I was out for a late dinner with some friends and got back to the hotel at about midnight. The night before I had been on a flight all night to arrive in Buenos Aires, gotten off the plane, went to the hotel, took a shower, and then gave a presentation and took part in the MDN Hack Day.

Suffices to say, I was quite tired and worn after the last events and all I wanted was to get some sleep. When I reached the hotel, there was a group of people gathered outside of the hotel – people who had attended the Hack Day and who also planned to be at the MozCamp this weekend.

When one of them saw me, he yelled “Robert Nyman!”, ran up to me and praised me for my work and specifically my talk previously during the day. He was talking for ten minutes about how much this meant to him, how he got influenced to do a lot of things and he was very excited about the future and the prospects! He was so engaged that he was almost bouncing up and down, just expressing his sheer joy and happiness.

And don’t get me wrong, this is not to say that I’m such a good speaker. I gave a good talk, and I’m happy about that, but this is about something completely different.

As I stood there listening, it just got to me more and more just how special that moment was, and in particular, the life I have chosen to lead. I can’t imagine doing something better than teaching, supporting and inspiring people to my best knowledge to create amazing things, to grow, to dare to take the plunge and try something new. And not just that, doing something that will be good for the web, and, as an extension, the world.

I sincerely believe it is our responsibility, our role as a species, to teach, share and help each other. And I feel blessed to have the opportunity to spend my life doing that!

Seeing this young man’s excitement really got to me, and all the implications of what it meant, so after a while I started feeling the tears begin to well up in my eyes. I thanked him and withdrew to my room before I got too emotional.

So, that’s why I do what I do. Because I have this amazing opportunity to play my small part in trying to make the world and people better by trying to be a better person myself.

To be more specific, it will cover the South Cone, and within 8 days we will be visiting four countries:

• Argentina
• Uruguay
• Brazil
• Chile

I was in Chile in November last year, and I’m very happy to go back to a thriving region with lots if interesting things going on! We will be arranging MDN Hack Days/Evenings, and it will be free to attend, so if you are in the region, sign up now!

The Schedule

This is an outline of the events we will be organizing in the region, and all but the MozCamp in Buenos Aires (which is for invited contributors) is open for for everyone. Our speakers will vary a bit, but I will personally be in all four locations.

April 20th

Time for the Buenos Aires MDN Hack Day, a full day of presentations and hacking away on the web!

April 21st-22nd

MozCamp in Buenos Aires, with a lot of Mozillians talking about development and the community.

April 24th

Montevideo MDN Hack Day Developer Evening, talking about HTML5, Boot to Gecko, Apps and Mozilla Persona.

April 26th

São Paulo MDN Hack Day Developer Evening, where I will be talking about HTML5 in general and about a number of exciting JavaScript APIs.

April 28th

Santiago MDN Hack Day Developer Evening, covering HTML5, Boot to Gecko, Apps and Mozilla Persona.

Excited!

I’ve only been to Chile in South America before, two times (including Easter Island), but am really excited to meet lots of great people and seeing interesting places in south South America!

Me and drinking

Looking at myself, I very rarely drink alcohol; for a myriad of reasons, really. When I was younger, with parties there were a good amount of binge drinking, and the result is of course being hungover, worn down and, at times, feeling pretty sick. Back in the teenager years, the goal was very often to get very drunk.

I’ve also never really been super-keen on the taste of most alcohol. Sure, I can appreciate a good wine or beer, but overall I prefer plain water. Additionally, I’ve been physically active most part of my life, and drinking and working out isn’t really a good match. To add to that, I have an ongoing interest in diet and health, what we eat and drink and how it affects how we feel.

So, I rarely drink.

But that’s how I choose to live my life, not that I think everyone else with a different opinion is wrong or should change.

A drinking problem

I think I got into this state of mind when I was in my early 20s. All good and well, and I felt good about myself. So, my problem is/has not been with drinking, but rather that I don’t (or very seldom drink) and over the years has rather been shown when attending events and parties.

Numerous times people have wanted me to drink, I’m “not a real man” if I don’t, or people have been under the impression that I’m not having a good time and rather wouldn’t be at the current event.

It couldn’t be further from the truth. I love meeting people, socializing, talking and hanging out!

Honoring differences

I think it is vital for us to honor varying opinions, show mutual respect and also understanding for cultural differences. Just as much as I don’t want to excuse myself for not drinking with “No, I’m driving”, “I’m too tired” etc, I don’t want people that like to have a drink or two feel that they have to defend themselves either.

My humble hope is just that we will respect people’s choices and opinions, and hopefully have interesting and constructive conversations about not drinking vs. drinking with moderation vs. binge drinking. We can always learn from each other, and we definitely owe each other to consider that not everyone will have the exact same opinion (and what a boring world it would be, if it was like that).

Avoiding exclusion

A world I don’t want to see is where people feel excluded, that they stop going to parties, conferences and events, just because they feel they don’t fit in or are even welcome. As a host, organizer or attendee, please just respect the differences and give and honor options. Have beer and wine, but also non-alcoholic alternatives like coffe, soft drinks, water etc.

Let’s focus on being inclusive and getting to know and understand more people and views, and just how beautiful people really are!

Disclaimer: Personally, I very rarely encounter being excluded or disprespected nowadays for my choice, but I just want to make people aware that some people might, even if not intentional, feel like that.

Sold out

All seats have been taken. Please write a comment to be put on a waiting list, there are always a number of cancellations, so there’s still a chance.

Finally, time for another Geek Meet here in Stockholm!

Introducing Rob Hawkes

I am very happy to welcome my Mozilla colleague Rob Hawkes, who is devoted to HTML5 and games. He’s worked a lot on his game Rawkets, had fun with Google balls and he was also appointed Brilliant newcomer of the year by .net magazine

The presentations

Rob will give two presentations during Geek Meet:

Creating Games with HTML5 and JavaScript

In this talk he will give you an overview of the new role that browsers are adopting to support games and the technologies and processes that are helping that happen. This includes areas like 2D graphics with canvas, console-like 3D games with WebGL, gamepad support, immersive full-screen experiences, multiplayer games with WebSockets, and much more.

Boot to Gecko: The Future of Mobile

In this talk Rob will outline Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project that aims to revolutionise the way we develop for mobile devices. I’ll highlight the key technologies involved in its creation and explain why a mobile experience created with HTML and JavaScript is a good idea.

Time & place

This time around, Geek Meet will be sponsored by Valtech, and will take place May 10th 18:00 in their office at Hantverkargatan 5 in Stockholm. Valtech will also provide beer and pizza to every attendant, all free of charge.

