CSS Zen Garden is ten years old. If you started coding recently you may not have heard about the site, but Zen Garden was a defining moment in web history.

Zen’s developer, Dave Shea, had a simple objective: to illustrate why CSS should be taken seriously and inspire designers. The concept provided a static HTML page and allowed developers to apply and submit their own styles. The only restrictions were that the CSS should validate and the resulting page worked in IE5+ and Mozilla (Firefox’s predecessor).

The number of submissions increased exponentially and there was a sudden realization that CSS could do more than just apply color to H1 titles. To put it into historical context, by 2003 CSS techniques had been viable for several years but tables and spacer GIFs remained the predominant page layout methods. Tables worked in all browsers and were well understood.

Zen Garden did for CSS what Jesse James Garrett’s A New Approach to Web Applications did for Ajax a couple of years later. The technologies already existed, but it required a spark to ignite developer passion and revolutionize its application.

Zen Garden 2013

Zen Garden achieved its goal — who isn’t using CSS layouts now? To celebrate an amazing ten years, Dave Shea has re-released Zen Garden, put the code on GitHub and started work on a new HTML5 version. A lot has happened in the past decade, so the modern requirements permit:

• CSS3 transitions, transformations, animations, shadows, gradients and effects. Remember to prefix properties where necessary but Webkit-only designs will be “discarded with prejudice”!
• Responsive Web Designs
• Web fonts
• Support for IE9+, recent versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari, and iOS/Android

New designs can be submitted now. Please send us the URLs of your groundbreaking examples or designs you like.

MySQL — the world’s most-used relational database — will be 18 next month. The first version was developed by Michael Widenius and David Axmark and released by MySQL AB on May 23, 1995. The open source product rapidly gained traction alongside PHP to become an integral part of the LAMP stack.

Sun Microsystems obtained MySQL for $1 billion in January 2008. 15 months later, Oracle acquired Sun for $7.4 billion and became the owner of Java, VirtualBox, OpenOffice and MySQL. The takeover caused significant controversy since the world’s biggest commercial database provider now controlled a major open source competitor.

Michael Widenius was particularly critical and released his own MySQL fork under the GNU General Public License from his own company, Monty Program AB. MariaDB is designed to maintain compatibility and be a drop-in replacement for MySQL.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Monty Program AB has signed a merger agreement with SkySQL. SkySQL was formed by former MySQL executives — including David Axmark — when Oracle acquired the database from Sun. The MySQL band are back together!

The new company will continue to use the SkySQL name to support and develop MariaDB. Michael Widenius stated:

The MySQL database is named after my first daughter, My. The MariaDB database is named after my second daughter, Maria. With this merger and my own role in the MariaDB Foundation, I’m ensuring that the MariaDB project will remain ‘open source forever’, while knowing that enterprise and community users of both the MySQL and MariaDB databases will benefit from best-in-breed products, services and support provided by SkySQL. And who doesn’t want the best for their children?

MySQL has a stronger rival. It’s reassuring news especially for those with any concerns regarding Oracle’s plans for the open source database.

See also:

• SkySQL Merges With MariaDB Developers To Create ‘Next Generation Open Source’ Database Company
• MariaDB.org
• SkySQL.com
• MariaDB vs MySQL — compatibility

Do you use the hgroup element in your mark-up? It’s probably best not to — the tag is being dropped from the HTML5 specification.

We normally think of HTML5 specifications receiving additional features, such as the new <main> element. However, elements can be removed if they offer no compelling benefits.

hgroup represented the heading of a section and normally contained two or more h1 to h6 child elements, e.g.

<hgroup>
<h1>My Main Heading</h1>
<h2>A sub-heading</h2>
</hgroup>

Did you ever use it? I can recall one occasion and, even then, it was primarily for use as a CSS hook and could have easily been a div or section. The request to remove it came from Steve Faulkner:

• hgroup does not convey clearly that a particular heading is a sub-heading
• heading semantics are still exposed regardless of an outer hgroup
• the specification stated all hgroup headings must be concatenated for accessibility, i.e. the title would become “My Main Heading A sub-heading”
• hgroup did not have at least two reasonably complete interoperable implementations, i.e. it was a div by another name
• few sites implement the hgroup element

No reasonable use-cases were forthcoming so hgroup will ultimately disappear from the HTML5 specification. There is a possibility it will morph into another element offering better semantics, but those debates are yet to occur.

