Charl van Niekerk » Blog: February 2005

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Firefox S5 Structure Proposal

This photo was taken by adlaw. [License]

This is a cross-post from my SFX Blog [ Feed | Bloglines ].

Here is a draft of my proposal for the structure of the Firefox S5 presentation slideshow project.

The top-level list items represent the various interest groups, and the secondary-level list items represent the actual topics.

See lower down for explanations and more information about the various groups and topics.

End Users
1. Introduction (What is Firefox?)
2. Basic Screenshot(s)
3. Overview of Features
4. Usability
5. Privacy
6. Security
7. Tabbed Browsing
8. Popup Blocker
9. Live Bookmarks
10. Integrated Searching
11. Find-As-You-Type
12. Download Manager
13. Configurability
14. Themes
15. Extensions
16. Stats
17. Migrating from Internet Explorer
18. On the Web
International Audiences
1. International Websites & Groups
2. Application Translations & Other Localization
3. Translatability (where applicable)
IT Professionals
1. The Mozilla Foundation
2. Security (more detail)
3. Deployability
4. Migration (large scale)
Web Developers
1. JavaScript Debugger
2. DOM Inspector
3. Web Developer Toolbar
4. Web Standards Support
5. Unicode Support
6. Bidirectional Text (where applicable)

The End Users section can be used as a base, and then the other sections can be combined with that to form a presentation.

Stats can be used to tell people about the amount of Firefox downloads, and about recent market share gains. Stuff like Asa's download graphs can also be included for this purpose (graphs usually look impressive).

On the Web can contain the URIs of sites like getfirefox.com, which can also be changed to the local equivalent for internationalization purposes.

Internationalization: In the online world where English is mostly dominant, this should impress many individuals from non-English-speaking backgrounds. Proven to be very effective in South Africa.

In The Mozilla Foundation, we wish to tell the IT Professionals a bit more about Mozilla's background. This is for building brand trust.

Deployability can cover stuff like Automated deployment of Firefox with extensions, themes, and pre-configuration.

This is only a draft; feedback is extremely welcome.

Expect updates to this post until we get it right. :-)

Specifying the language of content

If you enjoyed this article then eat your heart out!

Firefox in Afrikaans

As announced at Translate.org.za, the Afrikaans (af_ZA) localization of Firefox has now nicely been packaged into an installation file and is up for download:

Mozilla Firefox should be available in Afrikaans shortly. We are currently finalising the QA of these build which will be released with Firefox 1.0.1. Download a test build and help us iron out any last minute problems:

Linux

Mac

Windows

If you are interested, we want your feedback! :-)

If you wish, you can just comment your feedback on this post and I'll gladly pass it on.

Firefox S5

Finally, a project has been started to create a slide show presentation for Firefox: Firefox S5.

I'm in the process of creating a proposition for the outline of the structure of the presentation, with the various topics categorized under the different possible audiences.

I'm also working on a few designs, and of course I'll eventually be translating the entire thing into Afrikaans too. Excellent stuff going on. If you have a bit of extra time, or you also did a Firefox presentation in the past, please lend a hand if possible.

If you're interested in this project, watch both Lachlan's SFX blog and my own SFX blog for updates.

Additional Weblogs

I'm finally going to open two additional blogs: one dedicated to web standards and one dedicated to open source. The reason I want to do this is because I want to make this blog more of a personal blog; I want to start posting more mischellaneous stuff here like things I like and dislike, which may or may not be related to computers.

Since I realise that not everybody will be interested in these posts, I'm going to be posting my standards-related stuff to my web standards blog and my open source-related stuff to my open source blog. I know that splitting up a blog like this isn't really always the best thing to do, and to a large extent I dislike it, but I do feel that it needs to be done.

Update will follow.

The Big Red Fez

I recently read The Big Red Fez by Seth Godin [Blog].

I would say this is a must-read for any serious web designer/developer. The book outlines many of the common mistakes people make when building commercial websites. The author is not a very technical person; he's a marketer, which is actually the right kind of person to write a usability/online marketing book like this.

