I heard/read about the conference when it was in its planning stage, but since I was already scheduled to speak at Øredev this week and had some other things to attend to, I early on discarded the idea of attending JSConf.eu.

However, as things got closer, I realized I could actually be a part of it, and given the impact of the event and all the interesting talks, I felt I would really like to talk there as well!

In May this year at the Scandinavian Web Developer Conference 2009, I as well as Jan Lehnardt and Malte Ubl gave presentations, and interestingly enough, together with Holger Blank, they are organizing JSConf.eu.

So, I got on touch with them over the weekend and spoke with Malte, and basically got to hear that they would love to have me do a talk, but that the budget wouldn’t cover my expenses – which is fair enough, my proposal was “drastically late”, as Malte called it , and the JSConf.eu 2009 conference schedule had already been organized. So, I spoke to my employer, Valtech , who graciously immediately offered to sponsor me!

Therefore, I can happily announce that I will, alongside the fantastic list of speakers, do a talk at JSConf.eu. I’ll be covering some brief JavaScript history, common best practices and then more advanced things like scope and closures. Slightly worried that my talk might be too basic, but at the same time, I hope to fill in some blanks and repeat important information that everyone should know, and hopefully inspire people to delve into the fantastic workings of JavaScript.

Will you be there?

Apple has applied to patent CSS transformations and animations. I’m no lawyer, and it’s virtually impossible what results such a patent owned by Apple would lead to in reality, but really, if it in any way cripples interesting technologies and approaches in creating richer web sites, end users and web developers are the losers.

And, I know, it seems to be in the spirit of Apple to close things in, but I sincerely hope they will drop this and instead contribute to the web with open technologies and ideas – we have all seen various companies going down the proprietary path for things web-related, and it has never been for the better.

So, Apple, please, just stop it.

On top of the various ways of selecting elements in a web page and using the FriendlyFire collaboration (all described in the Firefinder page), it now also supports 8 languages, thanks to very helpful contributors:

• English
• Japanese
• German
• Italian
• Polish
• Dutch
• Swedish
• Danish

If you haven’t already, go download Firefinder now!

Also, if you are interested in contributing with translating any other language, please let me know, through a comment or the ways to contact me!

It is especially interesting, and scary, for me since all the other names on the bill are true JavaScript heroes. Just take a glance at this list of the speakers:

• Jake Archibald
• Christian Heilmann
• Todd Kloots
• Peter-Paul Koch
• Stuart Langridge
• Robert Nyman (that’s me! )
• Simon Willison

As the name implies, it is naturally about JavaScript, but also with a complete focus on front end-development – as opposed to many other conferences. With this impressive list of speakers, I am sure anyone interested in JavaScript will be wildly pleased!

Besides, the name is awesome, isn’t it? I am so happy I came up with it, and that Remy, the event organizer, liked my suggestion.

Make sure to buy a ticket now while there are still some left!

Web browser market share

Let’s start by looking at the current web browser market share, available at Browser Market Share and Browser Version Market Share:

Internet Explorer

65.71%

Firefox

23.75%

Safari

4.24%

Chrome

3.17%

Opera

2.19%

That’s generally almost a level playing field, wouldn’t you say? Sure, take away 30% from Internet Explorer and share among the others, but still the trend is going towards a well-balanced web browser market. I guess one reflection is that Opera, after developing web browsers for all these years (and having a very good product!) has a very low market share on the desktop, and I think they need to do something exceptional to change that.

If we break it down per web browser version (with over 1% share), it looks like this:

Internet Explorer 6.0

24.42%

Internet Explorer 7.0

19.39%

Internet Explorer 8.0

16.84%

Firefox 3.5

12.65%

Firefox 3.0

9.62%

Safari 4.0

2.92%

Internet Explorer 8.0 – Compatibility Mode

2.30%

Chrome 2.0

1.74%

Opera 9.x

1.27%

Firefox 2.0

1.24%

Chrome 3.0

1.20%

Here, there are a lot of interesting conclusions we can draw. First and foremost, IE 6 is still the most used web browser in the world – to me, this is terrifying, and saddening that we’re still suffering from that era. Interesting to see how many users who have upgraded to Firefox 3.5, although I thought it would be more in comparison to version 3.0. Also noteworthy that the Compatibility Mode in IE 8 are used by more people than all Opera users together, and almost as many as all Google Chrome users. Also, given Google Chrome’s aggressive upgrading strategy, I thought there would be more people with the latest version.

Looking at Top Browser Share Trend, we can see that Firefox 3.5 and IE 8 are the web browsers with the most upgoing trend at the moment.

Ballmer: Chrome and Safari are rounding errors

In a recent interview, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Chrome And Safari Are Rounding Errors. And yes, sure, I know he has to act like that. Or, correction, he believes he has to act like that to bring confidence to Microsoft fans. However, in my world, it gives the opposite message: if you are downplaying competitors share, as opposed to bringing forth why your own product is so special, it’s a sign of fear and uncertainty (and don’t ask me where he gets the statistics of having 74% of the market, where most studies show around 65%).

Is Google Chrome a success or not?

But, one thing is interesting there in Ballmer’s statement, and also in the very varying opinions I hear from people about Google Chrome. It has been in the (Windows) market for a little over a year now, and it has a little bit over 3% of the web browser market.

Some people claim it’s an amazing feat in just one year to get 3% of the market, while others see it as a failure with all Google’s brand and marketing power; that they instead should have had something like 10% by now to have succeeded. Some people claim that Google Chrome OS is a, more or less, desperate measure to put even more focus on the web browser, to make more people use Google Chrome.

So, what do you think: is Google Chrome a success or a failure? Or perhaps in between? And do you have any thoughts on web browser market share of today?

Therefore, my ambition here is to:

• Give you a little history
• Go into what HTML5 is and what it covers
• Show code examples
• Target the question whether you can start using it or not

Background

The HTML5 work stems from the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group), and their focus is the development of HTML and APIs for web applications. The reason it came to life back in 2004, founded by people from Apple, Mozilla and Opera, was a worry about the direction W3C were taking with XHTML, and no focus on HTML or the real-life needs for web developers.

It got really interesting in July of 2009, when W3C announced that XHTML2 would be cancelled in favor of HTML. This means that the only future development of HTML and XHTML is in the form of HTML5 – HTML5 is the future, whatever you think about it.

I should also mention right away that HTML5 is spelled just that, with no space between the the L and 5 – read more in Spelling HTML5.

What is HTML5

So what is HTML5, really? Basically, it’s about extending HTML/XHTML with new more semantically rich elements, deprecating attributes, introducing new attributes and altering how some element and attributes are allowed to be used. Hand in hand with that is the possibility to use attributes for WAI-ARIA to make a web page more accessible, such as with landmark roles.

