European sites already offer this functionality, and a company I can't recall used to have 360 Quicktime's of every intersection in New York, way back in '99 or 2000 (please leave a comment if you remember the name of that site.)

Beautiful API

This page is beautiful: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/. Every service-based web site should have a page like this.

This is a great way to understand and communicate your functionality. If you can't describe your site in these terms, well, start trying because you should be able to. (You don't have to make it public.)

I'm not here to talk about the benefits of web services and open APIs -- but at least internally, if you can think about your offerings in these clean and explicit terms you'll be much more successful.

We've moved beyond the "If you build it, they will come" days. We're now in the "If you offer it, they will build it" days. This cool map-based Flickr interface was built because the API existed.

Digital-proof that you should stop using Internet Explorer for your browser.

Digital-proof that you should stop using Internet Explorer for your browser.

The goal is simple: to collect a database of every single article ever published on the internet about why one should not use Internet Explorer.

Creating Personalized Feeds with Delicious

I have found this a useful way to use http://del.icio.us, the excellent social bookmarking site that is based on tagging.

Let's review quickly. I post all my bookmarks to delicious. They are all viewable by the public. Mine are here: http://del.icio.us/natekoechley. One great thing about delicious is that every page on the site - every node - has an RSS feed. If all my bookmarks are viewable on the web at /username, then the feed of that content is /rss/username.

Looks like this:
http://del.icio.us/natekoechley
http://del.icio.us/rss/natekoechley

The second thing that's great about delicious is that I can quickly and easily annotate my bookmarks with tags. For example, I have bookmarked Industrial Drawings from the Smithsonian. In addition to storing the URL, I have tagged it with the following words: industrial, drawings, smithsonian, museum, design, art, history.

Each tag becomes a node.  When you are viewing my total collection of bookmarks, my username "natekoechley" is the node. It is likewise possible to view all my bookmarks for a particular tag, such as
http://del.icio.us/natekoechley/art
http://del.icio.us/rss/natekoechley/art

If you want to widen your view, you can view all "art" bookmarks for everybody on the network:
http://del.icio.us/tag/art
http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/art

There is no limit to the number of tags you can have, either in general or with a single URL.

As you can see, each node - tag - get's it's own RSS feed. This is the functionality that creates my personalized feeds.

Great Firefox Resources

Here are two great sites reviewing tips, tricks and extensions for the Firefox browser from the Mozilla Foundation. (You are using Firefox, right?)

First is the thorough article from Scot's Newsletter. Well written, it includes Firefox Extension Recommendations and Firefox Customization Recommendations. The extensions are grouped by type, including "tab-browsing" and "UI-fixing", as well as broad groups for "tried 'em, like 'em" and others.

The second article is "Secret's of Firefox 1.0", from Windows Secrets Newsletter. This one is focused on tweaks available through Firefox's about:config interface. Check it out for many speed tweaks.

(both via)

Blog Torrents, P2P and the Development of De-centralized Media

Broadband Daily posts an interview with Nicholas Reville of Downhill Battle, which just recently released Blog Torrent, a very exciting new initiative:

Blog Torrent is a key first step of our plan to make software that builds participatory culture. Video (specifically television) is a huge part of culture. But it's still an extremely top-down medium-- even as the tools to make high quality video and animation have become extremely cheap, very few people watch any significant amount of video other than what's on networks and cable. We think homemade video can compete directly against professional television, especially as reality shows have brought down viewers expectations about the production values needed to make engaging TV.

More from the BlogTorrent site:

What is Blog Torrent?: Blog Torrent is software that makes it much easier to share and download files using the bittorrent protocol. Blog Torrent is easy to install on your website: we don't use MySQL so installation is as easy as uploading a folder to your web host, and all administration happens in the web interface. Blog Torrent is easy for users: even if they don't know what bittorrent is, they get an installer that downloads the file they want. But most of all, Blog Torrent makes publishing with bittorrent painless. Just click "upload", pick a file, and you're done. This is our preview release and it has a lot of bugs and rough edges... but we're smoothing them out for the next version, so stay tuned.

Why does Blog Torrent matter?: Making it easy to blog large video files means that people can share their home movies the same way they share their photos or writings. It lets people create vast networks of truly peer-to-peer video content-- video that was made by individuals and shared with individuals, no bandwidth budget or distribution deal needed.

We'll definitely be seeing more torrent news lately, and this convergence with the blogging world / blogging technology can only help.

