Last week I linked to a piece about Financial Times turning its iOS app off, to concentrate on the Web instead.

Technology Review wrote of their experience “The future of media on mobile devices isn’t with applications but with the Web.” in Why Publishers Don’t Like Apps.”Like almost all publishers, I was badly disappointed. What went wrong? Everything … We sold 353 subscriptions through the iPad. We wasted $124,000 on outsourced software development. We fought amongst ourselves, and people left the company. There was untold expense of spirit. I hated every moment of our experiment with apps, because it tried to impose something closed, old, and printlike on something open, new, and digital.”

Also How NSFW Corp Dodged The Newsstand Bullet And Lucked Into HTML5″ “when Not Safe For Work Corporation finally launched a few hours ago, there was no Newsstand edition, and no Kindle store edition. Instead, it’s HTML5 all the way.”

Mobilism mobile browser panel with Jeremy Keith and reps of RIM, Google, Nokia and Opera on

Standardsy stuff

• Lea Verou on Text masking — The standards way. I have a lot of sympathy with the view expressed by Matt Wilcox – SVG is much harder to write than a line of CSS (and I feel a bit ewww at mixing presentational SVG with my HTML). But at least this works everywhere, which is Lea’s point.
• Jake Archibald’s funny and finely-researched article Application Cache is a Douchebag is vital for those thinking of offlinerifying a site, the and Fixing Application Cache Community Group want to, er, fix the AppCache spec.
• Opera’s representative on the CSS Working Group, Florian Rivoal, has a proposal to fix the vendor prefixing system:
  

  When a browser vendor implements a new css feature, it should support it, from day 1, both prefixed and unprefixed, the two being aliased. If a style sheet contains both prefixed and unprefixed, the last one wins, according to the cascade.

  Authors should write their style sheets using the unprefixed property, and only add a prefixed version of the property (below the unprefixed one) if they discover a bug or inconsistency that they need to work around in a particular browser.

  If a large amount of content accumulates using the a particular vendor prefix to work around an issue with the early implementation in that browser, the vendor could decide to freeze the behavior of the prefixed property while continuing to improve the unprefixed one.

• A proposal from Edward O’Connor of Apple for <img srcset> for responsive bitmapped content images
• How browser engines work – a video presentation by Anthony Ricaud
• Research shows adhering to WCAG doesn’t solve blind users’ problems

Legal stuff

• Dutch pass Net Neutrality Law (where’s mine, Mr Cameron?)
• A short, fun video about The EU cookie law

Misc

• This picture shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth’s water in comparison to the size of the Earth
• Marriage in the bible – keep it sacred!
• Bad otter taxidermy

For years there have been promises of remasters and reissues, none of which have come to fruition. Until today! Amazon tells me that the double CD of remastered EPs is released, including three “new” songs:

Good for You

Angel (“Bilinda’s Song” on bootlegs)

How Do You Do It

Can’t wait to listen to it in CD quality. This interview with Kevin Shields, he suggests a new album of Loveless-era material, too. Hurrah!

As you may have noticed, Opera announced an experimental Labs build supporting a handful of -webkit- vendor prefixes, based on an idea originally suggested by Daniel Glazman, CSS Working Group co-chair:

The rule should be this one: if the CSS parser encounters a prefixed property for another browser, honour that property as if it were prefixed for us UNLESS an unprefixed or prefixed for us valid declaration for that property was already set. That would drastically reduce the problems on the Web.

Here are some of the most useful commentaries (both for and against). Mostly I haven’t commented, except for Andy Clark’s piece which contained factual inaccuracies which could mislead readers.

• Opera confirms WebKit prefix usage – the .net magazine article that broke the story, based on a leaked email and catching me unawares as I was heading out for the airport
• Browser Wars II by Faruk Ateş
• Andy Clark’s There I said It and my correction
• On Opera’s Implementation of WebKit Aliases by Peter Gasston
• Why O, why? by David Kaneda. This is more balanced than I expected, as the author works for a only-works-in-webkit-woo! mobile framework/ library thing, although one of his 3 pieces of practical advice is to detect WebKit browsers and block them from Opera’s demos, thereby opening the Web by closing the Web, and helping users by hurting users
• On vendor prefixes and WODs by Ian Devlin
• The most thoughtful of all the posts I’ve seen so far is Is the Opera lady singing for Vendor Prefixes? by Kevinjohn Gallagher
• and the one that neatly sums up my personal ambivalence, and then acceptance of our move:
  Opera, -webkit-, and the purpose of browsers: “The secret to reaching “Acceptance” is to simply ask yourself, “What are web browsers for? What is their absolute primary purpose? The answer: A web browser’s primary function is to display web content.”

