Archive for the ‘WWW’ Category

2013 Books

Posted on in Books, Doctor Who, Memes, My Life.

A lot of Doctor Who related reading this year, what with it being the 50th anniversary and everything there was a lot available to read.

Available as a poll over on Live Journal (you don’t need an LJ account to vote, just an OpenID account which means an account from WordPress.com, Google, Yahoo, Blogger, etc.)

The Doctor's Monsters

Doctor Who

  • Dark Horizons by J.T. Colgan
  • Devil in the Smoke by Justin Richards
  • About Time Volume 7: 2005-2006 Series 1 & 2 by Tat Wood
  • TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 2: Patrick Troughton by Philip Sandifer
  • TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 3: Jon Pertwee by Philip Sandifer
  • The Doctor’s Monsters by Graham Sleight
  • Who-ology by Cavan Scott
  • Time & Space Visualiser by Paul Smith
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who: Assimilation 2 Volume 1
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who: Assimilation 2 Volume 2
  • Nemesis of the Daleks

Nemo: Heart of Ice

Graphic Novels

  • Nemo: Heart of Ice by Alan Moore
  • Fables Volume 18: Cubs in Toyland
  • Fables Volume 19: Snow White
  • The Invincible Iron Man: The Five Nightmares
  • John Constantine Hellblazer: Death and Cigarettes
  • Justice League Volume 1: Origin
  • Demon Knights Volume 2: The Avalon Trap
  • Stormwatch Volume 2: Enemies of Earth
  • Stormwatch Volume 3: Betrayal
  • Secret History of the Authority: Hawksmoor
  • Willow Volume 1: Wonderland
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volume 3: Guarded
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volume 4: Welcome to the Team
  • Weasels by Elys Dolan

Supergods

Fiction

  • Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch
  • Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie
  • Stonemouth by Iain Banks
  • Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
  • The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
  • London Falling by Paul Cornell
  • 1356 by Bernard Cornwell
  • The Iron King by Maurice Druon
  • Flashman and the Angel of the Lord by George MacDonald Fraser

Non-Fiction

  • Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram by Iain Banks
  • Prime Minister Boris… and other things that never happened by Duncan Brack and Iain Dale
  • All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To by Stuart Laycock
  • Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero by Grant Morrison
  • A Radical History of Britain by Edward Vallance
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Pure CSS Things

Posted on in WWW.

I’ve had to add them to loads of web pages over the years, but I’m not sure what the proper name for them is. You know, the many-pointed stars / jagged edged circles used to denote special offers or prices. Them. Anyway, yesterday I had to add one to a page and decided to see if I could add it via pure CSS.

And for all browsers except IE8 and lower, I could.

Wow!

.offer-flash {
  background-color: #DE277D;
  width: 50px;
  height: 50px;
  position: relative;
  transform: rotate(45deg);
}
.offer-flash:before, .offer-flash:after, .offer-flash b  {
  position: absolute;
  width: 50px;
  height: 50px;
  background-color: #DE277D;
}
.offer-flash:before {
  transform: rotate(22.5deg);
  z-index: 4;
  content: "";
}
.offer-flash:after {
  transform: rotate(-22.5deg);
  z-index: 4;
  content: "";
}
.offer-flash  b {
  transform: rotate(-45deg);
  font-size: 16px;
  line-height: 45px;
  text-align: center;
  color: #fff;
  text-transform: lowercase;
  z-index: 5;
}


<div class="offer-flash"><b>Wow!</b></div>

I’ve removed the various prefixed versions of transform for clarity, don’t forget to add them in if you want to support IE9, Firefox 15 or lower, Opera 12 or lower or any Webkit browser.

One caveat is that as the various elements and pseudo-elements overlap each other we can’t add borders or dropshadows to those elements. Borders I’m not going to get into, but dropshadows are possible by wrapping one extra HTML element. (Watch out for the interaction of z-index, position, :before and :after.)

Wow!