However, that also means that he tends to over-simplify certain technical aspects. The book is also a bit American-centric, which is quite a pity. Yet, I could recommend it to anyone, and it definitely deserves to be on my Favorite Books list. It's just plain simple good old fun reading. :-D

Thunderbird Marketing

Mozilla Thunderbird has finally gotten a proper review on go_open in Episode 10 that aired on 2004-02-05. Mark Shuttleworth himself did the inset. I just hope they'll give Firefox such a good proper review soon.

They mostly went on about the junk mail filtering, which is apparently state-of-the-art heuristic programming in Thunderbird.

Everybody is always giving so much attention to Firefox (which is very good), but Thunderbird often feels to me like it's being neglected. It's such excellent software, and is such an excellent compliment to Firefox, that I really feel we must give it much more attention and include it when we're advertising Firefox.

As previously reported, I already did a presentation (slideshow will be released soon) about Firefox at the GROSS User Group on the 2004-02-01 meeting. I wanted to do that together with Thunderbird (as was advertised), but found that the Firefox presentation grew too large and took too much time that we wouldn't be able to fit in Thunderbird according to time constraints. However, I'm planning on doing Thunderbird on one of the meetings in the nearby future.

Now I'm not saying at all that we should stop marketing Firefox - we should really get going, especially now with the upcoming IE 7. But I think we should give just as much attention to Thunderbird. Together, Firefox and Thunderbird make an excellent combination, and once users love the one they'll most likely love the other too. In other words, they're stronger when put together.

An Update to Internet Explorer: Good or Bad?

I was planning on writing this article for months now, but never got around to it. But with all of the stuff going on at the moment regarding IE 7, I might as well make the post now.

Ok, so let's get right down to the question: will an update to IE be a positive or a negative thing for global web standards usage?

It all comes down to whether IE 7 will have much better standards support or not. If it will, then this might be the best thing that hit the standards community in a long time (good standards support in a browser that will be shipped with millions of computers world-wide). If it won't, then this might actually be extremely bad for all of us.

One thing we can pretty much rely on is the fact that IE will get some major UI improvements. Welcome to the world of popup blocking, tabbed browsing, find-as-you-type, improved integrated searching (although I think they'll just try to force their own search engine down on us instead of giving us choice like Firefox).

This is bad. Very bad. Why? Because most end users choose Firefox not for being standards compliant, but because of the improved UI. And Microsoft knows it. However, when the end users download Firefox for the UI, they also inevitably get a browser with superior support for standards along with that.

When Microsoft updates its browser with an improved UI, it will automatically give users less reason to switch to Firefox. If IE doesn't get better standards support, it will mean that less people might be using a browser with good standards support at the end of the day, setting us a step backwards.

So actually, an update to IE will most likely harm web standards more than anything, unless they offer better support for standards, which is extremely doubtful IMHO (history speaks for itself; no need to be a pessimist).

The 'lang' Attribute

Since we're focusing on accessibility now (and rightfully so) I thought I would kick off with an issue that has long bothered me: multilingual text.

I find that one of the most practical, yet heavily underused attributes is the lang attribute (and by that I also include xml:lang obviously). Yes, many people like me have been using it for years now, but far too few IMHO. There has been far too little said about this issue in recent years, and I feel it's about time we should be starting to make people aware of this, why we need it and how to use it properly.

Marking up languages and using those attributes don't only apply to the root element and specifying the base language of a document (although that is of course also very important, especially for search engines). Marking up languages specifically and thoroughly is very important for speech-enabled UAs to pronounce the text correctly.

For example, let's say I want to throw a bit of common French: Au Revoir! Let's say an aural UA reads this out to a person with limited visibility. Just imagine if that French was pronounced as English! That wouldn't sound correct at all, would it? Even people (like me) with very limited skills in French would think it sounds rather weird! That's why it needs to be marked up appropriately as fr so that it can be pronounced correctly by a UA with a French engine (most should have one on a default install - French is a major western language).

Ideally speaking, you should mark up absolutely every single piece of text as the language it's written in accurately. This sounds pretty straight-forward, and usually it is, but sometimes it can also become quite tricky.

