Daily
Report

30 March, 2000
[12:12 pm]
Two (count 'em) Beautiful Women of the Web™ have written to request photos of our haircut. That's like Auriea asking Jakob to share his source code. Web people, they're kooky!
        ::: Web People, They're Kooky! Deux: We've stayed well out of it, but large numbers of otherwise sane web authors have been embroiled in a canonical debate about how many words should be used on a website. And most of them are not kidding. Next burning issue: How many colors?

[11:55 am]
The deadline for entries in the 5k award contest is 5:00pm PST, April 2nd 2000. According to our Graphing Calculator, that's, uh, really soon.
        ::: Personal storytelling: Drunk or sober?

[1:40 am]
Now live at Adobe.com: Where Have All the Designers Gone? (To the sharp-eyed with long memories, yes, this is a revised version of the article we originally ran on A List Apart. A deja vu is a glitch in the Matrix.)
        ::: The Web Standards Project's statement on IE5/Mac has been picked up by Bloomberg News and the Macintosh News Network.
        ::: Interesting stuff in today's Guest Book, including a letter from the creator of [the.Valley], a nicely designed weblog. Other pages updated here this morning include Les Misc., and the continuing bottle battle of Mr Jenkins, our poorly designed alcoholic haiku contest that never seems to know when it's had enough.
        ::: And, yes, we got the haircut, if you can really call two hours of herbal tea drinking, neck massage, and conversation a haircut. (We still remember our first encounter with the barber's art: the smell of cigars, wrinkled copies of Playboy, an aged Italian with a buzz trimmer grasping our mitts and saying, "Don't talk with your hands, Son.") Times have changed. Now it's trip-hop and techno in a trendy Soho loft space. Personal grooming as an upscale variation on "Calgon, take me away." The haircut as a substitute for sex or narcotics. We're hooked.

29 March, 2000
[10:45 pm]
::: Fulsome is as fulsome does, sir: Earlier today, when xmlhack labeled The Web Standards Project's praise for IE5/Mac "fulsome," they probably meant that we were being too nice for our own good.
        Yet, as Anita Rowland points out, fulsome actually means something quite different. "It means foul and disgusting, but is often taken as 'excessive' because of the cliche, 'fulsome praise,'" Anita explains. A visit to Common Errors in English could have saved the day. Hey, at least it wasn't a syntax error.

[12:35 pm]
Now live on Yahoo news: Web Standards Project Praises IE5/Mac, Urges Microsoft to 'Finish the Job.' And the story has already been picked up by xmlhack, which gently chides our "fulsome" tone.

[4:08 am]
In a few hours, The Web Standards Project will have something to say. Keep watching the skies.
        ::: Jonas Ridderstrale says, in the future, people won't have jobs, they'll have temporary gigs – like a jazz musician. We say it's already happening. And this is our gig. Tip your waitress.
        ::: Today's the day some of the hair comes off. We want to look pretty when we speak at Geek Pride this weekend. (Not only are we browser sluts, we're turning into conference hussies. Make that conference connoisseurs. "Geek Pride? A modest domestic conference with an opensourcey bouquet.")
        ::: Fun Facts: Did you know? We not only write this page several times a day, we also go back and cut stuff out when we realize how idiotic it is. Sometimes, instead of deleting the idiocy, we simply comment it out, and leave it in the source code.  

28 March, 2000
[3:45 pm]
More of our crap: We gush over the standards implementation and usability enhancements of IE5/Mac in an interview at Mactopia. For some reason there seems to be a photo of Jack Nicholson above the interview.
        Also highly worth reading: standards activist Susan Lesch's Mactopia interview. And Points, Pixels, DPI and You (a guide to font sizes in IE5/Mac and on the web - important stuff for anyone who designs websites).
        ::: That's gotta hurt: At the beginning of the Mactopia interview, we were asked what we do, so we mentioned A List Apart, and Microsoft linked to it at the top of the article. And what's on the cover of this week's A List Apart? A big steaming article on the importance of an upcoming browser: Netscape's.
        Ouch. Who are the PR wizards who came up with that one?
        We could give you our long-winded rationale (IE5/Mac supports two key web standards and is shipping right now; Netscape's browser is supposed to support five key web standards when it ships real soon), but hey. Call us browser sluts. Just call us! Our Browser Slut operators are standing by.