.offer-flash-shadow {
  background-color: transparent;
  width: 50px;
  height: 50px;
  position: relative;
  box-shadow:  3px 3px 6px #333;
  z-index: 1;
}
.offer-flash-shadow:before, .offer-flash-shadow:after {
  position: absolute;
  width: 50px;
  height: 50px;
  background-color: transparent;
  box-shadow:  3px 3px 6px #333;
  z-index: 2;
  }
.offer-flash-shadow:before {
  transform: rotate(-22.5deg);
  content: "";
}
.offer-flash-shadow:after {
  transform: rotate(22.5deg);
  content: "";
}
.offer-flash-shadow .offer-flash {
  box-shadow:  3px 3px 6px #333;
  position: absolute;
  z-index: 3;
}

<div class="offer-flash-shadow"><div class="offer-flash"><b>Wow!</b></div></div>
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2012 Books

Posted on in Books, Memes, My Life.

A decent amount of non-fiction read this year (including an amount of decent non-fiction), plus the whole (to date) of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Available as a poll over on Live Journal (you don’t need an LJ account to vote, just an OpenID account which means an account from WordPress.com, Google, Yahoo, Blogger, etc.)

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 2009

Graphic Novels

  • John Constantine, Hellblazer: Phantom Pains by Peter Milligan
  • John Constantine, Hellblazer: The Devil’s Trenchcoat by Peter Milligan
  • Midnighter: Anthem by Keith Giffen
  • Stormwatch Volume 1: The Dark Side by Paul Cornell
  • Demon Knights Volume 1: Seven Against the Dark by Paul Cornell
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volume 1: Freefall
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volume 2: On Your Own
  • The Boys Volume 10: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker by Garth Ennis
  • The Boys Volume 11: Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men by Garth Ennis
  • The Boys Volume 12: The Bloody Doors Off by Garth Ennis
  • Fables Volume 16: Super Group by Bill Willingham
  • Fables Volume 17: Inherit the Wind by Bill Willingham
  • V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
  • Neonomicon by Alan Moore
  • League of Extraordinary Gentleman: Century 2009 by Alan Moore

A Certain Big Fat Fantasy Epic

  • A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
  • A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
  • A Storm of Swords: Part 1 Steel and Snow by George R. R. Martin
  • A Storm of Swords: Part 2 Blood and Gold by George R. R. Martin
  • A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin
  • A Dance With Dragons: Part 1 Dreams and Dust by George R. R. Martin
  • A Dance With Dragons: Part 2 After the Feast by George R. R. Martin

Whispers Under Ground

Other Science Fiction & Fantasy

  • The Bride That Time Forgot by Paul Magrs
  • Hell’s Belles! by Paul Magrs
  • Conjugal Rites by Paul Magrs
  • Doctor Who: Frayed by Tara Samms
  • Snuff by Terry Pratchett
  • Star Trek New Frontier: Blind Man’s Bluff by Peter David
  • Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch
  • Bernice Summerfield – Life During Wartime edited by Paul Cornell

Historical (for some value of)

  • A Body In The Bath House by Lindsey Davis
  • See Delphi And Die by Lindsey Davis
  • Nemesis by Lindsey Davis
  • Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell
  • King’s Man by Angus Donald
  • Flashman and the Dragon by George MacDonald Fraser

The Geek Manifesto: Why Science Matters

Non-Fiction

  • Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies
  • Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield
  • The Making of the British Landscape: How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today by Francis Pryor
  • Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
  • Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea by Christine Garwood
  • Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox
  • The Geek Manifesto: Why Science Matters by Mark Henderson
  • Information is Beautiful by David McCandless
  • How to Land an A330 Airbus: And Other Vital Skills for the Modern Man by James May
  • How I Escaped My Certain Fate by Stewart Lee
  • Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who edited by Steve Berry

2011 Books

Posted on in Books, Memes, My Life.

Fewer graphic novels (especially superheroes) this year – almost certainly down to Croydon libraries being a lot poorer in that respect than Lambeth.

