Nimbupani Designs blogs

Links for 2009-06-29 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

SEOmoz | SEO Best Practices: SEOmoz's New Policies Based on Updated Correlation Data
New tips

Links for 2009-06-28 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

BHRA: Events
NY Tunnel

Links for 2009-06-20 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

The Little Manual of API Design
Found it in my online surfing not sure how useful this is

Links for 2009-06-18 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Literary Magazines by Every Writer's Resource.com
Tonnes of Literary mags and things you can submit to.

Book Reviews for June 2009

divya — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:15:56 -0700

What is this? Me, doing a book review only half way into the month? Incredibly, I have managed to read 4 books already. I am reading 3 books simultaneously now, so we will see how many I can complete reading by the end of June. But till then, here goes my review of books:

Yacoubian Building

This book is the first I have read which deals with homosexuality in an Islamic culture. The novel is similar in storyline / usage of words to Cairo Modern by Naquib Mahfouz (One reason could be they are translations from Arabic). One of the common elements is the description of how women get treated like prostitutes when they go to work and the rampant corruption. The novel ends like a Bollywood movie (this one). It is another (probably most popular) book documenting the rise of fundamentalism in Egypt. There is also a movie based on the novel, which I am now very curious to see!
Coraline

I had read Coraline last month, but forgot to include it in the review. Coraline is a dark tale of a girl who is sad that her parents are “busy” all the time in front of the computer and finds a door to an evil alternate reality. The story is about how she gets back from that to her real life. I think any child growing up with working parents might identify with this book. Heck, even I could identify with the parts on making my own tales about strange places. I always imagined there was a trap door in my house - staircase to some buried treasure.

It is an intelligent book that works for both kids and adults. Some of the “life lessons” learnt by Coraline applies to everyone. Must read for all kids. I want to watch the movie too!
The Automatic Detective

This book is my dream come true! It smashingly mixes noir and science-fiction genres and is thoroughly at home in both. It has the first person narrative and standard characters that you find in pulp fiction except it is set in the future and the narrator is a robot who is the first of his kind to have obtained citizenship. Mack Megaton (a robot created to wreck destruction on humanity but his feature-not-a-bug of “free will” enables to give up his destructive ways), finds himself investigating the disappearance of his next door neighbours (though he can’t quite understand why he wants to do it), and ends up saving the world. It reads like a Raymond Chandler thriller - complete with a bombshell (who is a genius and his sidekick). Didn’t find the science fiction that interesting, but the pulp story line more than compensates for it.
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

This is a great set of stories about Batman which finally puts Joker and Alfred Pennyworth (Batman’s butler) to rest. Just like other Frank Miller stories - these are dark and melancholic. I suspect parts of the Batman film, The Dark Knight are based on this book.
The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics

It is rare to find comics about crime - usually they are fantasy or superhero specific. So, I was really happy to find such a diverse collection of crime comics in this book. It is quite a thick book at 480 pages. There are a lot of famous writers featured like Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Will Eisner, Dashiell Hammett, Ed McBain and some - literally - unknowns. I really liked the story “Commissario Spada: Strada” by Gianluigi Gonano & Gianni De Luca which just illustrates how each human being ascribes their own thoughts and opinions to other people when they describe them. Comic book fans will delight in this collection of stories.

As usual, friends, what books do you recommend?

Links for 2009-06-15 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Russell Stutler's Sketchbook Home
Great resource on sketching

Foldable CSS blocks in SASS with Textmate

divya — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:44:25 -0700

I recently started using SASS for my CSS development (thanks to Deepak). SASS is a meta-language that makes developing CSS really easy - provided you master the syntax. There is a very good textmate bundle which makes it really simple to use on a mac. I will write more about how it has proven useful, but this post is to resolve a problem of developing CSS with SASS.

