In a blogosphere dominated by SxSW updates, this little nugget documenting the rise and fall of Internet Explorer piqued my interest. Microsoft were actually very innovative with their browser in the 1990s but got lazy once they had effectively killed of Netscape.
DHTML changed web development forever. It was, however, IE4’s DOM that pushed the technology (and web development) forward by being the primary influence on the W3C’s DOM Level 1 and 2 specification. IE4 revolutionized web development in 1997, and IE would do so again a few years later.
As our profession continues to mature, it's great to see these reflections of Internet history springing up around the Web - in an industry that's all about the next big thing, it sometimes helps to understand how far we've come.
I'm feeling pretty proud of myself after creating a special valentine's game for my Wife's ipod Touch using the GameSalad game engine. I read about Game Salad a few weeks ago and was intrigued enough to download and play with it. In it's simplest form, GameSalad is a code-free gaming engine that allows you to drag and drop graphics and apply a pretty powerful set of rules to create games from scratch. The interface is nice and intuitive and there's a wealth of example projects and video tutorials to get you started. For what it is, I'm surprised how many genre's of games you can create - sure, you're probably not going to create anyghing groundbreaking, but it sure is fun.
The best part is once the game is finished they make it really simple to publish, then you just need to create a Provision for your device on the Apple site (which is a lot easier than it used to be!) and drag the two files into your iTunes. The only downside is that there is no (legal) way to get rid of the GameSalad animation when loading your game, and gameSalad does have a shaky reputation amongst other developers (and maybe hardocore gamers) since it's so easy to make bad games. But if you're willing to put in some effort you can create something fun and playable much quicker than coding it in Objective C.
The game I made for my wife was a simple platform game that involved collecting hearts while finding a key that will unlock the door to a special valentine message. I put the whole thing together in about 6 hours using Creative Commons sprites and graphics (from here & here), it's a pretty easy game but I think it makes for a unique gift. Guess I'll find out later.
Fascinating article about how Google set up a sting to prove that Bing was using it's search results. It seems a little sinister that Microsoft are riding on Google's expertise in order to compete with them, and how many IE users realize their data is being used this way? Big brother is indeed watching:
The only reason these pages appeared on Google was because Google forced them to be there. There was nothing that made them naturally relevant for these searches. If they started to appeared at Bing after Google, that would mean that Bing took Google’s bait and copied its results.
This all happened in December. When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled. They were also told to click on the top results. They started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing.
A good read from net tuts for PHP developers, mostly common sense stuff but it doesn't hurt to brush up on best practices. I've been guilty of not giving my variables obvious names when rushing through a piece of code, so it helps to have these called out so they remain top of mind. And you can't help but love a list that goes from 0-19.
This function in just came in very handy for debugging purposes. It's a javascript function that basically mimics print_r in PHP.
/**
* Function : dump()
* Arguments: The data - array,hash(associative array),object
* The level - OPTIONAL
* Returns : The textual representation of the array.
* This function was inspired by the print_r function of PHP.
* This will accept some data as the argument and return a
* text that will be a more readable version of the
* array/hash/object that is given.
* Docs: http://www.openjs.com/scripts/others/dump_function_php_print_r.php
*/
function dump(arr,level) {
var dumped_text = "";
if(!level) level = 0;
//The padding given at the beginning of the line.
var level_padding = "";
for(var j=0;j \"" + value + "\"\n";
}
}
} else { //Stings/Chars/Numbers etc.
dumped_text = "===>"+arr+"<===("+typeof(arr)+")";
}
return dumped_text;
}
A fascinating article on Tech Crunch, and something I've sometimes thought about:
The problem lies with the trend. We’re looking up more things, more often, and not because we’re more curious. It’s because we can’t be bothered to retain even the data that matter to us.
As we become more and more reliant on looking up rather than retaining information are we becoming more dumb? I believe I studied some of the ideas presented here in my Artificial Intelligence class at University over ten years ago. It basically theorized that when a human writes something down, the brain feels no need to retain the information, it's externalized. It's hardly a stretch to replace 'writes something down' with 'looks something up'. I'm trying my best to remember the name of the book, and resisting the temptation to look it up.