It also introduces a number of APIs for making it easier to create web applications:

• 2D drawing API with the canvas element.
• API for playing of video and audio with the video and audio elements.
• API that enables offline Web applications.
• API that allows a Web application to register itself for certain protocols or media types.
• Editing API in combination with a new global contenteditable attribute.
• Drag & drop API in combination with a draggable attribute.
• API that exposes the history and allows pages to add to it to prevent breaking the back button.
• Cross-document messaging with postMessage.

Other things that initially was in the specification, but broken out into separate specifications are:

• API for Geolocation
• Web Storage.
• Web Workers.
• querySelectorAll.

All in all, a lot of nice new things and technology to help us shape the future of the web. As you can see, some of the above things are in the actual HTML5 specification, some others are broken out into their own specifications. Think of it as with AJAX: when that term and hype hit the world, anything that was even remotely related to JavaScript in any way was thought to be AJAX.

Pretty much goes with HTML5: for most people, that’s generally the term you need to imply that you are using new state-of-the-art technologies to create a web site; in reality, that might be “just” HTML with some new semantic enhancements, or it might be an extravaganza with the new APIs in conjunction with JavaScript.

I think the best document to read to grasp the changes are HTML5 differences from HTML4, which will cover:

• Open Issues
• Backwards Compatible
• Development Model
• Impact on Web Architecture
• Character Encoding
• The DOCTYPE
• MathML and SVG
• New Elements
• New Attributes
• Changed Elements
• Changed attributes
• Absent Elements
• Absent Attributes
• Extensions to HTMLDocument
• Extensions to HTMLElement

Backwards compatibility & progressive enhancement

I think one of the main reasons behind the adoption of HTML5 is that it sets out to be backwards compatible and work with the web browsers there already are in the market, and have been for some time, too. This is done through new elements which, generally, have no particular look or behavior attached to them, but rather offering more semantic richness and then up to you style them via CSS according to your liking.

The other parts are new elements that have been implemented in some web browsers, and not in others, where the progressive enhancement approach that has been preached for a long time comes into play. Meaning, use the new elements which will give a richer experience in some web browsers, whereas it will fall back to default content in others.

Example in question: a cascade of new input element types:

• tel
• search
• url
• email
• datetime
• date
• month
• week
• time
• datetime-local
• number
• range
• color

So far, WebKit and Opera have been the most busy rendering engine to implement some of these, especially in relation with Opera’s work with WebForms 2.0 support, but in other web browsers it will fall back to a regular input type="text". That means, for instance, that input type="search" will will give subtle, but better user experience, in Safari and Google Chrome, but will be a fully functional for all others.

The beauty of progressive enhancement.

HTML5 code introduction

Let’s get down to some code introduction and what you need to be aware of when you start coding HTML5.

Syntax options

The doctype for HTML5 looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>

No versioning, no redundant information. All progressive enhancement on a feature-level, as opposed to complete releases that need to be implemented.

And, to be a bit more pragmatic than before, HTML5 will allow both quick-closing of empty tags (such as input, link etc), but you can use those elements just as well without quick-closing them. Quotes for attributes are also optional, and you know what? You can even use upper-case letters for your element names of you will!

All of these examples are valid HTML5:

<DIV>A monkey</DIV>
<p id=john>John's P</p>	

<input type=text>
<input type="text">
<input type="text" />

This might be scary to some people, and I agree with the concerns the HTML5 Super Friends presented, where they want a way to, in a more stricter way, be able to validate the consistency of the code. However, with all different people’s coding styles and our legacy, allowing this freedom was probably the only pragmatic option to get people along, instead of fighting battles that will never be won.

It should also be noted that it is not needed to specify the type attribute for style or scriptelements; it is automatically assumed to be CSS respectively JavaScript.

And, a great thing is that you can now wrap entire blocks with an a element to make that entire block a link to somewhere!

HTML or XHTML

I should also mention that there are two options to serve HTML5 content: as HTML or XHTML. The somewhat confusingly named XHTML5 differs a bit from HTML5, though:

• No doctype is needed, just an XML prolog.
• It must have a namespace: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
• It must be served with either of these MIME types: application/xhtml+xml or application/xml.
• The noscript element can not be used.

New elements

Lot’s of the research behind HTML5 has been how people name their elements, with IDs and classes, and part of the result are new elements named/inspired by those. There are a lot of new elements in HTML5, where these are probably the most interesting as you can use them right away in any web browser.

article

Mark up parts of the content that is independent, for instance blog post, article etc.

aside

Used to mark up relevant additional information, like a sidebar.

audio

Used for natively including audio in a web page.

footer

The counter-part to header; could be used for any footer section per context.

header

Used for headers in its context. Note: not just for the header of a page, but also for each header part in section, article and similar.

hgroup

Used for grouping several headers, for instance, a main heading and a sub-heading.

nav

Used for marking up main navigation.

section

Mark up a generic document section. Easily confused with article, and on top of that you nest either of them, in any order, with the other.

time

Used to mark up a time or date.

video

Used for natively including video in a web page – lots of interesting work is coming along here in terms of web browser support.

HTML5 examples

Let’s get down to some actual code and see what an HTML5-coded web page could look like. I have put together a simple HTML5 example with new elements and WAI-ARIA landmark roles as part of my HTML5 demos page (quite sparse now, I know, but I will incrementally add examples to it).

This is the complete source code of that web page:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
	<meta charset="utf-8">
	<title>HTML5 example with new elements and WAI-ARIA landmark roles</title>
	<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/base.css" type="text/css" media="screen">
	<!--[if lte IE 8]>
	<script src="js/html5.js"></script>
	<![endif]-->
</head>

<body id="index-page">

	<div id="container">
		<header role="banner">
			<h1>HTML5 example with new elements and WAI-ARIA landmark roles</h1>
			<p>This page has valid simple HTML5 markup complemented with WAI-ARIA landmark roles for accessibility</p>
		</header>

		<nav id="demo-top-nav">
			<ul>
			<li><a href="http://robertnyman.com/html5">HTML5 demos and samples' start page</a></li>
			<li><a href="http://robertnyman.com/">Robert's talk</a></li>
			<li><a href="http://robertnyman.com/javascript/">JavaScript compatibility tests</a></li>
			</ul>
		</nav>

		<div id="demo-main" role="main">
			<section id="demo-main-content">
				<header>
					<hgroup>
						<h2>A title</h2>
						<h3>Subtitle to the above title</h3>
					</hgroup>
				</header>

				<article>
					<p>Some content, created <time datetime="2009-10-14">October 14th 2009</time></p>
				</article>
				<article>
					<p>Some more content - i guess you get the drift by now</p>
				</article>

				<article>
					<header>
						<h2>The HTML code for this page</h2>
					</header>

				</article>
			</section>

			<aside id="demo-aside-content" role="complementary">
				This is just a demo page to see HTML5 markup and WAI-ARIA landmark roles in action in a simple context
			</aside>
		</div>

		<footer id="page-footer" role="contentinfo">
			Created by <a href="http://robertnyman.com/">Robert Nyman</a>
		</footer>
	</div>

</body>
</html>

As you can see, it looks more or less than every other HTML web page you have ever seen, but with just a few new HTML elements being used and the role attribute with landmark roles for WAI-ARIA to make it more accessible.