No … I Use hgroup On Every Page!

The removal of hgroup will make little difference to your daily coding efforts. Most browsers already support it and, even in a new applications, hgroup would be treated the same as any unknown tag. That said, it’s probably best to avoid using hgroup in new projects since HTML validators will eventually report an error.

In a surprise statement released last week Google announced that Chrome and Chromium are to adopt a new rendering engine named ‘Blink’. Blink is a fork of Webkit introduced because:

• Chrome uses a different multi-process architecture to other Webkit browsers
• It provides Google with further performance improvement opportunities.

Google stated:

Blink’s mission is to improve the open web through technical innovation and good citizenship.

We believe that having multiple rendering engines — similar to having multiple browsers — will spur innovation and over time improve the health of the entire open web ecosystem.

All very noble. But was Google’s decision politically motivated? Webkit is open source; there are no technical reasons why Google couldn’t implement improvements. However, Webkit is largely controlled by Apple — a competitor. At best, Safari would have the same technologies. At worst, Apple could block features which offered Google a competitive advantage (such as Dart).

Regardless of the reasons, Blink is good for the web.

Webkit has never been a single rendering engine so another fork will have little immediate impact. Over time, Blink will proceed along a different path unencumbered by Webkit stakeholders. The engine will be one of Google’s top priorities and should evolve rapidly.

Blink will appear in Chrome 28 and also be adopted by other browsers based on Chromium — including the new version of Opera and RockMelt. We may have lost Presto, but Blink goes some way to redress the balance. The web has four major rendering engines once more — even if two will be mostly identical for a few months.

Will There be a New Vendor Prefix?

No. Blink will continue to support some -webkit prefixes for legacy compatibility but all prefixes will eventually disappear. Experimental DOM, CSS and JavaScript features will be available without a prefix but the developer must enable those facilities with a single setting in about:flags.

I’m not wholly convinced it’s a major improvement. Unless other vendors embrace the policy, developers will have the same number of prefixes to manage and remember (or forget).

Other Downsides?

Apple has most to lose. Webkit’s development team has been cut by 50% and the engine has just lost almost 40% market share. The web is everything to Google but a distraction for Apple; Safari could fall behind other browsers.

Testing has also become a little more difficult for web developers. While you could never rely on Chrome-compatible code working in Safari, differences were rare. That’s no longer the case.

The situation was complicated further when Apple dropped Safari on Windows. Windows developers must either buy a Mac, hope other Webkit browsers are close (Dooble, QupZilla, SlimBoat) or rely on Apple providing test facilities like Microsoft did for OS X users.

Finally, while Blink is technically open source, it’s Google’s baby. Chrome’s dominance means Google can change Blink in ways that were not possible before. The company could be dictating web standards before we know it — especially if they enable non-prefixed features which operate differently in other browsers.

Despite the pitfalls, Blink seems an appropriate name — the web’s future just became a little brighter.

Unless you think otherwise?…

Version numbers may be meaningless but Firefox 20 marks a milestone for Mozilla’s flagship browser. The new release appeared on April 2 exactly six weeks after version 19. If you don’t have it, open Help > About Firefox or download the browser from getfirefox.com.

Firefox 20 has a surprising number of new features — let’s look at the best…

Developer Tool Updates

Firefox has received an incredible number of tools within the past few releases. The Developer menu has been reorganized to order them more effectively and a new Toggle Tools option provides quick access to the Web Console. The Console can also be viewed within its own panel as well as docked.

A new JavaScript Profiler had been promised for version 20 but the feature has been delayed for a later release.

New Download Manager

If I recall correctly, this is the first major update to the Download Manager since it appeared in Phoenix back in 2002. The dedicated panel has been replaced by a drop-down list accessed by a new toolbar icon which highlights the time remaining:

It’s a nice touch. Previous downloads are still logged in bookmarks and history panel.

getUserMedia Support

Firefox now provides the getUserMedia HTML5 API which has been available in Chrome and Opera for several months. With the user’s permission, you can capture audio and video from a microphone or camera. Opera’s Photo Booth provides an excellent demonstration of the technology.

canvas Blend Modes

When you draw on a canvas element any existing pixels are normally replaced. However, the new globalCompositeOperation property permits Photoshop-like overlay effects including multiply, screen, darken, lighten, color-dodge, color-burn and difference. Refer to this Mozilla article for more information.

