I miss the old Friends show, sometimes. Hapless Ross Geller catching Hell for his behavior during a time when, he thought, he wasn't romantically linked to anyone and therefore wasn't accountable. Still, I am thinking that it's time we took a little break.
As the calendar is laid out this year, between work and family and a host of commitments, it just isn't convenient to update the page here for the rest of the year. And I suspect that few would bother to stop by on Christmas eve or New Year's eve just to see what I happen to think about HTML.
So this is going to be it for the year. The last Imparting Of Wisdom and Revealed Truth as I see it. Kids, be good. Stay in school. Don't end up like your old Unca Mark. Don't build pages out of Tables. Words to live by as we close out the year, don't you think? There must be others….
Close cover before striking. One at a time, please. Buckle-up, for safety. This door to remain unlocked, during regular business hours. May cause itching. Wait thirty minutes before swimming. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. You'll put someone's eye out. It's always fun until something gets broken. Always make backups. Accept no substitutes.
Your browser does not appear to support JavaScript, or you have turned JavaScript off. InstanceBeginEditable. Please close other applications to free up more memory. Not to be taken internally. Not available in Wisconsin. This information is provided on an "as-is" basis. Consult an accountant. Consult an attorney. You may want to discuss this with your doctor. May cause drowsiness.
Dispose of properly. Keep out of reach of children. All rights reserved. Store at room temperature. You may already be a winner. How do we do it? Volume! Made in China. Avoid contact with eyes. Semper Fidelis. Do not use near open flame. Visa and MasterCard accepted. This is not a toy. Try it today! In God We Trust. Requires three AA-batteries (not included). Please. Thank you. Dial "9" to get an outside line.
Slower traffic keep right. Click it or ticket. Not to be taken internally. Your mileage may vary. And remember, your TV will stop working in February. It's up to you to determine if that will cause a problem, or not.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The Year in Review
Well, kids, it's been an interesting year, hasn't it? Looking back I found a few "Oh, yeah" moments that are mildly embarrassing this morning.
Remember when I was going to learn JavaScript? John Lennon told his son Sean, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans". Stuff just got in the way. New releases of software, new ways of doing old things. The general ebb and flow of life. So that needs to go back on the spindle, for next year. I've made it all these years without knowing JavaScript. I'll probably survive another several months. But all of the new reasons for learning JavaScript, mostly having to do with AJAX, are still valid, so this is something I do still want to work on in the months ahead.
There was a brief scare when it looked like we would have to actually add non-standard markup to our pages if we wanted to be sure that our non-standard browsers operated in standards mode. Said another way, even though our page was technically perfect, and several good browsers would render it as intended, for a few weeks it looked like we might have to actually add a line of unnecessary markup to that page in order to be sure that one Name Brand Browser operated in standards mode. The scare quickly passed, as we received assurances from Microsoft that their upcoming Internet Explorer would, right out of the box, operate in standards mode. If the books said it should look like this, IE would render it like this. I love a story with a happy ending.
There were lots of references to Dreamweaver. You can change Dreamweaver. You can adjust Dreamweaver. You can select preferences and options and tune-up Dreamweaver just about any way you might like. You should learn keyboard shortcuts. You should learn anything you can about Dreamweaver. One of the biggest interruptions this year was the introduction of Dreamweaver CS4.
Now, suddenly, everything you know is wrong, right? Well, no, not quite. A great many things have changed, but there is plenty that is still very familiar about Dreamweaver. The workflow has been streamlined and improved quite a bit. But it's going to take some time to realize gains from doing old things in new ways. Some of us may struggle, but for the most part I believe the journey will be worth it.
We talked a little about accessibility. We talked a bit about alternate access methods. I got an iPhone and discovered I needed to almost entirely re-write a short workshop I'd put together on The Handheld Web, about writing Web pages for today's Blackberry and iPhone users. This is going to be an area where we see the most excitement in the years ahead, I'm pretty sure. Today's machinery is kind of a baseline. We should not expect that tomorrow's Treo or Blackberry or iPhone will be in any meaningful way slower or less-capable than today's. So there may come a day, soon, when most of our page visits are coming in via these little devices. We owe it to our audiences of 2010 and 2012 to create pages that can be used, and useful, in handheld devices. Don't include media in file formats they don't understand. Don't rely on old technologies that may not be fully supported or supported at all in handheld devices. And realize the key differences. It's not just a smaller experience. It's a different experience. You cannot "hover" over a link on a Web page with your finger, for instance, and have that link change color, size or shape to reinforce it's selectedness, the way you can in a Web browser.
Outside of the Web, the world either went to Hell or came back from the brink, depending upon your point of view. Our retirement accounts evaporated in the heat of the lawlessness Wall Street refers to as "deregulation". As the economy tanked in various cities we waited to see what the effect might be on us, here on The Prairie. Like one of those giant falling-domino displays, we don't even know for sure when things will hit here, let alone how bad it might get. But already the upper levels of administration are warning us to do more with less, turn out the lights and look for ways to save. In a system where one of the biggest expenses is payroll, that does not bode well for anyone Making Plans for next year.