Sign up now!

Please sign up with a comment below. Please only sign up if you know you can attend. There are 150 seats available, and you can only sign up yourself. Please use a valid name and e-mail address, since this will be used to identify you at the event to get in.

This morning, we were talking about the KONY 2012 movement, various reaction around it and how easy we share things without even looking at it. How our gut reaction is to act without even knowing what we’re acting on or reflect on what it means.

(If you want to delve deeper into the KONY 2012 topic, you can, for instance, read Kony 2012: what’s the real story?).

What we want to cover here is the greater scheme of things, social media and how people react.

When a social media campaign gains traction, and especially when it becomes widely successful, this seems to be the order of events:

1. A lot of people Like a campaign on Facebook, share and retweet it and watch any possible video available.
2. There’s a backlash with the people spreading the word being accused of just taking part in Slacktivism, that it won’t do any change at all and it’s just for them have a better conscience about it.
3. These two camps never get along, they keep on arguing – sometimes ugly – and that’s it.

Thoughts on this:

Even if some of the social media attention is there to make the person passing the information on feel better, it still serves a purpose. It spreads awareness, and hopefully a number of people want to learn more about it. And this is the key thing:

We have to learn more. We have to watch what we hear with critical eyes, look at it from different perspectives, do our research and scrutiny of various sources. We need to look at the positives and negatives to form an opinion as close to the actual truth we can. We need to practice source evaluation to ascertain a source’s credibility.

Because, with social media in particular, it’s so easy to support something or spread the word, but it won’t be worth anything if you’re not entirely sure what you actually support. And the beauty of the web is also how easy it is to put in a little effort to find out more!

In the words of Bob Dylan:

Lot of water under the bridge. Lot of other stuff too.

Find out what really is under the bridge!

If you want to get involved, contribute in anyway, donate money – by all means, do that! But make sure you do it to the right cause, that it will have an effect and what that campaign/organization genuinely stand for.

Because we all owe that to ourselves, and, more importantly, to the people that are in desperate need of attention and help. Care as much as you can, but make sure it’s not a misguided effort without all the cards on the table.

Now please go and do something good! But do make sure, as much as you can, that it actually is good.

One thing which has been very important when it comes to creating special end user experiences have been the ability to show something fullscreen, effectively hiding all the other content etc.

Remember when web sites gave you instructions how to configure your web browser with hiding toolbars and more, just to get a slightly better user experience? Or maybe it’s just me…

Either way, some time ago we got fullscreen support in web browsers where the user could choose to view the current web site in fullscreen. That’s all good and well, but as an extension to that, as web developers we want to be able to trigger that. Either for the entire web site or just a specific element.

And now we can!

Requesting fullscreen

We now have access to a method called requestFullScreen, so far implemented in Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari. Therefore, to make it work at the moment, we need this code:

Please note that the Fullscreen standard in the W3C specification uses a lowercase ‘s’ in all methods, whereas Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari use an uppercase one.

What the code above does is just getting a reference to the documentElement and request for it to be displayed fullscreen. Naturally, you could also make just a certain element fullscreen, for instance, a video, with the same method called for the element you wish.

Cancelling fullscreen

If you want to cancel the fullscreen state, you need to call it on the document element:

Note here that W3C has decided to call it exitFullscreen, but in all existing web browser implementations it’s about cancelling the state.

Detecting fullscreen state change

The user could, for instance, exit fullscreen, something that might be good for you to know. For that we have a fullscreenchange event, that you can apply both to the element that requested fullscreen, but also to the document. Then we just detect the fullscreen state and take act accordingly, like this:

document.addEventListener("webkitfullscreenchange", function () {
fullscreenState.innerHTML = (document.webkitIsFullScreen)? "" : "not ";
}, false);

Styling fullscreen

In CSS, we get a number of pseudo-classes for styling fullscreen elements. The most reliable one is for full-screen and automatically gets triggered when the document/element is in fullscreen mode:

html:fullscreen {
background: red;
}

Notice here that the W3C approach doesn’t use a hyphen between the word ‘full’ and the word ‘screen’.

It should also be added that Firefox is the only web browser that applies a width and height of 100% to the element that is requesting fullscreen, since we believe that is the desired behavior. This can of course be overridden with the above CSS.

Full screen with key input

For security reasons, most keyboard inputs have been blocked in the fullscreen mode. However, in Google Chrome you can request keyboard support by calling the method with a flag:

docElm.webkitRequestFullScreen(Element.ALLOW_KEYBOARD_INPUT);

This does not work in Safari, and the method won’t be called.

With Firefox, we are discussing and looking into various ways of how we we could add keyboard input support without jeopardizing the end user’s security. One suggestion, that no one has implemented yet, is the requestFullscreenWithKeys method, which in turn would trigger certain notifications for the user.

Web browser support

This feature is currently available in Firefox 10 and up. It has also been available in Google Chrome since version 15 and Safari since 5.1.

Play with fullscreen!

I have a Fullscreen API demo available for you to play with, and all the code is available in the Fullscreen repository on GitHub.

PPK is outlining his thoughts and experiences when organizing the Mobilism conference and trying to get devices/sponsorship, and his take on various players out there. When it comes to Mozilla, he is basically frustrated for not getting any replies in time about the possibilities of getting Boot to Gecko devices to the conference. I can relate to the annoyance of not getting replies, and I’ve written about my thoughts in The decency of replying to e-mails.

Eventually he reached out to me and said he didn’t hear anything back about sponsorship from Mozilla (no devices mentioned in that e-mail), and we had a direct e-mail discussion back and forth, all in the same day. I contacted people at Mozilla who should know, and to my knowledge, they got back to him soon after that.

No, unfortunately there weren’t any devices for him. Boot to Gecko is a very fresh initiative, only started six months ago, and we just managed to produce a handful of devices to demo at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. As PPK is very well aware of, and in the mobile world especially, partnerships and various deals are essential for success and getting any traction and therefore our first step had to be to do that for Mobile World Congress.

The operating system, and implementation on a few devices, is in a very early stage, and to my knowledge, no devices have been handed out to anyone external to the project. Mozila doesn’t produce hardware, we are doing the software part, and we share what we can. I personally covered all we could share with the Boot to Gecko announcement and Gaia, Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko user interface.

Additionally, all the code for Boot to Gecko and code for Gaia is open source, and available for anyone to experiment with and try out. Paul Rouget set up Gaia on his web site, which anyone can do by just taking the code for Gaia from the GitHub repository. And that’s what can be done at this time.