If you want a more real-world example, just view the source code of robertnyman.com: I have now rewritten it as HTML5!

Can I use it today?

I would say yes!

There was some wild speculation about the date 2022, because one of the main men behind the work with HTML5 and the specification was asked in in an interview about HTML5 and its timeline, and the date 2022 was mentioned. Then everyone assumed that HTML5 wouldn’t be ready until 2022, which is not was addressed, but rather when web browsers would have two releases with completely full support for HTML5 (compare that to CSS 2.1 support etc and the time it has taken, and you will probably get a more sane reaction). Read more about in 2022, or when will HTML 5 be ready? if you want to know more.

But let’s go through the pros and cons, and I will explain why HTML5 is ready to be used.

Pros

Major players using it

To begin with, a lot of major players have already started implementing it. Google.com already have the HTML5 doctype (although they should really improve the markup accordingly), the new hyped Google Wave is revolving a lot around HTML5 and related APIs (which ironically uses a HTML4 Strict doctype…) and there is also a YouTube HTML5 demo page.

Strict rendering

The HTML5 doctype will trigger the strictest rendering in all web browsers. No Almost Standards Mode, no quirks; strict all the way, which is the way we want, and the way it should be.

Progressive enhancement

You can start today just by changing the doctype. Then gradually move onto exchanging some structure elements, sprinkle it with some WAI-ARIA etc and before you know it, you have a fantastic HTML5 page!

Validation available

Now even the W3C Validator supports HTML5. Just use the Firefox Web Developer Extension to validate your HTML against it. The HTML Validator extension unfortunately doesn’t support it yet, but I know there are at least plans to include this – if you have any ides or input, please help him out.

SEO

It probably doesn’t matter much right now, but in the future, I think that web sites that are marked up in a much more rich fashion with new HTML5 elements to give them the multitude they need, will benefit a lot from this.

Cons

Ah, right, drawbacks. There are always some, isn’t there?

Internet Explorer

It probably doesn’t come as a shock to you, but Internet Explorer, all current versions (yes, including IE8 as well) has a little issue: it won’t apply any CSS to an unknown element (e.g. nav, section etc).

However, Sjoerd Visscher found out that with an HTML5 Shiv, sort of an electrical shock for IE to start rendering things at least a little bit more properly, you can address that problem.

The gist of it is that you need to call document.createElement with the name of each new HTML5 element you use in the page. You don’t need to use it to append or place those element, just call it to make IE aware of them. Remy Sharp has written a little HTML5 enabling script for Internet Explorer, version 6 to 8 which works in all possible cases.

People eager for HTML5 has argued that we will need script dependency for IE to render styling for those elements, otherwise it will render unstyled, but with the content still fully accessible. While I agree in theory, I think it is, at times, an unnecessary requirement for using HTML5.

Another option is the content negotiation approach, where we on the server exchange the new elements for old ones just for Internet Explorer. It’s simple: just have a regular expression to replace all block elements (header, footer, section etc) with div elements, and the inline ones (time, mark etc) with span elements.

Together with that, always style you elements through their id attribute or class value, and you are good to go! All modern web browsers + screen readers + search engines will get rich HTML5 markup; IE will get plain old HTML.

The drawback of the first option is script dependency to get correct styling for the new HTML5 elements; the drawback with the other approach could be duplicating CSS and JavaScript code. Therefore, consider the options and choose the approach you deem most suitable.

Specification discussions

There are still some discussions about some elements in HTML5 and how they should be specified, what existing options/combinations there are that will work in existing user agents (which is a must; it can’t break things). Overall, though, I’d say use the new parts everyone agrees about and that will work, and hold on with the bells and whistles until it’s ready.

The last call for the HTML5 working draft is in October this year. The future is already here.

Where we are today on the web

I for one is really happy that this is finally becoming true and usable. Sure, as always there are a number of issues and things to discuss, but overall we really need this as web developers. We need new elements, APIs and options to create dazzling web sites, and we have been waiting so long for something new at all.

I also think this is vital for the climate of the web, to have open standards to code after, and to compete with the ever-growing closed-in and proprietary technologies that try to claim the web as their own.

Have me do a presentation

If you found all this to be immensely interesting, and would like to discuss it in real life or hear more, please contact me if you want me to talk at a conference, your company or similar!

Related reading

HTML5 Specification

The specification for HTML5.

WHATWG FAQ

A good FAQ about WHATWG and general answers to questions about HTML5 and peoples’ wishes.

HTML5 differences from HTML4

Great introduction to the differences between HTML4 and HTML5.

Dive Into HTML5

Mark Pilgrim has started writing an online book about HTML5. Only a a couple of chapters available right now, but already an interesting read.

HTML5 pocket book

Jeremy Keith has a handy little map over HTML5 elements and what they are supposed to be used for.

HTML5 Doctor

Great posts about general issues and ways to solve them, and also discusses flaws in the specification and alternatives.

Designing a blog with html5

Good introduction to how you would mark up a blog with HTML5.

HTML5 Super Friends

Well-known web names exclaim their support for HTML5, but also bring up issues they would like to see resolved.

My talk

I will do a presentation in the Wednesday Web Development track about JavaScript history, what it is and where it comes from, and then move into such interesting and important areas such as best practices, object-orientation, scope and closures. And yes, I know, quite brave to try and pack all that into 45 minutes. Wish me luck!

Other presenters

I can say for sure that I’m glad to be the first speaker on Wednesday, because following me are JavaScript king Douglas Crockford and performance guru Steve Souders! They have been, and are, very influential to me and it’s truly an honor to be featured on the same bill as them.

Accompanying them are Piotr Walczyszyn and Nikolai Onken, who will talk about Adobe AIR respectively Business Applications with the Dojo Toolkit.

The Thursday Web Development track also has some interesting talks with Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, Remy Sharp and others.