[2:20 am]
Theater of Cruelty: Our friend Mark was freelancing for a client we'll call Roger. They had just completed their project and were sitting in Roger's office. After a long, uncomfortable silence, Roger glanced up from his desk and looked Mark meaningfully in the eyes.
        "Mark," sighed Roger, "you know how sometimes you stare at your address book, looking over all your friends' names and phone numbers, and you suddenly realize that they're not really your friends at all? That you have nothing in common with them, you don't even like them, and you're pretty sure they don't like you either?"
        Mark said, "No."  

::: Internet Literary Database II: In Book Proposal (below) we noted the web publisher's dilemma when discussing books. [Linking to a book reference from Amazon.com or a similar online retailer makes you, in effect, an affiliate retailer even when you have no interest in selling anything to anybody; you simply want to link to additional information about the book you're discussing. We suggested that a non-commercial Internet Literary Database would solve this problem.]
        Reader Tanya Rabourn reminded us that it's possible to link to a library's online catalog. For instance, here is a non-commercial link to James Ellroy's novel, Brown's Requiem, courtesy of the Library of Congress. (At least, it was a working link an hour ago. Apparently the lengthy http references generated by the Library of Congress eventually time out and stop working.)
        Reader Eric Hellman pointed us to the emerging LinkBaton service, which is compiling literary (and other) databases to which web authors and users may link. The interface is still in development, and most of the linked services are commercial at this time. But pointing to a dozen commerial services at once may feel less mercantile than providing one-click access to the money page.
        Most interestingly, reader Hanan Cohen submitted our idea to a mailing list of librarians, whose fascinating responses are archived via sunsite.berkeley.edu. The Net is amazing.

::: Updated the usual pages here. Later today, look for an announcement from The Web Standards Project.

27 March, 2000
[10:15 pm]
The Web Publisher's Dilemma: Work on the curriculum for web designers is going so well that we're wishing we could publish it online. That's ridiculous, of course. The material is designed for the classroom, it's a collaborative effort, and it's not ours to publish (it belongs to our partner). But that is the nature of this strangely addictive medium. Create something you like, and you look forward to instantly sharing it with the world.

[1:15 pm]
Must Read: "Penis Envy", from Harrumph.com.

[1 pm]
A List Apart is honored to have been selected as a Netdiver Networks site, where it joins great zines like Digital-Web, Born Magazine, Holodeck 73, and Kottke.org.
        ::: Talking about standards and browsers is like sauntering into a saloon in 1870 with a six gun on your hip. Sooner or later, somebody's going to take shots at you.
        Some academics demand to know why our own sites are not fully standards-compliant. (Answer: because the browsers don't support this yet. And even when they do, there will be a transition period. We will wait until most of our audience for each site is using fully standards-compliant browsers.)
        Some developers ask why we can't just build for the majority and author to the quirks of IE5 for Windows. (Answer: Because the web is for everybody. And besides, we've been held hostage for five years by the quirks of various browsers. Why volunteer for continued bondage by pledging allegiance to the current market leader? Tomorrow that browser could change its quirks - or another browser could "own" the market. Best, we think, to author to standards as soon as it is possible to do so.)
        Some ask how we can praise both Microsoft and Netscape in the same week. (Answer: Because they are both working to end the madness and give us full support for W3C standards. Netscape's browser, when it is released, is supposed to deliver complete support for five crucial web standards. Microsoft's IE5 for Macintosh fully supports two – and it is shipping.)
        If you feel like debating any of these issues, have we got a mailing list for you.
 
[midnight]
Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh will be available in a matter of hours.
        This is a better browser (more usable, more standards-compliant) than the Windows version of IE5. In fact, it's the best web browser we've seen on any platform. It complies with two important web standards: HTML 4 and CSS-1. It solves long-standing usability problems that have plagued web users since the days of the FONT FACE tag. And beyond all that, it rocks.
        We urge Mac users to download this browser the moment it becomes available (later this morning).
        Note: Some of you may want to write to us about this browser. Please don't. We don't have the bandwidth right now. But there's a forum at Macintosh News Network where you can discuss the browser's pros and cons at length. Be sure to see Todd's note for a quick run-down of not-so-obvious cool features built into IE5/Mac.

