Nigel McFarlane

Mark up For Neanderthals

Written by admin on May 5, 2009

“Mark” is not just a noun, it is also a verb. From the quill pen strokes of bearded academics to the vandal with a spray can, markup is both an action and a result. But marking up is more than this: it is fundamental creative license to express one’s own message. That is the effect of semi-literate thinking coupled with inspiration. Expressed in writing, in paint, carved on a tree, or by cutting back across a wave on a surfboard, it is to change the external world, one stroke at a time.

Such markup cannot be done by a soulless machine; it is the province of people only. Machines can only produce formatted files. It is the nature of people, in their non-electronic, non-digital, entirely organic way, to crash right across barriers they are not even aware of in order to get their message out. In the case of HTML, pages expressed in badly formed, ill-formed, invalid or just plain wrong syntax are victories of expression over technology. Such behaviour should not just be allowed, it should be encouraged and preserved, particularly for mediums such as HTML that are widely accessible and manageable by ignorant non-specialists.

Rough treatment of HTML therefore has more support in logic than the raising of standards in order that rough treatment be avoided. Symphonies of perfect HTML are still viable; but at the same time no one is excluded just because they can’t play the violin. The same should be true of other interaction methods that Web software supports.

Within Mozilla technology, human markup actions extend well beyond poorly formed HTML. Mozilla enthusiasts make their marks in the numerous small databases stored in user profiles, in stylesheets, in themes, in add-on and extensions, and in all kinds of both wise and foolish appropriations of the bundled and unbundled technologies. If Mozilla is to be a worthy piece of Web architecture it must learn to tolerate rough treatment in these areas as well as in HTML. It should not be fragile; it should not be full of arduous and Byzantine access paths.

The openness of Mozilla’s XUL/XBL tagset definition is an excellent example of a loosely managed canvas on which much can be casually and flexibly writ; the fragility of the chrome registration system is a clear counter example. It is relatively easy to bounce rudely up and down on XUL; but registering chrome requires finicky care.

The problem with arguments in favour of rough treatment is that it is all very well in principle, but in practice something must be engineered.

Cleaving the Body Politic

Written by admin on May 5, 2009

Whether the Web is defined as HTML, HTTP or the dynamic and discriminatory mouse-clicking of Web surfers, there are larger perspectives of the services that Web technology enables. We can use these larger perspectives to qualify and test how some of this rough treatment should be assessed.

At the simplest level, the Web can be seen as the exchange of documents cast in agreed formats. Document formats are produced and consumed by machines, except in the near-mythical case of “plain text”. Where no users are directly involved, it is clear that there is no excuse for failing to implement document formats – machines are quite good at rigidly specified tasks. Thus, mistreatment of HTTP headers, which are machine-crafted in all but the most extreme of environments, is justifiably viewed as an inexcusable piece of rough handling. So much for Internet Explorer. Attempting to apply this logic to HTML must fail, however, because numerous HTML documents, including this one, are still hand crafted. That means that HTML is not yet exclusively a file format.

A more expansive view of the Web is that it is a global distributed application for document management (DM), either in terms of technology or in terms of user behaviour or psychology. If this view is taken, then it follows that the built Web is a very rudimentary document manager indeed, since standards exist at the most basic levels of DM functionality only. Even RDF and OWL, the most abstract of the Web standards, say nothing about the common structures required for the numerous vertical niches within the document management field, or anything about basic change control. The document management argument is thus a “no-case-against” argument for rough handling of standards. Web browsers and servers are sufficiently primitive at document management that any advancement is water to a thirsty man. There is, from the document management point of view, no case against DHTML Web application hackery, no case against Web surfers accruing bookmark collections as large as an encyclopaedia, and no case against Web browsers being hacked, optioned and special-cased to within an inch of their lives. Such things are all required when underlying standards are so grossly inadequate from an application point of view.

There is a historic Microsoft analogy for this set of circumstances. One could not expect a modern, graphical desktop from MS-DOS: at best one could expect stop-gap tools like Sidekick and XTreePro. MS-DOS was just too primitive alone to be a full solution. The layering of Microsoft Windows 3.1 and other equally aggressive applications on top of MS-DOS, or the abandonment of DOS entirely in favour of the Apple Macintosh were the inevitable consequences. It is not unlikely that such a process will repeat itself in the case of the foetal document management functions that the currently built Web represents.