SASS identifies child selectors using indentation. For example:

	#parent
		:font-weight bold
		
		#child
			:font-weight normal

would translate into CSS as:

	#parent { font-weight:bold; }
	#parent #child { font-weight:normal;}

When I have about 10 child (or sub-child) elements within each parent, tracking down the parent can become tricky. This is where folding CSS groups come in handy:

How did I do it?

First, I found this post on creating foldable CSS groups in textmate

Here are the steps:

Go to Bundles>Bundle Editor>Edit Languages.
Select the SASS > SASS file on the left column.
Now you should see the language grammar file for SASS, starting with the line “{ scopeName = "source.css"”
find the line “foldingStartMarker = " (line 4)

Edit it to:

 foldingStartMarker = '// START |^#|^\*|^\b|^\.';

Edit the foldingEndMarker to:

 foldingStopMarker = '// END |^#|^\*|^\b|^\.';

Tada! Your folding groups are ready! But it is not easy to type in “// START” and “// END” every time. So, you can create a snippet to automate it for you:

Go to Bundles>Bundle Editor>Edit Snippets...
Select SASS in the left column and click on the “+” icon at the bottom of the left column. Name it as you like.
Put this snippet on the right column with the snippet name, you created in the previous step, selected.
```
	// START ${1:name}
	${0:$TM_SELECTED_TEXT}
	// END ${1:name}			
		
```
Finally, assign a shortcut (Activation Trigger) that you can type and press tab so that you get access to the above (I used the characters “fld”).

I have created an issue to add this to the sass-textmate-bundle on Github. Please vote for it, if you would like to see this feature in the bundle.

Thanks to Chris Eppstein for nudging me to blog about it!

Links for 2009-06-07 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Anokhi: Our Shops
great prints of jaipur crafts

Analysing my Information Consumption

divya — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:42:47 -0700

I had tweeted about wanting to analyse my feed reading activity — mainly to track what different topics I followed over the years. Neither Google Reader trends nor NetNewsWire stats charted that kind of data. Luckily, the list of blogs I was subscribed to, in 2006 and in 2007, are still online (list for 2006, list for 2007 [.xml file]).

Here is what number crunching turns up:

My web design follow list hasn’t changed over the last 3.5 years. It is, more or less, the same.
In 2008, I discovered a topic outside my usual interests: Africa. This led to devouring books, music, news, twitter updates about various countries of Africa.
In 2009, I stopped tracking freelance jobs altogether (though I rarely ever read those feeds after 2006) as I started working full-time at Microgroove
In 2006, I was giving equal attention to graphic design / illustrations / decor. This changed in 2007, when I started devoting most of my attention to illustrations. This interest waned somewhat in 2008/09 where my attention was taken up by Africa.
In 06/07, I had a lot of interest in decor (which led to this). Recently, I have become more convinced of the benefits of leading a spartan life and lost interest in hoarding stuff (however nice!).
The number of feeds I read seems to be reducing steadily — though they keep fluctuating every month. The main cause of this reduction, I suspect, is the increased use of twitter. Since I follow some of these bloggers on twitter, I don't feel the need to subscribe to their blog.

Here are the graphs for comparison:

2006

2007

2008-2009

Enough about my activities! I am very curious to know how your information consumption trend is like?

(Charts were generated using Google Chart Generator)

Links for 2009-06-03 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Book Reviews for May 2009

divya — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:05:50 -0700

This was a really bad month for reading books. I had barely half an hour everyday for reading books. Sigh.