Getting a ticket

Øredev 2009 is a massive 5-day event with lots of different tracks – therefore, there are a number of ticketing options available. Everything from 1-day-, 2-day passes etc to other options. Please check it out and if you find it interesting, I might see you there!

Background

As we all know, Mozilla, with Firefox, took back the web from a Microsoft-dominated era with Internet Explorer, made it open again and put emphasis on web standards. The way I see it, we owe gratitude for the openness and much healthier web browser landscape we see today, and it’s a very important step towards an open web.

Following that, Apple started developing Safari, based on WebKit, and last year, Google got into the game with Google Chrome (also based on WebKit). Somewhere at the sidelines, marketshare-wise, Opera has been around for quite some time, and has lately put a lot of effort into having people evangelize about HTML5 and future technologies.

With all this innovation, faster release cycles, new features and better overall support is brought to us, and I believe competition thrives from this. For many years, Firefox was known for setting the bar, both with web standards support and new exciting features, but as of lately, other web browsers have started seriously competing for this position, in terms of feature-support and performance.

Meeting in Prague

In Prague, I got the opportunity to discuss with Firefox Director, Mike Beltzner, and Firefox developer Vladimir Vukicevic about the future of Firefox, what to focus on and what web developers find most important. I also featured in a panel about HTML5 moderated by Vladimir where we discussed the balance of fixing old issues compared to implementing new things.

Before the panel, Vladimir had also expressed what they are looking for:

We are interested to hear what you think we could be doing better at, in terms of support for current or emerging web standards. Are there existing features in other browsers that you want to take advantage of that we don’t support? What about those features is compelling?

What’s missing from the web platform? Where do you want to see us take it? If you could pick one capability to add to the web, what would have the biggest impact on your web app development?

Of the currently supported standards, what’s painful? What would you like to see us focus on improving, whether through enhancement or through change?

What I think

The way I see it, Firefox took, and held, the lead for some time, but it is facing a huge challenge right now. The parts I find most important are:

Start-up time

In my daily work, with colleagues as well as people I met in the various companies I visit or do work for, a lot of them have chosen Google Chrome as their number one web browser. Anyone I ask about why, the answer always comes out the same: “Startup time – Firefox is so slow”. I know lots of work is being done by Mozilla in this area, but, if possible, I believe it has to be given even more priority. One suggestion is to postpone checking for add-on updates till after the web browser has actually started. Complement performance focus with looking at perceived performance vs. actual performance.

Performance, performance, performance

I think this can not be stressed enough. Without a doubt, the reason behind a fast adoption of other web browsers, especially Google Chrome, is spelled speed. Page rendering and JavaScript performance have to increase even more. In all fairness, it has to be said, Firefox 3.5 without any add-ons is very fast and almost up to par with the others, but at the same time add-ons is the main competitive advantage and in many cases, the sole reason for people choosing Firefox. Therefore, add-ons implementation has to get faster as well, and I believe Jetpack is an attempt to achieve that – problem is, native Jetpack in Firefox and people porting their add-ons to it is far away in the future, and other measures need to be taken before that.

Separating processes

This goes a little hand-in-hand with the performance points made above, but with separate processes for each tab, and especially one for the Firefox UI, it gives a great playing field for accomplishing that. I know this is in the long plan for Firefox as well, but I just want to emphasize how crucial it really is.

Release cycles

I think it comes down to how often a new version is released, but also, more importantly, how many features that are being tried to be packed into each release. The important choice to make is incremental additions and enhancements, and not believing each version will contain everything that is desired.

Acid3

Why I think the Acid3 tests matter is not necessarily what support that comes with a 100/00 score, it’s about the message it sends out to developers. If Mozilla can’t deliver a score of a 100, while WebKit and Opera can, it conveys the feeling that Mozilla have a harder time and is a little bit behind implementing things.

Implementing new features

What was good with the Firefox 3.5 release was support for video and audio elements, Location Aware Browsing, general HTML5-related support in the form of CSS enhancements, query selectors etc. Keep this up, but most of the above are just following WebKit examples – I would like you to be first with the most mind-blowing features! (I think the AwesomeBar is one example of such a great feature)

I want Firefox to be the best web browser out there again, all categories, and I believe these are the vital steps to achieve that. Make me proud!

What do you think?

Those are my thoughts. Is Firefox your main web browser, or do you just “use it for developing”, as I mostly hear? What would it take to make it your number one web browser again?

Help Mozilla out by contributing your thoughts!

Getting there

Thursday October 1st I met up with fellow Swedes Patrick Finch and David Tenser (ok, Patrick is actually British, but he lives in Sweden, so it counts as one of us ) to get on our flight with Czech Airlines. They were about to participate on Friday on an event for the local Mozilla community in Prague, and I had made sure to have one extra day of touristing in the city before the actual conference.

Once we got to the Andel’s hotel where we were staying (a very nice hotel, by the way), we got settled in our rooms and then planned to meet up to have dinner. In the lobby, I also met Søren Skrøder, who I got to know at the Mozilla/Maemo event in Copenhagen back in May. As it turned out, though, the main organizer William Quiviger (who now sports some kind of Jef Goldblum-look with his glasses…) was just a tad stressed in getting things in order and be on top of everything, so we went to the preparation area.

Once there, we met Barbara Hueppe, Paul Roguet, Irina Sandu, Svetlana and other people making their best to get everything in order. Being the kind spirits that we are, we added our small efforts to get everything done, so we could go out and eat something: by this time, I was famished!

Once we got everyone together and went out to eat, let’s just say that there were mixed ideas about where to go, and where the actual place was located. We walked around in Prague for almost an hour, till we finally settled on a restaurant. I ordered in Carpaccio, which was awesome! After dinner, I was exhausted, so I got back to the hotel, said hi to Axel Hecht and then went to my room to get some sleep and be prepared for a full day of Prague touristing.

Tourism in Prague

The next morning, I met a lot of Mozilla people at the breakfast, and I and Søren had decided to make an attempt to tourist together, since he had also dedicated his Friday time for the same purpose. We started by packing our bags, buying some water and then initiate our Prague excursion.

We took a glance on the map, had a brief discussion about what we wanted to see and then embarked on our walkabout. One of our first destinations was the the huge main park in Prague, Pet?ín hill. Neither I or Søren expected it to be so hilly, though, and there were serpentine walkways taking us up the steep hill.

After quite some time walking, we eventually reached the Pet?ín Lookout Tower, which gives an amazing view over Prague. There sure are a number of stairs to walk up, but it was definitely worth it! After having spent quite some time in the park by then, Søren expressed that he really wanted to move on and see other sights (these opinions were expressed in tweets like “Søren says we have had enough of pretty park pictures now. ” and “Søren says: “Fuck the scenic route”.”).

