However, today it’s been announced that the W3C’s XHTML2 working group will not be renewed after its charter expires this year, so that the resources can be focused on HTML5.

Considering the editorial bottle-necking the HTML5 spec has (aka, Ian Hickson as the sole editor and a track record for NIH mentality) I’m not sure how much these resources will impact the spec’s maturation speed. However, I am glad that they’re making this move as everyone and his cousin agrees that HTML5 is important, even if they’re not quite sure how/if it works.

In particular, I found John Allsopp’s recent tweets about HTML5 to be a very interesting look at the spec’s current status (here’s an example), which gives me the impression it needs all the help it can get to reach a stable state.

Speaking of help, I wanted to mention HTML5 Doctor, brought to you by snogtastic Bruce Lawson, Rich Clark, Jack Osborne, Mike Robinson, Remy Sharp and Tom Leadbetter. Got a HTML5 question? They’re here to help! (No, really, they’re really helpful.)

As we’re about to learn, being wise and making wise choices do not always go hand in hand.

Today’s comic imagines Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Schneier intentionally exposing themselves to danger in a gladiatorial arena (overlooked by a Caesar-esque Dave Shea) with the predictable results. Sadly, this scenario reflects reality (with a little editorial excess) in a way that shocks me.

Let’s lay out the recent events.

Jakob’s Suggestion: Let’s Unmask Passwords

On June 23rd Jakob Nielsen proved he’s not done making poor recommendations in the name of usability. This time the victim is not design, however. Instead, he firmly takes a swing at security by recommending that passwords become unmasked, leaving naked all the strange alphanumeric combinations that we strive mightily to remember every time we want to visit naughty sites, check our email or bid on a rare 1920’s lampshade online.

He makes some assertions while recommending this course of action. First, that people rarely look over shoulders. Second, that you’re alone in your office. Lastly, he names two “costs” that these cause, one being that users don’t trust sites that mask password fields and the second that masked fields result in weaker passwords. He ends this list of errors by suggesting we do away with the masking altogether, and dance widdershins under the stars in a deep forest clothed in naught but our own sweat.

For the sake of avoiding a stoning at the hands of security experts, he does make an offhand suggestion of offering a check box to allow masking for public situations, but this is said in an afterthought that shows how little he worries about such a trivial thing as someone with both curiosity and eyeballs noticing you typing things on your monitors.

Dave Shea’s Suggestion: Let’s Have A Smackdown

I might have spent my remaining years ignorant of his “suggestion” (might I take some liberties and call it a mad raving?) of tossing away one of the final barriers of security in exchange for a marginal increase in usability. However, Dave Shea took the impetus to make a comment about Jakob’s strange post on Twitter, for which I thank him.

He then followed with a comment replete with inspiring concepts: “A Bruce Schneier / Jakob Nielsen smackdown would be, frankly, awesome.”

It’s moments like this that I wait for, mouth watering with anticipation as I crawl through the many tweets and blog comments of the web design sphere of opinion. Immediately I imagined a savage competition between these two notables where Jakob’s naivety costs him in a contest against the security expert Schneier. These sort of daydreams translate easily into a comic, and furthermore align with something about which I found myself holding a strong opinion. This sort of conjunction almost always sends me scrabbling to my mad laboratory, where I harness arcane shapes into vector imagery and stamp it with the mad wisdom of the stars.

The Twist: Bruce Agrees With Jakob

However, it was only on July 26th that Bruce did something I don’t think Dave expected when he made his tweet, and certainly wasn’t in my realm of anticipation. He agreed with Jakob.

Thankfully, I was able to adapt this change of circumstance to my comic’s needs.

However, I’m not about to alter my opinion on the topic. Namely, that I think this suggestion is madness.

In short, it appears to me that Jakob and Bruce assume that exposed passwords are a non-issue because firstly criminals don’t hover over shoulders and secondly that privacy when surfing a website is a guarantee.

Problem #1: Enabling Criminals Of Convenience

Let’s cross out the consideration of serious hacker types for a moment. These aren’t the sort of individuals that need to see you typing your password to steal your stuff. They’ve got mad skills, and are probably busy right now taking your credit card information off a hard drive the U.S. Government accidentally sold to a spare parts reseller. But amateur no-gooders and opportunists need all the help they can get. They may not plan on stealing wi-fi access, but if they see you typing a password in the cafe they just might take advantage of it.

