Author Archives: Randy Peterman

XHTML 2.0

As XHTML 2.0 is obviously not too near on the horizon this article is for discussion and further thinking on forward compatibility and standards.

Others have been having a discussion as to why you should have your site in valid XHTML 1.1 or 1.0 or 1.0.1.1.0 markup, which has not borne any fruit (in my opinion). The critical issue comes down, for now, to pragmatic issues such as time and workflow/CMS. I propose a third, more critical issue: XSLT and forward thinking. IF your site is valid XML (which valid XHTML 1.X is) then you can run an XSLT process on it’s code and you’ll find yourself with a WAP version, or an XHTML Basic version for phones. Or you could run an XSLT process on it and turn your XHTML 1.X site into an XHTML 2.0 site. Or you could turn it into plain text and wrap it with a <pre> tag.

An important reason to keep this set of standards is forward compatibility… not for 2005 but 2010. We need to be pragmatic, make it work now, but also be ready for the future. If Zeldman‘s new book on future compatibility doesn’t say this I’m going to be sad 😉

Squealing Like a Stuck Pig

This morning Abigail got her arm caught in the bars of her crib while climbing out. She’s OK, but it has now prompted Jessica to declare, “There shall be a new bed for our daughter, even if I have to sell my internal organs.” To which I replied, “If you sell enough organs we can buy a house.” But in short, Abigail has needed a ‘big girl’ bed for some time, I’ve just been holding out because frankly I want to have her get a bed when she gets her own money.* I think that she needs to get a job and start pulling her weight around here** So hopefully all of the parts and pieces will come together and we’ll be waking up at 6:00 AM because she walks in, not because she’s screaming cause she’s stuck.

* This conversation never really took place
*this is a lie
**not for some time
***I never used this character set in the above paragraphs
****You’re reading it anyway

Broadcast Television

As some of you may know, and those of you don’t will now unless you cover your eyes while reading the rest of this entry, we don’t have cable. We don’t have satellite either. So we get mediocre reception on our rabbit ears and we endure the garbage of Broadcast Television. Most programs, aside from This Old House, America’s Test Kitchen and TBN, there’s nothing good to watch on Television. I would much rather do one of the following than endure the boredom of most broadcast Television shows:

Thanks for putting out such amazingly quality shows networks – you give me lots of time to imagine what could really be done if I had time to sit and be bored.

High Percentage

I love it when my Outlook Express application goes above and beyond the call of duty. When I ask for one hundred percent, I get 42,083% from it [see the bottom of the image, in case that doesn’t make sense].
Outlook Express, above and beyond the call of duty

Count of Monte Cristo

I just finished The Count of Monte Cristo (Buy it at Amazon.com) last night at 12:40 or so. Great book, but I’m incredibbly tired now (that’s a lie, I’m not that tired, but I will be this afternoon). The ending had me realing, I was just wondering “what?!” Not because it was a bad ending, it just caught me off-guard, which is fabulous. In the end you see that even Edmond, who is after revenge, is still susceptable to error and his actions have a weighty consequence. Very good reading and if you don’t want to buy it, it is available at Project Gutenberg as a text file. Also, you could get it at your local library. Whatever the case, after reading this I want to read some more fiction. Jessica and I are considering the ‘Bourne Identity’ since we liked that movie as well.

FireFox 0.9 Installer

The latest Mozilla Firefox browser is just round the corner and I’ve installed the 0.9 beta. The installer is beautiful. It gives me all of the options I want. I’ve recently been thinking more and more about installers and am convinced that they are just as vital a piece of your software as anything else. Witness the wonder that WordPress’s 5 minute Installer instills. It actually does only take that long, and for a web application, that’s a beatiful thing.

The graphics of the Firefox 0.9 installer incorporate the new branding and I’m confident that this branding will increase market share. Why? Because it is attractive. Millions of women surf the net every day and I tell you that as superficial as it sounds, the blue ‘e’ is not sexy enough to hold people while a cute fox is sure to get some attention! Furthermore the installer lets you pick a custom set of options for installable components, whether or not to place shortcuts in various parts of your Windows interface (Programs Menu, Desktop and Quick Launch). This is a great step forward for Firefox!