The future of web standards

Perhaps in response to Andy Clarke's recent call for the disbanding of the CSS working committee – in turn prompted by Opera's lawsuit against Microsoft – James over at The B-List has uncorked a truly perceptive analysis of The future of web standards.

Read it, if you're geek enough to care.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web

Speaking of things that are handy as pockets on shirts, if you love fonts and have ever had the need desire to more fully understand the whys and wherefores of web typography, have I got a deal for you.

Check out The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web - a practical guide to web typography.

I'd tell you to tell 'em Foo sent you, but they'd probably be all like, "Foo who?" And then you'd probably be all embarrassed for me and like, "Tee hee." Unbecoming one of your obvious breeding and discernment, that's all I'm saying.

Got CSS? Get Firebug.

Check out this powerful Firefox plug-in for examining and tweaking your CSS:

Firebug - Web Development Evolved

A tip of the hat to I Love Typography.

Paradigm shift

Ever since the company I work for was purchased earlier this year, the word has been that development on the project I've worked on for the past 10 years would be ending and that our team would be redistributed among several other groups. During my tenure, my primary responsibility had been to find ways to make the application run on the mainframe—a role that had long kept me on the periphery of things and under the radar of the people who hand out cool new things to work on.

Ironically, the fact that I wasn't well versed in some of the more esoteric inner workings of the code worked in my favor when we received our new assignments.

Because much of what I did wasn't very interesting and involved lots of time waiting for programs to compile and link, I entertained myself by learning what I could about HTML, CSS, and various other web technologies that I could get my hands on without having to request software licenses from MIS. All those years I'd spent tinkering, I thought I'd never have any professional use for the things I was learning, but it turns out that my side efforts positioned me well to be assigned to a team that's doing ASP.NET and C# development. And, because I wasn't one of the experts for the old project's core architecture, I was easily released from maintenance responsibilities.

That all sounded very promising, but I've been hearing for years how I was going on to bigger and better things. Nothing had ever changed, so I had my doubts that it would be any different this time—until this past Friday, at least. That's when it all came together. Decisions were made. Schedules were set and briefings held. Training classes were scheduled.

All the tinkering and reading I've done over the years, on my own time, is going to come into play now. My new responsibilities will involve large, steaming helpings of XML, XSLT, XPath, DOM, JavaScript, CSS, etc. and my familiarity with those technologies will make it a whole lot easier to get my head around the new stuff and more quickly make a contribution. I get to work with technology that's not 30 years old, and I'm kind of stoked about it!