Some languages, like Dutch for example, have certain words that are taken from English and then adjusted somewhat to become Dutch. For example, the word downloaden (which means "download", naturally). Semantically, this is sort-of adjusted and adopted from English to Dutch, thereby making it Dutch. In other words, if the rest of the document is in Dutch you shouldn't really have to bother marking this up as another language.

When this word is pronounced by a computer, it will probably be pronounced incorrectly, because I strongly doubt that the "w" would be pronounced by it as it is normally pronounced in Dutch. Some people will therefore be tempted to mark it up as English. However, this is still incorrect from a semantic point of view. Downloaden shouldn't be pronounced in an English voice, but rather in a typical Dutch voice, otherwise it would sound completely unnatural in a Dutch piece of text.

Most languages on earth will have at least some words (some languages more than others) that are pronounced a bit funny. Therefore, it's the job of the creators of the relevant aural engine to cater for the various needs of their respective language. We, as web developers, can only aid them so far.

One of the facts that people often ignore (or want to ignore) is that proper nouns ("names of places or things" for those that don't speak geek) should also be marked up according to language.

For example, my name (pronounced in a typical English fashion) might not sound funny (well, probably it does, but they're expecting it to sound funny) to an American that doesn't know anything about South African names in the first place. However, for the average South African, to listen to my name being pronounced in English would sound totally ridiculous and often incomprehensible to them. They would expect it to be pronounced as in Afrikaans.

Therefore, you would like to have the average South African using an aural UA that might have an Afrikaans engine installed hear my name pronounced as it should be. Every time you mention my name or this weblog's title, you should preferably mark it up in the applicable language if possible. For example:

Charl van Niekerk (for HTML)
Charl van Niekerk (for XHTML)
<cite lang="af">Charl van Niekerk</cite> (for direct citations)
<cite>Charl van Niekerk's Weblog</cite> (for citations from this weblog)

Note that I'm not listing every possible scenario and combination since that would just be a waste of time. You're not a total idiot, are you? ;-)

Marking up languages for names is indeed often very difficult. For example, when you want to mark up the language of the name of the author of a post or a comment. This will essentially mean that you need an extra textbox on your comment form to allow your users to type their name's language code.

However, sometimes you get people with their full name containing more than one language. For example, take a Russian woman marrying a Greek man. That woman will then have a Russian first name and a Greek surname. This essentially means that you'll have to start allowing span elements with lang/xml:lang attributes into the name field. This could get a little tricky, especially if you need to insert that name into the value of an attribute (for example, the title attribute of a rel element). Therefore, you'll just have to strip the markup in those.

Anyway, there are workarounds for everything, and we'll just have to live with the limitations. For example, you're out of luck in attributes and also in poorly-designed elements like the title element which doesn't really allow you to mark up anything properly. For example, no span elements are allowed, which means you'll have to mark the entire title up in one element. This is troublesome for titles as on this weblog, which I would have liked to mark up like this:

<title><span lang="af">Charl van Niekerk</span>'s Weblog: Some Post Title</title>

Very stupid not to be able to do this IMHO! But luckily, this will all change with XHTML 2.0 (thanks, Lachlan) since apparently in the current working draft at time of writing, span elements are allowed into the title element!

Yeah, this indeed goes to a whole new level of markup purism and software requirements... Who ever said life is going to be simple? :-)

Backwards Compatiblity is NOT the Key

Clarification: I'm not at all saying that backwards compatibility is evil; it's extremely cool! I'm only trying to say that it shouldn't get into the way of progress (therefore, it's not always the key, but that doesn't say it's not anything). Remember: If you're sending XHTML as text/html, don't be suprised if your document is rendered a bit differently when sent under an XML MIME type. You asked for it. If you're not up to the XHTML challenge, back off and stick to HTML. We'll all live longer if you do. That's probably the best anyway if you care about being compliant with IE. :-)

Here is a quote from a recent post on Hixie's Natural Log:

Allow me to a quote paragraph from an e-mail from an average Web developer:

Web developers are going to hate W3C for this, and it's going to make the transition to an xml based internet more difficult. The arguments for such a radical new approach better be good or the new approach will help undermine the authority of the W3C.