Understanding the hints, we started walking downhill again, and got to the Strahovsky monastery – unfortunately, it was closed when we got there. However, outside we met two people from the Mozilla community in Barcelona, and decided to make company.

That was then followed by a visit to Loreta Holy Shrine and then lunch at a local restaurant. Baffled by the constantly low prices: about €1.50 for a large beer and no lunch or dinner costed more than €20 (unless you wanted something really special). Post-lunch, it was finally time to reach the Prague Castle!

Within the castle area is also the gargantuan St. Vitus Cathedral, which we spent a fair amount of time in. After that visit, we went into the urinal, and I got the idea to take a picture of a toilet that was sealed off in an interesting way. Suffice to say, the reaction of the other people in the urinal, when they heard the camera flash, was not comforting. I learned something that day about taking pictures in urinals…

By this time, it started to get chilly outside and the wind started blowing, so we briskly moved forward out of the castle area, by wine growing on the hill side, and down towards the Vltava/Moldau river and across to the Old Town area of Prague (still a little bit scared of the guy who came walking on the sidewalk with a chainsaw – apparently Czech people defend their own hood in a different way…).

Once in the Old Town we had a look at the extraordinary Astronomical Clock and had the luck to see it at the full hour with all of its display. On our way, there’s was an offer to see a non-verbal performance of Beatles’ Yellow Submarine – Great, I’ve been looking for that all my life…

Next stop was the Museum of Communism, depicting the history of communism in the world, and in Prague in particular. It is terrible, but also needed, to be reminded how evil man can be, and that we really need to be more respectful and understanding to each other.

When the museum visit had come to an end, our Barcelonian friends needed to go back to the hotel again. Søren and I, however, just knew he had more to see in the city. We walked to the Charles Bridge, where the Swedes fought the Czechs during the Thirty Years’ War, and also got the opportunity to climb up in the tower on the Old Town side.

Last task of the day was crossing the bridge, admiring its gorgeous statues and then finding a tram station to get back to the hotel again. At the hotel, some Danish countrymen of Søren had arrived, so I, Søren and Finn Sørensen went out and had a nice dinner together (Carpaccio again for me, two nights in a row – oh, how I love it!). That was later followed by a welcome beer at the hotel with all the newly arrived conference attendants.

By this time, my room mate from Sweden, Stefan H, had also arrived, and in a Swedish humble manner we almost constantly apologized to each other for how much room we took in our hotel room, what a mess we had created etc.

My tourist day in Prague was fantastic, and I’m truly happy I took the time to do it!

The conference

The Mozilla conference had two full day of presentations, and I will list the ones I attended. The talks were divided into four tracks:

• Development
• Internationalisation
• Advocacy
• QA

(entire schedule)

Saturday presentations

Welcome address by Tristan Nitot

Tristan is the President of Mozilla Europe, and he welcomed us all to the conference and went a little into what it would contain.

Keynote: Glyn Moody

Glyn Moody is a technical writer who spoke about the importance of open software, how Mozilla of today is derived of the old Netscape roots, and how amazing it is that it actually happened. I wonder what the web would have looked like without Mozilla. Also, Moody is a great name, and I sure know it would fit me.

Keynote: Mark Surman

Mark is the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, and his talk was about spreading the word, building community, and, in essence, making sure we continue to work for an open web. He also raised the extremely important question: “Will we have an open web 100 years?”, and how we can make sure that happens. Mozilla Drumbeat is a way to help people spreading the word.

Panel discussion with Tristan, Glyn and Mark

After the keynotes, it was time for a discussing about the open web, integrity and how can protect people on the Internet. I think a very important question was raised by someone in the audience about what information and data we can claim that we own; is a great blog comment of mine, in someone else’s blog something I can claim ownership to, what about pictures others take of me etc. Unfortunately, this was just dismissed with jokes about being seen drunk on Facebook, which really missed the big question. Sad.

Firefox Next – Mike Beltzner

Mike is the Director of Firefox, and he gave a very interesting talk about the future of Firefox, what they see as the true competitors (not other web browsers, but rather proprietary technologies such as Flash, Silverlight and Gears), how it needs to have shorter release cycles and what they need to focus on in the future. Later during the conference, I got to have a chat with him, and was happy to hear about the work on improved start-up time, how performance is perceived and other things.

Firefox in Europe

Mike Beltzner led an open discussion about the future of Firefox in conjunction with help, support and input from the European community. Good suggestions and I hope they got something to think about for future plans.

Firebug

Jan Odvarko of the Firebug team walked us through new features in the upcoming Firebug 1.5. Being a Firebug extension developer with Firefinder and Inline Code Finder, I would had hoped for more information about extending Firebug, but I think the right thing was to talk about general features. After his talk, it was great to finally meet Jan in person, talk a little and share the challengin experience of, as an extension developer, trying to understand Firebug…

Prism

Having developed a few Adobe AIR applications, for some time now, I have been hoping that Prism would take off and offer a good open alternative. As I see it, Prism is decent, but at the same time I get the feeling that the development pace of it isn’t that fast, and that they would have to put more effort into it if they want to compete with Adobe AIR.

Weave

Anant Narayanan did a very interesting and inspiring talk about Weave, where they are today and possible future plans. We spoke a little after the presentation about Opera Unite, possible interest in offering similar things to users and such.

Jetpack

Aza Raskin was supposed to give this talk, but his plane was late (or something), so Anant and someone else (missed the name) had to step up and hold an open discussion. What is clear is that Jetpack is most likely the future extension model for Firefox, phasing the old one out (at least for most use cases), but it will take some time and there are a number of things to work out before we reach that point.

My friend Remy Sharp was also to hold a presentation about HTML5 as well, but unfortunately couldn’t make it to Prague.

Saturday evening boat ride on the Vltava/Moldau river

Mozilla had arranged for all of the conference attendants to first ride specially booked historical trams down to the river, and then board a boat to get a dinner on board accompanied by a guide. However, with about 180 attendants, Czech beer and people spread out, the guiding didn’t really take off.

It was also possible to get up on the top of the boat to get a beautiful view of Prague at night. There I first got to have a good talk with Steve Lau of Songbird and then Martin Kliehm, who fights a lot for accessibility.

I also found it amusing to to see Patrick Finch, a.k.a. Remington Steele (or James Bond if you will), giving his special agent stance on the boat, and telling a story about an amazing feat of his.

After a few hours on the river, we got back to the pier again, and got on a bus back to the hotel, and I got to have an interesting talk with David McNamara about many varying things. Once back at the hotel, a few of us decided we needed just one more beer, and went out on the town – we were me, Brian King, David McNamara and Matjaz Horvat. Once at the bar, we also met Kamil Lach, who I got to know in Copenhagen in May, and someone else, who I just can’t remember (I was jus tired; do not blame the beer intake, ok?! ).