Batman: The Killing Joke

I had heard a lot about Batman: The Killing Joke and was delighted to find it in my library. It did live up to the hype. The Joker has an interesting backstory as a failed comedian. It also has an interesting perspective of the Batman and the Joker being reflections of each other (just like in Matrix of Neo and Agent Smith). A very enjoyable book!
Still I Rise

This is a comic book that details the history of blacks in United States. It was quite informative - talks about the black inventors who are usually not acknowledged in public history and the rise of the Civil rights movement. It is written and drawn by two African-Americans, so it is a personal story of struggle as well. Still, I think it is a little odd that it did not cover the slavery that occurred among Africans before the colonialists arrived. Also missing is a description of the creation of Liberia which was founded by the freed slaves from United States. But this book is an excellent source of information about African-Americans who have contributed to the society and for the struggle for civil rights.
The Doll’s House

Sandman : The Doll’s House is one of the Sandman series. I had actually read a later one, The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives earlier. It is an engrossing read, as is typical of Gaiman. I was very amused by the idea of a Conference for Serial Killers (known as the “Collectors”).
Another Day of Life

Another Day of Life is about the Angolan Civil War. It is deeply personal and free from assumptions and stereotypes about Africans. The author claims to have evidence of FNLA troops practicing Cannibalism and the UNITA getting the funding from American Churches. It is amazing to read about what the author had to go through to cover this important event in Cold War Era.

.
The main reason for finishing only 4 books was, I was stuck reading The Savage Detectives: A Novel which is a heavy tome. Sadly, I had to give it up as it was reserved by a lot of people. But I have bought a copy now, so hopefully, I should write about it next month!

An Event Apart Speakers

divya — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:18:31 -0700

I went to An Event Apart Seattle this week. It was a great event and I got to speak with all the gurus of web design. Seizing this opportunity, I even got them (well, some of them) to autograph my sketches. Here they are!

Can you guess who they are? (Answers in my flickr stream)

Book Reviews for April 2009

divya — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:30:37 -0700

I can’t seem to read more than 4 books a month! Here are the books I read this month:

The Best of Spirit
It was with great fascination I read the book The Best of the Spirit. I have never enjoyed the experience of reading comics as much as I did with this one. The Spirit is a character created by Will Eisner. The very first story of Spirit gives hints to the genius of Will Eisner. The irregular panels, the treatment of time, are all very unlike the usual comics I have read from that era.
“Meet P’Gell” has nothing much to boast about in the story line, but the way it is presented is unique. Given that it was 1946 when it was first published, it was one of the earliest ways of narration by a character in the comic.
“The Killer” is another striking story which “screws” (in a good way) with the timeline and comes up triumphantly. The story not just goes back in time but also in a few parts shows the scene through the Killer’s eyes.
Unlike other superheroes, Spirit simply appears for the sake of appearing in these comics. In The Story of Gerhard Shnobble, Spirit is simply fighting some villains in the background while the story focuses on Gerhard Shnobble.
Two Lives is a hilarious story about how a man finds prison more pleasurable than being married. Spirit appears only in 2 panels.
The story I liked the most was Ten Minutes. The first page is totally arresting, the panels by themselves have nothing special about them but the action and the text are really innovative.
The earlier stories seem to have a racial stereotyping of characters (Chinese, Black, Turkish) which were disturbing to see in the otherwise fantastic stories. Hats off to Will Eisner!
A Year in High Heels: The Girl’s Guide to Everything from Jane Austen to the A-list
A Year in High Heels: The Girl’s Guide to Everything from Jane Austen to the A-list by Camilla Morton is a frivolous book that you expect it to be. This book serves as the wikipedia to the chic, but ignorant. The book is divided into twelve chapters (each for one month of the year). Each chapter ends with a "Foot Note" that is a short eulogy on a kind of shoe (e.g. Platform Shoe for October). Each chapter also has a recommendation of a book to read (famous ones/books make to films/ romantic ones/classics) along with wikipedia-like entries on who was born/died/created in that month. In between all this is a bunch of how-tos including how to podcast/blog/dress for interviews/hoodwink your boyfriend/girlfriend into buying you all that you want.
If that is not enough to turn you off, then I guess you are the prime audience for this book :) Just kidding, I did enjoy reading this book. It is an interesting glimpse into the "Sex and the City" lifestyle the author seems to enjoy and promote! If not anything, I did learn who Peggy Guggenheim was!
Foundation

Foundation is a very exhilarating novel by Issac Asimov. I can’t imagine it was written in the 1950s. The props - though dated - fade invisibly to the background in the light of the main story. The philosophy that underlines the novel is called Psychohistory, a combined study of history, mathematics, and statistics to make near accurate predictions of the future (provided there is no overwhelming external force).

