MentalX

This has been all over the blogosphere in the past few days as the release of the new issue of A List Apart has generated quite a stir. In case you missed it, the articles in question are here (Aaron Gustafson) and here (Eric Meyer). While my initial reaction to this sides slightly with “bad idea,” the final verdict is something that will have to wait. Here are my thoughts:

Firstly, I find it encouraging that Microsoft is actively engaging the web development community (at least those in favor of, and pushing web standards). It must be stated that I was in the camp of web designers who were pleasantly surprised by the sweeping changes made to IE7. While it wasn’t all that it could have been, it was much better than I had expected. IE8 seems to be on much the same path. My fingers are crossed.

My two mild concerns about this idea of using meta-tags to basically target browser versions are as follows:

1. It requires that browser vendors make new versions of their browsers backward compliant. Maybe not so strangely, the only browser vendor in question is Microsoft, and while I have been more-or-less satisfied with their progress, I am just not so sure that they can be trusted to continually accomplish such a feat. And, just for the record, I have never bought the statement by Microsoft that it was unwilling to release a new version of IE for fear that it would “break the web.” And if I don’t by that, I can’t buy the idea that “version targeting” is going to in some way accelerate the progress of their browsers. Sounds like a plea for an out to me.

2. Tying into this idea, it really bothers me that the web community as a whole seems that it can’t be bothered (at least in the eyes of Microsoft) to neither write good, clean, accessible code nor create a fix when technologies advance (a proposition that is fairly easy if you write good code in the first place). This attitude has long been a problem with me. But alas, I suppose it persists in all industries in one-way or another.

So, at the end of the day, all this mainly amounts to good fodder. I will have to wait to see just how it effects my implementations, and the industry as a whole. Only then will I be able to tell if it is a good thing or not.

UPDATE: Here are some links on the subject that might be good to read up on:

Zeldman: In defense of version targeting

Meyer: Targeted

Meyer: Version Two

456 Berea St: Standards mode is the new quirks mode

McLellan: Version Targeting and JavaScript Libraries 

If you haven’t heard by now, Webkit is now supporting the @font-face CSS property. There are a variety of opinions on this…some good, some bad. I for one am pretty excited about the addition, and am hoping others soon follow suit (obviously Opera is already there, but Firefox, Camino, and IE (don’t laugh) need to fall in line).

I’d like to address the two biggest issues that most objectors are pointing out:

1. Legal issues with Font usage

There is already an Open Font License (OFL), and several open source fonts available. I am hoping that the addition of the @font-face property will do nothing but perpetuate this area of font development. For the most part fonts are still designed exclusively for print, it’s be a nice change to have a few designed with the web in mind.

2. Many web designers don’t know anything about typography

Excuse me? I have argued in the past that a lack of design knowledge by web designers and lack of tools that allow for precise universal web-based design are the main reason that web design for the most part is boring and hideous. If you want to be a web DESIGNER, you might want to learn a thing or two about design, design history, and typography.

In conclusion, I am in favor of this advance. It will be misused, however, it might finally bring a sense of style and art to the web that is currently non-existent. Rock on, Webkit.

Well, I made the jump on  a recent coding job to validating everything as XHTML 1.0 Strict. I had been a holding out over a problem I had with the missing target attribute.  My thinking all along has been, “Hey, if I want somebody to leave my site without leaving my page entirely, that’s my choice not theirs.” After much thought, I have decided that it is better to give control back to the user. If they want to leave the site … fine. If not, it is easy enough for them to open the link in a new window or tab without any fuss.

So, do I miss the target? Nah, I think I’ve hit it spot-on.

I have just finished recoding the HerbergerOnline services page to clean everything up, and add a ton of accessibility features. One of these features was the inclusion of “Skip to Navigation” for the sake of screereaders. The links are positioned off the page by using absolute positioning. When I went to test on IE7, I noticed that it was generating a horizontal scrollbar along the bottom of the page…nasty. I very rarely care about what IE(any version) does, just so long as the site functions and looks OK. I did, however, want to figure out what was up. So, I loaded up Mezzoblue (Dave Shea) as I knew he used similar functionality and found that his page was creating no such scroller. What’s the deal, yo?

The deal is that I was using text-indent: -9999px;. Mr. Shea was using top: -9999px. This positions up instead of out, and solves the problem. So, lesson learned.

Need to work on creating microformats for class notes. How cool would it be to have notes available in a standard microformat that could be made available to a variety of applications. Will get to this asap.

Something like:

<div class=”vnotes”>
<span class=”topic”>Acoustic Guitar</span>
<ol class=”XOXO”>
<li class=”note_l0″>number one instrument of choice by self taught musician</li>
<li class=”note_l0″>acoustic guitars consist of 6 or 12 strings and hollow body
<ol class=”XOXO”>
<li class=”note_l1″>strings can be made of nylon or metal</li>
</li></ol></ol>
</div>
OK, not sure that’s going to work, but it’s a start.