Audio and Video playbackRate Support

Have you ever wanted to watch a tedious movie at double-speed? The playbackRate property permits just that (apologies for the inline code):

<video id="v" src="video.webm" controls autoplay></video>
<a href="#" onclick="document.getElementById("v").playbackRate=2;return false;">fast foward</a>

View a demonstration movie…

Improved Private Browsing

Private browsing prevents Firefox updating your history, caching pages, saving passwords and storing cookies.

While it’s been available for some time, clicking “Start Private Browsing” from the menu would close your current window and start a new session. From version 20, Firefox permits you to have any number of private and non-private windows open at a time.

Better Plugin Stability

Browser stability is largely irrelevant if your plugins cause chaos. Fortunately, the new version of Firefox detects hanging plugins and allows you to close them without restarting the browser. I doubt it will end plugin problems but it’s a step in the right direction.

Want More?

Firefox developers had a busy six weeks…

• CSS and JavaScript now load with a higher priority than images to improve response times.
• various ECMAScript 6 additions
• performance improvements
• a dozen security fixes.

I’m not sure how long Mozilla can keep up the pace of development, but other vendors should take note (seriously Google, could you only manage a spell checker in Chrome 26?!)

Recent research at the University of Scunthorpe in the UK has identified an issue which could compromise the security on which we depend for online shopping and banking. The department for Computer Research and Advanced Protocols has demonstrated IDentity Information Overlay Technology. The technique analyzes your activity rather than data packets to reveal passwords, visited sites and other sensitive personal information.

The project leader, Professor Juppe, explains:

Modern devices have a persistent Internet connection. Even if you’re not actively using a device, it’s fetching messages, checking for software updates or handling other processes which result in a steady stream of data transmission. Binary is converted to electronic signals which flow through the network.

Binary data is usually represented as clean voltage spikes. In reality, the signal is affected by electromagnetic interference which causes imperceptibly small fluctuations named “micropulses”. While they are rarely enough to cause data loss, micropulses pass through wired and wireless communication layers. They can even cause minuscule delays and bursts when translated through a fiber-optic bridge.

The biggest cause of micropulses is the user; the human body acts as a transmitter when using an input device such as a keyboard. In essence, your connected data flow becomes a carrier wave for micropulse information which can be analyzed. It does not matter whether your connection uses HTTP or HTTPS — the actual data can be ignored but your activities are revealed.

The technology is being refined and the rate of successful micropulse analysis increases exponentially each year. The technique works better if you are physically close to the target — such as on the same wifi connection. However, the research team has successfully attempted analysis over hundreds of miles and, as micropulse detection improves, geographical location is unlikely to remain a limiting factor.

Micropulse Protection

Micropulse analysis technology is experimental but the threat is real. Fortunately, there are a number of low-tech solutions which significantly reduce the risk of identity infringement.

1. Use an on-screen keyboard
Touch screen and on-screen keyboards are not completely immune, but micropulse analysis is made far more difficult. Professor Juppe suggests switching between on-screen and real keyboards when entering sensitive information such as passwords.

2. Shield your input devices
Wrap aluminum foil around devices such as keyboards — the shiny side should face inward to reflect the pulses. If you’re using a laptop, use a small piece of foil around the Ethernet cable or, on wifi, regularly move the device to modify micropulses and make them more difficult to analyze.

3. Reduce electromagnetic interference
Device shielding may not be enough since your body conducts micropulse information. The effect can be reduced by wearing gloves and rubber boots while working.

Have any of your accounts been compromised even though you were careful to safeguard passwords? Have you been approached by someone who knew details of your online activities or services? Could micropulses be to blame?

A pre-release build of Windows Blue, Microsoft’s successor to Windows 8, was leaked a few days ago. It may have been intentional or unintentional but the OS was installed, dissected and reported across the web.