All we can do is try very hard to become better. And if you can create a dozen pages in the time it takes me to build ten, there's a good chance you'll be here in two years while I might not be. Maybe that recasts things like learning keyboard shortcuts in ways that mean more to you now. I hope so. I'd hate to lose any of us, including myself.
Remember when I was going to learn JavaScript? John Lennon told his son Sean, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans". Stuff just got in the way. New releases of software, new ways of doing old things. The general ebb and flow of life. So that needs to go back on the spindle, for next year. I've made it all these years without knowing JavaScript. I'll probably survive another several months. But all of the new reasons for learning JavaScript, mostly having to do with AJAX, are still valid, so this is something I do still want to work on in the months ahead.
There was a brief scare when it looked like we would have to actually add non-standard markup to our pages if we wanted to be sure that our non-standard browsers operated in standards mode. Said another way, even though our page was technically perfect, and several good browsers would render it as intended, for a few weeks it looked like we might have to actually add a line of unnecessary markup to that page in order to be sure that one Name Brand Browser operated in standards mode. The scare quickly passed, as we received assurances from Microsoft that their upcoming Internet Explorer would, right out of the box, operate in standards mode. If the books said it should look like this, IE would render it like this. I love a story with a happy ending.
There were lots of references to Dreamweaver. You can change Dreamweaver. You can adjust Dreamweaver. You can select preferences and options and tune-up Dreamweaver just about any way you might like. You should learn keyboard shortcuts. You should learn anything you can about Dreamweaver. One of the biggest interruptions this year was the introduction of Dreamweaver CS4.
Now, suddenly, everything you know is wrong, right? Well, no, not quite. A great many things have changed, but there is plenty that is still very familiar about Dreamweaver. The workflow has been streamlined and improved quite a bit. But it's going to take some time to realize gains from doing old things in new ways. Some of us may struggle, but for the most part I believe the journey will be worth it.
We talked a little about accessibility. We talked a bit about alternate access methods. I got an iPhone and discovered I needed to almost entirely re-write a short workshop I'd put together on The Handheld Web, about writing Web pages for today's Blackberry and iPhone users. This is going to be an area where we see the most excitement in the years ahead, I'm pretty sure. Today's machinery is kind of a baseline. We should not expect that tomorrow's Treo or Blackberry or iPhone will be in any meaningful way slower or less-capable than today's. So there may come a day, soon, when most of our page visits are coming in via these little devices. We owe it to our audiences of 2010 and 2012 to create pages that can be used, and useful, in handheld devices. Don't include media in file formats they don't understand. Don't rely on old technologies that may not be fully supported or supported at all in handheld devices. And realize the key differences. It's not just a smaller experience. It's a different experience. You cannot "hover" over a link on a Web page with your finger, for instance, and have that link change color, size or shape to reinforce it's selectedness, the way you can in a Web browser.
Outside of the Web, the world either went to Hell or came back from the brink, depending upon your point of view. Our retirement accounts evaporated in the heat of the lawlessness Wall Street refers to as "deregulation". As the economy tanked in various cities we waited to see what the effect might be on us, here on The Prairie. Like one of those giant falling-domino displays, we don't even know for sure when things will hit here, let alone how bad it might get. But already the upper levels of administration are warning us to do more with less, turn out the lights and look for ways to save. In a system where one of the biggest expenses is payroll, that does not bode well for anyone Making Plans for next year.
All we can do is try very hard to become better. And if you can create a dozen pages in the time it takes me to build ten, there's a good chance you'll be here in two years while I might not be. Maybe that recasts things like learning keyboard shortcuts in ways that mean more to you now. I hope so. I'd hate to lose any of us, including myself.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
How Do We Measure "Better?"
There are those who think software updates are there to provide an increase in revenues back to the Mother Ship. There are those who think they fix bugs, enhance features and streamline the workflow. After buying a new wide-screen computer and several boxes of wide-screen software, we should be productive all out of proportion to our former selves, right? Well, maybe.
As with most things businessy, you would reasonably expect to be able to measure an increase in something vaguely defined as productivity. The net effect of a lot of small increases is a mighty force on the economic landscape. In the middle-late 1990s productivity gains outstripped inflation, briefly. This allowed employers to raise wages without having to raise prices. Think about that and let it sink in for a moment. Wages could go up, but prices didn't have to, in order to cover the increase. Wages and profits rose, but prices didn't follow.
So what does this mean to us? Maybe we replace our computers on a two-year or three-year cycle, or longer. We probably update our software about the same time. Eventually, we get a configuration that is some multiple faster than the one it replaces. Instead of Dreamweaver opening in twenty-three seconds, it now only takes twelve. What do we do with our new-found almost-a-dozen seconds? I wish I could say in these troubled times that I use that moment to spell-check my page or that I start a new one or even that I use that fraction of a moment to familiarize myself with my daily calendar and try to orient the rest of the week in my mind. I probably take a sip of coffee, though.