The ideas in Foundation have been widely used in Star Wars, Hitchhiker series (now I get the joke about Encyclopedia Galactica!), and other science fiction stories. I love the recurring quote (and theme) “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
An interesting idea explored here is the use of religion to subjugate the masses, and priests using it as a tool of power (which seems to have been the case in Ancient Egypt/Rome).A great start to the series and I hope to keep reading more.
The Toss of a Lemon
The Toss of a Lemon was an emotional read for me as every word I read was like seeing a movie in my head. It is the story of 3 generations of an Iyer family from the late 19th century to the 1960s. This book is primarily about Sivakami, but strongly touches on the issues of untouchability/caste. It also helps to understand the struggle of women to gain an equal footing in society.
This book is peppered with symbolism which might delight a western audience but they didn’t add any value to the story line (Thangam shedding gold dust for example). It is also a little jarring to read the english translation for every tamizh word used (there should have been a glossary), but some of the words brought a smile to my face (especially “Mundai” :D).
The story is not very different from that of my family and the quarrels/meetings are just too reminiscent of the gossip I have heard.
If you are an Iyer or interested in the history of Iyers, this book is a must read.

That’s it! What books have you read lately?

The Long Road from XHTML to HTML

divya — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:15:31 -0700

XHTML - A New Hope!

I started developing websites in 2003. At that time, XHTML was the flavour of the season (or rather the official W3C recommendation to move forward from HTML 4.x) and Deepak introduced me to the world of web design with XHTML and CSS. It was even written about favourably by the Godfather of Web Design. The reasons that were given to adopt XHTML were these:

XHTML had a smaller set of rules (since it is based off XML).
Using XHTML will make your document well formed (not the tag soup HTML allows you to write).
XHTML will be future compatible.
XHTML lets you integrate content from other markup languages with XML namespaces (like SVG and MathML)
You can use standard XML tools to work with your XHTML documents.

This was in 2000-2003. With the gift of hindsight we know now that XML was not the future. The biggest disadvantage to using XHTML being, any user agent (e.g. the browser) when it comes across an unescaped ampersand (&) in a URL or a mismatched character encoding in a trackback message, would cause the entire page to fail, and so most of today's public web applications can't safely be incorporated in a true XHTML page.

Internet Explorer has never supported XHTML (not even IE 8) making all arguments about standards compliance go down the drain. XHTML is not HTML compliant if it is served as content type text/html (read more on why sending XHTML as text/html is harmful). Moreover, XHTML 2 is not compatible with XHTML 1.1, which throws the future compatibility argument out of the window. Others had doubts over XHTML and XHTML 2.0 in particular (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) which paved the way for HTML 5.

HTML Strikes Back!

HTML 5 takes an evolutionary path with focus on backwards compatibility along with some innovations. HTML 5 aims to replace XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4.0. HTML 5 and XHTML 2 are opposites in a way, as support for HTML 5 does not imply support for XHTML 2 (browsers need to support these separately).

HTML 5 defines 2 syntaxes - HTML syntax (which is compatible with HTML 4 and XHTML 1 documents (served as text/html)) and XML syntax which needs to be served as application/xhtml+xml. Even better, HTML syntax of HTML 5 allows MathML and SVG elements to be used inside a HTML document (reducing the need to use XML at all).

With HTML 5, you can continue using XHTML closing for empty elements (e.g. <br/>) and it will still be acceptable in HTML syntax.

HTML 5 defines different rules for user agents and authors. The user agents are required to be backwards compatible, but the authors are required not to use "deprecated" elements for HTML 5 conformance.

