Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Concordia University – Portland, Oregon

The new website design is up and running on the Concordia website. I launched it on Tuesday, spent the last two days finding the bugs and responding to the insane requests that come from launching a new design. (“What we have a website? This is great… but…”)

I’m happy with the design, but as with any project, I’m already finding things that I would change. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on your view, I won’t be around to make those changes. I start at Pacific on Monday. The next web lackey at Concordia will need to take up the banner. (No reference to SCT Banner was meant here.)

In a recent post to UWebD, the university web developers list, a diehard Microsoft user stated the following:

From around ’97 through ’01, Netscape was perennially behind IE, but it was rarely faulted until it finally bit the dust. Now IE is behind Netscape in certain respects–mostly on minor issues if you ask me–and all hell breaks lose. What has changed?

IE is not behind Netscape; it is behind the opensource products of Mozilla. There is a big difference. Netscape is a dying browser. AOL couldn’t decide what to do with it. Netscape hasn’t had an update in nearly two years. Should they decide to release another version of Netscape at this point, it would be a nearly futile effort. All of the opensource Mozilla-based browsers are far superior to Netscape for one major reason…extensibility. While you can technically extend Netscape, what’s the point—it still drops a “try AOL” icon on your desktop.

When you argue that the IE and Netscape are at it again, you miss the point. Netscape is dead. The future of the Web lies in the hands of whomever comes up with the best method for delivering the tools end users want or need. IE may continue to soak up the consumer market by being the default on the machines that a majority of people buy, but it will just as quickly loose the tech-savvy, power user market unless it becomes extensible and flexible—something that Microsoft is loath to do under its current business model.

It is easier for a GUI developer to extend Mozilla, or its quicker sibling Firefox, so developers will continue to build better tools for these browsers. It is easier for a Web developer to build a standards-compliant site that is also cross-browser compatible in a Mozilla derivative than to fool around with CSS hacks in IE only to scrap that CSS when developing for alternative browsers.

My current practices involve building for Firefox, then testing the code against IE. Most of the time, after giving a little ground on a few cool tricks that don’t add anything to the usability, everything works. This is not necessarily the case if you go the other way and start with IE. This applies regardless of your operating system.

I’m really tired of hearing references to “war” and “battle” when referecing the current market share of any given browser. The only thing going on is a group of users trying to design a piece of software that fulfills a need. Mozilla and other opensource movements—heck even Safari for that matter—will continue to gain marketshare so long as they fulfill a need. It isn’t a battle so much as an organic environment where subtle changes cause all the involved organisms to adapt or slowly disappear. It’s called evolution—there is little violence involved in this case…aside from the occassional flames.

Is there really anything else to say? I can just email my musings and they automatically publish.

AlterNet: Crimes Against Nature – If you have the stamina, the will, to make it through this comprehensive indictment of the current administration and its environmental policies you will be rewarded by a rich understanding of the depth to which our democracy has sunk–if that can be called a reward. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writing for the Natural Resources Defense Council breaks down in astounding detail the extent to which the Bush administration has neglected scientific data and common good in favor of a systematic attack on the environment. This attack can be summarized as a fascist attempt to pirate the wealth of a nation into the hands of those few demented souls that would support a political machine bent on deceiving the citizens of the United States and the world.

I am left with the soul-deep feeling that the removal of the current administration must occur in next year’s elections, or we will be left with the biggest social/philosophical/environmental catastrophe in the history of mankind. If it sounds as if I’m overstating the matter, read this article and the corroborating evidence. We are truly at a markpost in history. We risk a great deal by sedating our conscience and allowing the de facto to become our existence. We risk a great deal by alienating the working class voter and driving them towards the overplayed simplicity of a larger righ wing movement towards a concentration of wealth that is eroding the middleclass wage in the United States.

We should not be afraid of terrorists or treason; we should be afraid of losing our democracy, our environment, our citizenry. We should do something about it. Vote.

The Weather Underground – The The Weather Underground, a documentary of the militant faction of the activist group Students for a Democratic Society, is making its rounds through art cinemas around the country. The current generation of college students simply have no idea how turbulent the Sixties were. As protests against the war in Iraq spanned across the world, the media mostly ignored the peaceful outcry against an unjust war, but what will happen if the war continues for years and US soldiers continue to die. Could violent protest, such as that of the Weathermen, resurface in our society?

The form of violent protest that was espoused by the Weathermen Underground would be considered a form of terrorism in the current popular culture, but would it still be considered terrorism after five years in bloody conflict overseas? The implications of full scale violent revolt on the streets like that of the 1960s are horrific, but if we continue our systematic repression of civil liberties at home and human rights abroad, we will likely return ourselves to a similarly violent boiling point. Is this really what we want? I would personally prefer a more gradual (though not too gradual) shift in the humanistic fabric of our society towards a more egalitarian socio-political system, but I know there are those that see revolution, violent and speedy change, as an alternative to the continued moral bankruptcy and public hypocrisy.

The film points out the duality of a movement that sought to rapidly create peace through violence. It does not glorify their actions, instead it highlights both the internal and external struggle of a band of young adults who desperately wanted to make a difference. The surface appearance of the world around us would suggest that many of their efforts appear to be in vain, but this would be overlooking the impact of the Sixties on our society. Whether through peaceful or violent means, the activism of the Sixties has helped buoy the causes of human rights, social activism, and global awareness.