Push Button Paradise

Stupid JavaScript tricks 

Say you have an object o, and that object has a string property .s. Say you want to test whether the string is empty, but defensively so that if o doesn't happen to have .s, the code will fail gracefully. You'd do this, right?

if (o.s && o.s.length == 0) { .. do something .. }

Bzzzt. Wrong answer. The && operator, amazingly enough, returns the unconverted left-hand side operand if it is convertable to false (and an empty string does convert to false), so you effectively end up with if (""), which is effectively if (false).

So the defensive part works great as intended, but the offensive part fails miserably. The block of code you thought would be happily executing gets skipped entirely. -m

Open Letter to Yahoo! 

Dear Yahoo!,

Your decision to block 3rd party clients, including Trillian, from accessing the Instant Messenger network has seriously degraded the usefulness of your software. While I applaud your efforts to enact "preventative measures to protect our users from potential spammers", it's worth noting that I have never recieved a single spam instant message. On the other hand, several of my workmates around the globe are now considerably harder to reach.

If the situation does not improve soon, I will switch to a rival network, and encourage all my contacts to do the same.

Sincerely,

Micah Dubinko

Update: Within a few days, Trillian and other providers have partially restored service.
-m

The Business Value of Web Standards 

Article by Jeffry Veen -m

CRN on Cardiff Software 

This interview has some interesting quotes about my employer. Like "Microsoft isn't the only vendor in this space, and in many ways is playing catch-up to players such as Cardiff Software", and that's from the reporter, not the Cardiff guy. Some of the software they talk about is my baby, particularly the framework that makes it easy to support multiple XML formats. -m

Coming soon: final text 

I just got the final published text back from O'Reilly. As soon as I get a minute, I'll package it and put it in the usual place in its full GFDL glory. -m

Xopus Online for gcapaper 

Update: I did get the Xopus package. It's a zero-install *.hta that you just click and run. It is amazing what these guys are doing in the browser. Already I'm having a better experience than with Word, but I'll wait to say more until I've put it though some more trials (including table editing). -m

Word 2003 XML Disappointment 

I have a pre-made Word document that I've updated for XML 2003. For the conference, however, it needs to be in the gcapaper format. Since I just got a non-beta copy of Word 2003, I thought I'd try out the much-hyped XML editing features. A lovely lady from dmsi-world.com sent me a "smart document" pack for Word, which I'm sure is excellent, but I couldn't use it since it doesn't support tables or footnotes.

So I tried using XML editing with Word. First, it seemed like there should have been some easy way to coax Word into saving the existing *.doc file mapped to XML of my choosing. If that feature is there, it is very well hidden.

Next, I tried manually adding tags and cutting/pasting from the other document. On every save (which I do quite frequently, being paranoid and all) I would be warned about losing formatting information (duh) and have to click through to get an actual save. It wasn't clear how the 'style' mechanisms of Word fit in with the on-screen display of the edited XML, which is helpful to see how close heading titles are, how thick the paragraphs are, etc. I think the XML folks got into a fight with the old guard behind the Word UI and lost.

Eventually, to my horror, I looked at the generated XML file, which had become a 200K monster. Somehow, it had gotten switched into the WordML mode. In contrast to the annoying earlier warnings, there was no hint that something so bad was about to happen. Even after fumbling for the 'save as data only' checkbox, the resulting file was Unicode-invalid according to a conventional text editor (smart quotes strike again), missing large chunks of data, and other elements were out of place, making the document structure invalid.

No, thanks.

The Xopus guys have offered to let me try out a new beta of their in-browser editor, which alas is currently Windows-specific. In the meantime, I guess I'll fall back to Morphon, which is now free.

Auto mechanics don't necessarily like to hand-crank their car to start it every morning. Why are tools so bad that even XML mechanics are complaining? -m

Now with titles 

First post with the new design. CSS doeth rock. -m

Site Redesign coming soon 

There are some nice layouts on CSS Zen Garden. I looked through them all, picking one I liked. Turns out it was designed by my friend, Ben Nolan. Hmm, great minds think alike! Watch for a new look soon. -m

Orson Scott Card writes a great essay 

MP3s Are Not the Devil

OSC is an author, and thus more or less depends on copyright as his livelyhood. Yet, he notes "the people complaining about all the internet "thieves" are, by any reasonable measure, rapacious profiteers who have been parasitically sucking the blood out of copyrights on other people's work."

Yep. -m

Open source is irrelevant 

According to this Sun exec...

"As the industry's single largest contributor to the open-source movement, I don't say that lightly...The issue isn't open-source, folks--it's open standards." -m

XML Journal 

Hands-on XForms -m

In Osaka 

I'm at a W3C meeting all this week. Few updates here for awhile. -m

So, are HTTP headers supposed to carry equivalent weight as RDF assertions or not? -m

XForms Essentials is now shipping from Amazon.com. Follow the link for your own copy, either in paper or a free download. -m