Aja Lapus

Tag: Web standards

  • I’m Getting Naked

    It’s already summertime and most people are stripping down to their trunks and bikinis to get wet with friends or their families on the beach or on a pool. Me? I’m here stuck inside my room stripping … and this is not an April Fool’s joke … stripping my website buck naked off of its stylesheets. *tee-hee* Well, anyway, I’ve done this before and I’m doing it again. Last year was good, and I hope this time is better. Dustin Diaz is finally proving the annual in Annual CSS Naked Day.[1]

    To anyone who isn’t familiar, CSS Naked Day was made to promote standards. During the 1990s, HTML has grown to become a more presentational language than what it was really meant to be. With browser implementations varying from each other,[2] and the bulk of maintenance work that HTML has become to present aesthetics, proposals were made to have a presentational language that later became what is now CSS. CSS has already replaced every presentational bit of HTML 3.2 and has even added more, and with the advent of better support to the standard since late last year, it is really worth advocating for better and wider Web designer adoption.

    The reason for stripping CSS off for a day has been acknowledged by the creator of CSS himself, Håkon Wium Lie—saving HTML from becoming a presentational language. I’ve seen many sites that produce good aesthetics, but the perceived quality just stops there. As I turn off the styles on my browser,[3] the layout remains the same, but now with garbled images and incomprehensible text. And they say they’re standardistas.[4]

    I hope everyone who have read this participates in the upcoming second year of the celebration of semantic markup. It’s very nice to see that two, Shari and Mr. J, out of currently four links from the official page that are talking about the event are of Filipino blogs. If you think your site doesn’t qualify to having semantic markup, you still have four days to this year’s deadline. Registration is now open [and automated] at the Official CSS Naked Day site.

    Oh, and for those WordPress users that are too lazy to edit themes, I’ve made a plugin that strips every piece of stylesheet in your pages without a single tweak on your templates—configurable to follow the recommended 48-hour period or just your local 24-hour April 5.

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ I really do not know why they call the first time, annual, already.
    2. ^ As a result of the first browser war.
    3. ^ The way everyone, humans and bots alike, are to understand the page.
    4. ^ I would have told them privately that all but one of the sites in their gallery wasn’t compliant, but it seems that their feedback link isn’t operational. So, just consider this as feedback. Oh, I do hope the site submissions be screened better as it would be a good starting point for showcasing great Pinoy designs.

  • New Way to Get Involved

    If you happen to be an advocate of anything—may it be Web-related or not—it really wouldn’t hurt to get out of your lazy sitting position and go out to reach a broader set of people. Web-wise, this has been done successfully on the Spread Firefox Web site with its members, and business-wise, on record companies and bands with street teams. Now, my advocacy followed suit.

    The Web Standards Project announced the formation of the WaSP Street Team during the WaSP Annual Meeting held at SxSW—to take the advocacy out to the streets—or possibly everywhere you might be involved with.

    There could be a little disadvantage to this, since you aim for the Web user and you take the promotions out anywhere around the real world, you may be shooting at the wrong people. But, of course, the primary advantage with this move by WaSP, in my point of view, is to let the person who uses the Web know what Web standards are even if they do not browse such scary tech or Web standards-related sites just by knowing them in the streets they walk on everyday.

    I still do not clearly know what WaSP plans as the first task for its Street Team. But, you could sign up for announcements from its mailing list on the Street Team homepage. Could this be the answer to the standards awareness problem? I really hope so. Let us watch out what it could do for the Web standards community. Be aware. Get involved. Get the message out everywhere, together.