The new OS contained an early version of Internet Explorer 11. A very early version. Probably nearer IE10.01. There’s little new technology to report, but one update caused a storm of controversy on SlashDot and Neowin.net: IE11′s user agent string appears to impersonate Firefox…

Mozilla/5.0 (IE 11.0; Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; .NET4.0E; .NET4.0C; rv:11.0) like Gecko

The ‘MSIE’ string has disappeared and a suspicious ‘like Gecko’ statement has appeared. Cue 1,000 conspiracy theories.

Historically, browser vendors and developers have been doing the user agent dance since the dawn of the web. The problem starts when you attempt to create a cross-browser compatible website:

1. A developer creates a website in browser X then tests it in browser Y.
2. Browser Y fails, so the developer writes browser Y detection routines and serves different code. Everyone is happy.
3. Browser Y is then updated — but the website now fails because it’s serving legacy code.
4. The vendor changes the user agent string: detection fails and the site works again. Everyone is happy and we loop back to step one.

Look at the start of IE11′s user agent string: Mozilla/5.0. The early versions of IE had to masquerade as Netscape because it was the dominant browser and many sites refused to return content to anything else. The situation continues today — IE, Chrome, Safari and Firefox all start with ‘Mozilla/5.0′…

IE10:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; Trident/6.0)

Chrome 25:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.22 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/25.0.1364.172 Safari/537.22

iPad Safari 6:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5355d Safari/8536.25

Firefox 19:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:19.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/19.0

You’ll also notice both Chrome and Safari use the same ‘like Gecko’ string as IE11. I don’t recall that bombshell hitting the headlines?

The biggest change in IE11 is the removal of ‘MSIE’. I suspect that has been done for one reason: to prevent sites serving invalid IE6/7/8 code to modern editions of the browser. Recent releases of IE’s Trident engine are closer to Gecko or WebKit than legacy editions of itself. By removing the ‘MSIE’ string, Microsoft is breaking detection code and making many sites work as they should.

The point is: none of this matters. If you’re browser sniffing, you are almost certainly doing something wrong! While it seems an obvious solution, browser sniffing is a fragile technique that introduces more maintenance headaches than it prevents. If you know someone who sniffs, please suggest they close their IDE, step away from their browser and embark on another career.

The past few days have not been kind to web developers. Google announced they were scrapping their popular RSS Reader application and that overshadowed news from Adobe that Browserlab was being closed with immediate effect.

Browserlab started as a free browser testing service in 2009. Testing web sites and applications is notoriously difficult owing to seemingly infinite combinations of device, OS, browser, plugins and configurations. Desktop software developers — you have it easy! You can normally concentrate on one or two operating systems. However, people expect web applications to work no matter what. It doesn’t matter whether they’re running IE10 on Windows 8, Safari 6 on Mac OSX, Chromium on Ubuntu, Firefox on Android, Lynx on a Commodore 64 or — even worse — IE6 on XP.

Browserlab was one of a number of online services available for web developers which helped spot the worst layout problems. Adobe disclosed their reason for closing the system:

The growth of the importance of mobile devices and tablets, the landscape has changed dramatically. Because of this shift, we have seen the usage of BrowserLab drop over the past year while at the same time our engineering team has been focusing on solving this new challenge with new solutions.

We’d like to thank all of our customers over the years for using and providing input for the Adobe BrowserLab Service.

I find the announcement slightly strange. Testing has become more difficult so you would have expected the number of BrowserLab users to increase? Admittedly, it was not as good as competitors and did not support mobile devices but it remained a viable service for the majority of us testing desktop-based browsers.

Fortunately, BrowserLab users have a couple of good alternatives (take note Google):

1. Sauce Labs — BrowserLab users receive up to 10 hours of free testing
2. BrowserStack — there are no specific offers for BrowserLab users, but head over to Microsoft’s modern.IE website to receive three months free service.

So goodbye BrowserLab. Let’s hope this is the last essential service to disappear this week…

If you’re one of the 50% of PC users with Windows 7, be prepared for an essential update coming your way. Internet Explorer 9 has been officially retired to make way for IE10. The new browser will be installed as part of the standard Windows Update unless you explicitly prevent it (please don’t!)

It’s an important milestone for web developers. While IE9 was a radical step up from IE8, it was missing features we take for granted in Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Opera: CSS3 gradients, text shadows, animations, transitions, column layouts, flexbox, ECMAScript strict mode, media query listeners, the file API, web workers, local storage, etc. IE10 plugs many of the HTML5 gaps.

