/devel

This brought a sad smile to my face.

There was a time when Javascript implementation in Internet Explorer was really top notch and other browsers had something to look up to (apart from memory leaking, which is just embarrassing). But it’s been 5 years since last IE and it will take almost another year to release version 7, which won’t bring any Javascript related changes (apart from native XMLHTTPRequest). I see myself as language minimalist, but there are things that I’d love to see implemented.

However, IE is not the only thing developed with glacial speeds. Even though there’s talk of CSS3, we only received (another?) working draft of CSS 2.1 a couple of weeks ago. So, as many are not aware, even CSS 2.1 hasn’t seen a final release yet even though it’s been widely used for a while now.

Slow development pace does have certain benefits. We get more time to learn and master new stuff and what we learned doesn’t age as quickly as it would otherwise. But when limits of what you have rub you the wrong way, it can be quite depressing to calculate how long it will take to remedy this. Especially if you’re bound not only to development of a technology, but also to its deployment. Thank <some deity> this is not an issue for me with Python 2.5.

In the line of work that I do, I can pretty much forget anything in development which needs browser support, since it won’t be deployed widely enough in this decade. I don’t, since I’m a geek, but I could as there’s little I can do with it and there’s a whole history of great promises that didn’t make it in the end.

It does, however, pose an interesting question without an answer. When should I start learning something new?

First part of AJAX workshop is behind me and I enjoyed it immensely. I hope our participants did as well or failing that, I hope we didn’t waste their time too much.

Looking back I’m not satisfied with everything we did and I wish I’ve done my part better. I’m sure I wasn’t clear or coherent enough. Fry did much better, but I feel we could do better with examples.

If we ever repeat this workshop, and we both would love to, we’ll have to make it longer, since there simply wasn’t enough time to talk about the details and quirks that can and usually do waste majority of your time.

If you were there yesterday, then please drop me a line or two about your experience. I’d also love to hear what you want from second part of the workshop, since it’s not too late to change it to suit you better.

I tried to leave a comment on Digg recently and had trouble deciphering its CAPTCHA. I was eventually successful, but only after I got annoyed. Simply put, CAPTCHAs are evil.

There’s no need to rehash why, since plenty has been said so far. They don’t really work and they exclude lots of people even if you do use an alternative audio check. As a left-handed person, who curses every time he picks up an “ergonomically” designed scissors, I kind of imagine how it is when things are designed for a majority you don’t belong to.

However, even if you could make them completely accessible (doubtful) and would somehow be able to resolve the overlap between smartest programs and, well, less-gifted humans (impossible), I’d still dislike them. What they say to your readers is: “I’ll make you work so I don’t have to.”

Is this the message you want to communicate?

P.S: WordPress users, you really ought to take a look at Akismet, if you haven’t done so.

I think it was Jon Udell who gave the advice to include information about author and date of publication in the title tag of each document. I think it’s a smashing idea, but I have a problem.

I have no clue how to do it in WordPress. It seems every WordPress date or title tag wants to reside inside of its loop and document title is firmly outside of it. Anyone have any ideas?

Update: Fry’s plugin came to rescue .

Another piece of chicken fillet went into the trash bin, because I didn’t check its expiration date when I bought it a few days ago and hence didn’t see it expired on the same day.

Would it be really that hard to clearly label food that is going to expire in a couple of days?

As a customer I’d appreciate this greatly as it would allow me to plan a little bit better by when to use what. Either no one has thought of something so obvious or Mercator finds it worthwhile to aggravate me for few dollars. Lucky for them their competition isn’t any better so this might not even cost them a customer.