26 March, 2000
[11 pm]
Tonight's the night. The night we've all been waiting for. That's right, in just a few hours, the months of breathless speculation will end. And Microsoft will unveil Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh.
        Oh yeah, the Academy Awards are also taking place.

[4 pm]
DotCom.uppance: We know you've seen this already. But on the off-chance that you missed it: dotcom backlash lives at blowthedotoutyourass.com. Kids, get your parents' permission first.
        Reminder: The deadline for entries in the 5K Awards contest is 2 April. That's, uh, really soon. Kids, finish those sites up! And on the other end of the bandwidth spectrum ...
        Vote early, vote often: There is still time to cast your ballots in the Flash Film Festival, a collection of extraordinary creative works. Toughest decision: once-upon-a-forest.com and mono*crafts are both up for Best of Show.
        And in a different galaxy, if you're so inclined, our Ad Graveyard is up for Coolest Humor Site in the Cool Site of the Year Awards.
 
[12:30 am]
Every time we mention a book, we feel compelled to link to it, as we'd link to any other subject matter. Problem: With no comprehensive non-commercial book resources on the web, we inevitably end up linking to Amazon.com or a similar commercial resource, and that makes us feel like book pimps. Solution: The web needs an Internet Literary Database, similar to the Internet Movie Database, so we can link to books without looking like we're trying to sell you something.
        Note: In an effort to appear more like the big Internet players, we've just patented the idea in the paragraph above. (We've also patented the ironic link, the non-underlined link, the satiric observation, and the comma.)
        ::: Well hush our mouths: Late last night, we suggested that web designers might wish to refrain from publicizing their social gatherings, since what starts out as a celebration of friendship can easily be perceived by outsiders as a self-congratulatory circle jerk. Wait, that was supposed to be an apology.
        See, lots of nice people link to each other and post snapshots of each other, and there's nothing wrong with that. Our remarks were not aimed at those folks, and we never meant to offend them. Sincere apologies if you thought we meant you. We never mean you. We adore you.
        ::: As if the web were not commercial enough: Ad Graveyard fans, reader Mark Egan thinks you might like the site of the Radio Mercury Awards, where you can hear the world's best radio commercials in streaming RealAudio. The Awards date back to 1992, and we were among the Judges that very year. The Awards Show was held in the New York Public Library. We rented a tux, sat at a banquet table, and ordered the first of many free martinis. For some reason, that's all we can remember.
 
25 March, 2000
[11:55 am]
Call us Luddites (just call us!): Cell phones were bad enough. Then came those little earphone/neck mike models. You know the ones. The ones that make you think the guy on the elevator is having a psychotic episode – ranting at his dead grandfather – until you notice the tiny wire hanging from his ear, and realize he's simply yelling at his stockbroker.
        So here's the brainstorm:
        Fake earphone cell phones for the mentally ill homeless.
        See, in the 1980s, U.S. President Reagan decided to save government money by sending the mentally ill out of the hospitals and onto the streets. And they are still on the streets, feeling frightened, helpless, and socially ostracized.
        But for a few dollars per mentally ill homeless person, the U.S. government could easily distribute cheap earplugs that look like fully functional cellphone headsets. And then you'd never know whether the screaming guy in your subway car was a homeless schizophrenic or a high-powered venture capitalist.
        Sure, it would be better for the U.S. government to actually help the homeless. But come on. No politician is going to do that.
        Whereas, for a small investment, Headsets for the Homeless could actually ship.

[3:15 am]
Yesterday we noted that this week's A List Apart article discusses the importance of Netscape's upcoming browser. Today an ALA reader shares the frustrating experience of using that very browser to try to read the article:
        "When I read an article about web standards and how revolutionary Gecko will be [using] the latest milestone build from Mozilla (#14), I should be able to read it properly.... Simple HTML links only worked after I clicked them five times each, plus I always had to scroll back to the point."