Unmasking the passwords by default creates a situation where Average Joes are given a lot more temptation to misuse the information they’re casually overseeing. We’re a curious, slightly selfish race. Give us the chance and we’ll be exploring things we shouldn’t. This is probably why emergency room doctors drink heavily after workdays involving gentlemen walking funny who whisper about the need for extreme secrecy when dealing with their medical “emergency”.

Problem #2: Privacy In The Home Is An Illusion

We’ll jump past the criminal concern, however, to look at the privacy issue. For the average American (and even more so for the average human) privacy isn’t a guarantee, and rarely exists when accessing a computer terminal. On the home front you often have spouses, siblings, parents and children all about as you log onto email accounts, purchase music via iTunes, check your bank account, or make a purchase for a pizza or a movie. Although I’ll pretend that maintaining privacy between spouses isn’t a concern (although I suspect it is) we all know that kids will be kids, and that some siblings are less than circumspect in respecting your stuff.

How would you like to come home only to discover you’ve spent $40 on purchasing a couple of Brittany Spears albums? How about learning someone (probably a young someone) bought access to an adult movie on the cable box with your account? I’m not saying that kids can’t get access to something with enough effort, but I think that it’s a big step in the wrong direction when you remove such a simple barrier to that access, and by doing so it requires no effort on their part to act on a poor decision.

Problem #3: Private Office? What Private Office?

So privacy in the home is an issue. What about the workplace? I have a great job. I don’t work in a cubicle farm. But many office workers do, and have hundreds of co-workers with easily five or six sitting in cubes across the aisle who can see their screens.

School teachers often have their computers in the classroom next to students. Should they trust all their pupils to respect their privacy and not try to access staff-only functions or answers to an upcoming test?

Furthermore, more and more people are accessing websites in non-traditional spaces. When you’re packed on a subway car with dozens of commuters and you need to access a site on your smart phone, do you want to have to decide if you can trust the people squeezed up next to you?

I could come up with dozens of other scenarios. Jakob is trying to cast his recommendation in the light of saving us from “legacy” design by implying that we live in an era where security won’t be risked by removing masking. Bruce seems to agree, stating that shoulder-surfing is an uncommon activity and that the risk is outweighed by the annoyance of typing blind.

The Root Of The Problem: Outdated Assumptions On Where Websites Are Accessed

I say that instead these two are making assumptions about website usage that are outdated. Computers are being used by younger children with more sophisticated skills. Websites are increasingly accessed more by other devices like smart phones, in non-private spaces with dozens of potential observers. Privacy is a vanishing commodity, so to presume that an average scenario doesn’t involve potential prying eyes is foolhardy and risky.

Jakob said the following: “Users make more errors when they can’t see what they’re typing while filling in a form. They therefore feel less confident. This double degradation of the user experience means that people are more likely to give up and never log in to your site at all, leading to lost business. (Or, in the case of intranets, increased support calls.)”

I’m going to call you out on this one, sir. That’s outright backwards. I feel less confident when I am entering a naked password in any environment, and strongly doubt the security of the site in question if required to do so. In fact, I’m likely to not use it at all. Why should I trust their other measures if they can’t even protect the password from passing eyes?

Perhaps username/password security truly need to be replaced by something both more secure and simpler to use. I’m not sure what that replacement technology should be. But I do know that we shouldn’t decide that usability trumps security and retrograde to exposing our passwords to John Q. Public.

No offense, John.

[Edit: Fixed the jump from #2 to #4 in the problem subtitles. Thanks, Elaine!]

One of the groups in Denver that was present during some of these post-presentation events was Refresh Denver. I don’t know why, but the idea of a group of like-minded web-heads meeting up, talking shop, and having a few drinks or something to eat never occurred to me. I immediately knew that I wanted to see some of that scene going on locally.

Fortunately, Mindfly Web Studio (aka, my employers) also were thinking that, and thanks to their work Refresh Bellingham has been set into gear! On July 15th, Jeff Croft of Blue Flavor will be traveling to the City of Subdued Excitement to talk to Refresh Bellingham about the use of grids in web design. After his presentation those that desire will be getting drinks and eats, providing plenty of opportunity to get to know local web people and learn from one another.