Available as a poll over on Live Journal (you don’t need an LJ account to vote, just an OpenID account which means an account from WordPress.com, Google, Yahoo, Blogger, etc.)

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1969

Graphic Novels

  • The Boys Volume 6: The Self-Preservation Society by Garth Ennis
  • The Boys Volume 7: The Innocents by Garth Ennis
  • The Boys Volume 8: Highland Laddie by Garth Ennis
  • The Boys Volume 9: The Big Ride by Garth Ennis
  • Dark Entries by Ian Rankin
  • John Constantine, Hellblazer: Pandemonium by Jamie Delano
  • John Constantine: Hellblazer: Bloody Carnations by Peter Milligan
  • Angel: After the Fall Volume 3 by Brian Lynch and Joss Whedon
  • Angel: After the Fall Volume 4 by Brian Lynch and Joss Whedon
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 8: Last Gleaming by Joss Whedon
  • League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1969 by Alan Moore
  • Tom Strong Volume 1 by Alan Moore
  • Eternals by Neil Gaiman
  • Fables Volume 15: Rose Red by Bill Willingham

Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

Doctor Who

  • Doctor Who: Dragon’s Claw by Steve Moore, Steve Parkhouse and Dave Gibbons
  • Doctor Who: The Eyeless by Lance Parkin
  • Doctor Who: The Indestructible Man by Simon Messingham
  • Doctor Who: Wolfsbane by Jacqueline Rayner
  • Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography by Elisabeth Sladen
  • Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby’s Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) by Robert Shearman and Toby Hadoke
  • Time, Unincorporated 3: The Doctor Who Fanzine Archives: (Vol. 3: Writings on the New Series) edited by Graeme Burk and Robert Smith?

The Windup Girl

Science Fiction and Fantasy

  • Never the Bride by Paul Magrs
  • Something Borrowed by Paul Magrs
  • Enter Wildthyme by Paul Magrs
  • I Shall Wear Midnight: A Story of Discworld by Terry Pratchett
  • Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
  • Transition by Iain Banks
  • Surface Detail by Iain Banks
  • The City and the City by China Mieville
  • Looking for Jake and Other Stories by China Mieville
  • The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
  • Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Other Fiction

  • Flash for Freedom! by George MacDonald Fraser
  • Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser
  • Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser
  • Flashman at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser
  • Flashman in the Great Game by George MacDonald Fraser
  • The Fort by Bernard Cornwell
  • The Kingdom of Light by Giulio Leoni

Non-Fiction

  • God Collar by Marcus Brigstocke
  • Map Addict: A Tale of Obsession, Fudge & the Ordnance Survey by Mike Parker
  • Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom by Tom Holland
  • Robin Ince’s Bad Book Club: One Man’s Quest to Uncover the Books That Taste Forgot by Robin Ince
  • Seven Million Years: The Story of Human Evolution by Douglas Palmer
  • The Story of English: How the English Language Conquered the World by Philip Gooden

But not as you know it

Posted on in Blogs, Books, My Life, Work.

'Out of this World' at the British Library

Last Thursday evening I attended the launch of the Out of this World science fiction exhibition at the British Library. I’ve blogged about the exhibition for work.

The launch night was fun in a peculiarly geeky way as I got to play spot the author/critic/BNF. Some people (Kim Newman to give the obvious example) are easy to spot but far too many fall into the general category of middle aged men with greying beards. In fact I could easily have been looking at the crowd at Salute or @media instead.

At the same time that I was listening to China Miéville give a speech to open the show, Lettice was at a different exhibition launch with Cilla Black and Ringo Star. There’s probably something profound in that contrast but I’m really not sure what.

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HTML5, or is it?

Posted on in WWW.
HTML5

I’m late to the party as usual, but here’s my summary and opinions of the recent fuss over what is and isn’t HTML5.

HTML5 means two things:

  1. A standard published by the W3C
  2. A label (analogous to DHTML or Web 2.0) for a group of new web technologies, including the standard referred to above but also CSS3, SVG and other technologies.