Can you guess what he was talking about?

He was in fact asking why the little hack that CSS has for HTML backgrounds, namely that a background on a body element will propagate up to the canvas, has been removed for XHTML, so that in XHTML you have to set the background on the html element instead.

Imagine the kind of reaction authors like this will have when faced with XHTML2, XForms, or RDF...

Time for a good rant...

<rant>

This must be the biggest load of crap I have heard in a while (and that says a lot). How one little change is going to cause everybody to hate the W3C, I honestly have no clue. If it all was that fragile, the W3C could never have existed in the first place.

I often style the root element in HTML too, simply because it cuts down on the amount of div elements on a page. However, in HTML you often encounter problems when trying to apply backgrounds and stuff, but not in XHTML at all!

Why is this new added flexibility in XHTML so bad then? They're just fixing past mistakes IMHO, and making it all fit in nicely with XML.

Why do some people seem to constantly fear change? What point is there to life if it isn't progression? I would indeed say that the change mentioned is progression. Why don't we just go back to HTML 3.2? Instead of fearing, we should rather go on and embrace positive change, learn about it and teach others, and go on with our lives. To even spend time wining over this whole thing of this-and-this isn't backwards compatible and that-and-that isn't backwards compatible, we should rather focus on informing people about the changes and tell them why they make things better.

Yes, some people will never let go of their old habits and will have trouble adjusting to new technologies. You always get some people that don't enjoy learning new things, while the rest of us do. I'm just sorry for these people. I'm not going to stand still and watch progression being slowed down dramatically by these (IMO incompetent) individuals. I'm full out for technologies like RDF, XForms and I just can't wait for XHTML 2.0! Yes, let's aim for the stars, not for the same old gutters we've been in all of these years!!!

</rant>

Thanks for letting me vent a bit, now I feel a lot better. :-)

I'm Back

For those of you who have been wondering where I've disappeared to, I spent a week at home with a nasty flu. However, I'm back and ready to start irritating everyone again with my nonsense. Now, how to get through that blogroll...

MSN Search

As you must have heard already, the new MSN Search has been released. Much of the blogosphere is already filled with posts about it, but I haven't really read any thorough reviews yet. So, here goes:

Visual Appeal

No doubt, it's minimalistic yet pretty. Fine gradients combined with some avid colours creates a peaceful, yet modern and elegant design. Google has gotten far with its minimalism, but I think they should really look into making their site a little more colourful and visually pleasing.

Usability

The usability is comparable with Google as far as I'm concerned. The only issue I have is that once you open the drop-down list on the right of the search button, it refuses to close if you click somewhere else on the document. This "problem" is observed both from Firefox 1.0 and Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 2000.

Features

On the search drop-down list, you have the following nine choices as observed on search.msn.com through Firefox:

Web
News
Images
Look up word
Encarta
Stock Quotes
Find Movies
Shopping
Music

Google covers a few of the most important items, but having a built-in dictionary and encyclopedia along with being able to check your stock and search for movies and music is definitely a big bonus.

Internationalization

Well, to be quite frank, at the moment it sucks from my viewpoint. First of all, it's not in Afrikaans like Google. Secondly, in Internet Explorer, when I try to go to search.msn.com I get redirected to search.msn.co.za, the South African equivalent. And that site sucks bigtime! It only has four search choices on the drop-down instead of nine:

Web
News
Images
Look up word

Why can't a South African search Encarta? And because you keep being redirected, it doesn't seem like I can use search.msn.com at all through Internet Explorer. Luckily, it doesn't redirect me when I'm using Firefox, or otherwise I would have given a report that would appear like nonsence to a person from overseas!

The fact that I'm not being redirected definitely seems like a bug, because I get redirected from google.com to google.co.za automatically every time in Firefox. Oh my goodness, I hope I'm not missing anything on that side! Anyway, that's the bug in MSN Search's system, but this is one bug I'm glad about. I certainly hope they don't fix it until after they've fixed the South African search.

Weird to see that Microsoft is boobytrapping their South African Internet Explorer users, though! If that won't give you enough reason to use Firefox, then nothing will. :-)

However, something funny is that on both search.msn.co.za and search.msn.com through both Firefox and Internet Explorer, you get a checkbox to search only within South Africa.