Brian gave me a good talk which really inspired me on the way back to the hotel – thanks, Bri!

Sunday presentations

Keynote: Seth Bindernagel

Sunday morning started with a talk by Seth about the importance of localization, and how it has been, and is, such an important part of helping to bring Firefox to everyone in a lot of countries.

HTML5 Roundtable

Both stepping up for an absent Remy, and out of my own interest, I took one of the places on the HTML5 roundtable, amongst a total of 9 developers, which was during two hours before lunch. The idea was to discuss about HTML5, feedback and concerns and also let the audience ask their questions about it. I think I did ok on it, but overall, my feeling is that we could have been a bit more structured with the set-up and topics, and nine people on the panel were probably a few too many.

Interestingly enough, one of the other people on the panel was Anthony Ricaud, who is a WebKit Developer and works on the Web Inspector. Kudos to him for taking part of a Mozilla event, and it was good talking about Web Inspector as well.

Above-mentioned Martin Kliehm was part of the panel, and did a good job emphasizing the need for accessibility in HTML5, and I was also joined by Ilmari Heikkinen, who showed a nice canvas animation demo and is also behind CAKE (take a lot at the amazing Missile Fleet, for instance).

Stratified JavaScript

Showed some interesting examples with concurrency in JavaScript.

Songbird

Steve Lau presented Songbird, which is an open source music player based on XULRunner. Quite interesting, and I liked Steve’s cool, calm presentation approach. He demoed the extension capapbilities, skinning etc and I for one sure hope it becomes popular.

Mozilla Labs: The Future of You-centric Browsing

Aza Raskin, who had arrived Saturday evening, gave a talk about user experience and setting the end user, i.e. you, in focus and control. Interesting presentation, but personally I felt i would have wanted some more hands-on examples. We had a talk after, and I asked a number of questions about user interface, what he was working with compared to the current work being done on Firefox, his opinions on certain things etc. Aza is a busy man, so if you get the chance to corner him, make sure to ask everything that’s on your mind.

That was all I saw during the Sunday, and it was followed by trying to make sure to get the time to say good-bye to everyone before it was time to go to the airport.

Going home

Two small buses were chartered to get us to the airport, work courtesy of FuzzyFox who probably had enough stress for a year organizing it all. Once at the airport, I sat down and had a talk with Anthony Ricaud, before it was due time to bug (even more) gifts to my loved ones and then board the flight home.

Thank you Mozilla and everyone attending for a great event, and I hope to see you all again soon!

All my pictures are available on Flickr and on SmugMug.

It is a two-day conference in Prague where a lot of interesting people will be discussing very interesting things.

There will be four main tracks:

• Development
• Internationalisation
• Advocacy
• QA

Personally, I’m naturally very interested in the development track, but the advocacy part is also something I care a lot about. In terms of speakers, it’s a little of who’s who of Mozilla names, and I can’t wait to see the presentations!

Funnily enough, my friend Remy has been invited as the HTML 5 guru, so I’ll make sure to prepare some difficult questions for him.

My part? No speaking, for once, just attending, mingling and generally having a good time!

If you are from, or have ever been to, Prague, I would really appreciate some good advice of what to see and do – it’s my first visit! I’ve made sure to have one extra day of sight-seeing and experiencing Prague, so I really want to make the most out of it!

Also, are you perhaps going as well?

Google Chrome Frame

In Introducing Google Chrome Frame , Google explains that it is a plug-in to Internet Explorer, to completely replace the rendering engine with the Chrome one, based on WebKit. This means that you will get the same support within IE, that Chrome offers, when it comes to HTML and CSS features and JavaScript performance. Yes, for real.

It reminds me of when Mozilla, on a smaller scale, offered Screaming Monkey to replace the script engine in Internet Explorer, but it never really took off.

Google’s approach is that if you/the end user has installed the Google Chrome Frame plug-in, all you need to do is add this meta element to your web page/site:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">

The irony here is, of course, that this is the same meta tag Microsoft suggests to make Internet Explorer use its IE 8 mode or its Compatibility View – having a new option, “real fucking rendering”, so to say, is of course hilarious!

Google Wave not supporting Internet Explorer

One very interesting thing was mentioned in Google Wave in Internet Explorer: Google Wave will not support any version of Internet Explorer; not version 6, 7 or 8.

They have come to the conclusion that it is such a waste of time and money to try and make it good in Internet Explorer (recognize the feeling?), and that it will be sub-par at best, anyway, so they will not develop for it. Instead, they will recommend to Internet Explorer users to either install the Google Chrome Frame plug-in or to install another web browser which have better support and superior performance (can’t help wonder why Opera are never allowed amongst the web browsers Google list).

Picture taken from Google Wave in Internet Explorer

My thoughts

I’m really on the fence here about Google Chrome Frame. My two basic takes are:

No one will care

The way I see it, most people who use Internet Explorer belong to one of two categories:

• Home users who have no idea what a web browser is, and will not install anything (or, in some cases, everything – different story… )
• Company users with company IT restrictions where it doesn’t matter if it’s a web browser upgrade, new browser or “just” a plug-in – they’re not allowed to install anything.

When it comes to the latter category, my estimate, after having seen a lot of different companies’ IT departments and learned about their values and general stance, is that they will shrug their shoulders and just ignore this. And if people can’t install Google Chrome Frame, and those in charge won’t let them, it’s practically useless and will have no impact.

Part of this, also, is that I believe people, to some reasonable extent, should be able to access any content on the web, and that it is our job as web developers to offer this to them. It’s not their problem if they use a less competent web browser.

It’s fantastic!

When I first heard about Google Chrome Frame, I liked the idea and I know Alex Russell behind it is one of the smartest developers in the world. I am 100% convinced that this has been implemented in an optimal way, especially from a performance perspective, so not having to develop for any Internet Explorer rendering engine sounds like a god-send!

And what will make this matter is not just that Google offers the technology to do it, it’s that they require either the plug-in or a more competent web browser for Google Wave. And if Google Wave comes even close to the potential it has, it will a serious contender to, or at least as popular parallel service as, Facebook and Twitter; people will care since they will want to be able to use it. Just imagine the effect if Facebook had this requirement!

I also think what will decide how this is perceived is that Microsoft have a long business history of locking people in, of business strategies crushing opponents and any chance of competition, and it has led to their extremely poor reputation today. If we look at Google, instead they have just focused on delivering kick-ass services that everyone will want to use, not be forced to. And this is why this might have effect: it’s there to make people’s web browsing lives better, not just an attempt to quench other companies’ offerings.