So that’s one precise, technical meaning, and one vague, fuzzy meaning. If you’re talking to developers, web designers, browser manufacturers or CTOs you use the first meaning; if you’re talking to marketing types or CEOs you use the second. If you’re talking to a mixed audience you need to clarify what you mean. It’s not ideal but it’s not the end of the world.

The W3C produced a new logo as part of their effort to promote HTML5. This was marketing activity and the usage seemed to be close to the second meaning above. However, this is the W3C and their core audience is technical and hence expected the first meaning. Some fuss and a few edits to the FAQs later and the situation was clarified.

Meanwhile the WHATWG have decided that from now on they are working on the living standard of HTML and that version numbers are passé.

This actually makes a lot of sense. Browsers don’t implement versions of HTML, they implement a hodge podge of features that appeal to them. Most web sites are thus created based on what works on browsers. When we say that we’re building a site in XHTML 1 and CSS 2.1 we mean the subset of those features that are both useful for the site in question and supported by IE7, etc.

But developing (a site, an API or a browser) to a moving target is difficult and troublesome. Having a standardised version of the spec is useful, it means that my example site using that subset of XHTML 1 can be checked against that standard today, tomorrow and five years from now.

The good news is that there’s no longer two HTML5 standards to cause confusion. Now there’s HTML at WHATWG – an iterative, ever evolving specification that acts as an ideas generator and prototype for the future of the web, and there’s also HTML5 (and maybe one day 6, 7, etc.) at the W3C – a slice of the living standard, reviewed, refined and eventually set in stone as a standard.

I’ve been using parts of HTML5 for over a year now – I’m using a fairly safe subset of features (and <hgroup> which some people seem to have a problem with and want to remove or change) and can refer to the W3C spec for details whilst keeping one eye on the WHATWG for future developments. This seems like a sane approach for most front end developers – there’s a lot of exciting changes coming out and only a few people will have the time and resources to keep on top of all of them.

Still, we’ve got a logo now. 🙂

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2010 Books

Posted on in Books, Memes, My Life.

Last year I said “I think 2010 may be slightly less weighted towards graphic novels”. Whoops.

How many of my 2010 books have you read?

Available as a poll over on Live Journal (you don’t need an LJ account to vote, just an OpenID account which means an account from WordPress.com, Google, Yahoo, Blogger, etc.)

Read the rest of this very true thing…

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All your comments belong to ????

Posted on in Blogs.

Latest storm in a teacup over at LiveJournal is worth a few notes.

Much of the functionality in the latest release is good or at least inoffensive (pingbacks, cross-post posts to Twitter and Facebook, add Facebook Connect alongside OpenID for non-LJ users to log in and post comments). But one item, the ability to cross-post comments to Facebook and Twitter has caused a bit of a fuss (understatement, this is LiveJournal so toys have been ejected from perambulators with great vigour).

It seems like a dumb idea, badly implemented.

  1. Context
    Why cross-post a comment out of context from the post it is commenting on (and indeed out of context of an any comments it may be in reply to, LJ having a decent threading system for comments unlike some other blogging systems)? It seems pointless.
  2. Privacy
    The fact that the choice to cross-post is entirely at the hands of the commenter and ignores the privacy settings of the original post has caused the biggest fuss and rightly so. If someone posts a friends only post to their blog, then should their friends be able to share their (out of context) comments on that post with everyone on Twitter or Facebook? Well, at least you’ll find out who your real friends aren’t…
  3. Poor User Interface
    The positioning of the checkboxes for cross-posting between the comments field and the comments submit button is likely to lead to accidents. And considering the context and privacy issues such accidents will be at best nonsensical and at worst deeply intrusive.

I would never have gotten beyond the context issue if someone had brought this up in a brain storm with me. The sheer pointlessness of this function means it should never have been developed, and now that people have expressed almost entirely unfavourable opinions because of the privacy and UI issues, should mean that it gets removed rather than “fixed”.

