17 February, 2001
[5:30 am]
As of 5:30 am EST, A List Apart is back, though the forums may not be working yet. The elves at Webcore Labs resurrected ALA even before restoring the juice to their own site. We can't imagine any other hosting company doing that. :::
 
[4:30 am]
If you've come here in response to news coverage (this article at CNET, for instance), the Browser Upgrade campaign is at webstandards.org, not here, and the site that was upgraded to full standards compliance was A List Apart, not the site you're now reading.

If you're unable to read A List Apart, it's not because the site received millions of hits within the space of a few hours, it's because of a power outage that fried ALA and all other sites on the hosting company's network. The elves at Webcore Labs are working around the clock to restore these sites. At the moment, all you can see is a default server message.

If you're one of hundreds who sent letters today inviting us to debate your views or more fully explain our own, we regret that a thousand of us with a thousand typewriters could never respond to your letters in time. Our views are summarized on the Browser Upgrade pages, concisely reported in an article at CMP's TechWeb, and detailed in two longish articles in this week's A List Apart, which we hope will be back online soon. Though we can't talk one-on-one with all of you, A List Apart contains reader forums in which you can state your views.

We regret that the CNET article implied that we were angry at browser users. Of course we're not. The WaSP's Browser Upgrade campaign is about developer education. CNET's reporter is a fine journalist but was new to this turf.

We also regret that the CNET article implied that the site you're now reading had been upgraded to full standards compliance. The site you're now reading is six years old, contains thousands of pages and millions of non-standard workarounds, and will be upgraded to full standards compliance as soon as we can find the time to do it. In 1999, we tried redesigning this site's 1995 Ask Dr Web tutorial entirely in CSS, but aborted the effort when it led to the discovery of the Netscape 4 crashing bug. :::
 
16 February, 2001
[2 am]
Bang! The WaSP Browser Upgrade campaign has officially launched, complete with developer tips and your basic press release. Update your sites and upgrade the way your visitors experience the web. Boom! The ALA standards-compliant redesign has officially launched in a special double issue that's both a manifesto and a nuts-and-bolts tutorial. With Issue No. 99, the separation of style from content moves from theory to fact. We tell what we learned, what we gained, and what we sacrificed in converting from oldstyle HTML to the way all sites will soon be built. :::
 
15 February, 2001
[6 pm]
Yes, we're back. Yes, it was fabulous. Yes, we'll tell you all about it later. No, we can't right now. Yes, the secret project is about to launch. :::
 
11 February, 2001
[8 am]
I Was a Teenage Telemarketer: barebones outline for tomorrow morning's keynote in Atlanta. Naturally the top-secret, ultra-cool stuff has been left out of this little tease. See some of you down South, and the rest of you back here on the 15th. :::
 
10 February, 2001
[7 pm]
It is finished. A lifesucking boatload of work, on two related secret projects, is now complete. It will help many web designers, delight a few, and infurate others. Business as usual.
        You won't see the results until 16 February, unless you're in Atlanta Monday morning for our keynote address at Web Design 2001. Speaking of which, we'd better start packing. :::
 
While we're gone, we will not be updating this site and will not be receiving or answering email. (Not that we've done a swell job on the email front lately anyway.) If you grow restless in our absence, read this. We'll be back on the 15th. Keep watching the skies. :::
 
[9 am]
Who tha king. :::
 
9 February, 2001
[4 pm]
In Issue No. 98 of A List Apart, For People Who Make Websites: THIS HTML KILLS—activitist Jim Byrne sounds off on the importance of web accessibility, and the difficulty of doing it right. Plus, back by popular demand: INDIE EXPOSURE—Julia Hayden reminds us that the web's true value is human. You can talk about both stories in the ALA Forum. This will be the last issue of ALA as you know it, and there's a note about that, too. :::
 
Commenting on yesterday's Netscape 6.01 release notes, reader Matt McIrwin points out that Netscape's recommendation to "uninstall ATM," a deal-breaker for most Mac users, is actually unnecessary. All you have to do is turn off ATM font smoothing before starting Netscape 6. Apple's built-in font smoothing is just as good, anyway, and ATM can keep doing the rest of its job without disturbing Netscape 6 or Mozilla.
        In the testing we've done in connection with upcoming changes at ALA and another activity we'll announce later, Netscape 6 comes across as a maddeningly mixed-up masterpiece. From the CSS box model to the DOM 1 Core, Netscape 6 supports more standards more extensively than any browser ever released (though IE5/Mac matches its CSS and HTML compliance, comes close in other areas, and is a lot more pleasurable to use).
        Yet Netscape 6 suffers from a flaky installer and strange glitches over simple things like JavaScript rollovers. It's like a brilliant, drunken writer who spouts deathless poetry one moment, dirty doggerel the next. In our opinion, those who dismiss this browser are wrong; those who complain about its quirks are right. Keep watching. :::
 
8 February, 2001
[4 pm]
Netscape 6.01 has left the building. Should fix some bugs in the initial release. There is a known conflict with Adobe Type Manager. That's not good. Mac OS: "You may experience a crash during the first attempt to install Netscape 6. Subsequent installs will be successful." That's not terribly inspiring either. The rest of the news is good. :::
 
[3 am]
A genius who prefers to remain anonymous has restored our faith in web standards and standards-compliant browsers. Or maybe just our faith in human genius.
        The purpose behind our long hours and cryptic news bursts will be revealed on 16 February. :::
 
As the Internet economy continues to implode like a nuclear experiment gone horribly wrong, it is interesting to re-read A Night at China Club (1999), our tragicomic excursion into a realm of clueless dot-com euphoria. To the glutted revelers in that lost world of 14 months ago, it seemed the party would never end. It always smelled like Dante's Ninth Circle to us.

Since we're stumbling down memory lane, we note with some pleasure that Style vs. Design was yesterday's About.com Tip of the Day. Oh, look, also in the Tip of the Day Archive are the Joe Clark/ALA Flash Access piece, and the Jeffrey Veen "I Love ALA" interview. We are pervasive, like a hard summer rain that soaks through clothes. We no longer breathe, no longer dance, no longer nap on couches. We are the ghost in the machine. :::