    Oh, I remember you could also join us in discussion on Web Standards Philippines. Just send me a message or leave a comment on this entry so I could add you on to the Basecamp. 🙂

  • Towards a Standards Compliant Web

    Several weeks ago, with the discussions on and my involvement with WaSP ILG and recently with PWAG, I was struck by the idea of forming an advocacy group here in the Philippines concerning Web standards. I immediately asked two of my standards-loving friends, Shari and Lexie, if they are also interested. Though we sometimes had conference chats regarding the topic, we still haven’t been able to formally talk about our goals and objectives. All I know is that we sure love to promote standards to every Web-aware Filipino.[1]

    We thought about inviting some other standards-aware individuals and professionals, but we could never know them all [though Shari has already mentioned quite a few]. I guess I also like the idea of volunteering as this would constitute better involvement on the possible discussions that will be held regarding the matter. So if anyone would like to join the advocacy wholeheartedly, speak up! We will be very glad to hear from you. We are taking steps little by little towards a standards compliant Web.

    On the other side of the story, you may notice Filipino/Tagalog translations[2] on the International Liaison Group pages from the Web Standards Project. Those were translated by yours truly with the help of my mother and my friend Shari. We aren’t very good translators, so if you notice [some] mistakes—given the fact there are virtually no literal translation for every single English word, and most technical Filipino words are just borrowed—and you know you could help us, I am so much willing to receive some assistance. 🙂

    By the way, I have written an article for Bite Size Standards about styling inline list items. I would eventually post them here if ever they consider it useful and worthy of being included in their archive. I have considered writing the article for A List Apart, but I feel it seems a bit overreaching. I sent the article to them [BSS] on the 6th of February 2007. I guess am slowly realizing I am running out of luck—there are only two days left before their expected processing duration of one to two weeks comes to an end.

    Notes:

    1. ^ though Shari may have been a little bit sarcastic about it
    2. ^ examples include:

  • The Second Browser War Round 2

    Upgrade to Firefox 2 Now! Though Windows Internet Explorer 7 came out earlier than Mozilla Firefox 2 for about a couple of weeks, I could not help but to announce that my favorite Web browser just released its second major update. But do not forget Opera 9 as it offers a faster and lighter browser for someone who would just want to surf the Web.

    The browser wars have just stepped up to the next level. For now, here are some comparisons with my own opinions and rankings:

    Web Standards Compliance

    1. Firefox 2 and Opera 9

      Though Opera 9 has been the only browser on the Windows platform to pass the WaSP Acid2 test, Firefox 2 is the only browser to ever support JavaScript 1.7. Both have considerable support for Web standards on XHTML and CSS under most circumstances (as Acid2 tests for uncommonly used standards support).

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      They say that they have improved support for standards on Internet Explorer 7 but when I test sites that break on Internet Explorer 6, they still break on version 7. Besides, support for the proper XHTML media type, application/xhtml+xml, would cause Internet Explorer 7 (as well as earlier versions) to look for an external application that supports it.

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    Customizability

    1. Firefox 2

      With so many user-contributed addons, from Web development tools, custom toolbars and multimedia entertainment addons to usability, accessibility and Web services integration tools, the possibilities are endless.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      The only thing that I think would work on Internet Explorer 7 is the ability to add custom toolbars which are usually from search engine and portal companies such as Google and Yahoo!

    3. Opera 9

      I really do not know how we could customize Opera though its suite of applications such as a good download manager, mail/newsgroups and BitTorrent clients all in a lightweight package contribute to its popularity.

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    Security

    1. Firefox 2 and Opera 9

      I haven’t researched much about the security differences of both these browsers, but I know since the majority of users are using Internet Explorer (with the automatic update to 7 on the start of November) they are more likely to be targetted that way. Both have good popup blockers and Firefox 2 has a phishing checker.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      Still is the most widely used (or will be with automatic updates) browser and the most vulnerable to attacks. Though the integration with Windows has been cut off, support for ActiveX controls remains as an opt-in feature. It’s much better than Internet Explorer 6 though. It has a popup blocker and it has (currently) a better phishing checker than Firefox 2 has, according to some site. (I can’t seem to find the link right now, to be posted as an edit later.)