I hope that the cross-posting of comments, and only the cross-posting of comments, is removed soon, as it threatens to overshadow the other features in this release which offer useful functionality that can enrich the LiveJournal experience for users who use it as a general blogging platform rather than a private, anonymous, slash-fiction, walled garden.

BTW, this post was created in the WordPress blog on my personal site; cross-posted to LiveJournal; syndicated via RSS; a notification tweeted; and Facebook notes will pick it up from the RSS in a couple of days. Your comments and replies will only appear in the place they were made however, unless you use (on purpose or by accident) this misguided feature on the LiveJournal version of this site.

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Election: each to their own

Posted on in My Life, The World, WWW.

My local candidates, assessed on the quality of their web sites.

Tessa Jowell, Labour

http://www.tessajowell.net/

IA and Design: Nice use of YouTube and Google Maps (don’t re-invent the wheel, use the market leaders where suitable). Two equal width content columns means the user doesn’t know which piece of content is more important. Labour Party banner ad at the top looks like a banner ad. Accessibility and Privacy links go to labour.org.uk so how can we tell whether they apply to this site?

Technical: Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, has 10 validation errors. Layout breaks in Opera 10.53. Email sign up things doo.doo is a valid domain name and dfsfsfd a valid postcode. JavaScript for TinyMCE and something call admin-interface.tao are loaded on every page – maybe these should only be loaded on admin screens?

Kemi Adegoke, Conservatives

http://kemi.adegoke.com/

IA and Design: Best looking site, not much else to say about it – simple but efficient.

Technical: Based on WordPress. Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, has 85 validation errors. Kemi claims to “enjoy web development and writing the occasional bit of code”. Layout breaks very slightly in Opera.

Jonathan Mitchell, Liberal Democrats

http://www.jonathanmitchellsblog.com/

IA and Design: It’s a Blogger blog – with commenting disabled. Only been blogging since February apparently. Black text on a mid-green background. All the text is in bold.

Technical: It’s a Blogger blog – claims to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, has 363 (!) validation errors.

Shane Collins, Green Party

Couldn’t find an individual site, so http://www.greensarecoming.org.uk/ShaneCollins

IA and Design: Video should probably be instead of mugshot instead of tucked away at the bottom. Otherwise clean and efficient, if a bit basic.

Technical: Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, has 41 validation errors.

Elizabeth Jones, UKIP

Couldn’t find an individual site, so http://candidates.ukip.org/index.php?pg=show&eid=578

IA and Design: Photo looks like it came from MySpace. Nice use of UGC in the Q&A section (but … how can blood sports be “a matter for the individual to decide”?)

Technical: Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, has 131 validation errors. URL is terrible from an SEO perspective.

So, we’ve learnt that the big parties spend more on web sites than the little ones; that no candidate can make a site that actually validates; that XHTML is hands down winner over ye olde HTML 4 or bright shiny new HTML5. Not much help in actually deciding to vote for. 🙁

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Screen readers, HTML5, ARIA – all happy together?

Posted on in WWW.

This week I converted a site from XHTML 1 to HTML5, and as part of this I moved the ARIA landmark role attributes from generic div elements to various new elements. And I got to wondering whether this could have unforeseen consequences.

I know from feedback that the ARIA landmark roles have proved useful for some users of this site, so it would be a bad move if this stopped working because their screen readers didn’t recognise the role attributes on “unknown” elements.

<div role="banner"> vs <header role="banner">

I guess what this boils down to, are there any user agents that (a) support the role attribute and (b) use the DOM as generated by a browser engine that fails to recognise HTML5 elements?

Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer won’t style HTML5 elements (though IE will after applying a little JavaScript magic) but styling isn’t the same as recognised at a basic level.

This seems like an edge case, as most of the reports I’ve found whilst searching have indicated that HTML5+ARIA is a good thing and works, but most of the reports don’t specify versions of user agents used. Does anyone have any links to first hand research into this issue?

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