When we can share devices, more information and tools for web developers, naturally we will do so! Humbly we learn along they way, and we constantly strive to get better. We also have a number of ideas for how to move forward, and we would love to share as much as we can! Because that’s how Mozilla is as an organization, and that is how I am as a person.

So, for PPK to go from that to tell an entire organization to fuck off? For not getting replies from one person?

I’ve known PPK since the end of the 1990s, we’ve met and been co-speakers at a number of conferences, and I believe we have always felt a mutual respect for each other’s work. But for something like this to work out, we need to act professionally about this.

We need to speak in a reasonable tone, be realistic and continue to show respect and initiative to work together.

So, hugs to you PPK, and I look forward to a sensible discussion and collaboration moving forward.

Tip: remember, you can always find all my reading suggestions in the Robert’s read category

Robert’s Read for March 7th 2012

• 
  

  TSA Nude Body Scanners Made Worthless

  Detailing the workings of the scanners and shows how you can bypass the scanners with metal objects.

• 
  

  The Most Astounding Fact

  About the true beauty of existence

• 
  

  The Simpons – Game Of Thrones intro

  The Simpsons version of the Game of Thrones intro is awesome!

• 
  

  There is no simple solution for local storage

  Do you use localStorage? Then this article is a must read!

• 
  

  Web browser market share: Internet Explorer and Chrome down, Firefox up

  Interesting part is that there might have been skewed results due to Chrome’s pre-rendering feature

• 
  

  Give it five minutes

  A post about thinking before giving feedback

• 
  

  Mozilla Boot to Gecko hands-on (video)

  Mozilla’s Christian Heilmann demoing Boot to Gecko for six minutes

• 
  

  Mozilla Collusion

  See who is tracking all your movements on the web and how it’s connected

• 
  

  Mozilla and the Mobile Web API evolution

  As part of making the web in general, and mobile devices in particular, an even richer web platform, we at Mozilla work with our WebAPI initiative.

• 
  

  When the web started

  The WorldWideWeb application is now available as an alpha release in source and binary form from info.cern.ch.

• 
  

  Ubuntu on Android

  A full Ubuntu desktop, on your docked Android phone

• 
  

  The Things We Miss

  A Violin Virtuoso Plays A DC Metro Station and goes completely unnoticed.

• 
  

  The Oatmeal on TV shows

  Spot on when it comes to what’s wrong with the media industry and TV show availability

• 
  

  First look: Mozilla’s Boot2Gecko mobile platform and Gaia UI

  Looking at Mozilla’s Boot2Gecko initiative and what it is.

• 
  

  Vendor-prefixed CSS Property Overview

  Great overview over all CSS properties and their counterpart in all web browsers.

• 
  

  Wikipedia Appears on Page 1 of Google for 99% of Searches

  Interesting to see which stronghold Wikipedia have when it comes to Google search results

• 
  

  Mozilla leads in HTML5 accessibility support

  Technical director of TPG Europe Steve Faulkner opined on Twitter that the test results suggested “Mozilla’s commitment to HTML5 accessibility is second to none”.

• 
  

  Firefox 11 – PageInspector 3D – The minecraft way

  Using the 3D Inspector in the Firefox Developer Tools and some crafty HTML

• 
  

  WebM and WebP for All Browsers

  WebM and WebP Hand Ported to JavaScript for All Browsers – Badass JavaScript. Impressive!

• 
  

  Firefox Adds Powerful New Developer Tools

  Firefox 10 is available with built-in Developer Tools.

The desired future approach for storing things client-side in web browsers is utilizing IndexedDB. Here I’ll walk you through how to store images and files in IndexedDB and then present them through an ObjectURL.

The general approach

First, let’s talk about the steps we will go through to create an IndexedDB data base, save the file into it and then read it out and present in the page:

1. Create or open a database.
2. Create an objectStore (if it doesn’t already exist)
3. Retrieve an image file as a blob
4. Initiate a database transaction
5. Save that blob into the database
6. Read out that saved file and create an ObjectURL from it and set it as the src of an image element in the page

Creating the code

Let’s break down all parts of the code that we need to do this:

Create or open a database.

// IndexedDB
var indexedDB = window.indexedDB || window.webkitIndexedDB ||
        window.mozIndexedDB || window.OIndexedDB || window.msIndexedDB,
    IDBTransaction = window.IDBTransaction || window.webkitIDBTransaction ||
        window.OIDBTransaction || window.msIDBTransaction,
    dbVersion = 1.0;

// Create/open database
var request = indexedDB.open("elephantFiles", dbVersion);

request.onsuccess = function (event) {
console.log(“Success creating/accessing IndexedDB database”);
db = request.result;

db.onerror = function (event) {
console.log(“Error creating/accessing IndexedDB database”);
};

// Interim solution for Google Chrome to create an objectStore. Will be deprecated
if (db.setVersion) {
if (db.version != dbVersion) {
var setVersion = db.setVersion(dbVersion);
setVersion.onsuccess = function () {
createObjectStore(db);
getImageFile();
};
}
else {
getImageFile();
}
}
else {
getImageFile();
}
}

// For future use. Currently only in latest Firefox versions
request.onupgradeneeded = function (event) {
createObjectStore(event.target.result);
};

The intended way to use this is to have the onupgradeneeded event triggered when a database is created or gets a higher version number. This is currently only supported in Firefox, but will soon be in other web browsers. If the web browser doesn’t support this event, you can use the deprecated setVersion method and connect to its onsuccess event.

Create an objectStore (if it doesn’t already exist)

// Create an objectStore
console.log("Creating objectStore")
dataBase.createObjectStore("elephants");

Here you create an ObjectStore that you will store your data – or in our case, files – and once created you don’t need to recreate it, just update its contents.

Retrieve an image file as a blob

// Create XHR and BlobBuilder
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(),
    blob;

xhr.open("GET", "elephant.png", true);
// Set the responseType to blob
xhr.responseType = "blob";

xhr.addEventListener("load", function () {
    if (xhr.status === 200) {
        console.log("Image retrieved");

        // File as response
        blob = xhr.response;

        // Put the received blob into IndexedDB
        putElephantInDb(blob);
    }
}, false);
// Send XHR
xhr.send();

This code gets the contents of a file as a blob directly. Currently that’s only supported in Firefox.
Once you have received the entire file, you send the blob to the function to store it in the database.

Initiate a database transaction

// Open a transaction to the database
var transaction = db.transaction(["elephants"], IDBTransaction.READ_WRITE);

To start writing something to the database, you need to initiate a transaction with an objectStore name and the type of action you want to do – in this case read and write.