Safari, Opera, Firefox have openly declared support for HTML 5 (and Internet Explorer is on the team to draft the HTML 5 standard). XHTML 2 does not have any browser support and Safari has explicitly opted out of drafting XHTML 2.

Mike Malone has written a great review of XHTML 2 vs. HTML 5 and it seems like HTML 5 will win this war.

Personally, I gave up on XHTML when I learnt to be more forgiving (and less of a pedant) about HTML documents (it is not their fault!). This blog though, is ironically XHTML 1.0 Strict.

What should you do?

If you are new to web design or working on large portals, my suggestion would be to use HTML 4 rather than XHTML. You can code well-formed HTML with HTML 4 and you don't need XHTML to whip you into shape to do that. Better still, use HTML 5 - without using the newly introduced elements (as they are not supported universally).

UPDATE: Dave Shea talks about why he is switching to HTML 4.01

What happened to the design?

divya — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:21:37 -0700

Finally get to participate in CSS Naked Day!

As they say, it is time to show off the <body>

To know more about why styles are disabled on this website visit the

Annual CSS Naked Day website for more information.

UPDATE: The CSS Naked Day is now over!

Book Reviews for March 2009

divya — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 11:37:58 -0700

This month was a slow one for books. I managed to read only 4 (and complete only 3) and most were digital versions read during lunch time. I managed to complete the Hitchhiker Series and had a ball of a time with them. In between, I gave a written driving test so now I have an Instruction Permit which lets me learn driving.

The Color of Magic

This is the first book of the Discworld series. I am more in love with Terry Prachett after reading this one. The idea of Cohen the Barbarian is so brilliant! The passage where Twoflower describes insurance is rib-ticklingly hilarious. I have only exclamation marks to describe this book. It is a riot and a must read for anyone fond of witty humor. I am definitely going to read it again (provided I finish rest of the series!).
Restaurant at the end of the universe

It is the worst of the Hitchhiker series. I understand why I didn’t like it when I read this the first time. Reading this book feels like watching Spiderman 3 - so boring and predictable. But it is something you have to get through to go to the brilliant finish!
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish is an outstanding finish to the Hitchhiker series. John Watson is especially well done character in this book (who calls himself Wonka the Sane). Love his parts. Sad to see Marvin die though. Now I am really interested in watching the movie again. There are more contemporary references to Dire Straits, computers which are rather true and hilarious.
On the Road

On the Road is a book I have been trying to read for the past 4 months. It is a book that is a cult classic and I just can’t get myself to read it fully. It was like reading a list of blog entries of a hitch hiker. I must note it was a very radical book for the 50s. There are flashes of brilliance, but for someone who does not feel the way he does, I guess it did not appeal to me. It is one of those things that you either love or hate it when you read it the first time.

April is going to be a slow month too. I have about 4 books, but I think it will be unlikely that I will finish reading all of them given that my weekends are going to be occupied with learning how to drive! What have you guys read lately?

The Truth about Doctypes

divya — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:58:12 -0700

I knew I had to declare a Doctype but just didn’t know why. I recently had to work with html files without Doctype and didn’t even realise that the IE errors I was coming across was because of the triggering of quirks mode. Today I read in depth about Doctypes and I burn in shame to know how many bugs could simply be resolved by declaring a Doctype. So, here is what I found out about the Damned Doctypes.

IN THE BEGINNING

Long long time ago in the age of no standards, people wrote HTML with reckless abandon which resulted in tag soups and atrocious styling. Browsers were no better and tried to “fix” the errors in CSS declarations and generally did not obey any standard.

ENTER DOCTYPE

In 1995 the first signs of standardisation came in the form of HTML 2.0 HTML specification (note that there was no HTML 1.0) which first introduced the use of Doctype “To identify information as an HTML document conforming to this specification, each document must start with … document type declarations.”