Refresh Bellingham is a great opportunity for web designers and developers of all skill levels in the Bellingham area to gather, socialize and learn from each other. It’s not a sales pitch, it’s a community. If you’re a professional, a hobbyist, or a student considering entering the field, I strongly recommend coming and checking it out!

Did I mention it was free to attend the presentation? If you’re like me and regret missing AEA: Seattle, then come check out Jeff’s talk at no cost.

Let us know if you’re coming.

Let’s review the facts.

Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 spec and top dog of the WHAT WG, is an employee of Google. He also adheres to a policy when dealing with people that can be summed up as: Deny, Delay, Too Late.

It can be argued that HTML5 is an important upgrade to one of the most vital technologies of the 21st century. Billions of people are using the Internet to facilitate communication and business, share their culture, access otherwise censored information when living under harsh regimes, and so forth. Most of the sites they use for these purposes are built in some fashion upon HTML.

At the currently accelerating rate of content creation, it’s safe to say that billions of pages will be built with HTML5. How these pages are designed, and how they’ll meet the needs of people both in the present and in the future rest upon how this standard is outlined. Everything from preserving the portability of microdata, ensuring the accessibility of web users with special needs, and finding ways to share media without the hassle of brand-specific plugin wars (anyone seen a flash site on an iPhone yet?) are determined by this effort.

So why is it that the person who is the center of this process is allowed to be a man who rejects consensus, actively denies issues (based on his own admitted policy) and substitutes expert advice in important areas like accessibility with analyzing data from the Google Index and parsing numbers? Numbers that we cannot have a third party confirm because every request to do just this is ignored?

There is no doubt in my mind that Ian is brilliant. However no man, no matter how brilliant, should be allowed to be so influential on a spec when he is bringing all this baggage to the table with him.

The biggest problem for me is as follows: Google. Ian’s work is highly influenced by data harvested by Google. I am positive Google has some spectacular views of the web, resulting in some highly accurate views of the current state of the Internet. I’m also sure that this doesn’t matter one bit if we have to take their word for it, because we can’t view it ourselves.

Most people search the web through Google. I get mail through Google, site analytics through Google, news through Google, and sometimes even browse with a browser used by Google. It’s impossible to throw a rock at the Internet and not somehow hit Google. It’s to the point where even the US government is getting a bit itchy and considering taking antitrust actions against them.

I don’t want to sound paranoid, but perhaps we shouldn’t craft HTML5 solely on Google’s say-so. If the data-harvesting Ian performs can’t be independently verified, then perhaps we shouldn’t accept it as fact. It’s just not prudent. We definitely shouldn’t use it as a substitute for actual experts in discussions like accessibility (which I spoke about last week). If Ian can’t accept that limitation or provide access to the raw data, then we need to consider whether a conflict of interests exists and whether he should remain as the editor. With him doing such a poor job of playing well with others (whether they be individuals, experts, or other WC3 working groups) while relying on private information from his employer, how can he be expected to create a HTML5 that meets not just his needs, or Google’s needs, but everyone’s needs?

I’m not convinced he can.

To get a better view of what I’m speaking about (assuming you’re not already familiar with it), go check out the post I wrote at Mindfly about this very issue: Web Developer Weems and the Case of the Multiclass Bungler (AKA IE6).

The first involves Bruce Lawson and snogging. In relation to point #2, I tweeted this. He responded with this. I find the word snogging hilarious, so it went downhill from there, with mental images of Ian Hickson and John Foliot getting hot and heavy.

In those mental images, Ian is asked to shave.

The second topic, which quite inadvertently spawned the first, involves HTML5, ARIA and the apparent lack of peace between the groups responsible for developing each. In his post Alternate Text in HTML5, Bruce bravely discusses his opinion on the topic despite his stated delicate nature and then suggests a group hug, and perhaps a sing along.

By comment #2, Anne van Kesteren has dropped the thunder and brought back the fighting.

Here’s a recap: Blind people can’t see. Blind web users, as a result, need some aids to make sense of things we’d take for granted, even when screen readers are taken into account. Pictures need some form of alternate text and tables need some sort of summary to help give them the scope of the data that’s about to be read to them (as just two examples.)

