BLINK and more about yesterdayWhat happened? Normally I'm all into web standards (especially for elements that are unsupported, like object), but after I read a nice post yesterday about the worst tag ever (he means object by that :)) it changed a bit. Not that I'm not all into standards anymore, but more the fact that I laughed that a simple invalid element like embed works great across all main browsers.
Change the specification! Just kidding. Just keep checking Evan Goer's Journal, 'cause he "promised" to be back with Halloween:
Heya Anne! Nope, I haven't tested NOEMBED yet.
But with Halloween coming up, you've just given me a great idea for a series of scary posts... on non-standard markup! Shiver in fear of BLINK and MARQUEE! Scream in horror at Netscape 4's Javascript Stylesheets! Ooooooo.... Booooooo!
I don't know about you, but I'm already freaked out.
In related news, A List Apart has been redesigned (thanks Rogier for letting me know, before Zeldman did). They have some new articles to BTW, but you have to see those for yourself. I like the new ALA (using acronym is right, isn't it? No, it isn't.) And unlike other people who have 'a high resolution' (1280*1024) I don't have a problem with the fact that they didn't specified any min-width or max-width. A person who reads ALA has a sidebar and should be glad it fits in their window :).
I also really like the 'zeldman style' and the now very clear interface. The only thing I am wondering about is why they used Active Server Pages (ASP, marked up as abbr), but that doesn't really matter, since most things work just fine (except for the comment system).
Zilla-gardener Dave Shea released a couple of new gardens, but that happened two days ago. Yesterday he told about another ripped CSS file without given credit. If I'm not mistaken this file was donated to the garden project by Andrew, from Mooncalf. He was also the first who noticed. Fortunately the owners of the site didn't know about it, it was only some lazy design company who did this stuff and it has now been changed (a bit).
There are probably a lot more things that happened yesterday, but these were the ones I quickly remembered. To end, a short note about the purpose about this weblog. Most posts are about subjects we can't use now and if we can use it, Netscape Navigator 4 can't handle it (yes it is a synonym, only Google doesn't recognize it). And if you think I should start living in the 'real world'. I am(!), but not on this weblog...
Which reminds me, I was looking through the dictionary definitions for acronyms and abbreviations the other day and found out that what many of us think of as acronyms are actually initialisms (that is, abbreviations that are pronounced as letters and not as a word, such as ALA or FBI.
However, they usually get marked up incorrectly as acronyms, even though the definition for an acronym seems to be an abbreviation that is pronounced as a word.
So things like ALA and FBI are actually initialisms and cannot be correctly marked up using XHTML. Does that mean the W3C should add an <init> or something equivalent to better compensate for that in the next iteration of XHTML 1.0? Hmm.
Heh. To clarify: An abbreviation is any shortened form of any number of words. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letter(s) of the major words in a phrase. In the past, this "word" had to be pronounceable; however, in recent years, the term is also used as a synonym for initialism. Thus it is now correct to use acronym to describe both NATO and FBI.
One of my former professors for a networking class (the king of abbreviations and acronyms) used to make a huge deal about the fact that acronyms had to be pronounceable. We couldn't go around calling acronyms abbreviations or vice versa. I wonder if he'll be heartbroken that the common definition has recently changed? ;-)
Oh yes, another thing. If every major browser supports a particular thing, it seems to me that particular thing is the standard, regardless of what some random group says in their "specifications."
To paraphrase, if every citizen in the Kingdom of Blorg wears a yellow hat, then that is the standard thing to do. Even if King Blorg declares that the standard is to wear a blue hat, what difference does it make if everyone continues to wear yellow?
Now, granted, that may or may not be the correct or ideal thing to do....
You're welcome ;-)
I also really like the new ALA look. It looks by far better than the old ALA. And what's up with all these people bashing the new look? It's a true Zeldman stylee.
O no! Don't start about abbreviations :) (I know I asked, I just thought ALA could be pronounced as a word). Read this and if you have any questions left, ask them:
Thanks for those links! Of course someone already came up with all this before I did...
Well, I pronounce ALA as a word, so that makes it an acronym. The other day, though, I had to think a moment about MySQL. But I actually pronounce that as “my sequel” I mark it up as acronym as well.
About the ALA redesign, as I have written in my own blog, I do like the new and better interface, but in my opinion the design is not as beautiful and clear as might be expected from one of the heroes of modern webdesign. I don't have a problem with the fixed width, more with the colors and lack of whitespace.
As to de facto standards and specifications: companies like Microsoft are members of the W3C and help define the specifications. Then why do they not follow those specifications in their browsers? That is so frustrating!
embed has not been put in the HTML specification because object is better and because there was a patent risk... which has been prooved to arrive finally.
As usual do not confuse, Specs features and bad implementations.