Jeffrey Zeldman's Blog, page 62

OFF MY LAWN!

IT IS NOT "IRONIC" when an article about web standards is published in an online magazine formatted in Flash, or PDF, or some other non-HTML format. It is not "ironic" when an article on responsive design appears on a website that is not responsively designed. It is not "ironic" when an article on three essential principles of usability appears on a website that violates all three principles. It is not "ironic" when an article bemoaning the overuse of "Share" buttons appears on a website that overuses "Share" buttons. It is not "ironic" when an article advocating long form reading on the web gets chopped into multiple pages that discourage reading for the sake of a few ad views. It is not "ironic" when an article about microformats appears on a site that does not use microformats. It is not "ironic" when an article advocating HTML5 appears on a website formatted in XHTML. It is not "ironic" when an article about web accessibility appears on a website that suffers from serious accessibility problems. It is not "ironic" when an article about the importance of proper semantic markup appears in a magazine whose markup would make a goat cry. It is not "ironic" when an article about progressive enhancement and unobtrusive scripting appears on a website that fails if the user disables JavaScript.

It is publishing. It is humanity. It is the vanguard of ideas clashing against the rearguard of commerce. This is not new. This is all to be expected. We must stop raising our eyebrows and chuckling at it. We must decide to accept the world as it is, or to roll up our sleeves and help.







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Survey for people who make websites

THIS WEEK some friends launched Contents Magazine. Last night other friends threw a party to announce the new (free) Readability. Every day, around the world, hundreds of thousands of web people make magic, working in a digital medium that sometimes perplexes my brilliant engineer father and would have seemed like witchcraft to my grandmother, may she rest in peace.

The web is the most disruptive, empowering invention since, well, I don't know. It helps ordinary people topple dictators or just comparison shop. We, the people who make websites, are responsible for this shamanistic creation, and we've been doing this work for two decades. Yet in all this time, nobody in the mainstream world seems to have noticed. Oh, they notice when Google challenges Facebook for world supremacy. And they noticed when Twitter helped bring about the glorious Arab Spring. But they don't know jack about us, the people who do this work, and they don't care.

If anyone is going to compile data about us and sift meaningful analysis from that data, it's going to be we ourselves. The boot-strappers, the self-taught HTML wonder kids. You and me.

And that is why, as I have every year since 2007, I once more ask you to take ten minutes and complete the survey for people who make websites. Do it now.

I thank you, and you'll thank yourself later.

For the curious, here are the ALA survey findings from 2007–2010:

A List Apart Survey Findings 2007
A List Apart Survey Findings 2008
A List Apart Survey Findings 2009
A List Apart Survey Findings 2010








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SXSW love me long time

SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST Interactive ("SXSWi" or simply "South by" to its friends) has somewhat brazenly announced that I will be the first inductee in its new Hall of Fame. The induction will take place during the 2012 Interactive Awards presentation in March of next year. There will be flowers and virgins. Well, flowers.

SXSW Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology. Founded in 1995—the same year I started this website—the Austin, TX-based interactive festival attracts tens of thousands annually.

I hope this announcement will not negatively affect attendance.







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A Sea of Blue Hats

"London, Ontario Digital Interactive Game and Web Conference Day 1. Jeffrey Zeldman delivered the keynote in the Web stream downstairs at London Convention Centre. Later that day, SxSW announced his upcoming Hall of Fame Induction March 13, 2012!"

Jeffrey Zeldman at DIG 2011 Photo Gallery.







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Air Travel As We Know It

My thrice-delayed, once-cancelled flight home has been resurrected and is boarding. No one was ever so happy to be flying coach to Newark.







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.net Magazine's Top 25 Web Design Books

CONGRATULATIONS TO A List Apart technical editors Aaron Gustafson and Ethan Marcotte, whose Adaptive Web Design and Responsive Web Design were ranked #1 and #2 in .net Magazine's "Top 25 Books for Web Designers and Developers" of 2011.

Other top-ranked web design books include CSS3 for Web Designers by Dan Cederholm, Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin, and Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug.

Four of the top 25 were A Book Apart books: namely, Responsive Web Design, CSS3 for Web Designers, Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski, and The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane.

I contributed to the article but did not nominate any A Book Apart books.

Congratulations to these authors!

The top 25 books for web designers and developers | Feature | .net magazine.







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5th annual Blue Beanie Day is November 30, 2011

THE FIFTH ANNUAL International Blue Beanie Day in support of web standards will be celebrated Wednesday, November 30, 2011. Here's how to participate:

Take a self-portrait wearing a blue beanie (toque, tuque, cap) and upload it to the Blue Beanie Day 2011 pool on Flickr.
Add a blue beanie to your social network avatar on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Flickr, etc.

Read more about Blue Beanie Day:

FAST COMPANY: Why Is Your Web Designer Wearing a Blue Hat Today? by ALISSA WALKER (2009)

See you on the internets!

Perpetual tip o' the blue beanie to Doug Vos

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HTML5 dumps TIME element

"It's with great sadness that I inform you that the HTML5 element has been dropped, and replaced by a more generic – and thus less useful – element. The pubdate attribute has been dropped completely, so there is now no simple way to indicate the publication date of a work."

Much more at Bruce Lawson's personal site. Hat tip: Stuntbox.







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Shutting off Compass Calibration in Location Services can stop iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S on iOS5 from sucking battery life and running hot.

I have an iPhone 4 and fwiw, mine was losing 10% per 2 hours and running warm as soon as I upgraded to iOS 5. In my case the culprit was quite easy to track-down. The new OS Location Services has a new sub menu: System Services. These services by default do not show the familiar arrow icon at the top right of the status bar. However, a new setting allows System Services location usage to be displayed. Just as well as in my case (I hasten to add that your mileage might vary) the culprit was 'Compass Calibration' which was perpetually holding on to Location Services even through restarts. Switching the blighter off cured the problem. What's odd is that I have tentatively switched it back on since and it no longer activates Location Services. Very odd, but there's my tale.

via Troubleshooting a battery-sucking iPhone 4S | Macworld By flyperson 4:48:54 PM PDT Oct 24, 2011

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New MobiUs Browser For iOS Makes Mobile Web Apps Act More Like Native Apps

"Mobile development firm appMobi is launching a new HTML5-powered browser for iOS on Monday which will bring additional capabilities typically found only in native apps to the mobile Web. The MobiUs Web App Browser, as it's being called, works both as a standalone browser alternative or in conjunction with Apple's mobile Safari, similar to the way browser extensions work on the desktop Web.

"…The browser integrates two full sets of APIs from both appMobi and from PhoneGap (1.0) to give the Web apps a native look-and-feel, plus the ability to access all the hardware features of the smartphone."

More: New MobiUs Browser For iOS Makes Mobile Web Apps Act More Like Native Apps | TechCrunch.







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