You say potato, and I say Doritos. Speaking of web standards, a supporter of The Web Standards Project has been bellyaching over this little public service banner ad, created in 1998 by Lance Arthur. We think the ad says "in a world where we all have problems, our web browser shouldn't be one of them." The banner's critic thinks the ad makes fun of fat people. With interpretations like that, it's no wonder so many ads end up in the dumper.
        Brad, Wynona, more duck sauce? Speaking of tasteless self-promotions, those of you who've been using the web for a while may remember a web design pioneer whose otherwise fine site was rendered massively annoying by the inclusion of both a calendar and a journal in which he reported his lunches and dinners with various Silicon Valley bigwigs. Our distaste for these culinary bulletins left us suspicious of web journals for years afterward. Let's face it, does Kevin Spacey hold a press conference every time he and Samuel L. Jackson meet for tacos? Of course not. And actors are a heckuva lot more interesting than web designers.
        We bring this up (so to speak) only because, for the past few weeks, we've been enjoying a number of lunches, dinners, and between-meal treats with various web designers, magazine editors, company presidents, multimedia designers, and even the dean of an institution of higher learning. And you know what? We will never write about those meetings. Because they are private. Because they are uninteresting unless you were there. And because it's time to curb this tendency to amplify one's every belch via the worldwide publishing medium that is the web. Fellow web designers, nobody cares who you've dined and danced with. Check, please.
        (Oddly enough, today's Kottke.org seems to make the same point we hope we've just made.)
 
24 March, 2000
[4:34 pm]
(Cyber)Space Oddity: Jonas Ridderstrale is the co-author of Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance, and was one of our fellow speakers at the Infohiway Conference in Stockholm. One of Jonas's premises is that mass marketing is dead and niche marketing rocks. He pointed out the success of the Gay & Lesbian Bank, and suggested that, in a wired global marketplace, banks for dominatrixes, masochists, and so on could be equally lucrative.
        All of which brings us to the David Bowie Bank, which at first blush would seem to be somebody's idea of a prank. But it's actually a geniuine online banking institution. Now, we love Bowie and, except for a brief, dull period in the mid-80s, he's always been ahead of the curve. But would we really trust Major Tom with our retirement fund (if we had one)? And as to the inevitability of the Ice Cube I.R.A., the James Brown CD account, and other celebrity banking possibilities, it's too easy and we won't even go there.
        By the way, we would never have located this (cyber)space oddity if not for jaw 187, the nifty weblog of 16 year-old James Weston.

[3:35 pm]
Does America "own" the Internet? (Hat tip to Alan Herrell.)

[10 am]
In this week's issue of A List Apart magazine, for people who make websites:

Why Gecko Matters: Theoretically the first fully standards-compliant web browser, Netscape's upcoming Navigator 6, based on the Gecko rendering engine, is about to enter a world where most people use IE5. Is Netscape's effort too little, too late? Is it the beginning of a better way to create websites? Your humble author articulates The Web Standards Project's position, and explains what the presence of a fully standards-compliant browser could mean to the web.

23 March, 2000
[11 am]
Cranky Lloyd Wood hates Style Sheets.

[1:30 am]
In Gamla Stan (Old Town), the 700 year-old heart of Stockholm, we descended a stone staircase into the squalor of an old curiosity shop. The store's aged owner seemed to have collected the effects of everyone who had ever died in Stockholm. Old postcards, old LP records, old comic books, old cutlery, old dolls, old clothes, old shoes, old books, old lamps, old rugs, old dust lay everywhere in the old haunted shop.
        We noticed a photograph of two men wrestling. The back was dated 1954. We asked the owner what it was. He told us it was 20 kr. (about $2.50 U.S.).
        We bought it.
        We were going to use this strangely ambient photograph as the starting point of a front page redesign today, but life got in the way. Fortunately, we managed to write Friday's lead for A List Apart magazine, and to make some headway with the Populi web design curriculum project, so the day was not a total loss. And of course we got that fancy rock star consultation.