EDIT: So I caved and looked it up (I found it on one of my old sites on archive.org!). The book was called Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again by Andy Clarke. The chapter in question is at the very end of the book, Where Does the Mind Stop and the Rest of the World Begin? Considering this book was first publish in 1996, this question has never seemed more relevant.
How many times have we all answered this innocuous question? It is, of course, the question asked when users log into Facebook. However, it’s a question we will see a lot less frequently with the new design.
It was while posting yesterday that I noticed you are no longer greeted with a big text box just waiting for your response to the familiar question on the Facebook homepage. Instead you are required to click a Status icon at the top of your News Feed in order to share your thoughts with the world. It's a small change, but at the same time pretty significant.
I have no data or studies to back this up, but I'm willing to bet when a person sees the question "What's on your mind?" the brain is already formulating an answer subconsciously. The big empty text-box also invites you to fill it, making it practically second nature to contribute to the stream of social chatter. With these cues gone, it now requires a completely conscious action to post a status update.
Already I’m noticing fewer updates on my newsfeed since the change, I can only imagine the trend will continue as the new layout continues to roll out. Don’t get me wrong; my feed is still buzzing with new photos, articles and app updates. It’s just the text-only content disappearing.
I'm not yet sure what the implications are of this change of functionality, but it feels like a big reversal from a couple years ago when Facebook appeared to be emulating Twitter. Instead of competing with other social networks, there’s now bigger fish to fry – as sharing replaces searching as the preferred method of finding new content, is Facebook positioning itself to be the next Google? The prevalence of ‘Like’ buttons all over the Internet seems to back-up this idea. Whatever the meaning is, this seemingly minor UI change makes me wonder what’s on their mind?
It doesn't sound very exciting, but this article is a pretty fascinating insight into how a few simple CSS tips transform into best practices and adopted throughout the Web Community. It also shows how collaborative Web development is as ideas are shared and improved upon rather than being closely guarded secrets (admitted it's hard to be secretive when anyone can click View Source):
Çelik’s reset quickly drew the attention of CSS guru Eric Meyer, who used Çelik’s work as a jumping-off point for his first attempt at a global reset, as well as a follow-up almost immediately thereafter.
The article contains some genuinely useful information, but it's a great reminder that something as simple as resetting a browser's stylesheet can be a complex evolution of various points of view and experimentation.
Kenny Meyers makes a compelling argument for Web designers/developers to learn javascript:
It’s my belief that every single programmer should learn JavaScript. There are many new technologies coming out that fuel this principle. There is one single reason behind it. It’s ubiquitous. You can work for anyone and do amazing things if you’re using JavaScript. You can do it instantly on any machine.
Not every company is a Ruby shop. Not every company is a .NET shop. It’s my belief that 99% of the time both of these companies will need someone who knows JavaScript, and knows it well. Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and Google all use JavaScript to make great things.
I have to admit, I’ve learned more Javascript than anything else since taking a job at the Martin Agency. Everything from form validation to mobile web-apps to real-time shopping carts has required some large amounts of javascript work. It’s the most useful weapon in my armory and can be applied and combined to all kinds of solutions.
I also agree with Kenny’s view on frameworks, I love jQuery as it allows me to develop quickly and not worry about cross-browser issues. But when it comes to writing something that needs to be lightweight and efficient it’s useful to drill down and practice some straight javascript to build things from scratch. If you are interested in learning javascript this article has some great resources to get you started. I found it best to just jump right in and search for help whenever I got stuck, more often than not somebody else has already been there and figured it out. But yes I agree, Javascript is the way to go - as web browsers become more powerful and sophisticated the demand for this once simple scripting language will continue to increase.
Jack White’s record label apparently decided to put a limited edition re-issue on ebay and it sold for $510. Fans weren’t happy about this move and lashed out, provoking a response from Jack White himself:
why should ebay flippers, who are not real fans, dictate the price, make all the profit (taken from the artist and the label) and take the records out of the hands of real fans?
Sure he has a point about ‘flippers’, but doesn’t it kind of take away the fun aspect of record collecting? Or am I just being nostalgic?