Markup

Ah, you were waiting for this, weren't you?

MSN Search uses XHTML 1.0 Strict. Only one validation error was returned on the homepage, not being a structural error. On one result page I pulled, two validation errors returned were returned. The first is the same as the one on the home page, and the second one seems to be at a glance a structural mistake for XHTML, but not for XML. Therefore, the document would most likely still have parsed correctly if it was sent through a compliant XML parser, and the error also doesn't look like it would have caused incorrect rendering in a highly compliant UA, because it's a hidden input element not being wrapped in a block-level element.

Just to clarify what I'm trying to say above, by a structural mistake in XML I mean a structural mistake in the markup. By a structural mistake in XHTML, I'm referring to the document structure, that stuff you would be accessing through the DOM.

This is an issue that could easily have been avoided by using a div, but it doesn't really seem to be that serious.

I could go and validate the entire site, but that would be unnecessary for my purposes. I quickly looked at some of the other pages, containing many more serious markup issues. But take a look for yourself if you like.

The XHTML is sent as text/html, even to compliant UAs. They should rather have used HTML in my opinion for their purposes.

As a closing statement, I would say that the source code is terribly unclean to look at directly, since it rarely contains line breaks. But of course, this doesn't matter (or could even be seen as a positive point by some) unless you're investigating as I am.

Since the markup is so difficult to look at, it's a bit difficult for me to do a proper, good semantics/accessibility checkup. But from what I've seen, it looks fair.

Search Results

This is the most important part, and yet it's the same as the internationalization: It sucks bigtime!

Let's say I search for my own name in Google and compare that to MSN.

What would you expect to be on the first page of results? My homepage, this weblog, my Flickr account, etc as on Google? Not on MSN!

Ok, so that's only one query. Yet, it doesn't look good.

ASP.NET?

From results.aspx, I conclude that they must have been using some version of ASP.NET to build that site, unless they're faking it. Having a file extension like .aspx in any URI is, obviously, very ugly. But apart from that, taking the relatively good state of their markup into consideration they must either have refrained from using their own "supertechnology", the dreaded .NET web forms, or they must have used a different version of it that isn't publicly released yet. The latter is less likely than the first, but if the latter is the case we might be in for a treat! However, if the first is the case, then even Microsoft is ditching their own web forms.

Conclusion

With MSN Search, Microsoft has gained much ground on Google when it comes to standards and visual appeal. However, it will take long before their search algorithms are strong enough to truely be a competitor. The only way it's going to become popular is if Microsoft is going to try to "force it down" on users in their next version of Windows, Longhorn (or whatever it will be called) IMHO. But for now, my homepage stays the Firefox Start Page with the Google search form, thank you very much!

GROSS User Group Meeting 2005-02-01

Starting off with a bang in 2005!

All-in-all it was a very interesting evening. I did a presentation on Firefox, and we got some interesting feedback from the people attending.

I asked my mom to take a photo of me while I was busy presenting Firefox; however, she forgot (as is to be expected of her). It's a bit of a pity, since that could have made an interesting photo for "spreading Firefox" on SFX. (I don't know about any South Africans having uploaded photos for presenting Firefox yet, but I could be wrong.)

Anyway, I took all the photos (meaning that I'm not on any of them btw).

~~I will upload the actual slideshow I used during the Firefox presentation a bit later on. I'll update this post.~~ I can't find a good place to upload the slideshow I used. If you want it, mail/IM me and I'll send it to you. It's 95 slides in length, weighs in at about 2.68 MB, and it's in Powerpoint 2003 format.

2005 South African Blog Awards

The 2005 South African Blog Awards have just started [via]. I would really like to go for Best SA Tech Blog.

They also have a very nice-looking logo thanks to Martin, which has a very nice-looking website. It's good to see this kind of design talent in South Africa. I, myself, am very fond of the "smooth and perfectionistic" approach to design. Keep it up!!!

Oh yes, and as it was soon established, non-South Africans ~~are~~ will be also welcome to vote!