The effects of this

I feel that we have crossed a line. It’s not just about the regular IE 6 complaining, it’s about companies openly stating that Internet Explorer just doesn’t cut it and that it’s time, from a financial, sanity and best-for-the-web standpoint, to demand more. Microsoft can’t just ignore this, especially with the steady decrease of Internet Explorer users, so the way I see it, they have three options:

• Stop developing Internet Explorer. Just say it was fun while it lasted, but it’s time to face the facts and let go. (this will not happen)
• Come to the conclusion that the rendering engine never have the possibility to match the open-source work of WebKit and Gecko, and instead focus on everything around the content, and integrate one of the open-source rendering engines. (this will not happen either)
• Put full focus into making Internet Explorer 9 the most kick-ass web browser in the world – screw backwards compatibility! I’m sure Microsoft has the financial abilities as well as skilled developers to do it, so it’s “solely” a matter of business strategy (to complement this, they should offer multiple side-by-side versions of Internet Explorer, something I am sure they can technically do, but unfortunately it will never happen)

Either way you see it, Microsoft, the gauntlet has been thrown. Time to step up and act.

I hadn’t checked the statistics for some time for my getElementsByClassName code, so you can just guess my surprise when I saw it has passed one million downloads!

At the time of writing, the code has been downloaded 1 029 433 times! Last time I looked, sometime during spring, I vaguely remember it was somewhere between 100 000 and 200 000. It might have gained some recent popularity, but still, that’s quite a push. With one million now, it kind of leads me to suspect it has been hot-linked, but as far as I know, hotlinking to the provided download at Google code (which holds the download statistics) isn’t possible, since it should prompt you with a dialog. And it’s Google – I have to be able to trust them, right?

So, until I learn more or something else is proven, getElementsByClassName has been downloaded a million times. Yay!

What?

My dear friend Molly Holzschlag will be coming here exclusively just to talk to you! I take for granted, most, if not everyone, of you already know who she is, but basically all you need to know is that she’s awesome.

I have told her that you’re a smart bunch (you are, right? ), and that I want her to delve deep into the future (and now) of fascinating web development with HTML 5 and other assorted features. Molly will hold two presentations, with a break in the middle, to inspire you to be part of, and shape, the future of the web!

And, as always, there will be beer and food (as Tim says: Mexican pizza topping, which means Chili con Carne. Yes, for real.), and the admission is completely free.

Where?

The event will be held October 20th at the bwin premises at Klarabergsviadukten 82 in Stockholm. Doors open at 18.00, and we expect to go till 22.30.

Limited seating and signing up

At this time, there are a limited number of seats: 120. There’s a minimal possibility there will be a few more, but please don’t count on it.

Sign up now to be sure to get a seat; just write a comment below!

And also, please only sign up if you are sure you can attend.

I enjoyed some of his movies and performances, and Dirty Dancing is definitely the most appreciated chick flick of all times. From what I have heard, he was always a very nice and likable guy, and I must admire someone who found his love when he was young and they stuck together for the rest of his life.

What makes me sad, except for his terrible fate, of course, is that there have been a number of people from the era I grew up, who have died recently (Patrick, Michael Jackson etc). And that, in turn, makes me so much more aware of our inevitable fate. One day this will all be over, and what are we actually wasting our lives on?

Thank you Patrick for your time. I hope you will find peace.

Development target #1

I believe that, beyond a nice, consistent and well-designed interface and impressive hardware, one of the major strengths of the iPhone is that it has become the number one platform choice for developers for mobile phones. Virtually any developer or company interested in developing something for a mobile phone will do it for the iPhone first.

Extending – the way to go

This is pretty much the same strength as Firefox has. With the abundance of add-ons on offer for it, it’s hard to compete. But what if something happened that made, let’s say, it easier or better to develop an extension for Google Chrome? Something that made people look somewhere else than the iPhone?

Slowly moving towards a dangerous line

To me, it seems like Apple are, or always have been, heading in that direction with their App Store and its requirements to get approved to be on that vital platform. According to my personal values, anyone should be possible to install whatever they want on their computer, mobile phone etc. And while App Store is a financial success, both for Apple and developers, and naturally it’s good and easy for end users to have one place to look to for applications, they don’t allow any app there.

The Apple approval process

The problem is the approval process. Some apps seem to almost go straight through, some takes quite a long time, and some are just rejected. And according to the well of feedback on the Internet, a lot of that rejection seem to be based on weak or irrelevant arguments. Or it might just be that they’re competing with already existing, or soon-to-come, Apple applications.

That’s where I think they go wrong. As opposed to Mac OS X, where Apple has a good base selection of software but I can choose to install whatever I want, the iPhone locks you in. And given the price you pay for it, that’s not how you want to feel.

Also, looking at high number of photo apps that stopped working with the release of OS 3.0, listed in Broken iPhone photo apps, it really makes me start to wonder. For example, I, for one, was a very happy user of the Darkroom Premium app (App Store link), which offered a great way to make sure the phone was being held stable enough for a non-blurry result.

However, as outlined in Darkroom and OS 3.0 Compatibility Issue Update, they have repeatedly been rejected by Apple for doing something which they have always done. The claim is that they are “using an undocumented API”. Problem is, a number of apps have been blocked for this with the 3.0 release, but as always, there are some apps who do the same thing, but have been approved…

And, if they are using an undocumented API which evidently works and offers great features to the phone owners, just bloody document it then!

My suggestion

Keep the App Store, the reviews of applications and everything that goes with. Offer a safe haven, if you so will, for users so they can only install what Apple approves of. But, for those who want to, give users the option to install whatever software they want, from whatever source they want.

Seeing the popularity of jailbreaking iPhones, and trust me, that interest will not decline, just give people what they ask for – the freedom to install anything to their liking. Because in the long run, if you don’t, I think someone else will take that spot.

What do you think?

Do you believe in the free choice of the end user, or that software dictatorship is the only way for Apple (and any other company)?

Which was fair enough, I was driving 9 kilometers (approx. 5.5 miles) faster per hour than I was allowed to. Quite a hefty fine, though: 1500 SEK (214 USD), where I don’t even dare to wonder what I would have to pay had I been going faster (still, as opposed to Finland, ticket amount is not based on annual income here in Sweden…).

I was caught by a speeding camera, and the interesting part was the letter I got home with a picture of me speeding:

If you look closely, you can see that I am, in an overly curious manner, looking out at something. What the hell was I looking at?