Digital Web Magazine: a Fast Company's 2005 Fast 50 Nominee

If you don't read Digital Web Magazine, you should. If you do, you should leave a testimonial over at the Fast Company's 2005 Fast 50 - their 4th annual - where Nick Finch, DWM's publisher and driving force is nominated this year.

CSS Hack vs CSS Filter

I was in the midst of some late-night coding. Well, not really late-night I guess. Let me rephrase.

It was 10:30pm and I was just getting started with some nighttime coding. I was searching for something, and ended up reading a july 2003 evolt post. In it, PPK describes the difference between CSS Hacks and CSS Filters. I've read tons about each, but this is the first time that I really noticed their definitions.

CSS Hacks

Techniques and syntax that achieve desired results by exploiting a bug in a particular browsers rendering engine.

CSS Filters

Techniques and syntax that achieve desired results by exploiting a feature that a particular browsers rendering engine does not yet support.

What does a front-end web developer do?

My business card says I'm a Senior Web Developer. I've been asked a million times what I do, what that title means. It's not easy to explain.

I tell my Grandmother that I'm in publishing. Close enough for somebody in their 90's.

Sometimes I say I'm a Technical Designer or just a Designer. Other times I describe the Web Project Triangle: Project Management on one end, Design (visual, experience) on another, and Engineering (databases, servers) on the third. I say that Web Developers sit in the middle of that triangle, giving and receiving deliverables, and often acting as liason between those groups and practices.

Occassionally I say that "we're the people with the most software", which is really just another way of saying that I'm in the the middle of the Triangle. I often have MS Project, Word and Excel running to look at project plans, Gantt charts and task lists from Project Management. Add to that some combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, Viseo and maybe InDesign to handle deliverables from Design. From the Engineering world, I always have a local web server running with PHP and MySQL running, as well Unix utilities, bug tracking software, debugging suites... So there's all that, plus all the software native to Web Development. (Scores of browsers, Homesite, screen rules and color management tools, diff-ing and testing software, and more....

For another take on the same question, read"What does a front-end web developer do?". Author Christian Heilmann is the mind behind Unobtrusive Javascript and all the other great tools at onlinetools.org.

CSS Hacks - Collection of Articles and Links

I've been thinking about CSS hacks lately, so I thought I'd gather together some of the resources I've been using and articles I've been considering.

• Over on CNET, Michael Meadhra writes (yesterday) CSS: To hack or not to hack. While not introducing much new information, and it's always useful to consider another professionals thought process and approach. In addition, he makes important reminders, including that our work is it's highest quality when we

  [think] of design and coding as parts of the same process and [are] willing to go through multiple iterations of the process to refine [our] design. It doesn't work if you approach coding as the task of precisely implementing a preconceived design.

• Doug Bowman has an article on his stopdesign site entitled Filtering CSS. The article gives some background on CSS hacks and filters, then introduces a new CSS filter that can be used to import a separate style sheet for IE5/Mac, named the IE5/Mac Band Pass Filter.
• Molly Holzschlag's piece for informIT, Strategies for Long-Term CSS Hack Management is definitely worth reading.
• No hack list would be complete without at least a passing mention of Tantek's Box Model Hack. Turns out I don't use it that often, but you still gotta have it in your toolbox.
• If you're not using del.icio.us, you definitely should be. Either way, you can find more CSS hack info in their collection: http://del.icio.us/tag/css-hacks
• In addition to those articles, there are a bunch of quality resources too: Centricle's CSS Filters (css hacks) compatibility grid, Dithered's CSS Filters main page, and the always useful CSS-Discuss Wiki has a dedicated page: http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CssHack. If you still need more, there are about a quarter-million here.

Enjoy.

MIME Type Test Suite

I pointed to Juicy Studio's article It's all in the MIME a few days ago in my mini-blog. Well, Gez Lemon, the author of Juicy Studio, follows that up with some MIME Type Test Suites.

Did you notice the shameless plug for my Mini-Blog? Good. Enjoy it. (The 8 most recent posts to my mini-blog are included in the right column on my main blog.)

Why have a mini-blog? What's the difference? Who's idea was it? First of all, it wasn't my idea. I remember noting it first at my friend Ernie's blog, but it's pretty common and you'll find something similar at mezzoblue and even Digital-Web's What's New area.

Why have a mini-blog? The idea it to be able to quickly blog lots of things, without diluting the quality of the main blog. My mini