WNAS

Interesting take on script for the blind, the Moon letters. Now here is something that I think is very beautiful. And it is being made for the blind... strange.

As bibliophiles, how often do we stop to consider the ways sightless people experience books and reading? Prior to the mid-nineteenth century few options existed for the blind; several systems of raised lettering had been developed, but they were complicated and difficult to learn. Meanwhile, the growth of literacy and the media during the industrial revolution led to an increased demand for texts of all types, including those accessible to the blind.

Moon Letters

My take on 3-D movies, I get a headache. And to be honest, that's not what I'm looking for when going to a movie, don't know about you though... The one movie I have seen in 3-D, UP, was great. But it was great when I watched it at home on dvd, in movies also: content is king. 3-D is the same as the web2.3462 gradients, a fad. Or at least I hope...

"3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension. Hollywood's current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches. It is driven largely to sell expensive projection equipment and add a $5 to $7.50 surcharge on already expensive movie tickets. Its image is noticeably darker than standard 2-D. It is unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness. It limits the freedom of directors to make films as they choose. For moviegoers in the PG-13 and R ranges, it only rarely provides an experience worth paying a premium for."

Why I Hate 3-D (and You Should Too)

I read an interesting tweet just now by Sergey ilinsky, saying that his bug report to Chromium was being ignored. A bug that let's you include css only for chrome WebKit browsers, like apple's safari and google's chrome. Look here for the example page., the text is red in chromium WebKit and black in other browsers. The HTML is valid in case you're wondering, so you won't catch it that way.

All you have to do is to write a phony include that only chromium WebKit browser ( today ) will detect and act upon. Like this:

<link type="custom/mime+type"
rel="stylesheet" 
href="css/chromehack.css" />

The type="custom/mime+type" is what does the magic. Chromium WebKit browsers will request the file from the server and add it to the document. What should happen is that browser shouldn't fetch the file or process it for that matter. The chrome team responded with a status: WontFix, which is wrong in my opinion. People will use this to write css to over come chromium WebKit bugs instead of learning what it is they are doing wrong.

The reasoning of the chromium team is:

Darin, given the number of web sites this would likely break I don't think we want to be this strict. If you disagree then I will re-open this.

I think that there is something to be said about this reasoning, but I am one of those people that wants browsers to be very, very strict... I understand that browsers don't want to "break the web", after all, who remembers the outrage that ensued when microsoft released version 7 of IE. A lot of people blamed IE for their own sloppy coding, breaking bad websites.

Why should this be fixed?

A lot of people write css to work around browser bugs, when they should go out and read the specifications. Very often I see people complain about bugs, they have done something wrong in their HTML. So when I see a reaction like the wontfix by chromium I think that a lot of people still will take the easy way out and choose the hack, instead of learning to do it the right way. Not knowing that they are walking a fine line, utilizing a "feature" in a browser which may be fixed at any moment, thus rendering their fixes obsolete.

So I hope that they will fix this soon, after all building browsers to allow sloppy coding is encouraging that very thing in my opinion. And yes, I know that the "we render anything you code, even our own front page garbage" is what made IE6 the greatest browser in it's time. But in the end it slowed down the web, as people were not encouraged to write proper code, but got away with building crap.

Update

Kyle made an excellent point in his comment. This is a WebKit bug or feature. The browser does not do anything wrong, as this is not being specified. So browsers can do what they want with it. He even makes some good points on how we could be using this. Still I am not conviced and urge people not to use this, as it will come back and bite you somewhere...

Here’s what happened: On his Mac, Ryan pulled up a site called Eco Zoo. It is, seemingly, a pretty intense example of Flash development — full of 3D rendering, rich interactions, and cute little characters. Then, he pulled up the same thing on his Nexus One. The site’s progress bar filled in and the 3D world appeared for a few seconds before the browser crashed. Ryan said (paraphrasing), “Whoops! Well, it’s beta, and this is an intense example — let’s try it again.”

"JeffCroft.com: On the Android Flash demo at FlashCamp Seattle: "

 

Trying out Ecto as an alternative for Marsedit.

"The Incredible would live up to it's name if it wasn't running Sense UI. "

Android is great as it gives developers more freedom to do what they want. The unfortunate thing about it is that, this also works for the UI. At least in apple's closed system, the UI is being controlled more, making the apps more consistent in my humble opinion...

Go and read the whole piece here: whalesalad dot com — htc incredible vs. nexus one: 

Yes, the iPad is going to be available in the Netherlands in July. As a developer I want to have one as soon as possible of-course, so I can test my stuff on it.

The big question now is, should I get one in june in the UK when I'm there for Web Directions @media, or should I wait a full month. Available in july will probably mean the end of july...

And in case you have been hiding under a rock, here is the keynote announcing the iPad.

Some interesting comments Opera's product analyst Phillip Grønvold on the future of flash. I think they are right, flash has it's place. But it's usage for video for example is an excellent example of what you should use HTML5 for nowadays.

"But flash as a video container makes very little sense for CPU, WiFi battery usage etcetera – you can cook an egg on [devices] once you start running Flash on them and there's a reason for that."

Don't get me wrong, flash is great for some stuff, but I even see it for building webforms ( with openLazlo ) and that is just plain stupid.

The best line I think was:

"But at Opera we say that the future of the web is open web standards and Flash is not an open web standards technology"

Opera joins in Jobs v Flash argument | News | TechRadar UK: ""

Here are some random lines I decided to be the most striking ones.

• Overall, it's just a deeply, deeply frustrating and inconsistent experience.
• .. and the phone only updates every 15 non-user-adjustable minutes. Sometimes less!
• No app store, no IM client, no games, no calendar... not even visual voicemail or some carrier-hitched GPS app.
• While using the One and Two we found ourselves consistently confused or surprised by how many bad little interface problems there
• We'll chalk the better performance up to that heavily controlled sync schedule (once every 15 minutes at the most).
• If you're going to shell out this kind of money each month, it would be foolish to even consider these devices given the much, much better options out there.
• In the end, we're left with two orphan devices
• On the One, it's usually good for taking a picture after a firm press, but sometimes there's no reaction at all, while on the Two, it tends to focus in and out and then never snap a photo.

Microsoft Kin One and Two review -- Engadget: ""

After dark, the dirty work at Disneyland begins - latimes.com: "'When I started on Disneyland, my wife used to say, ‘But why do you want to build an amusement park? They're so dirty.' I told her that was just the point; mine wouldn't be,' the founder said at the time."

(Via .http://daringfireball.net/)