Save that blob into the database

// Put the blob into the dabase
transaction.objectStore("elephants").put(blob, "image");

Once the transaction is in place, you get a reference to the desired objectStore and then put your blob into it and give it a key.

Read out that saved file and create an ObjectURL from it and set it as the src of an image element in the page

// Retrieve the file that was just stored
transaction.objectStore("elephants").get("image").onsuccess = function (event) {
    var imgFile = event.target.result;
    console.log("Got elephant!" + imgFile);

    // Get window.URL object
    var URL = window.URL || window.webkitURL;

    // Create and revoke ObjectURL
    var imgURL = URL.createObjectURL(imgFile);

    // Set img src to ObjectURL
    var imgElephant = document.getElementById("elephant");
    imgElephant.setAttribute("src", imgURL);

    // Revoking ObjectURL
    URL.revokeObjectURL(imgURL);
};

Use the same transaction to get the image file you just stored, and then create an objectURL and set it to the src of an image in the page.
This could just as well, for instance, have been a JavaScript file that you attached to a script element, and then it would parse the JavaScript.

The complete code

So, here’s is the complete working code:

(function () {
    // IndexedDB
    var indexedDB = window.indexedDB || window.webkitIndexedDB || window.mozIndexedDB || window.OIndexedDB || window.msIndexedDB,
        IDBTransaction = window.IDBTransaction || window.webkitIDBTransaction || window.OIDBTransaction || window.msIDBTransaction,
        dbVersion = 1.0;

    // Create/open database
    var request = indexedDB.open("elephantFiles", dbVersion),
        db,
        createObjectStore = function (dataBase) {
            // Create an objectStore
            console.log("Creating objectStore")
            dataBase.createObjectStore("elephants");
        },

        getImageFile = function () {
            // Create XHR and BlobBuilder
            var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(),
                blob;

            xhr.open("GET", "elephant.png", true);
            // Set the responseType to blob
            xhr.responseType = "blob";

            xhr.addEventListener("load", function () {
                if (xhr.status === 200) {
                    console.log("Image retrieved");

                    // Blob as response
                    blob = xhr.response;

                    // Put the received blob into IndexedDB
                    putElephantInDb(blob);
                }
            }, false);
            // Send XHR
            xhr.send();
        },

        putElephantInDb = function (blob) {
            console.log("Putting elephants in IndexedDB");

            // Open a transaction to the database
            var transaction = db.transaction(["elephants"], IDBTransaction.READ_WRITE);

            // Put the blob into the dabase
            transaction.objectStore("elephants").put(blob, "image");

            // Retrieve the file that was just stored
            transaction.objectStore("elephants").get("image").onsuccess = function (event) {
                var imgFile = event.target.result;
                console.log("Got elephant!" + imgFile);

                // Get window.URL object
                var URL = window.URL || window.webkitURL;

                // Create and revoke ObjectURL
                var imgURL = URL.createObjectURL(imgFile);

                // Set img src to ObjectURL
                var imgElephant = document.getElementById("elephant");
                imgElephant.setAttribute("src", imgURL);

                // Revoking ObjectURL
                URL.revokeObjectURL(imgURL);
            };
        };

    request.onerror = function (event) {
        console.log("Error creating/accessing IndexedDB database");
    };

    request.onsuccess = function (event) {
        console.log("Success creating/accessing IndexedDB database");
        db = request.result;

        db.onerror = function (event) {
            console.log("Error creating/accessing IndexedDB database");
        };

        // Interim solution for Google Chrome to create an objectStore. Will be deprecated
        if (db.setVersion) {
            if (db.version != dbVersion) {
                var setVersion = db.setVersion(dbVersion);
                setVersion.onsuccess = function () {
                    createObjectStore(db);
                    getImageFile();
                };
            }
            else {
                getImageFile();
            }
        }
        else {
            getImageFile();
        }
    }

    // For future use. Currently only in latest Firefox versions
    request.onupgradeneeded = function (event) {
        createObjectStore(event.target.result);
    };
})();

Web browser support

IndexedDB

Supported since long (a number of versions back) in Firefox and Google Chrome. Planned to be in IE10, unclear about Safari and Opera.

onupgradeneeded

Supported in latest Firefox. Planned to be in Google Chrome soon and hopefully IE10. Unclear about Safari and Opera.

Storing files in IndexedDB

Supported in Firefox 11 and later. Planned to be supported in Google Chrome. Hopefully IE10 will support it. Unclear about Safari and Opera.

XMLHttpRequest Level 2

Supported in Firefox and Google Chrome since long, Safari 5+ and planned to be in IE10 and Opera 12.

responseType “blob”

Currently only supported in Firefox. Will soon be in Google Chrome and is planned to be in IE10. Unclear about Safari and Opera.

Demo and code

I’ve put together a demo with IndexedDB and saving images and files in it where you can see it all in action. Make sure to use any Developer Tool to Inspect Element on the image to see the value of its src attribute. Also make sure to check the console.log messages to follow the actions.

The code for storing files in IndexedDB is also available on GitHub, so go play now!

What’s interesting here is the other names of the list, who are people like Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, pop star Robyn, Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify and more. We were talking about what’s behind such a list, and there are probably several factors:

• Number of followers
• Follower/following ratio
• Number of retweets/favoritizing of tweets

Whatever is behind it, I’d just like to say I’m honored to be in such company.

Now go follow me on Twitter!

Let’s me first start by saying that while I work for Mozilla, these opinions expressed here are my own.

The situation

We have lots of web sites out there, especially mobile targeted ones, where -webkit prefixes have been used in CSS code to achieve certain design or visual effects for the WebKit rendering engine, most notably available in Google Chrome and Safari. The impact of this isn’t a guess game either, but based on data collection and analysis for a huge number of mobile web sites out there.

There are a number of problems with this:

• These features are implemented as experimental, hence the prefix, and generally not meant to be used in production code.
• When web developers have been using them, they’ve usually just provided the -webkit prefix and none of the prefixes for other web browser vendors, i.e. -moz (Mozilla – Gecko), -o (Opera) and -ms (Internet Explorer) nor unprefixed versions.
• While the idea with these experimental features is to become standardized, many aren’t, and also, some of those that become standardized might have a changed implementation when it reaches that level.

The effect of all this is that web sites might be perceived to offer users a richer experience in WebKit-based web browsers, and naturally, all other web browsers want their users to have that experience as well since they have implemented that support.