22 March, 2000
[4 pm]

Stylin': Maybe it's all the public speaking we've been doing, or maybe it's the way our girlfriend's jaw trembles when she looks at us, but after six years without a haircut, we stumbled into an elegant Soho salon for a consultation. (That's right, they don't cut hair right off the bat. First you have a consultation. Days later, you have an appointment. Months pass, and eventually you get a haircut.) We learned that the multi-hued rat's nest cascading beyond our shoulders is "awesome hair" that just needs love. Which it will soon get, in the form of an expensive trim.
        Oh, we know what you're saying: "Any man that good looking must be gay." We hear it all the time. We also hear: "The web's gain is the NBA's loss."
        What can we say? After denying it for five years, we've come to realize that all those webloggers writing about each other are right: Web designers really are rock stars. Ugly, terrified, non-charismatic rock stars, perhaps. But rock stars none the less.
        Assuming we go through with it, we'll be premiering the new 'do when we speak at the first annual Geek Pride festival in April.
        ::: Released A List Apart Digest No. 219, featuring the continuing saga of text size and readability issues on the web. (Non-geeks, sorry to bore you to death.)
        ::: Contribute! Editor Nick Finck seeks designers willing to contribute articles, tutorials and cover art for upcoming issues of Digital Web Magazine. Peruse the contributors page or write editor@digital-web.com.

[10 am]
Non-geeks, sorry to bore you to death. As should be obvious from a glance at the news (or a nod at the last few days here), the web is about to get three new browsers – all of them promising greater compliance with W3C standards.
        It won't do much good if we keep writing bad code.
        If Netscape, Microsoft, and Opera really pull this off, the next step for folks like us will be education – so we can unlearn all the bad old ways we've been building websites.
        We're also going to have to beat up, er, gracefully assist, the folks who make FrontPage, DreamWeaver, and GoLive, because if those tools keep generating quirky, browser-dependent code – and if millions of people keep using those tools – we'll have won the battle and lost the war.
        We hope to have good news on that front in the weeks ahead.

21 March, 2000
[6:30 pm]
A few of our comments are quoted in ComputerWorld's article about next-generation browser technology.

[2 pm]
Alan Herrell informs us that MonkeyJunkie (a resource for web designers) is closing its doors, but not before pointing to Evolt and our very own A List Apart as good places for webmonkeys to hang their hats.
        This reaffirms our long-held belief that success is largely a matter of continuing to show up.

[10 am]
More on the imminent release of Netscape's next-generation browser, which promises to fully comply with five key web standards:
        A white paper on Netscape's Gecko engine (.pdf format). And, in The New York Times, Netscape Browser Faces a Changed World.
        In a few days, Computer World will publish an interview in which we discuss the importance of Netscape's Gecko. In a few more days, Mactopia will publish an interview in which we praise IE5/Mac. It sometimes seems like we're torn between two lovers – or on two conflicting payrolls. But the truth is, we just want the web to work, and, since standards are the way, we praise standards-related achievements whether they're accomplished by Netscape, Microsoft, or Irving Schmenge Associates. (By the way, have you checked out Schmenge Exploragator 1.0?)
        Gecko looks like the kind of achievement that could change everything. But of course we'll have to wait and see.

20 March, 2000
[7 p.m.]
Netscape fights back: media coverage and press release.  

[9 a.m.] In Dallas, working with Populi and a person we'll call Mystery Artist until it's kosher to discuss her participation, we hammered out the shape of a complete curriculum for web designers. It will take a few months to fill the shape with content. As far as we know, nobody anywhere is doing anything like this.
        Making the whole thing that much more interesting, instead of paying to study the web design curriculum, if you're accepted into the program, Populi will pay you. Like we said, nobody is doing anything like this.
        In Stockholm, we met with and spoke to the members of what will probably be Europe's largest web design firm. Making the whole thing that much more interesting, aside from one or two managers, the entire group was composed of designers and programmers. It was a genuine talent fest. More on that later.
        In both cities, whenever possible, we sneaked out to explore our surroundings. More on that later. We also met some incredible people. More on that later as well.
        We expected the cold weather in Stockholm; were suprised by it in Dallas (as were the residents of Dallas); and it followed us home to New York, where we're still trying to figure out what time zone we're in.
        Later this month, we'll travel to Boston, to speak at the first annual Geek Pride festival. More on that later.
        Refreshed good old Mr Jenkins's Last Martini, the Guest Book, and various other pages here. It's nice to be back.

19 March, 2000
We're back from Dallas. Oswald acted alone.