The WAI-CG has methods for solving these sorts of problems. These solutions exist in HTML4. However, the WHAT WG, with what I presume is a desire to keep code simple, want to do accessibility their own way. To prove their point, they lean on surveys of existing web content which show little adoption of the accessibility features being debated. They also decline to accept the advice of accessibility experts with real-life experience interacting with disabled users.

For a bunch of smart people, that’s pretty stupid.

Actually, that’s stupid for stupid people, so it’s outright dead-brained for smart people.

Why would surveys of existing content prove the effectiveness of the features when used? All it proves is that accessibility awareness needs to be raised among developers. To figure out whether the proper use of these features improve accessibility for the blind, I’d suggest talking to a blind web user.

As John Foliot points out in his comments in Bruce’s post, by all accounts Ian has not actually received any input from a blind person on the accessibility features he is denying.

I’m not an expert in this field, so I’m not going to propose solutions. I do propose, however, that the WHAT WG listens to the experts instead of continuing to cling to their “not invented here” mentality and looking to their own interests before those of the community that absolutely relies on accessibility to make use of the web.

In other words, stop being jerks.

Here’s a couple of related links to the topic in addition to those shown above that might make a good read: Mechanism to Summarize a Table, maintained by Laura Carlson. HTML5 and WAI-ARIA by Anne van Kesteren (the real good stuff is in the comments). Also, make sure to check out the comments in Bruce’s post. There’s a lot of good material in there to get a feel for positions and justifications.

Edit: Corrected the authorship of the Mechanism to Summarize a Table link, based on John’s correction below. Sorry for that, Laura!

(For those of you from hotter climes, I’m aware how weak this must seem. My town of origin, Redding, CA, easily tops 110 during the height of summer. However, it’s really hot compared to the local average.)

So perhaps I was suffering from heat stroke when I thought I heard a co-worker championing in conversation the use of blue, underlined text for all hyperlinks on all web sites. Anything else, they assured, was difficult, if not impossible, for your average Internet user to see or use. Without the vibrant blue (always backed up by purple for visited links) and the noble underline, these commoners of the web would be lost, incapable of navigating from page to page.

Balderdash. Poppy cock. Bullcrap. Etc.

Somewhere near the dawn of time, when the World Wide Web was a mewling infant homunculus suckling at the breast of Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, I’m sure all twelve people capable of browsing the twenty pages available on the web were barely able to comprehend the idea of a hyperlink. Blue, underlined text on a stark white background was likely the only thing saving their minds from imploding in horror at the thought of some elder gods prowling the phone lines and dragging their souls through the 14.4k modems they’d spent hundreds of dollars to purchase.

I’m positive, however, that in the years since then that the average netizen has come to expect a richer media experience. They may have even “tweeted” (and giggled when it first happened) about a funny thing they saw, and uploaded a picture from their phone of this very event. They’ve watched cats play on pianos via YouTube and wept in silent awe as they realized that they lived in the best of possible worlds.

If a hyperlink had the audacity to be a shade of orange, I think they might just be able to pick it out of the surrounding text enough to click on it. If, instead, the bright blue links were bold instead of underlined (on a page where only links received such treatment) users of the web just might posses the ability to tell that clicking on aforementioned text would result in them navigating to a new page instead of providing them with a can of tuna.

I choose to believe this because I have the honesty to admit that most people are in fact not total idiots. Yes, we wail and gnash our teeth at trying to help clients understand what a paragraph tag is. Sure, we’re hard-pressed to not swallow our own tongues when explaining for the fifth time to our grandparents how to send email. But to claim that there is only one way to mark a hyperlink in a way that a peer of the web is capable of recognizing is exactly like saying that every non-developer is a complete moron who is incapable of telling that a peach is a fruit because it doesn’t look exactly like an apple.

Today’s comic places Jakob Nielsen in a hypothetical scenario that illustrates my disdain of the position that he’s advocated in the past on this issue: If you want it to be usable, it needs to be blue (or purple if visited) and underlined. Period.

There’s a special kind of hubris associated with this sort of statement. I’ll accept that blue, underlined hyperlinks are easy to spot. I’m also going to say that green, underlined hyperlinks (on a page that lacks green, underlined text elsewhere) would also work as effectively. Or perhaps blue, bold text. I’m guessing that underlines generally help, but I think ultimately any combination of highly visible traits that exist only on the link text and stand out from the non-link text is going to do the job.