Blame game

When there is a situation, there will always be a blame game. I’ll address the most common ones and reply to them:

Developers should have never used prefixed features in production code

Sure, but I do understand developers here. They work to offer the best user experience for their user, and any technical capability that offers it to them, they will grasp it. Even if they know it’s experimental, I believe they take for granted that the same thing will be standardized in the same way (where how gradients changed in WebKit is a good example of the fact that it is experimental, and it might very well change over time). What you could argue is they should’ve added all web browser prefixes and an unprefixed version, but usually at the time of implementation, they had no idea if that would work or if the implementation in other web browser would be the same.

The W3C CSS Working Group haven’t been working fast enough to standardize things

It’s a given that a process where everyone will reach consensus and agree on the best implementation can take longer than for just one vendor to implement what they think. A number of the experimental implementations might never be fit to reach a standard level either, but is rather mostly there to prototype new features.

Apple and Google don’t remove the prefixes in official released versions, but keep the -webkit prefix

The problem here is that a lot of web sites implemented the features with prefixes, and they don’t want to break those web sites, just as Internet Explorer have kept support for certain features to make sure web sites specifically built for IE will continue to work.

The -webkit CSS features developers use don’t break web sites

I believe this is an important argument. While the CSS features people have used with -webkit prefixes offer a richer use experience, they aren’t features that render a web site completely unusable if they aren’t there. However, no other web browser vendor will want to have their user to have less of an experience if they have the same support.

I do believe that while it’s interesting to know how we ended up here, there are many factors at play. Personally, I’m more for focusing on possible solutions and how we move forward, instead of delving too deep into the past. Or rather, I believe there will never be consensus on why this has happened.

Solutions

The way I see it, we basically have two plausible scenarios on how to handle this:

Evangelizing

Everyone needs to start/continue blogging, tweeting and informing developers to use all web browser vendor prefixes in their code. Tell them to use solutions and technical alternatives to add prefixes for all web browsers that support that certain feature. Have web browser vendors – namely Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft – invest in campaigns to raise awareness.

It is a hard task to reach out to all developers, but in my experience most developers do want to do the right thing, they do want their users to have the best experience available, no matter which web browser they use. And just like we shouldn’t make the web experience better for users on a certain operating system or device just for the sake of it, we shouldn’t do that with web browsers either. It is our job, our duty, as developers to make things as good as possible for our end users. Because that’s what we do.

The argument is that will never work. Some say it’s too late, that it’s a WebKit mobile web and we need other measures to fix it. I hope that’s not the case and there is still time to make this good. Looking back at how Firefox managed to break the 95% market share of Internet Explorer, how we got people to understand the value of semantic code and strictness with XHTML, I believe there is still hope here too.

An example is the implementation of the alt attribute, something that Internet Explorer incorrectly rendered as a tooltip. Lots of users were upset this, thought the Firefox implementation should change, but they stood their ground. And eventually developers understood the distinction between those two, and finally Internet Explorer fixed their implementation as well.

Every web browser implements the -webkit prefix

The other alternative that is being seriously discussed is for Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft to implement support for -webkit prefixes, effectively making the web sites that only use a -webkit prefix for their CSS work in all other web browsers as well. This would not necessarily be for for all features, but rather for the most prominently used ones. This sounds like a bad thing – which it is – and it’s been compared to opening Pandora’s box. I believe that if it’s done we will keep a technical debt for some time to cover up for other implementations, and it will be very unclear to developers what will work where. More practical details about this can be found in Eric Meyer’s interview with Tantek Çelik.

An argument for this case is that part of breaking the Internet Explorer dominance we had a decade ago was to implement support for innerHTML and similar, just to cover up for all the web sites and current code out there.

Moving forward

So, how do we move forward? What will happen? Some people have suggested prefixes like -beta and @-vendor-unlock but one major problem with that is that the experimental implementation or syntax across web browsers isn’t necessarily the same.

I believe we are in a situation where web developers are getting jaded and just go for the simple route with a prefix for a feature they have seen. I think prefixes still play their role for experimenting, but they should not be shipped in official releases of web browsers. Keep them experimental, and if they are implemented in a final release, do so without prefixes; at the same time, this feature is something that has to have been standardized by then.

So, my suggestions are:

• Make sure vendor prefixes only work in Nightly/alpha/beta releases.
• Keep on evangelizing to developers.
• If you build demos or give presentations, make sure to show code for all web browsers, point out differences and make people aware of how things work. If you share anything, that is your responsibility.

I don’t think it’s too late. I believe we have to work hard, but I sincerely hope we can solve this by reasoning.

And to conclude: by having a number of mobile operating systems out there that only allows you to use the pre-installed web browser/rendering engine, namely iOS and Windows Mobile, that is a situation that is much much more worrying to me than the prefix situation. Prefixes can be fixed and developers can be made aware and change. How do we change the above companies to inspire them to give the users choice?

Tip: remember, you can always find all my reading suggestions in the Robert’s read category

Robert’s Read for January 31st 2012

• 
  

  Using the Fullscreen API in web browsers

  Finally bringing the possibility of Fullscreen experiences to end users natively in web browsers.

• 
  

  Financial Times Experience with Web Apps

  Interview with Financial Times about their move from a native iOS app to a Web App. Interesting read, and I agree about APIs.

• 
  

  The top 20 HTML5 games

  HTML5 is quickly turning into a great game development platform. Rob Hawkes, creator of multiplayer space shooter Rawkets, highlights some of the best online games built with HTML5 (and JavaScript) out there and the technologies that they’re using.

• 
  

  Lies, Damned Lies, and Ebooks

  Ebooks: …taking the web, watering it down to what we had 5-10 years ago, presenting it as “the next big thing”

• 
  

  Pirate Bay Press Release On SOPA

  Basically stating that Pirate Bay & Hollywood are the same, for interesting reasons

• 
  

  CSS Performance Profiling

  Really interesting CSS performance profiling to see which approaches are the most resource intensive.

• 
  

  The developer book club interview with Robert Nyman

  Listen to my interview, talking about books that shaped me, the future, learning & philosophy.

• 
  

  JavaScript performance results in Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari

  Comparing results and various JavaScript tests and web browsers.

• 
  

  2011: A Badass JavaScript Year In Review

  The top JavaScript accomplishments of 2011 here, from demos to libraries and applications themselves.

• 
  

  Everything for free, always: how Facebook ads show us the sad state of the Internet

  Interesting read about Facebook, advertisement and the option of services costing money instead.