There’s another vital feature in IE10: automated updates. While Microsoft are yet to use it, IE10 can receive smaller incremental tweaks over time. I’m not expecting a Chrome or Firefox-like six-week delivery schedule, but two or three times per year would be significantly better than the current 18-24 month delay.

IE9 is likely to die rapidly especially since system administrators will not experience the upgrade issues which dogged previous versions. It will remain the default browser on Vista but the OS currently holds 6% of the PC market and is dropping fast.

IE6 and IE7 are dead. They still roam zombie-like across certain sectors of the web but, for most of us, the days of IE-specific hacks and fixes are long gone.

The IE8 Problem

Which leaves us with IE8. The browser holds 10% of the market and is the only version available for Windows XP which is used by one quarter of PC users. Many have stated that IE8 is the next IE6 (including me), but I’ve recently revised my pessimistic opinion…

• It depends on the statistics you believe, but competition from Google has changed the market. Chrome can be installed on XP, is advertised throughout Google’s ecosystem and light years ahead of IE8.
• IE8 usage is dropping by 0.5% per month. If the trend continues, it will hold just 5-6% of the market by the end of 2013.
• IE8 may not support HTML5, CSS3, SVG or media queries but it has few of issues we had to deal with in IE6 and 7. Your site will be missing rounded corners and drop-shadows, but the HTML5 shim will fix the majority of layout problems. It may not be pretty, but your site should work.
• IE8 is two versions old. Version numbers rarely matter to developers but it’s an important psychological gap for your clients.

It would have been great had Microsoft released a version of IE10 for XP and Vista but it’s probably not worth the effort. IE8 will die a natural death regardless of Microsoft’s aging OS platforms.

But let’s look at the positives: IE10 does much to catch up with the competition. It’s taken too long to arrive but I hope it becomes the most dominant version of IE within a few short months.

Google has announced they will discontinue Google Reader on July 1, 2013. The company state that usage has declined and they want to focus on fewer products.

I’m stunned. I’ve been using the application daily for several years and even Google states it has a “devoted following”.

Google Reader was launched as a Labs project in 2005. It was a relative latecomer to the news aggregation party and entered a thriving desktop and web-based Really Simple Syndication (RSS) reader market. The free product killed off many competitors including Bloglines (although that was subsequently acquired and revived).

Its demise started in 2011 when Google substituted social features for +1 buttons and disbanded the development team. The product has been neglected in maintenance mode ever since, but it remained one of the best — and only — options for RSS users. Its success means there are relatively few alternatives; NewsBlur has been experiencing server overloads since the news was announced.

Several petitions to save Google Reader running have started at:

• Change.org — more than 50,000 signatures
• keepgooglereader.com — more than 25,000 signatures

The decision to scrap Wave never caused such criticism and at least Google open-sourced the codebase. That appears unlikely for Reader.

Is RSS Dead?

I last discussed the death of RSS in October 2010. The XML-based technology powers many cross-server communications. Search engines — including Google — analyze feeds to aid web and product indexing.

RSS’s role as a protocol-like technology seems assured, but Google Reader’s termination will almost certainly end its use user-subscription service. Admittedly, RSS was too complex for many and never achieved mainstream success; social networks quickly became a more popular way of spreading news.

But it’s a sad day. Let’s hope Google listens to the users — otherwise Reader will disappear forever.

Owing to my rapidly increasing age I’ve used many, many IDEs and text editors over the years. Visual Studio, Aptana, Eclipse, HomeSite, CoffeeCup, Bluefish, Komodo, Vim, Crimson, jEdit, TextPad, PSPad, ConTEXT, PHPEdit, ScITE — I’ve probably forgotten more than I remember. Most annoy me. They often miss features I want or add bloat I don’t need. My current editor of choice is Notepad++: it’s simple, lightweight and very configurable.

Historically, HTML editors have been fairly awful. Many IDEs forced you to create dumb projects, insisted on particular doctypes, or favored deprecated tags. JavaScript editing could be worse: the editor programmers didn’t understand the language so even basic features such as function lists could fail.