Why does this issue rile me up so badly? Because I’m tired of old wives tales of Internet wisdom on how a page must be made. Especially when these limit our ability to explore the cornucopia of designs or features that we can make on the modern web. Such wives tales that annoy me include:

“Your site’s content? Well, it’d better be short, because people won’t read long texts on a screen.” Tell that Amazon as they laugh like madmen while they sell Kindles like hotcakes.

“Text needs to be near-black on a white background.” Right, except when the opposite is easier on the eyes for certain applications (like Mozilla’s online editor Bespin.)

Someone’s going to be a wit and jump on the fact that this site’s links are blue and underlined. I chose the color because it matches the sky in the header, and I liked the feel I got from tying that color into the rest of the site. But take a look at Twitter or YouTube and tell me that you can’t find the links even though they lack underlines. Go to Apple’s site and tell me the menu isn’t clearly a menu even though it’s not blue. A well conceived design can communicate to the “average” person without having to assume it’s being used by idiots.

The web has grown up. Its users are growing with it. Let’s put aside the juice boxes and start treating them like adults.

I’m working on a side-project that has multiple instances of the same object (or the equivalent in JS) that makes use of jQuery’s .animate function. At the end of the animate function I want to use .animate’s callback function option to loop the function in each object (allowing each to loop through a frame-by-frame animation of its own, for example).

The problem is I’m running into an obstacle, which can be illustrated by this simplified looping example. In this particular case, when you click on the button, it creates an instance of the object, sets a value inside it, then calls an internal function which displays an alert box, then calls a (in this case pointless) jQuery .animate function which contains a callback function to loop the instance’s function. The idea would be that I can call multiple instances of the object, and have each assigned their own values and then they’ll loop happily on their own.

That’s not happening, of course.

If you examine the JS source code (linked here) you’ll see that I use function(){this:greet();} as my callback parameter. My understanding was that this would correctly relaunch the function of the instance. It does not, however, work as I desire (aka, at all).

I know that this is an odd thing, so I’m sure I’m hamfistedly trying to pound a square peg in a round hole. The trouble is that I have absolutely no clue what the round peg is.

What I really need is a Master Po to tell me where I’m going horribly wrong here. Can anyone be my blind kung fu mentor?

“And a final piece of advice: do cool free stuff that doesn’t make you any money. It will totally grow your brand and get you clients. Putting yourself out there with your writing or your design (especially if you’re a quiet, socially shy nerd who doesn’t like going out and socialising at parties) will help a lot.”

I like that. And, frankly, I’m glad he’s done that himself. The articles and information at A List Apart was a key component from my transition of website wonkery as a side hobby to a career.

To close things up, Zeldman is called “The Godfather of CSS” in the article’s closing paragraph. Immediately my mind slipped to bad movie cliches with that, so today’s comic follows that mobster-related tact, also guest-starring Jason Santa Maria. (I know he’s not a Happy Cog employee these days, but I’m sure he still helps Zeldman out in a pinch.)

It’s a short read, so go read it. There’s some good advice in there, as well as a nice perspective on the past and future of web standards.

It wasn’t my intent to discuss Twitter back to back. After all, there’s all sorts of important web development topics just ripe for plunder. But I couldn’t pass this one up.

Twitter is working on a TV show. No, really. Or working with people working on a show. Whatever. I can’t imagine how I’d react to hearing this in person from one of Twitter’s higher-ups if I worked with them, although today’s comic attempts to recreate such a scenario. However, both Eric Meyer and Jeff Croft managed to craft suitable tweets that sum things up fairly well, here and here (respectively).

I appreciate the tool that is Twitter. I’ve kept in contact with people met elsewhere thanks to it, met new people with similar interests over it, and made good use of it in keeping up to date on interesting information in my industry. I’m not really sure, though, that a 140-character micro-blog requires a televised show.

About the only way you could jump the shark more is, well, to be Fonzi.

Seriously, why is he water-skiing in a leather jacket AND the shortest shorts ever? If this was cool in the 70’s, I’m glad I was only 3 when they ended.