• 
  

  Shockingly Unshocking: Two Congressional Staffers Who Helped Write SOPA/PIPA Become Entertainment Industry Lobbyists

  Two high level Congressional staffers who have been instrumental in creating or moving forward both PROTECT IP (PIPA) and SOPA have left their jobs on Capitol Hill and taken jobs with two of the biggest entertainment industry lobbyists, who are working very hard to convince Congress to pass the legislation they just helped write.

• 
  

  Firefox highlights, facts, figures and pictures in 2011

  Lots of improvements and interesting figures about Firefox in 2011

• 
  

  DeSopa

  Firefox extension to bypass SOPA DNS blocking

We were talking about books that inspired me when I first got into web development, books that shaped my knowledge about JavaScript and various approaches. We also discussed the future of the web, languages, learning and I even got a bit philosophical at the end.

I think it’s also the first time I could actually put up with listening to me without turning it off.

If it sounds interesting, please listen to the interview with me.

People!

One thing I do know, though, is that I will only namedrop sparingly, since I’ve meet an abundance of fantastic and outstanding persons this year, and there is simply not room nor time to go through all of them. Suffice to say, this year has without a doubt been the year when I’ve met the biggest number of terrific individuals, and I hope you know who you are and how happy I am that I met you!

A new job

In March this year it was finally decided and happening – I joined Mozilla as a Technical Evangelist! Lots of new changes with working for something you truly believe in – a non-profit organization dedicated to keep the web open and free! It is naturally also a big change working full time from home (or, well, wherever I am at the moment), and quite liberating to work from literally anywhere as long as I have a laptop with me (and honestly, after having the new MacBook Air, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a big bulky laptop again).

Someone special

For a good part of this year, I have been together with someone very special and I am really happy to have met a person who means a lot to me! She is smart, beautiful, funny, spontaneous and just an amazing being.

She is indeed one of a kind and I look forward to a continued great future together!

(I’m letting her be a bit incognito for now )

Travel and speaking

This year was packed with a lot of travel, speaking engagements in four contintents and a whopping 178,541 km covered during 95 days on the road. I’d like to briefly go through my journeys this year below. And, if you like pictures, below each destination there is a link to all photos from that trip, so don’t miss it!

All the slides and videos from my talks are available on Lanyrd.

Brussels, Belgium [February]

I went to Brussels to give a joint talk with Christian Heilmann about HTML5 at FOSDEM, and we spoke to a completely packed room!

Mountain View, USA [February]

A very intense trip to California, with arriving in the evening, followed by a full day of interviews for trying to get the position at Mozilla, and then travel home again the next day. It’s a long trip, but in hindsight it was definitely worth it!

Montreal, Canada [March]

I was speaking at the ConFoo conference, and the trip included some interesting meals and sightseeing. Plus, of course, a dip in the outside rooftop pool at the hotel, surrounded by snow!

I also got to know Jordi Boggiano here, and later on this year we also met in Italy and Switzerland.

[All pictures from Montreal in March]

Las Vegas, USA [April]

Microsoft invited me to take part of their MIX conference, and it was an extraordinary trip in so many aspects. Given the normal stance I get from web developers and the community, it was interesting, to say the least, to be at an event where the majority liked Microsoft and rooted for Internet Explorer…

It was also my first time in Vegas, and I complemented it with visits both to Hoover Dam (courtesy of Mike Taylor of Opera who drove me there) and visiting Grand Canyon, and also flying in it in a helicopter.

[All pictures from Las Vegas in April]

Vaasa, Finland [April]

Ok, I’ll be honest. No offense to Vaasa, but after a week in Vegas, it’s hard to compete. I did have a good time, though (I always do ) and the OpenKvarken conference was an interesting place to speak at. Also, having discussions with people like Monty Widenius (of MySQL fame) and Martin Storsjö of Bambuser is always a good thing!

[All pictures from Vaasa in April]

Verona, Italy [May]

Ah, Verona. Supposedly the home to Romeo and Juliet, something that the town had built upon immensely. A nice Italian town and the jsDay conference was a good place to be speaking at! First time actually meeting Patrick H. Lauke, of Opera, in person, which I’m quite glad for!

[All pictures from Verona in May]

London, United Kingdom [May]

Managed to find some time to visit my brother in London, and we squeezed in seeing Eric Clapton play at Royal Albert Hall and some good stand up at Comedy Store. Also happy to meet friends like Jake Archibald and his elusive girlfriend, Stuart Colville, Frances Berriman and more.

[All pictures from London in May]

Paris, France [June]

Between my old job and starting at Mozilla, I had a few weeks off and was quite happy to take my daughters to Disneyland Paris! It was a success, for all three of us, and it was an intense and joyous week!

London, United Kingdom [July]

Time to speak at the AJAX User Group and also get to meets tons of friends in, and around, London. Good times!

[All pictures from London in July]

New York City, USA [July]

I was quite happy to land this gig! Speaking for the GothamJS conference on stage on Broadway in New York City! Pretty cool! In 2000, I had a stint in New York and I hadn’t been back since. So, given September 11 and everything else that have happened during the last eleven years, I was extatic to be back, and it is a city I truly love.

[All pictures from New York City in July]

San Jose, USA [July]

Immediately following the New York City visit we had a Mozilla work week in San Jose. First one for me, having been employed for about two weeks, and we had a very nice off-site meetup and get together.

[All pictures from San Jose in July]

Zurich, Switzerland [September]

In the fall of 2010, while at a conference in Poland, I told Markus Leutwyler that he should organize something in Zurich. A little less then a year later he pulled it off, and I was happy to be asked to speak at the FrontEnd conference there. As I often do, I also managed to get some good sightseeing with some friends, which had us ending up outside the city in a moment that was like a mix of Deliverance and Blair Witch Project…

[All pictures from Zurich in September]

San Jose, USA [September]

Time for my first Mozilla All Hands, where all the employees meet up at the same location and have a week filled with talks, discussion and collaboration. I was impressed to see the professionalism from the leading people in Mozilla, and as a JavaScript developer, of course it’s mighty cool to have Brendan Eich as your CTO and David Flanagan aboard. Every evening was also filled with exciting events!

On the way home to Sweden, I had a layover in London for a few hours, so me and my brother managed to squeeze in a visit to Jimi Hendrix apartment since that specific day was Open House Day in London.

[All pictures from San Jose in September]

Los Angeles, USA [October]

After MIX in Las Vegas in April, Adobe MAX was my second massive conference this year. And man, I have to say, Adobe sure can put together a conference, and the outdoor party in downtown Los Angeles was amazing! Cirque du Soleil performance, Weezer doing a gig and much more! It was also my first time in LA, so I had a day packed with sightseeing.