At end of December 1997, HTML 4.0 was released which specified 3 different specifications. A HTML document can choose which one to follow, by indicating with the Doctype: A Strict specification (which excludes deprecated elements and frames), a Transitional specification (which excludes only frames), and a Frameset specification (which allows just about anything!).

INVENTION OF DOCTYPE SWITCHING

With the 3 flavours of HTML 4.0, browsers had the burden of having to display non-confirming HTML like it used to before (as many old websites would break if the browsers changed the CSS and HTML implementation to match the standards) as well as new HTML documents produced to confirm to the specifications.

Tantek Çelik, first implemented the innovative Doctype Switching while working on Internet Explorer 5 for Mac. The idea was this, if the Doctype specifies one of the modern specifications, the browser will render the HTML in “standards mode” and if not, the browser will render the HTML in “quirks mode”. Soon, all other browsers adopted it.

There is a 3rd mode called “Almost Standards Mode” which only differs from “Standards Mode” in the implementation of vertical sizing of table cells (IE 6 and 7 only render this mode and never the standards mode).

QUIRKS MODE

When a browser renders a document in quirks mode, it interprets the CSS and HTML like older versions of the browser allowing for nonstandard code and workarounds. The most affected is the CSS of the HTML document which gets interpreted differently in this mode.

There is no standard on which Doctype will trigger quirks mode, each browser has its own list of Doctypes that will trigger the quirks mode (see this chart).

For IE 6, 7 and 8, the Doctype declaration should be the very first line of the HTML document, otherwise it defaults to quirks mode (An XML declaration before an XHTML Doctype or even having a HTML comment above the Doctype declaration will trigger quirks mode). In IE 7 and 8, having an XML declaration as the first line of the HTML document will no longer trigger quirks mode.

Here is how valid CSS declarations get misinterpreted in IE 6, 7 and 8, when they are in quirks mode:

The Box Model is rendered incorrectly (padding is applied within the declared width of an element instead of being added to the declared width of an element).
The dimensions of a block level element changes if the content of the element does not fit the declared dimensions (e.g. If a paragraph which has a height:200px; specified will expand in IE 6 and 7 in quirks mode if the actual text content is longer than that declared height).
The default margin-left and margin-right of a floated element becomes 3px in IE.
margin:0 auto does not center elements.
Font properties are not inherited from parent elements to tables.

Other browsers have their own set of weird behaviors in quirks mode.

FUN TIMES WITH IE 8

As IE 6 and IE 7 “standards” mode did not fully confirm to the specifications, many websites had “hacks” to make them “look good” in “standards mode”. These websites will all appear “broken” in IE 8 when that comes along (since it complies more to standards than before), so here we go AGAIN down the road of Doctype switching.

So, now IE 8 has at least 4 modes, quirks mode, IE 7 standards mode, IE 8 almost standards mode and IE 8 standards mode.

Now IE 8 wants to introduce a NEW switching mechanism by using the <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> declaration to make sure it uses the IE 8 standards mode to render. If this meta declaration does not exist, it will use other various sources to determine which mode to render, most likely defaulting to IE 7 standards mode.

SO THE POINT IS

Just use the damned Doctype to make sure browsers don’t default to quirks mode with your HTML documents. You are safe in using:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> (except it triggers quirks mode in Konqueror 3.2, matters only if you know and care about that browser).
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> (without the XML prolog)

I hope this is of some use to you when you go about coding your HTML pages. Remember the damned Doctype!

REFERENCE

1. CSS - Quirks mode and strict mode

2. Activating Browser Modes with Doctype

[UPDATED: I edited the information about Doctype switching with inputs from Russ Weakley.]

Nimbupani Designs blogs

Links for 2009-06-29 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-06-28 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-06-20 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-06-18 [del.icio.us]

Book Reviews for June 2009

Yacoubian Building

Coraline

The Automatic Detective

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics