Mark Pilgrim has returned from his blogging sabbatical, which he seemingly spent vacationing off the face of Earth. (Or raising his “child.” Or something.) I’ve missed his rhetoric.
Category: Tumbles
There are exceptions, of course, but the attitude of Ruby on Rails users toward Ruby skeptics or critics has been less than kind. This is a crowd convinced that it has found the ultimate answer to everything, and they are not afraid to let you know. I only have a simple advice for these people: you might be right, but just be humble. It never hurts.
Derek’s tired of “user‐generated content” as a buzzword. In addition to what’s listed here, what pisses me off about this trend is that some startups think that they won’t have to provide any content at all. If your only source of content is the user, then your app’s value is strongly correlated to the size of your userbase. Which means that when you start your application will be worthless. How do you get people to sign up for something that has no worth?
Complexity is slowing Microsoft down. How much of the Windows architecture is dictated by obligations to “compatibility”? (Why do we still use drive letters? “Because that’s how it was in DOS” is an unacceptable answer.) BootCamp makes me think that the next 18 months are going to be really, really good for Apple.
It reminds me of something I heard once, and have taken as my own ever since: San Francisco is the kind of place where no one will tell you when you have a bad idea.
In order to stop myself from shoehorning random not‐quite‐blog‐posts into the “link” post type, I’ve created a new type: thoughts. I’m really hoping this idea will take off — it’s time for us, as webloggers, to occasionally stray from the beaten path of absolute fact and express opinions! I’m going to be a goddamned pioneer. (In other news, my feeds now contain full post text and HTML, as they should’ve a long time ago. I beg forgiveness.)
Stylable Text Fields in WebKit. Safari, which for eons has had the least‐customizable form controls among major browsers, will have the most‐customizable form controls when this code makes it into a release.
While the question has already been answered, I must mention that I’ve heard the former described as “shaved gerbil notation.” Proper terminology is important.
Since its release, FireBug has been on my short list of must‐have extensions for any sort of web development, but the recently‐released 0.3 version launches it right to the top of the list. I’m finding I use it even more than the Web Developer Toolbar.
Lightbox JS 2.0. The new version renders the half‐dozen unofficial “improvement” attemps damn near obsolete. Logical groupings for images, Scriptaculous effects, and even‐more‐unobtrusive markup. Sexy.