On top of that, I managed to walk right into the shoot of the next Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises.

[All pictures from Los Angeles in October]

Amsterdam, Netherlands [October]

Flying in directly overnight from LA, I got to Amsterdam the first morning of the Fronteers conference. Amsterdam is a place where I have lots of really good friends, and it almost becomes sort of an overload being there – it’s so intense!

[All pictures from Amsterdam in October]

Paris, France [October]

Believe it or not, this was the first time I was actually in Paris – I’ve only been outside the city before. I went there to speak at Paris Web which I quite liked. Giving a presentation that is live translated with both sign language and into French text on a screen is pretty fun! I also got to do all the touristy stuff as well – Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Musée du Louvre and Mona Lisa and more – by staying over the weekend.

[All pictures from Paris in October]

Johannesburg, South Africa [October]

First time in Africa, and why not start by going all the way down to South Africa? I spoke at the Tech4Africa conference, which was a great mix of varying speakers and attendees. The conference organizers also graciously offered all the speakers a three day safari in a game reserve seeing all the amazing animals and surrounds they have, and it was out of this world! Lions, elephants, rhinos, hippos, crocodile, giraffes, ostriches and so much more!

[All pictures from South Africa in October]

Santiago, Chile [November]

I flew directly from South Africa to Chile, via Brazil, to speak at the StarTechConference. After the high in South Africa I just wanted to stay there, but my visit in Chile turned out to be quite amazing as well! The different thing in Chile was that us international speakers were treated like rock stars, posing for pictures all the time, signing autographs etc. Slightly awkward when you know that you are just a normal person, but, I have to admit, quite entertaining too.

[All pictures from Santiago in November]

Berlin, Germany [November]

I got three days at home after Chile, and then on to Berlin and MozCamp Europe. My last travel this year, and while it’s great fun, I also felt how worn out I was and that I just needed to be home for a while. However, the most excellent company made this into yet another fantastic time.

[All pictures from Berlin in November]

Summing up the year

All in all, this year has been tremendous! Overall I’ve gotten to experience so much, meet so many people, see so many places and also grow as a person. I’m finally finding out who I really am, what I want and what I don’t want, and ultimately, what I want my life to be like. And that, my friends, is a genuinely wonderful feeling!

Happy New Year, and may all your paths be fantastic!

Tip: remember, you can always find all my reading suggestions in the Robert’s read category

Read for December 20th 2011

• 
  

  Is HTML 5 the olive branch for the Open Web?

  Article inspired by my presentation in South Africa

• 
  

  See the Web Developer Tools in the Latest Aurora

  A great screencast of the Web Developer Tools For Firefox, available in the latest Aurora builds.

• 
  

  Move The Web Forward

  Contribute to the web platform.

• 
  

  A quick Siri note

  With services like Siri, well-structured meaningful markup becomes even more important.

• 
  

  A look at some recently landed Web APIs for Firefox

  Looking at the first experimental implementations of WebAPIs in Firefox.

• 
  

  ‘Physics Of The Future’: How We’ll Live In 2100?

  Imagine being able to access the Internet through the contact lenses on your eyeballs. Blink, and you’d be online. Meet someone, and you’d have the ability to immediately search their identity. And if your friend happens to be speaking a different language, an instantaneous translation could appear directly in front of you.

• 
  

  Researcher’s Video Shows Secret Software on Millions of Phones Logging Everything

  The Android developer who raised the ire of a mobile-phone monitoring company last week is on the attack again, producing a video of how the Carrier IQ software secretly installed on millions of mobile phones reports most everything a user does on a phone.

• 
  

  The Mozilla Story

  Do you know Mozilla? This video tells the story of how Mozilla helped shape the web we know today — and how we’re going beyond Firefox to do even more.

• 
  

  86th Birthday Rage

  86th Birthday Rage

• 
  

  Facebook Developers HTML5 Blog

  HTML5 blog by Facebook developers.

• 
  

  How to name your kid in a computer-based world

  Funny comic about systems, security and naming. Geeky, of course.

• 
  

  24 ways: Adaptive Images for Responsive Designs… Again

  Quite interesting from a hacking perspective, but also very important in displaying the lack of options in web browsers today when it comes to building more versatile designs.

• 
  

  Google Currents

  Favorite publications, tuned for your tablet and smartphone.

• 
  

  Twitter Launches Brand Pages

  Brand pages will let advertisers customize their headers to make their logo and tagline more prominent.

• 
  

  Is Apple using patents to hurt open standards?

  Opera developer Haavard Moen has accused Apple of repeatedly using patents to undermine the development of Web standards and block their finalization.

• 
  

  Take on webOS and Mozilla

  HP announced that they’re going to open source webOS. No matter what one may think of webOS (or HP), this is great news. It’s an opportunity, but it remains to be seen what HP and others will do with it.

• 
  

  The Exporter

  Free your data on Twitter, Gowalla, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Foursquare

• 
  

  Join Us in the Mozilla Firefox Challenge This Holiday Season

  Together with Will Ferrell, Sean Penn and more!

• 
  

  Wikimedia: How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

  SOPA has earned the dubious honor of facilitating Internet censorship in the name of fighting online infringement.

• 
  

  Mobile HTML5 compatibility tables

  For iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, iPad and other mobile devices.

• 
  

  IE to Start Automatic Upgrades across Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7

  IE to Start Automatic Upgrades across Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7

• 
  

  A Case Against Using CoffeeScript

  A blog post outlining some issues and thoughts about CoffeeScript

• 
  

  Facebook introduces Timeline

  There has been a lot of talk about Facebook’s new Timeline, and now it’s here

• 
  

  Crazy Guy After House Fire

  Don’t miss his mood change at the end of the video.

• 
  

  Gaming and the Mozilla Labs Apps Project

  A quick overview of the Mozilla Labs Apps project and how it and the other technologies at Mozilla relate to gaming. We really are at a point where amazing games can be created on the Web with nothing but open technologies.

Company dependency and free services

Do you have all your mail on Gmail, appointments in Google calendar, pictures on Picasa and videos on YouTube? Do you use Facebook to sign into every service you use and article you comment on, on the web? All your pictures you’ve ever taken on Flickr?

A number of these companies offer these services for free. Free is a relative term, of course, since a majority of them go through your data and recorded behavior to present you with ads and similar information; at the same time, it makes it a much more compelling platform for advertisers with targeted ads. This data could, at least potentially, also be shared with third party companies, so in essence you can never be entirely sure what and how much a company knows about you.