My favourite commentary has been Daniel Davis‘ interview with Dr Stanley Dards, wise old man of the web:

Mobile

• How we use our mobile devices “more people have mobile phone subscriptions than have electricity or safe drinking water”
• Reponsive News – a blog by the team making the BBC News website responsive
• Web journey complete, FT switching off iOS app
• IBM goes after mobile developers with a single platform for IOS and Android

HTML, CSS

• Cross-Browser Debugging CSS – super article by Nicole Sullivan.
• Cookies, JSON, localStorage & Opera by Ian Devlin

Spot the difference!

An exciting competition for readers. Can you spot the difference between these two articles?

Two years ago, Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Internet Explorer wrote:

Today, intellectual property rights for H.264 are broadly available through a well-defined program managed by MPEG LA. The rights to other codecs are often less clear, as has been described in the press. Of course, developers can rely on the H.264 codec and hardware acceleration support of the underlying operating system, like Windows 7, without paying any additional royalty.

This week, the BBC reports Motorola wins Xbox and Windows 7 ban in Germany – also Windows 7 system software, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player:

It follows a ruling that Microsoft had infringed two patents necessary to offer H.264 video coding and playback.

Opera

For the sake of open-ness, here’s a link to Opera’s 2011 annual report (Giant PDF!).

There is no truth in alleged “leaked emails” that our business plan reads 1) Publish photos of loads of multi-ethnic hipsters in glossy report 2) alias -webkit- prefixes 3) profit!

Some of the statistics:

• One in five (21%) British adults surveyed think disabled people need to accept they can’t have the same opportunities in life
• one in four (26%) Britons think bars and nightclubs are not places for people with wheelchairs
• 42% of people with MS admit to being concerned about telling their employer about their condition in the current economic climate
• Over half (56%) of people with MS find it harder to socialise since their diagnosis, with around two-thirds (67%) saying their MS has hampered their ability to enjoy everyday social activities like drinking, eating out or shopping

The report concludes

MS is unpredictable and, perhaps largely because of this, widely misunderstood. It is different for everyone, and everyone responds to it differently.

But what most with MS have in common is a desire to live as full and active a life as possible before the condition strips more and more choices away from them.

I’m lucky; I travel a lot, do karate, and live a normal life. There’s a lot of ignorance about what MS is. The problem is that it’s different for every person. I was diagnosed in 1999 after I lost my vision in my left eye and the use of my left leg and arm. This is why my dancing is so crap.

Nowadays symptoms are

• Tiredness. That’s why, if you invite me to speak and ask me to take a long haul Economy flight, I’ll need 2 nights e.g. a full day before the gig to recover
• Clumsiness when tired, and slipping over on Oslo pavements in winter
• Dry mouth and swallowing difficulties, which is why I drink gallons of water at conferences and then have to rush to the loo. (Apologies if I rush past you if you’re waiting to ask a question – I’m not being a diva, just seeking a pissoir)
• Trigeminal neuralgia, random sensations like electric shocks, when touched unexpectedly, particularly on the face

My mankini allure is, thankfully, unaffected.

• I interview Scott Jehl about the responsive Boston Globe site
• WebM Gaining Momentum in Hardware
• Nested inheritance in Javascript by Marcos Cáceres
• The performance of localStorage revisited – Nicholas Zakas

Misc

• The source for the Apollo space program
• placezombies.com – a quick and simple service for getting pictures of zombies as placeholders in your designs.

Heartwarming stuff

This is why I love working with Norwegians. The ultra-nationalist terrorist mass-killer Anders Behring Breivik hates the children’s song “Children of the Rainbow” that describes a “World where – every sister and every brother – shall live together – like small children of the rainbow”. So 40,000 Norwegians got together to sing it, just to annoy him.

