2007 May Archive

Snails move quicker than the W3C

This page will evolve in the next few weeks incrementally. We will add a feed, very soon.

From the most recent post on the W3C HTML Working Group blog; made three months ago.


Mozilla gets native video support

Mozilla’s Chris Double has announced on his blog that he’s implemented the (proposed) HTML5 <video> element in a build of Firefox (demo screencast). The element will natively support OGG Theora files.

While I think this is great news and has a lot of potential, I foresee one major obstacle to this becoming standard: proprietary codecs. If they decide to implement it, Apple will want Quicktime in Safari, and Microsoft will want Windows Media Video in Internet Explorer.

As one commenter notes, the idea will be to have fallback options for anyone who doesn’t have an OGG player, probably in Java; there are some examples of how this will work on the Wikipedia Video page (caution: this caused Firefox on OS X to crash, although Firefox on Ubuntu played it perfectly).

Theora is obviously the most common-sense cross-browser, cross-platform, non-proprietary solution; but since when has the internet been governed by common sense?

Update: Since writing this post, I’ve found out that Opera also has an experimental implementation.


Using MooTools for animation timings

In my previous post, A MooTools Effects quickstart guide, I wrote a very simple and basic introduction to using the JavaScript framework to add animation effects to your website.

The popularity of the post took me by surprise, and showed me that there’s a demand for quick and easy tutorials on the subject; so I’ve decided to write a follow-up, dealing with animation timings.

Read the full article


The slow progress of Swift

The developer of Swift, the browser that was set to be the first native to Windows to use the WebKit rendering engine, has announced that development with WebKit is to be halted as the Windows port is unstable, and future versions will be based on Mozilla’s Gecko engine until WebKit stabilises, at which point Swift will switch back to it.

So I have to ask: what will Swift bring to the table without WebKit? We already have a bunch of Gecko-based browsers, and we have no information about what features Swift will implement.

I was pretty enthused when Swift was announced; even if it just had basic functionality, the fact that it was based on WebKit was pretty exciting. But as we’ve seen just two rudimentary pre-Alpha releases in almost 10 months, and no roadmap or project information is available on the website, this is turning into vapourware for me.


Hyperlinks are fun

Thanks to del.icio.us I found 25 Code Snippets for Web Designers which has some really useful and interesting links, including a great presentation on designing for the grid by Khoi Vinh, whose blog led me to DesignByGrid.com, a collection of tutorials and resources.


A call for clarity in standards specifications

Over at 456BereaStreet, the ever-impressive Roger Johansson recently wrote an impassioned article about a perceived lack of support for semantic structure in HTML 5. He’s now had a chance to understand the issue more fully and has written a follow-up, Another Look at HTML 5, in which he explains his concerns in a more measured way.

All of his points are valid, but his call for more clarity in the specification really struck a chord with me:

Read the full article


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Aside

I’ve updated my Speaking page to include more conferences, more videos, and a little on my speaking requirements and preferences. I’m planning to cut down on the number of talks I give in 2014 (twelve is too many), but am always open to interesting offers and opportunities, so please get in touch if you’re organising an event.

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