February 24, 2005

How to win over my immediatte affection - or - How to get sent out on the 'big feed' of XSLTBLog just because you made me laugh

I recently received the following email:
--
Hi,

I have two things on the agenda this morning, first the self-promotion;

1) In frustration over some legacy XML/XSLT code, I did a full
rewrite of them and decided to tell the story at
http://shelter.nu/blog-132.html which may or may not be of interest.

2) Your XSLT blog looks dreadful in Opera. Just thought you'd like to know. :)

Kind regards,

Alexander
--

Well Mr. Alexander, as I mentioned in my response email to you I truly appreciate honesty so in return I am posting this such that others can get a chuckle and then maybe learn a thing or two from the article you posted.

Cheers!

<M:D/>

UPDATE: Yikes! It does look horrible in Opera! I thought it was only because I forced the user to have client-side XSLT to be able to render the main section properly, but no, in fact it just flat out looks *AWFUL*! Hmmmm.... I thought I was CSS-compliant... I'll have to look further into this one.

UPDATE Feb. 28th, 2005 > I've updated the base code for the main page such that at last check the layout renders well enough in Opera such that, >> Continued >>

For the most part, it seems to look Ok in Opera. The existing issue left is the fact that because Opera doesn't support client-side XSLT it does not render the main content section as it should. I initially was at odds as to whether or not I should force anyone using a browser that does not support client-side XSLT ((Safari/Konqueror)<Will support via libxslt in next release/(Opera)< no known plans for any future support) to either use a browser that does support C-S-XSLT or to access and render the Atom feed (the Atom feeds on this site contain the full content of each post) for each of the sections desired, which to me seemed like a fair trade-off as it wasn't keeping anybody from accessing the content, just not everyone could do it directly from the page served up at xsltblog.com domain. But while we dream about the great and wonderful benefits of the fantastic new web we are all taking a part in building -- the ideal world in which the web is a series, sequence, or completely unrelated list of XML-based data feeds in which we use a reader of our choice to access and then render locally using our own machines hardware resources that world is not yet here. Even though the general focus (hinted towards in the domain name *XSLT*Blog.com) of this blog could probably justify forcing the C-S-XSLT hand of the visitor this steps away from the premise and thus the spirit of a Domain Specific Language -- to do a specific job and do it well to then get out of the way and let another DSL take over with its task etc...

Within the spirit of DSL there exists the allowance for the fact that there are cases that *THE* DSL of choice is not available and therefore an alternative method should be provided, so far as the alternative provides adequate capabilities to correctly finish the job it is asked to do -- and then get out of the way like a good DSL such that the process can continue forward. In many ways this is exactly how the future of the web will operate -- using MIME-types and meta-data to describe the data contained in the message that when received by a message processing and data rendering engine can be properly passed to an installed component on the client system, allowing this local domain to determine its own prefered method for rendering this message.

The unfortunate side of this in the current sense is that we are currently living within a WorldWideWeb in which Applications (e.g. IE, Netsape/Mozilla/Firefox/Galeon, Evolution, MS Office, OO.org, etc... etc... etc.. are the master of the indiviudal domains (our personal machines), not individual components, processing and rendering engines, or the likes of a typical member within a DSL "Utopian" community like that described above. As such building systems that center themselves around this dream world in which we are in process of building doesnt make a whole lot of sense just yet. These domains (both Man and Machine) will need time to adjust both the capability and the overall mentality to do things certain ways -- a process that has killed the dreams and ambitions of hundreds of thousands of great ideas that were simply too early, too late, or simply not executed to allow for the fact that, while a fanastic idea, the world adapts slowly to change and most business models are falsely centered around the perception that this product fills an immediate need and therefore will take the world by storm, making millions, even billions for all those in whom own a stake in these ideas.

So, after all of this I probably could have just said "I will be implementing a system such that any browser can view the content of the site no matter what client-side capabilities do or do not exist. Realistically I can't promise when that may be -- soon? yes. -- how soon? depends on some other unknown factors at the moment. I'm behind -- in some cases *WAY_TO_FAR_BEHIND* -- on some projects and until these are brought into proper scheduling alignment any and all site updates will be coming in little spurts usually at moments when my brain needs a break from its current task, a change in "code" scenery a proven tactic that more often than not gets me back on track while at the same time piecing together another project that otherwise would be left by the wayside.

Ok, I think thats enough of an update on this one as I believe I have sufficiently beaten this one to death...

Hope your day is spectacular!!! :D