Monthly Archives: July 2004

Safari’s Pseudo-Solution

MarkUp, Standards, User Agents

In light of the recent backlash against Safari’s HTML extensions, Dave Hyatt has come up with what he considers to be a reasonable solution that addresses most of the concerns and potential solutions raised by many such as Eric Meyer, and Tim Bray.

However, his solution involves extending HTML by adding an xmlns attribute, which is supposed to only be used in real XML, such as XHTML.

Seriously, what is the point of adding it to HTML? Why not just do it correctly with XHTML? I’ve heard the arguments that it’s not as easy to learn, and authors are already familiar with HTML 4.01, but I disagree.

Safari supports XHTML, and since these extensions are aimed at being used in Apple’s new Dashboard, there is no reason to follow the WHAT WG decision to be bugwards-compatible with IE, and thus extend HTML, especially when these additions are presentational, as I discussed earlier, and commented on again in Eric Meyer’s latest post on the topic.

Although Dave Hyatt does mention:

…the benefit comes when you switch to real XML. In the XML implementation, the namespace is completely real and effectively maps to a new language…

I think the Safari team should just go all the way, and implement these extensions purely as an XHTML module. Although, I would prefer that the presentational additions, such as the new composite attribute for the <img/> element were actually done as proprietary extensions to CSS. eg. -safari-composite: source-over;.

In conclusion, this is a quick fix to address recent concerns, which just isn’t quite good enough. It’s a pseudo-solution that’s come out of almost complete laziness to do things correctly!

What’s to be Gained from Spam???

Personal

Seriously, why do spammers continually spam everyone? I don’t read spam, and nor do millions of others, so what is there to gain from spamming me? It’s highly likely that your email will be detected as spam by my spam filter which is over 99% accrate, and as for the other 1%… Well, it gets tagged as spam quite quickly, usually without being read, or at least without much attention paid to what it’s selling or asking for. Thankfully, I don’t recieve an excessive amount of spam — I tend to recieve more in my letter box than my inbox, but both forms are still quite annoying.

So, what kind of spam do I get? Well, apparently I’m the benneficiary for quite a few recently deceased people that I don’t know, nor have any relation to, and who have left me millions of dollars in inheritance. Also, I’ve won several lotteries that I never entered and I’m told that I can claim all of this by simply passing on all my account details, and the transaction will take place in an overseas bank account. Ok, sure… I’ll just hand over my account number, credit card details, PIN… oh, heck, why don’t I just send you my birth certificate as well. Just deposit everything in that account — Thank you very much, I appreciate all the funds I can get! Ironically, had I done anything that those emails were requesting, I’d have been decared bankrupt long ago as my account would have been cleared out and my identity stolen and used for any number of felonies and fraud attempts. If you believe I’m entitled to some money that you have to offer, feel free to look me up in a phone book, and post me a cheque… but, seriously, like that’s ever going to happen!

Here’s the most recent offending email that I recieved:

Are You One Of The Millions Searching
For A Safe, Ethical, Secondary Residual Income?

Documented Income Statistics.  

NO M,L.M 

NO R-I-S-K

Stable Company

(links omitted)

No, I’m not searching for anything you have to offer, nor do I believe that anything you have to offer has no risk involved. Had I followed any of the links provided, what would I see? Well, since I’m not going to give this spammer the satisfaction of recieving a hit, I can only speculate. There’s a chance that I would be expected to be vulnerable to the latest of IE‘s security exploits. Sorry, I avoid IE like the plague, so that won’t hurt me. I could be asked to sign up for additional emails offering more money. Ha? Well, I didn’t want to recieve that email, so why would I want more? I could be asked to provide any of my personal details as I mentioned above. Sorry, not going to happen!

Are you a spammer? Have you, or are you planning to send out unsolicited email to me or anyone else in the world? Well, I’d like to know why! Like everyone else, you must recieve spam, so you know exactly how annoying and time wasting it can be. When was the last time you followed any advice you recieved in spam from someone else? Don’t Email Me! Post a comment to this blog, and let me know your reasons for spamming me or anyone else. Let me know what you expect to gain; why does annoying millions of people around the world give you any satisfaction; and why do you think you have the right to abuse the world’s greatest communication medium — the Internet!. This is not an invitation to spam me, this is an invitation to explain yourself. I’m serious, I would like to know your reasons for spamming.

For the majority of you who are not spammers, feel free to post your own speculations and answers to the above questions. It’d be good to hear both sides.

Exploring Safari’s HTML Tag-Soup Extensions

MarkUp, Standards, User Agents

Like everyone one else, I thought the days of browser vendors adding proprietary extension to HTML was over. Sadly, I was wrong: Safari has decided to join in on the game. They’ve now introduced a <canvas> element as well as a new composite attribute for the <img> element. Not only are both of these presentational attributes, they’ve been added to HTML, while still using the HTML 4.01 doctypes.

Of course, Dave Hyatt attempted to explain with a follow up post the reasons for making these extension to HTML and not using XHTML and adding them with a different namespace. Also, as he points out, others suggested that they should have used SVG, yet fails to explain with any valid reason, except by saying that it would have basically been too difficult and time consuming. IMO, that’s just plain lazy, and I would have expected better from Apple. Sorry Dave, I have to agree with Eric Meyer on this one — this is big a mistake, and I think the Safari team should hang their heads in shame!