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    Page Load

    1. Firefox 2 and Opera 9

      Based on my experience, both of these browsers load pages faster than Internet Explorer 7 though I still haven’t compared them to one another.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      Even with Internet Explorer 6, whenever I switch from Firefox to Internet Explorer (for Web page layout rendering), the latter would load a page slower. I think the phishing checker of Internet Explorer 7 made it worse as it always waits for it to finish (and it’s not that fast) before starting to load a page.

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    System Performance

    1. Opera 9

      Loads up on your system much faster than Firefox 2 though I still haven’t compared it to Internet Explorer 7 for they are both perceivably fast to load on my system.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      Loads up faster than Firefox 2 though the Scobleizer says that it consumes more memory than Firefox 2 without even finishing to load the same pages Firefox 2 has. The Lifehacker also published another comparison.

    3. Firefox 2

      Loads for the longest time compared to the other two but the said reason for this is the different language used to render its chrome to provide support for its themes/skins. It also receives criticisms for high memory usage.

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    Interface

    1. Firefox 2

      Cleanest and simplest interface [but with elegant looking buttons] to get you started surfing right away. Just lacks the default new tab button to familiarize new users with tabbed browsing though it can be added with toolbar customization. It’s skinnable as well.

    2. Opera 9

      Feels very much like a standard Web browser interface [as with Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 6] though some search boxes are more suitable for Web shoppers rather than the average Web surfer or Web developer. It also offers color schemes to suit every user’s taste.

    3. Internet Explorer 7

      Very compact, works without a menu bar, but just plain confusing with a very far stop and refresh button especially when you are used to Internet Explorer 6—users could be more familiar with Firefox 2 and/or Opera 9 this way.

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    Other Features

    1. Firefox 2 and Opera 9

      I could not seem to summarize them all, just take a look at the Mozilla Firefox 2 features page and the Opera 9 features page.

    2. Internet Explorer 7

      It features many things that makes it better compared to Internet Explorer 6 than to Firefox 2 and Opera 9 since both the latter browsers offer these features new to Internet Explorer 7. The complete list can be found on the Internet Explorer 7 features page.

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  • So much work, so little time

    One word: über-busy.

    I’ve just realized having so many dreams and interests could really stress a person out—well, at least for me. Well, after two weeks of unannounced hiatus, I could finally tell you some news.

    1. I’ve got the Head position in the Web & Technical Committee of the Engineering Student Council. Wish me good luck on this, guys. It’s so much work I haven’t imagined. I’ve only applied for the Assistant Head position, but after two chosen candidates [for the Head] declined, they picked me. Many projects to come. 🙂
    2. I’ve got accepted to work on XHTMLized. Current project: none. I’ve got to finish ESC work first. 😀
    3. My Princess got a blog! And, I write here, too. Please read: Mixed to Perfection. Thank you! Shoutout: I love you, Princess!
    4. My interest in spreading Web standards could possibly be official. Though up to now it still isn’t, I’ve already told Molly that I’m interested in joining the International Liason Group of The Web Standards Project. I hope other Filipinos come and join. This would be a great opportunity for everyone who’s into standards. 🙂

    I know I am forgetting something. Haha! It would just have to be on the next entry. I have to start making my project proposals and the projects themselves. Until next time!

    Raindrops on my car window. North Luzon Expressway, 6 May 2006. Oh yes! I remember: I’ve already gone out swimming with the Tan Clan (my mother’s side of the family). I’ve got only a handful of photos because it was so much fun being in water after so many days of extreme heat exhaustion. Ironically, it rained so heavy the afternoon we were coming home from the province. *sweatdrop*

    BTW, I’ve finished my upcoming layout about a week ago. It’s the content that it is lacking—about eight user pages are still unfinished, but the WordPress layout is done. I don’t want to activate it just yet because I think I have the tendency not to continue its development if I implement the design so early. Well, I may ask you though: “Finish it first!” or “I want the new design now!”? 😛

    Back to work, now. One by one by one by one … 🙂