Many people say they are fine with sharing all the data about them, but I’m unsure they realize just how much companies know about them. You can make a conscious decision what to share, all the time, but always be ready that anyone out there can access anything you ever share.

These services are great!

Don’t get me wrong: all these services are great! The companies behind them are businesses, offering services and making money like any company. All I want you to be is a bit cautious, though, with relying to much on just one company, and also giving all your information to that same company. Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. You choose what to share and where: never let yourself end up in a situation where you’ve created such a dependency on a company that bailing out is quite hard.

Store your information in more than one, unrelated, services and make sure you always have alternatives and back-up plans. Make sure you can cancel an account and have all associated data removed right away.

The web and all its information out there for you to consume is fantastic! But make sure it is on your terms. For instance, why does a Facebook news app need to know my personal information, likes etc? Or rather, of course it wants it and to analyze as much data about you as possible, but don’t agree to that.

And even more, even if you want to use apps like that, don’t post it on your Wall: by that behavior you, more or less, trick other friends into installing the same app, sharing all their information etc, because they just have to read what you, their friend, read. It’s about trust and recommendations, and we all have a responsibility there.

Enjoy the web as much as you can! But please, just think about what you share, and make sure that you, and no one else, is in control of that.

Tip: remember, you can always find all my reading suggestions in the Robert’s read category

Robert’s read for November 29th 2011

• 
  

  Mozilla’s Brendan Eich on the Birth of Firefox

• 
  

  The Relationship Between Firebug and Mozilla Developer Tools

• 
  

  Firefox – tons of tools for web developers!

• 
  

  ShiftIt – Managing windows size & position in OSX, also through configurable keyboard shortcuts

• 
  

  HTML5 context menus in Firefox (Screencast and Code)

• 
  

  Firefox Dev Tools: Inspector Scratchpad and Web Console Power Tips

• 
  

  Updates on the Stop Online Piracy & Protect IP Acts (SOPA & PIPA)

• 
  

  Going Fullscreen with HTML5 Canvas

• 
  

  How to choose a slogan…

• 
  

  Developer builds Siri proxy server

• 
  

  IE9 Mobile vs IE9 Desktop Browser

• 
  

  $200 Mario and Zelda-themed 3DS hardware bundles coming November 24

• 
  

  Latest ARIA landmark support data

• 
  

  Firefox for Android: Native Android UI

• 
  

  How to Install Firefox Mobile on the Amazon Kindle Fire

• 
  

  “The Kindle Fire doesn’t seem designed to run HTML5 apps as a primary goal.”

• 
  

  A Study in Brand Minimalism

• 
  

  xkcd: Wisdom of the Ancients

• 
  

  “My daughter has chosen the Dark Side”

• 
  

  Adobe donates Flex to Apache

• 
  

  Sadly, Adobe, Apple & Microsoft back SOPA

• 
  

  Android is winning, Apple is cashing and Samsung is confusing

• 
  

  The new native Developer Tools in Firefox

• 
  

  The Scary Reality of a Real-Life Barbie Doll

• 
  

  “The latest beta of Firefox for Android is the most compelling browser for mobile devices & tablets”

Tip: remember, you can always find all my reading suggestions in the Robert’s read category

Robert’s read for November 16th 2011

• Implementing the DOM and HTML Parsing with JavaScript
• H.264 video implementation compiled to JS, 30fps – JS/H.264 demo video
• Flow chart for status updates
• Google Starts Indexing Facebook Comments
• Goodbye HTML5 time, hello data!
• Mozilla Hacks Weekly, November 3rd 2011
• HTML WG chairs decided to revert adding data and dropping of time & pubdate in HTML5
• What Is IE?
• Women Struggling to Drink Water
• 25 Secrets of the Browser Developer Tools
• Natural Object-Rotation with CSS3 3D
• MDN – Documentation of the open web should be for everybody
• HTML5 Parser-Based View Source Syntax Highlighting
• Exclusive: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5
• The Open Web Platform: Browser technologies
• “Apple’s iOS is like Alcatraz”
• Vladimir Putin and the Battle of Hoth
• Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, on Teaching Kids to Hack
• Adobe Explains: Apple Won, Flash on Mobile is Done
• Flash is dead. Long live the internet.
• Klout Automatically Created Profiles, Including Minors
• The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history
• Cracking iOS’ Siri
• Thomas Suarez – iPhone Application Developer… and 6th Grader
• Mozilla is against SOPA/PIPA – Help us protect the Internet by speaking out against this terrible bill

Sold out

All seats have been taken. Please write a comment to be put on a waiting list, there are always a number of cancellations, so there’s still a chance.

It’s been quite a busy fall for me, but finally I’m happy to announce the next Geek Meet here in Stockholm!

Presenting Vitaly Friedman

I am very proud and glad to welcome Vitaly Friedman as the speaker this time around, who is the creator and Editor-in-Chief for Smashing Magazine, which, I guess you all know, has been hugly successful over the last years. I thought it was about time to talk about design and user experiences, and I’ve had the pleasure to see Vitaly do it before, so I know he will deliver something really good to you!

The presentations

Vitaly will give two presentations during the evening:

The Invisible Side of Design

As designers, we tend to get distracted by aesthetics of our designs, and often do not pay enough attention to the other, invisible side of our creations.

This talk discusses the value of functionality, storytelling and thorough editorial work in Web. It argues about the significance of purpose, context and quality in our decisions. It also provides personal insights and practical examples of invisible design being used in practice.

Smashing Magazine: Behind the Scenes

This talk describes the main principles and philosophy of Smashing Magazine’s editorial work. It features the main tools, processes and organization involved to ensure the high quality of the publication. The talk also covers main mistakes, lessons learned and practical insights into company’s growth and evolution over the years.

Time & place

This time around, Geek Meet will be sponsored by Creuna, and will take place December 1st 18:00 in their office at Kungsholmsgatan 23 in Stockholm.. Creuna will also provide beer and pizza to every attendant, all free of charge.

Sign up now!

Please sign up with a comment below. Please only sign up if you know you can attend. There are 150 seats available, and you can only sign up yourself. Please use a valid name and e-mail address, since this will be used to identify you at the event to get in.

A few months ago, a close friend of mine made me aware of Kristina Alexanderson‘s wonderful Star Wars-based photo collection CClone 365-2011. What she does is taking Star Wars figures and putting them in everyday contexts, creating wonderful, touching and beautiful situations!

Kristina is also a big fan and partaker of Creative Commons and sharing, and works with helping students becoming more aware of Internet and its possibilities in the project Webbstjärnan, and anyone with such good values deserves the attention!

Now, feast your eyes!