Fortunately, the situation has improved and NetBeans 7.3 has been released with full support for HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. The cross-platform IDE now includes an HTML project wizard which allows you to select popular boilerplate templates and JavaScript frameworks:

There’s a lightweight internal server, embedded WebKit browser, Chrome integration and responsive web design facilities:

CSS styles can be edited directly or changed within the Inspector-like rule editor:

The JavaScript editor has been rewritten to include better code completion, jQuery support and pattern recognition:

There’s also a new debugger which can analyze code running in the internal browser or Chrome. You can apply breakpoints on lines, when a DOM element changes, when events are raised and when Ajax requests are called. Very useful:

Finally, there’s a great browser log which displays exceptions, errors and warnings as they occur:

Don’t forget that NetBeans also provides first-class development facilities for PHP, Java and C/C++. If you’re into that sort of thing.

It’s great to see client side browser technologies finally receiving the tools they deserve. I’m going to give NetBeans another look … will you?

NetBeans is available for free from netbeans.org.

Opera’s WebKit announcement has divided developer opinion. Some are pleased there are fewer rendering engines to support (not that many developers actively tested Opera). Others state this is the beginning of the WebKit monoculture and IE6-like doom is upon us. The truth is somewhere in between but there are several reasons for concern.

1. WebKit != IE6, but…

WebKit is an open source rendering engine. It is not owned or controlled by a single organisation; anyone can use and modify the code. In comparison, IE (and its Trident engine) is owned by Microsoft and only available on Windows. Microsoft decision to abandon browser development could not occur in the WebKit world.

However, it’s important to remember that Apple and Google — two of the most powerful global IT companies — are in control of the most popular WebKit browsers. Apple is also responsible for handling WebKit developer agreements and either company can accept, reject or modify WebKit features to their commercial advantage. While you may be able to update the core engine, it won’t matter unless those changes eventually reach Chrome and Safari.

2. WebKit is not one engine

Some developers believe cross-browser compatibility issues will disappear if all vendors use the same engine. It would certainly make development easier, but it’s naive to think all problems would be eradicated. Test a reasonably complex design in Chrome and Safari today and you will encounter differences.

WebKit is forked and evolves along different paths. Vendors have different devices, deployment schedules and requirements. For example, Apple regularly add proprietary iOS-specific properties which may never reach the W3C or appear as recommendations.

3. WebKit is not the best engine

Those who support the monoculture argue that WebKit has won; it’s beaten Gecko and Trident. They are wrong. No engine is perfect, but you learn to forgive or avoid issues when you concentrate on a single browser.

WebKit is excellent and it was certainly the first to hit the CSS3 animation headlines. But if you think it’s ahead of all others, try using SVGs. Attempt animating pseudo elements. Use an unprefixed transform, animation or calc() function. Code using newer HTML5 form elements. Try persuading Firebug fans to abandon their favorite development tool. Don’t take my word for it — Dave Methvin of the jQuery core team and president of the jQuery Foundation states:

Each release of Chrome or Safari generates excitement about new bleeding-edge features; nobody seems to worry about the stuff that’s already (still!) broken. jQuery Core has more lines of fixes and patches for WebKit than any other browser. In general these are not recent regressions, but long-standing problems that have yet to be addressed.

When we started our jQuery 2.0 cleanup to remove IE 6/7/8 hacks, we were optimistic that we would also be able to remove some bloat from lingering patches needed for really old browsers like Safari 2. But several of those WebKit hacks still remain. It’s starting to feel like oldIE all over again, but with a different set of excuses for why nothing can be fixed.

WebKit, Gecko, Presto and Trident are all good rendering engines. They have strengths, they have weaknesses, but none is an outright winner in all areas.

4. A monoculture means and end to standards

One group of people was wholly responsible for the IE6 debacle…

web developers

IE6′s longevity was not the fault of system administrators, slow-moving organizations or an evil Microsoft. Ten years ago, developers targeted IE — not web standards. IE6 was the standard born from a monoculture; few considered a future where IE did not exist.

While there may never be a single WebKit engine, developers will choose it over W3C standards. If something works in WebKit browsers, it won’t matter whether that feature is proprietary, implemented incorrectly or fails elsewhere: it becomes the standard. At that point, you have to hope WebKit is never superseded by a better alternative — a horrible thought.

5. Competition is good

I’m saddened to see the demise of Presto but Opera made a logical business decision. Their primary market is mobile devices and Apple control the only HTML engine permitted on the iPhone and iPad. However, those restrictions do not apply to Microsoft and Mozilla. They have nothing to gain from switching to WebKit:

• If Microsoft scrapped Trident, it would affect every Windows application using web integration. It would cause chaos. I’m sure it would be technically possible to implement an API translation bridge, but how long would that take and what commercial benefit would it offer?
• Mozilla is not a commercial operation; there are no stakeholders or profit targets. The organization exists because it has Gecko, XUL and a range of related technologies. While they could switch to WebKit, it would end major projects such as Firefox OS.

Competition has been good for the web industry. A WebKit monoculture brings short-term development ease at the expense of long-term evolution and growth. Be careful what you wish for.

Introducing Podling – “Social Glue For Teams”.

Podling is a simple decentralized discussion platform we built for ourselves and have been using internally at SitePoint, Flippa and 99designs for a few months now… We thought we’d open it up and get your feedback. We’d love you to hear from you once inside.

So, what is Podling?

Podling is designed to take group (or team) based discussion out of your inbox and give it a home. The idea is you can quickly and easily set up small “throw-away” discussion groups (called pods) and each pod is private to the people you invite to it.

For example at SitePoint we have pods for project teams, pods for events, developer pods, marketing pods, customer service pods, social pods, and so on… And those are just the pods we know about.

Take control of your discussions

The great thing about Podling is it’s not a central company social page controlled by your sys admin like “other” platforms. You control the pods you start. You can start or leave pods at any time. So everyone’s interface to Podling will be unique to them. Power to the people!

Grab the IOS App

We also created an iOS app which you can download from the App store on iTunes which is handy if you’re involved in multiple pods.

You can get started at http://podling.com

We’d love to hear your thoughts via the “Podling Feedback” pod which you will automatically get access to when you join.

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) has come to an end. The news was announced in a post titled “Our Work Here is Done”.

WaSP was founded in 1998 by Glenn Davis, George Olsen, and Jeffrey Zeldman. Few of you will remember those dark times, but the web was caught in a battle between Microsoft and Netscape. Both were attempting to out-HTML each other with features such as blink tags, marquees and DHTML layers. It was a mess. Creating interactive web pages incurred two sets of code; one for IE, one for Netscape.

WaSP’s primary goal was to encourage browser vendors to support W3C web standards. Their mission statement:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has established standards for interpreting Web-based content.

By releasing browsers which do not uniformly support those standards, browser makers are injuring Web developers, businesses and users alike.

Lack of uniform support for W3C standards makes using and developing Web-based technologies unnecessarily difficult and expensive.

We recognize the necessity of innovation in a fast-paced market. However, basic support of existing W3C standards has been sacrificed in the name of such innovation, needlessly fragmenting the Web and helping no one.

Our goal is to support these core standards and encourage browser makers to do the same, thereby ensuring simple, affordable access to Web technologies for all.

Recommending HTML4.0, CSS, the DOM and ECMAScript was revolutionary in the days of table layouts, spacer GIFs, and “best viewed with…” statements. Few people listened at first. Microsoft and Netscape were actively competing against each other while web developers were caught in the crossfire doing their own weird and wonderful non-standard stuff.

Fortunately, vendors and developers started taking notice of WaSP toward the beginning of the millennium. By 2001, the group had persuaded Microsoft, Netscape, Opera and others to follow HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, CSS1 and ECMAScript guidelines. Had this not occurred, the web could have fragmented into separate browser-specific areas.

Since that time, WaSP continued to evangelize and educate. However, the original mission was accomplished and there were fewer reasons to visit the website. So it’s goodbye to the WaSP, but let’s not forget that the job is never over…

Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality. While there is still work to be done, the sting of the WaSP is no longer necessary. And so it is time for us to close down The Web Standards Project.

The job’s not over, but instead of being the work of a small activist group, it’s a job for tens of thousands of developers who care about ensuring that the web remains a free, open, inter-operable, and accessible competitor to native apps and closed eco-systems. It’s your job now, and we look forward to working with you, and wish you much success.