Less bleakly, some prefer to see the Web in terms of discourse. In this paradigm, the built Web is a lingua franca – a common language. The logic runs that the electronic discourse that is the Web, as facilitated by HTML, is somehow a pillar of civilisation and requires respect equal to that accorded to the courts and to football players. People must be able to communicate with each other – otherwise fragmentation, misunderstanding, woe and eventually war will be the only consequence. If there is not some minimum standard that HTML browsers require, and if Web page creators are not assisted to reach those minimum standards, then trains will no longer run on time.

There are several problems with this sort of logic, which hopes to prevent the propagation of poorly-formed HTML and perhaps also hopes to bring about the death of the MARQUEE tag and its raggedy-bottom associates.

The easiest of these problems is the supposition that a lingua franca is required. It is not. The Web is not Northern Ireland or any other equally torn state. No one is born into strife on the Web. Use of the Web is an example of joining an intentional community, whether that joining be as a supporter, an opponent, or merely as a garrulous ratbag. The conditions for intentional communities are well established: if you don’t like it, leave; if everyone doesn’t like it, the community falls apart. There is no need for a de jure common tongue in such places, because the surfer enters into precisely the dialog desired, with whomever it is desireable to dialog with. The Web can be arbitrarily partitioned into as many such intentional communities as you might care to identify, each of which might have their own perspective on HTML. In any event, the clashes of ideals and flame wars that occur from time to time on the Internet are testimony enough that a few HTML tags are not enough to ensure civilised (or normative) behaviour of any kind. So civilisation building, even of electronic civilisations, is not sufficient to support raising standards of HTML use.

A far more serious problem with the argument for quality-HTML-as-discourse revolves around markup. The markup concept is more than sufficient reason to ensure that rough treatment of HTML will and should continue for a long time.

Perceived Crimes Against Technology

Written by admin on May 5, 2009

A standard that interworks with nothing is hardly a standard worth having; it is rather more like a fetish. A useful standard is used by two or more agents and agreement on the standard is central to their interworking. To misuse or poorly implement a standard is to handle that standard roughly, if it is handled at all.

Within the world of the built Web, there are some well-known examples of rough handling. Mis-use or failure to use the Content-Type HTTP header, thus mis-representing the contents of Web documents is one. Ill-formed or invalid content inside XML and XHTML documents is another; so-called “Tag Soup” is the equivalent crime for poorly formed HTML documents. Use of features that erode the maximum utility of Web pages, such as dynamic animation of div and span tags, which can ruin accessibility, is a more contentious example. And then there are aberrant, or at least highly novel phenomena, such as the MARQUEE tag.

Such issues cross all aspects of the Web: the software tools that manage the disposition of content, like browsers and servers, the creation of content itself, the uses to which browser-like tools are put, and the behaviour of users and technologists as they handle the tools in an attempt to meet their needs. For example, is it really appropriate to build forms and menu application interfaces out of HTML? HTML is a standard with at best rudimentary forms and menu support, a standard intended for HyperText documents, not record management.

The beauty and simplicity of well-argued standards, or even imperfect ones, and the consequent software is not well served by these kinds of exceptions. In some conservative sense, neither is any kind of Greater Order served. Such exceptions are not crimes, however. Crimes can only be perpetuated against people and against those with anthropomorphic traits, like pets. What, then, are we to think about such rough-handling exceptions?

Words for The Mozilla Community

Written by admin on May 5, 2009

Markup is What People Do

The suite of HTML standards developed by the W3C are well established, and are today in real danger of full support by implementations that are of practical use. Against the sense of nearing completeness is a general restlessness, particularly evident amongst key specialists, about the apparently unsatisfactory way in which these carefully crafted markup standards and their matching software is being hamfistedly used by various user groups. In this essay I argue that attempts to mandate any kind of standards compliance across the built Web is useful only in special cases. There are other, overriding concerns.

5 Internet Marketing Tips That You Can’t Live Without

Written by admin on May 1, 2009

In recent years internet marketing has become more and more competitive. If you are going to make money online, you are going to need to know what you are doing. It’s not easy for a mom and pop business to throw a website online and start making money overnight. These days you are going to have to have a well-planned, targed internet marketing strategy. Here are some tips to help you:

1. Spend some time brainstorming about opportunities and write them down on paper.

2. Determine who to target with your marketing, and where to find them.

3. Figure out a strategy to reach this market and draw them to your website.

4. Once you get the visitor to your website keep them engaged until they purchase your product.

5. After they purchase your product, fulfill their order as soon as possible and follow up with other cross-sell promotions.

Most of all, remember that marketing takes time. If you dont succeed right away, dont give up! Most successful marketers have been some of the biggest failures before the became a success.