great notes for a migrator like me

"people hate programming"

Nicholas C. Zakas puts his position on HTML validation. I think that like anything, understanding the rules and why they exist is important – having the confidence/right to break them requires enough knowledge of what you are doing. Also, slavishly following a specification or doctrine is dangerous. (Not just in front end development!). But beware the inexperienced designer that gets wind of the idea that validation is not important. Give them an inch…

A checklist for making WordPress more secure. Must do someday.

Facebook pulls the rug from under developers again. I'm sure this will solve some issues with performance. But expect an outcry from the developers who didn't read the memo on the eve of FBML being disabled.

Overlay the spacial data associated with major events on your neighbourhood and put it all into perpective. A very effective and convincing method.

An effective and simple comparison mechanism. But can't help get the feeling that the interpretation of statistics is somehow hidden in the implementation. Need to examine this one further.

i haven't seen the Newsnight episode yet, but it seems the argument is information graphics advocates vs sceptics. But surely there are good and bad infographics?

handy little demo of css3 capabilities

Google Code gives us an introduction to CSS3 transitions and transforms and a description on how they implemented it for gmail on the iPad

Another point for the "Drupal is shit" argument: A seemingly simple feature, allowing the drupal_add_js() method to accept an external URL, has been an active ticket here since October 2006, and still hasn't made it into the stable codebase. This points to either a bloated framework, or a broken process, or both. Apparently tabled for the D7 release, but I'm not hanging around to find out.

I'm trying to do a background upload in a form that contains other data. So the upload should go on once the file is selected and the user can continue with the other input fields. Much like gmail does it. For various reasons I can't split my file upload field into another form, so I was hoping to clone/copy the input form to a new JS created form and submit it there. As discussed in this post, cloning a file input field doesn't copy the value in all browsers. The workaround is to simply move the field to the new form, not clone it.

working on a file upload script for a job, and on investigating the values returned in the Firebug console I became curious about what data I could get about a selected file. Which led me, via Google, to this. Interesting.

I recently bought the Magic trackpad from Apple, and I like it very much as a mouse replacement. I agree with this article though, it is just a new kind of mouse, indirect input, with some fancy gestures (which may get more fancy if Apple open this up to developers). Touchscreens are the real deal when it comes to gestural input and direct maniuplation, but lack the precision of indirect input devices. We are blessed with fat thumbs, and as long as that is true, mouses and their variants will be around.

This is disappointing. The government could really be more creative about a lot of the stagnation and problems we are all facing, and this seems a typical bureaucratic response lacking in any imagination or energy. They should be helping move forward, and getting us out of the rut.

This helped me configure my server so it runs a bit better.

I've often (mis)quoted Hoare's famous phrase ("premature optimization is the root of all evil"). To me the sentiment is to do with staying relevant and creative with the problem solving and not being dictated by perceived limitation of the tools. But as this essay notes, it's all to easy to lazily slide into lack of optimisation.

I think one of the futures for Flash lies in offline interaction design and physical interaction. Hardware like the Arduino will be crucial to this, and maybe help take Flash back to its creative/artistic side.

google chrome are changing to a regular release cycle. every sox weeks a new version of chrome will be releases with all the features that are ready.

Playful ("A day of cross disciplinary frolicking") was my favorite event last year. I had a really good refreshing and inspiring day off work and listening to some great speakers.

HTML5 is the new Ajax which was the new DHTML. All just terms for wizzy browser capabilities. Apart from discussing this question, this article is a good reference to HTML5 and related technologies

I will make it to UXLondon one day when I can afford it. Meanwhile I will read the summaries.