Secondly, believe it or not, the big white square over the passenger’s seat is not my doing; the picture came like that. So, when Fredrika saw it, she didn’t bring up the speeding or the ticket – she asked who I had had sitting next to me! To her, it was a cover-up with a secret passenger, and she demanded to get to know who it was!

So, thank you dear police, for creating these kind of conspiracy implications and possibilities…

And since IE once again managed to destroy my personal life, I thought I’d dedicate a little song to it (this is a web developer’s adaptation of Tenacious D’s Fuck Her Gently):

This is a song for the developers
But managers, listen closely

You don’t always have to fuck IE hard
In fact sometimes that’s not right, to do
Sometimes you’ve got to make some love
And fuckin’ give it some hasLayout too
Sometimes you got to squeeze
Sometimes you got to say “Please…”
Sometimes you got to say “Hey…”

I’m gonna fuck you, softly
I’m gonna screw you gently
I’m gonna hump you, sweetly
I’m gonna ball you discreetly

And then you say “Hey I brought you CSS”
And then you say “Wait a minute, IE”
“I think I got somethin’ in my code, could you lay it out for me?”
That’s fuckin’ team work!

What’s your favorite position? Relative?
That’s cool with me
It’s not my favorite but I’ll do it for you
What’s your favorite coding tool? Visual Studio?
I’m not gonna use it
But I’ll order it from Microsoft

And then I’m gonna love you completely
And then I fuckin’ fuck you discreetly
And then I fuckin’ bone you completely
But then I’m gonna fuck you haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard!
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard!

New features and changes

I have implemented both a number of new features and gotten a better integration with Firebug with this release, and they are:

Code collaboration with the FriendlyFire feature

The number one thing I wanted to incorporate in this version was an idea which came from Remy Sharp, where he knew I have developed a few Firefox extensions. He brought up the idea of being able to share code from within Firefox with other web developers, and I immediately jumped at the idea.

The new code collaboration feature is entitled FriendlyFire, and is quite easy to use. You use Firefinder and any of its various ways to select an element in the current web page. In the results listing, just click on the FriendlyFire link to send that element’s code to a pastebin service, JS Bin (graciously hosted and run by Remy), to share your code online. You will get a URL back to share with colleagues and friends – much more efficient than using e-mail or instant messaging.

JS Bin offers code highlighting, an additional tab for JavaScript (where you can also include any of the most popular JavaScript libraries), and an output tab where you will see how that code will behave in practice.

Support for auto-selecting element when hovering the page

In style with the feature for selecting HTML elements with Firebug, you can now turn on the Auto-select feature in Firefinder to make it automatically select the one you’re currently hovering over with your mouse. Click desired element to lock it to that selection.

Support for context menu click

For those who prefer the context menu, just right-click (or left, if you swing that way) an element and choose “Firefind Element” to send it to the Firefinder panel.

Inspect link integrated with Firebug’s HTML panel

In your result listing in Firefinder, you can now click an element’s Inspect link to immediately be taken to the same element in the HTML tab in Firebug – in case you want to check its CSS code or do some minor editing. Also, remember that you can actually edit the code for an element in the HTML tab, then go back to Firefinder and share its code through the FriendlyFire feature, and the updated code will then be shared!

Better performance

The CSS selector mechanism in Firefinder now exclusively uses the querySelectorAll support in Firefox 3.5. This means that your CSS selectors will get the best performance possible, and there will be no pass-through of any JavaScript library. Possible downside is that Firefinder now requires Firefox 3.5 to use, but my take was that everyone (developer, that is) already has it anyway.

Better integration with Firebug

In general, the showing and hiding of the Firefinder panel works better now, and all buttons and actions are behaving just like in Firebug. Remember that you can show/skip to the Firefinder panel, even if Firebug is hidden, by choosing Tools > Show Firefinder for Firebug or via its keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + V on Mac OS X and Ctrl + Shift + V in Windows and Linux.

Just one button to filter, which automatically detects if it’s a CSS filter or an XPath expression

Previously, there was one button for using CSS selectors and another for XPath. Now Firefinder automatically detects what sort of expression it is, and takes it from there – just press Enter in the field or click the “Filter” button to find elements.

Demo video

Sometimes, it’s difficult to describe everything in words, so I have also put together a demo video of using Firefinder, and with the new FriendlyFire feature:

Contributing

After 4 and a half years of blogging and code sharing, and my partaking of open-source projects, you know my main drive isn’t about getting paid for my code – it’s about sharing code and features with the world and other developers.

With that said, I do want to mention the possibility that if, and I really mean if, you want to contribute or express gratitude, I now accept contributions on the Firefinder add-on page, where the suggested donation is $1.

If you want to contribute, thank you very much – if not, it is naturally completely cool as well.

Download Firefinder

Don’t hesitate now, go download Firefinder right now! I hope it rocks your world as much as it does mine!

Background

We were sitting around a table in the beautiful Swedish archipelago, having a drink and chatting a little. Big men talk about big guns, right? So, we were discussing different German tank models. Not being just a man, but a computer geek as well, it hit me that the name of German tanks are the same as the name of OS X versions.

Names of tanks and operating system versions

When I got back online, I did a quick search, and Internet being what it is, naturally I hadn’t been the only one thinking about it. In German armored vehicles and Apple Mac OS X all these are listed, but please allow me to present a short list:

Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah

Tank: Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer Gepard (Gepard in German means Cheetah in English)

Mac OS X 10.1 Puma

Tank: Sd.Kfz. 234/2 “Puma”

Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar

Tanks: Jaguar 1 and Jaguar 2

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther

Tank: Panther

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

Tanks: Tiger 1 and Tiger 2

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Tanks: Leopard 1 and Leopard 2

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Haven’t found the corresponding tank yet, but I’m sure it exists…

Really

I’m really not sure where all this comes from, and it might just be coincidence – trust me, I’m not implying that Apple is some kind of Neo-Nazi movement in disguise (thinking about when especially the Tiger tank was mostly active). And sure, I can see why you would like to name something after great mighty cats.

But, what I really think, is that if you’re going to name a product line of any kind, don’t you just stop a moment to think, to contemplate:

a) Have anyone else used this naming convention?

b) Could there be any kind of negative connection?

Maybe my guess for the next iPhone to be named iPhone 3G SS isn’t so far off after all…

No age crisis, really; more like life ponderings. What have I achieved so far? What could or should I have done differently? I have seen and done so many things, and I’m so very grateful for all the wonderful experiences I have been given!

Also, looking forward and thinking about what I want to do with my ambitions, hopes and dreams. Because they’re still there, but they change and adapt over time. Isn’t it fascinating how some things are important to you all your life, while others are, in the long run, nothing more than temporary distractions?

So, congratulations to me!

How old are you?