Fri Apr 21
I must admit I’m pretty passionate - some would say obsessive - about some things. And if you read this blog regularly you know that one of those things is web standards, and I consider it a privilege to be involved in the future of the web.
So it upsets me when otherwise amazingly talented people just don’t get why we’re here. I speak of David Heinemeier Hansson’s reponse to Dan Webb’s article about Ruby on Rails. His comment “I?ll trade purity in HTML for purity in .rhtml any day of the week” is unhelpuf at best and downright reckless at worst.
Jeremy Keith agrees, and says this somes down to some pretty fundamental questions. It’s true, this does show up an attitude with some developers who care more about themselves than the end users. But, let’s be honest, who are we doing this web thing for?
SUre, we’re doing it for ourselves - I love what I do and am very glad I have the opportunity to be paid to do it. We do it for the companies that hire us, after all they are the ones who give us money to do what we love.
But no matter what business you’re in, if you create websites they fundamentally you’re doing it for them out there - call them visitors, eyeballs, potential customers or whatever you like - they are the ones that matter.
I help run a community site, which is all about the people that participate in the community. I run an e-commerce site, which is all about the customers that come to buy. I am developing an informational site which is all about the people that come there for information.
No matter what site I am involved with, I try to remember that the reason I’m doing it, every line of code, every pixel, is for the people who will be using it. Fortunately, I’m constantly reminded of that as I walk around my workplace and see websites and intranet applications I’ve written open on people’s screens. When was the last time I used these systems? When I built them, but these people use them every day. How could I not put them first?
So I’m disappointed with David’s comment, although I do believe he means well. We need to thing more about the end users than we do about ourselves as developers. Sometimes that will mean causing us extra work (form validation, anyone?) but it’s always the right thing to do.
Here’s a little analogy I thought of earlier:
Pieman: Good morning, sir, can I help you?
Customer: Mmm! Those pies look lovely! How much are they?
Pieman: Thirty pence each, or four for one pound.
Customer: Very reasonable value, I think. So what’s in them?
Pieman: Well, the usual stuff.
Customer: Like…?
Pieman: Meat, vegetables, that sort of thing.
Customer: Ah, right. What sort of meat?
Pieman: Just … meat.
Customer: Lamb? Beef? Chicken?
Pieman: Nope.
Customer: [starts to get nervous] Erm, rabbit? Come on, I’d like to know. Those pies sure look mighty fine, but I’d like to know what I’m eating if I buy them.
Pieman: OK, it’s rat.
Customer: Rat?!
Pieman: Yes, rat.
Customer: But you can’t sell pies made of rat meat!
Pieman: I can, and I am. In fact I’ve already sold over twenty of them this morning alone.
Customer: Good grief, that’s horrible! Why are you using rat meat, surely some official government authority will bring charges against you?
Pieman: Quite possibly, but to be honest I don’t care. Rat meat is free, easy to obtain, and easy to cook.
Customer: What? You’re just plain mental, you are.
Pieman: I may be, but in this game whatever makes my job easier is the right thing to do. Now, how many pies would you like?
[Addendum} I know what people will think, so I have to set their minds at rest. I’m not a masochist, and I don’t like to make my life unecessarily complicated. I’m all for easing the burden on developers, but not when it’s at the expense of the quality of end users experience.
Fri Apr 21
I must admit I’m pretty passionate - some would say obsessive - about some things. And if you read this blog regularly you know that one of those things is web standards, and I consider it a privilege to be involved in the future of the web.
So it upsets me when otherwise amazingly talented people just don’t get why we’re here. I speak of David Heinemeier Hansson’s reponse to Dan Webb’s article about Ruby on Rails. His comment “I?ll trade purity in HTML for purity in .rhtml any day of the week” is unhelpuf at best and downright reckless at worst.
Jeremy Keith agrees, and says this somes down to some pretty fundamental questions. It’s true, this does show up an attitude with some developers who care more about themselves than the end users. But, let’s be honest, who are we doing this web thing for?
SUre, we’re doing it for ourselves - I love what I do and am very glad I have the opportunity to be paid to do it. We do it for the companies that hire us, after all they are the ones who give us money to do what we love.
But no matter what business you’re in, if you create websites they fundamentally you’re doing it for them out there - call them visitors, eyeballs, potential customers or whatever you like - they are the ones that matter.
I help run a community site, which is all about the people that participate in the community. I run an e-commerce site, which is all about the customers that come to buy. I am developing an informational site which is all about the people that come there for information.
No matter what site I am involved with, I try to remember that the reason I’m doing it, every line of code, every pixel, is for the people who will be using it. Fortunately, I’m constantly reminded of that as I walk around my workplace and see websites and intranet applications I’ve written open on people’s screens. When was the last time I used these systems? When I built them, but these people use them every day. How could I not put them first?
So I’m disappointed with David’s comment, although I do believe he means well. We need to thing more about the end users than we do about ourselves as developers. Sometimes that will mean causing us extra work (form validation, anyone?) but it’s always the right thing to do.
Here’s a little analogy I thought of earlier:
Pieman: Good morning, sir, can I help you?
Customer: Mmm! Those pies look lovely! How much are they?
Pieman: Thirty pence each, or four for one pound.
Customer: Very reasonable value, I think. So what’s in them?
Pieman: Well, the usual stuff.
Customer: Like…?
Pieman: Meat, vegetables, that sort of thing.
Customer: Ah, right. What sort of meat?
Pieman: Just … meat.
Customer: Lamb? Beef? Chicken?
Pieman: Nope.
Customer: [starts to get nervous] Erm, rabbit? Come on, I’d like to know. Those pies sure look mighty fine, but I’d like to know what I’m eating if I buy them.
Pieman: OK, it’s rat.
Customer: Rat?!
Pieman: Yes, rat.
Customer: But you can’t sell pies made of rat meat!
Pieman: I can, and I am. In fact I’ve already sold over twenty of them this morning alone.
Customer: Good grief, that’s horrible! Why are you using rat meat, surely some official government authority will bring charges against you?
Pieman: Quite possibly, but to be honest I don’t care. Rat meat is free, easy to obtain, and easy to cook.
Customer: What? You’re just plain mental, you are.
Pieman: I may be, but in this game whatever makes my job easier is the right thing to do. Now, how many pies would you like?
[Addendum} I know what people will think, so I have to set their minds at rest. I’m not a masochist, and I don’t like to make my life unecessarily complicated. I’m all for easing the burden on developers, but not when it’s at the expense of the quality of end users experience.
Sat Apr 15
I guess most of you won’t have been there, just as I wasn’t, but I’m getting my fill of South by Southwest by downloading oodles of free music. I did it last year as well, and discovered dozens of great bands.
So, crank up your internet connection and get them while they’re hot!
Thu Apr 13
As I mentioned the other day I’m looking into ways to provide a backup of each Wiblog so that should the unthinkable occur, we’d be able to rebuild the entire Wiblog system. My idea is that users would be able to download a backup file (probably XML) of their entire Wiblog, and that there would be a couple of other ways to make sure that data is safe.
I’m not the only one with this idea. Joe Brockmeier over at Newsforge has a similar thought, but relates this to being able to move data from one blog or content management system to another easily. Shared formats are good, I like them.
Matt Mower and Paolo Valdemarin discussed this well over a year ago as well, and both have great comments to make.
So, how would this work? As Matt rightly says, a single RSS file with all blog posts could easily get unwieldy, so I subscribe to his notion that archives should be available in chunks - monthly archives make sense to me. If the system can wrap the archives up into an archived file (.zip, .tar or somesuch) then so much the better.
Then what we need is a file to link all the monthly archives together. Fortunately we can use OPML for that. And we need a way of storing additonal configuration, if required. That could include (for the Wiblogs at least) the list of bloggers and whether comments are enabled, as well as a whole myriad of other bits of data.
So once we have this collection of files, we have a complete archive of the blog. Hmm, it’s not ideal, is it? A single-file archive would be so much better. Gah, the devil surely is in the details with stuff like this!
Anyway, one thing I can say is that the new Wiblog system will - eventually - offer a downloadable, printable version of your Wiblog that you can use as a book template. That’s right - your Wiblog in a book! The options I’ve messed about with so far are: one post or multiple posts per page; A4, letter or A5 size; include extra information (tags etc).
The printable version will also contain your Wiblog name, address, icon and other nice features like page number and a list of links in each post. It will also have a page for your credits, you’ll be able to set these yourself, and an index page.
I’m trying to iron out some technical problems (like, having enough time to do this) but once I do I’ll announce it properly.
Thu Apr 13
The W3C have recently started a working draft of a XMLHTTPRequest specification, as I discovered through the PHP section of AJAX Magazine (via Ajaxian).
This is great news, not just because it might lead to more standardised code (no more jumping between native XMLHTTPRequest objects and ActiveX), but because it will raise the profile of AJAX and more specifically the Right Way To Do It. The W3C is, rightly, an influential body and will no doubt become more important as web developers the world over become more aware of the standards we should all work to.
AJAX, in case you didn’t know, is the term to describe modern JavaScript techniques. It’scausing big waves in web-world at the moment, and is a major part of the new Wiblog3 system.
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