12 Nothing Works

Things will never simply “just work”, that’s an unrealistic Utopian ideal which is inherently flawed. It’s like saying “I don’t make mistakes!” but of course you’ve already made the first mistake.

I see three stumbling blocks to any system. The first being ‘the human’ that creates the system, ‘the human’ that implements the system and ‘the human’ that uses the system.

As a web developer I’ve come to the understanding, the opposite is true “nothing just works”. You always need to ‘want’, to want to make it work.

posted at 02:13 am on April 5, 2006 by Ricky Cox

13 Nothing works...not even the authors website

This is a pretty lofty manifesto from someone who’s own website doesn’t even “just work”. He have links to validators (neither HTML or CSS validate as linked), and his own contact form redirects to a 404 page.

It’s just sad really.

posted at 12:40 pm on April 5, 2006 by Nick B

15 Convenience uber ales

We will have to accept that privacy as we have heretofore understood it may be a thing of the past: that people will be presented with a bargain where access to the most intimate details of their lives is traded away in return for increased convenience, and that many will accept.

People definately will (and do) sacrifice a lot more that their privace for their “increased convenience”. I find convenience along with security may be the main drives of our generation, but also core culprits for intellectual and creative sterility.

Yes, google may increase our IQ by whathaveyou, but what happens to our inquisitional capabilities?

If you ask a child a question and never wait for it to think for itself, but immediately feed him the correct answer, you effectively impair its creative abilities.

posted at 03:50 am on April 6, 2006 by Timo T.

16 Splendid - another web buzzword!

I just read this article.
Well written, but sadly devoid of anything actually interesting.

Do we really need another buzz word for the web 60.0 bandwagon to jump on. No satisfied with Tag clouds, Podcasting, Blogging…the list goes on and on…we have to come up with one that now sums up that in the future, more devices will be connected to each other, and it has to be an extremely funny play on words (ahem) – EVERYWARE!

I don’t see the point of this article on List Apart. I see the reason an article like this may exist – if someone had been commissioned to write it for a company that had a specific use for it, and as that, it would be a fine piece of work. However, do any of the users of this website (not magazine, sorry) have to be told that in the future, more devices will talk to each other?

Do we need another buzz word?

I tell you what, im going to go with Mr Greenfields principle as I guess I generally agree with it (as its just common sense) – but im going to call it – Conversaging!
In “conversation� we are all talking together, and everything is “converging� in a number of “years� (age) so “conversaging� is the future. How clever I am.
Its not as good as everyware, but im clearly not as witty.

Oh well

posted at 11:41 am on April 6, 2006 by Stuart Robinson

17 Validation & Quality Control

Adam,

First of all, yes your page validates… now. At the time I posted my previous comment, you had an EM tag that was not closed, thus causing any markup after that point to be considered invalid. This markup error caused the CSS validator to skip validating the CSS all together. You obviously know this as the error has since been corrected. That was the main point behind my previous comment.

To address your second concern about the message being more important than the method in which it’s delivered, I agree. You seem to have forgotten a rather important point though. On this website, with this audience, the method is every bit as important as the message. Someone preaching about technology to this community should understand that proper markup is important not only for all the commonly understood reasons, but to this community in particular it lends you one very important asset…credibility. Had this message been coming from “an ecologist, or a civil engineer� then yes, I would be more tolerant of this kind of issue. Given the topic of your manifesto however…

When ALA relaunched with this new design, there was an issue that was brought to ALA’s attention regarding validation of the new CSS. The issue turned out to be an issue with the validator, and not the CSS. ALA (Eric Meyer) even posted an article detailing what the problem was, and why it occurred. The point here is that you need to know your audience. Frequent readers of this website will be much less inclined to accept information (particularly on this topic) from a source that lacks this most basic credibility.

Please do try not to miss the forest for the trees – for the veins on the underside of a single leaf, actually. The kind of intolerant, narrowly reductive stance your comment epitomizes (to say nothing of its dismissive rudeness) will do us no good at all if we truly wish to build technology that serves ordinary people. And I do assume that is what we all want.

I take particular issue with that statement. Your condescending tone aside; In order to realize your fantasy of “technology that serves ordinary people� and technology that “just works�, there must be a common, well-understood foundation on which that technology can grow. In the case of the web (or any technology that interchanges raw data) that foundation is valid markup.

I also noticed that my concerns about your contact form have yet to be addressed. If indeed it is working properly (and you got the message I attempted to send yesterday before turning to the ALA forum), you really should consider some sort of confirmation page so that people using this form know that their information was actually received. I seriously doubt this is the case however as I get redirected to http://v-2.org/archive.php?found=false whenever I submit. That’s not so great for “serving ordinary people�. Most would not be nearly as patient as I have been.

Additionally, try clicking on your name (the link to your website) in any of your defensive follow-ups in this forum. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that http://http//www.v-2.org is not a valid URL. Mistyping (or not double checking) the URL for your own website doesn’t exactly instill a high level of confidence in your credibility as proponent of technology.

I also agree with what many of my fellow readers have already said….This article doesn’t belong on ALA.

posted at 02:27 pm on April 6, 2006 by Nick B

20 Just fix your form...

The goal of my original post was to bring some (minor) issues with your website to light to both ALA readers and yourself. You apparently either can not take, or believe you are above this type of criticism, and resorted to a personal attack. My post did not attack you personally, or even take issue with your academic work

As to whether this piece belongs on ALA, maybe you should take that up with the editors, as it was an invited submission.

I believe the repsonses here speak for themselves.

For the record, Nick, I didn’t enter the improperly-formatted URL […] I’m sure, if you mail them politely, they’ll correct it to remove the errant “http:â€?.

Fair enough.

Nick, you lost the right to “take exception� to my tone – or anyone’s – the moment you commented the way you did. You may now wish that you had couched your original commentary in a more collegial tone, but unfortunately you did not. You were obnoxious, and you got all the response you deserved.

I stand by my original post. I believe you may have mis-interpreted my tone. This is after all the website for “people who make websites”, and these types of things are constantly being brought up.

I would have been more than happy to bring these issues to your attention in a less public forum. I did in fact attempt to contact you via the contact form on your site 3 separate times, and with 3 different browsers. Had you (or your developer) taken the time to test your form, I wouldn’t have had to mention it here.

Should any of us “people who make websites” launch a form like this that doesn’t work properly (if at all), we would surely hear about it from both our clients and superiors. It’s also unlikely that we’d get a whole lot of sympathy from either. A person in your position of pseudo-authority really should be more careful. Please fix your contact form.

Had you not issued your rebuttal in such a condescending tone, I would not have felt the need to defend my position.

I’ll tell you this, though, and it’s a little sad: when I mentioned that this was going to appear here at a gathering of friends, they all [em]without exception[/em] wrinkled their noses and asked why. They recommended against it, using language (and this is close to verbatim) like “why would you want your work to be pissed on by a bunch of teenage standards Nazis?�

Name calling and mud-flinging. That kind of remark doesn’t belong here (even if it is a quote). Be careful Adam… your character is starting to show.

I’ll say it again… Know your audience. If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. In the scientific community, pieces such as yours are subject to relentless scrutiny. I see no reason your work should be an exception.

I had hoped that, by having this appear here, the “people who make Web sites� who read ALA would consider the challenges (not to mention the professional opportunities) that await us in the post-PC milieu, and here we are having a conversation as to what happens when we click on my name.

I believe most of us do. It’s our job.

For the record, I could care less what happenes when I click your name.

posted at 04:23 pm on April 6, 2006 by Nick B

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