It’s a great example. The UK and USA are intent on showing how much we value democracy and liberty by clamping down on what people can say, see, think, and clap them in prison without trial. Norwegians, conversely, reaffirm their values of tolerance and open-ness when they’re under attack.

Lyrics of Lillebjørn Nilsen’s Barn av regnbuen (Children of the Rainbow), lifted from theworld.org:

En himmel full av stjerner (A heaven full of stars)
 Blått hav så langt du ser (Blue seas as far as you can see)
 En jord der blomster gror (A world where flowers grow)
 Kan du ønske mer ? (Can you ask for more?)
 Sammen skal vi leve (We shall live together)
 hver søster og hver bror (Every sister and every brother)
 Små barn av regnbuen (Small children of the rainbow)
 og en frodig jord. (And a blossoming world.)

Noen tror det ikke nytter (Some don’t think it matters)
 Andre kaster tiden bort med prat (Others waste time with small talk)
 Noen tror at vi kan leve av (Some thing we can live on…
 plast og syntetisk mat. (…plastic and synthetic food.)
 Og noen stjeler fra de unge (And some steal from the young)
 som blir sendt ut for å sloss (who are sent off for a fight.)
 Noen stjeler fra de mange (Some steal from the masses)
 som kommer etter oss (who come after us.)

Refrain:
 Si det til alle barna! (Tell all the children)
 Og si det til hver far og mor: (And tell every father and mother)
 Ennå har vi en sjanse (That we still have a chance)
 til å dele et håp på jord. (to share hope for the world.)

• HTML5 gets a new <dialog> element which behaves as top-layer in the fullscreen spec. If the dialog is modal, it makes the rest of the document inert:
  

  A subtree of a Document can be marked as inert. When a node or one of its ancestors is inert, then the user agent must act as if the element was absent for the purposes of targetting user interaction events … Note: When a node or one of its ancestors is inert, it also can’t be focused.

  An entire Document can be marked as blocked by a modal dialog dialog. While a Document is so marked, every node that is in the Document, with the exception of the dialog element, its ancestors, and its descendants, must be marked inert.

  The great thing about a built-in <dialog> element, even with its egregious mis-spelling, is that it will make a lot of websites more accessible. For example, many sites use pseudo-dialogs that they either write themselves or get from JavaScript libraries. Many of these don’t allow modal dialogs and lightboxes to be closed using just the keyboard, for example (see Lightboxes and keyboard accessibility for more). Building accessible dialogs into the language is far better than expecting every developer to bolt it on.

  There’s already the beginnings of a shim for it.

• Let’s Talk about Semantics on HTML5 Doctor
• Flexbox and CSS Grids have too many alignment properties, suggests Fantasai, and attempts to harmonise them.
• Content order on touch screens by Henny Swan
• HTML5 Accessibility Chops: ‘real world’ ARIA landmark use – “From an initial analysis the correct use of ARIA landmark roles is surprisingly high. Developers are generally using ARIA landmark roles as intended. Although use is low, there is an major upward trend in use as sites switch to HTML5.”

Open Formats, Open Standards

Proprietary lobby triumphs in first open standards showdown – the UK government is consulting on how it can use “open standards for software and systems are required to ensure interoperability between software systems, applications and data”. Simon Wardley of Leading Edge Forum has more on how the lobbyists of the Big Proprietary Vendors are changing the definitions of “Open” to favour them.

Mobile development

• 77 words by me on mobile content philosophy
• Why We Shouldn’t Make Separate Mobile Websites – me in Smashing Magazine on why Jakob Nielsen is wrong about mobile usability. (The title isn’t mine. It’s really about why you shouldn’t always assume it’s best to make a separate site.
• Steve Ballmer laughs at iPhone (YouTube video)

Webdev tools and services

• An early look at upcoming features in Opera Dragonfly: “pretty print”, function return values, UPnP
• How to move your online sales away from PayPal by Rachel Andrew

Misc

• Mood Changes in UK Twitter Content 2009-2012 – “we analyse a collection of 484 million tweets generated by more than 9.8 million users from the United Kingdom over the past 31 months, a period marked by economic downturn and some social tensions.” With handy animation!
• Safety Tat – stick-on QR codes for children in case they get lost.
• The Key Ingredients to a Successful Glamour Shot (63 pics) (hat-tip @ourmaninjapan)
• Sarah Jessica Parker Looks Like A Horse