But even if I charge right into the day, is there really some benefit from being done twelve seconds earlier? Probably not, but the cumulative effect of twelve seconds a day, two hundred and sixty days per year, adds up to fifty-two minutes. Nearly an hour "extra" and even though the individual gains of one minute every week may not yield much, they do yield something, even if it's only the ability to sit in on one more meeting for free, every year.
I had a boss once who wanted to count-up the number of lines of code and markup on a page every Monday, and assign that humble number to me as what I had accomplished. This led, of course, to my splitting up lines of markup or code that could easily have stayed on one line, to adding plenty of <!-- HTML comments --> documenting the work, and so on. It also led to bizarre situations where I would use less efficient means of accomplishing the same task, entirely because it would give me more lines of "work" every week. Even if I could replace a dozen lines of markup with a one-line function, the old work would stay so it looked like I was accomplishing more, at least to him.
But there was no accounting for the three or four false-starts, beginning a project and abandoning a logical path when I suddenly realized we might need to account for a negative number, here, or need more than twelve places for the final answer or whatever. How do you function in such a Dilbert-esque environment? You give 'em what they want. And if all they care about is lines, give 'em lines. I did wonder what his reaction might be though, if I suddenly optimized a page and reduced its line count by a hundred lines or more.
But real productivity gains are attainable. It really is easier to build Web pages today, using Dreamweaver CS4, than it was using older versions of the same program. And it's easier using Dreamweaver than using any of the other programs I've tried. And the more you learn about what you are doing, the faster and "more productive" you become.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, as the saying goes. I am a firm believer in even Baby Steps getting you to some eventual goal. It's all progress. While you're saving-up for that new computer or the new software it craves, learn One More Thing about the program you use the most, every day. Adobe Dreamweaver? Lotus Notes? Microsoft Word? If you can find a way to save even a few seconds every day, the net effect adds up.
As with most things businessy, you would reasonably expect to be able to measure an increase in something vaguely defined as productivity. The net effect of a lot of small increases is a mighty force on the economic landscape. In the middle-late 1990s productivity gains outstripped inflation, briefly. This allowed employers to raise wages without having to raise prices. Think about that and let it sink in for a moment. Wages could go up, but prices didn't have to, in order to cover the increase. Wages and profits rose, but prices didn't follow.So what does this mean to us? Maybe we replace our computers on a two-year or three-year cycle, or longer. We probably update our software about the same time. Eventually, we get a configuration that is some multiple faster than the one it replaces. Instead of Dreamweaver opening in twenty-three seconds, it now only takes twelve. What do we do with our new-found almost-a-dozen seconds? I wish I could say in these troubled times that I use that moment to spell-check my page or that I start a new one or even that I use that fraction of a moment to familiarize myself with my daily calendar and try to orient the rest of the week in my mind. I probably take a sip of coffee, though.
But even if I charge right into the day, is there really some benefit from being done twelve seconds earlier? Probably not, but the cumulative effect of twelve seconds a day, two hundred and sixty days per year, adds up to fifty-two minutes. Nearly an hour "extra" and even though the individual gains of one minute every week may not yield much, they do yield something, even if it's only the ability to sit in on one more meeting for free, every year.
I had a boss once who wanted to count-up the number of lines of code and markup on a page every Monday, and assign that humble number to me as what I had accomplished. This led, of course, to my splitting up lines of markup or code that could easily have stayed on one line, to adding plenty of <!-- HTML comments --> documenting the work, and so on. It also led to bizarre situations where I would use less efficient means of accomplishing the same task, entirely because it would give me more lines of "work" every week. Even if I could replace a dozen lines of markup with a one-line function, the old work would stay so it looked like I was accomplishing more, at least to him.
But there was no accounting for the three or four false-starts, beginning a project and abandoning a logical path when I suddenly realized we might need to account for a negative number, here, or need more than twelve places for the final answer or whatever. How do you function in such a Dilbert-esque environment? You give 'em what they want. And if all they care about is lines, give 'em lines. I did wonder what his reaction might be though, if I suddenly optimized a page and reduced its line count by a hundred lines or more.
But real productivity gains are attainable. It really is easier to build Web pages today, using Dreamweaver CS4, than it was using older versions of the same program. And it's easier using Dreamweaver than using any of the other programs I've tried. And the more you learn about what you are doing, the faster and "more productive" you become.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, as the saying goes. I am a firm believer in even Baby Steps getting you to some eventual goal. It's all progress. While you're saving-up for that new computer or the new software it craves, learn One More Thing about the program you use the most, every day. Adobe Dreamweaver? Lotus Notes? Microsoft Word? If you can find a way to save even a few seconds every day, the net effect adds up.
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