Simon Willison's Links

A quote from Assaf Arkin

2009-07-06T21:02:02Z

Turns out, a lot of people are saddened by the loss of a spec they don’t understand, and if they did, would not bother using.

- Assaf Arkin

Tips on using python's datetime module

2009-07-06T14:20:12Z

Tips on using python’s datetime module. Wow. I’ve run in to problems with datetime and timezones before, but I had no idea how intrinsic those problems were to the design of the library.

A quote from Henri Sivonen

2009-07-06T12:46:23Z

There are two meanings to XHTML: technical and marketing. The technical kind (XHTML served using the application/xhtml xml MIME type) is a formulation of HTML as an XML vocabulary. The marketing kind (XHTML served using the text/html MIME type) is processed just like HTML by browsers but the authors attempt to observe slightly different syntax rules in order to make it seem that they are doing something newer and shinier compared to HTML.

- Henri Sivonen

An Unnofficial Q&A about the Discontinuation of the XHTML2 WG

2009-07-06T12:27:18Z

An Unnofficial Q&A about the Discontinuation of the XHTML2 WG. By Henri Sivonen.

Evidence of OpenID at Amazon

2009-07-06T01:25:17Z

Evidence of OpenID at Amazon. It looks like Amazon are using OpenID for SSO between their different properties—I clicked a link to sign in to AWS and the URL had OpenID query string parameters.

A quote from Alan Storm

2009-07-04T12:51:15Z

Yes, it’d be nice if everyone kept up to date on the progress of the various W3C working groups. They don’t. There are a lot of people who asked what professional markup looked like and were told (right or wrong) that XHTML was the future. So they went ahead and learned XHTML, built their websites and chose watching a DVD or spending time with their kids over watching Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby do battle over Postel’s Law. Now all of a sudden they’re told XHTML is dead. Some wailing and gnashing of teeth is to be expected. What’s needed is less “boy aren’t I smarter than them” snideness, and more Hey, here’s what’s up.

- Alan Storm

Jeffrey Zeldman: XHTML WTF

2009-07-04T01:22:47Z

Jeffrey Zeldman: XHTML WTF. Reading the comments, it’s scary how many people are totally ill-informed about HTML5 and XHTML5.

FAQs about the future of XHTML

2009-07-03T01:37:51Z

FAQs about the future of XHTML. The XHTML 2 Working Group charter will not be renewed after 2009—as far as the W3C are concerned, XHTML5 is the future of XHTML.

Newspaper Club - A work in progress

2009-07-02T19:34:02Z

Newspaper Club—A work in progress. “We’re building a service to help people make their own newspapers. This is the blog where we’re alarmingly honest about where it’s all going wrong.”

Video for Everybody!

2009-07-02T19:33:02Z

Video for Everybody!. Reminiscent of the early days of Web Standards, Kroc Camen has created a fiendishly clever chunk of HTML which can play a video on any browser, starting with HTML5 video then falling back on Flash and eventually just an HTML message telling the user where they can download the file. No JavaScript to be seen, but conditional comments abound. Requires you to encode as both Ogg and H.264, but Kroc includes details instructions for doing that using Handbrake.

Modernizr

2009-07-02T10:56:47Z

Modernizr (via). Neat idea and an unobtrusive implementation: a JavaScript library that runs feature tests for various HTML5 features (canvas, box shadow, CSS transforms and so on) and adds classes to the HTML body element, allowing you to write CSS selectors that only apply if a feature is present. Detected features are exposed to JavaScript as boolean properties, e.g. Modernizer.multiplebgs.

Codecs for

2009-07-02T10:16:58Z

Codecs for <audio> and <video>. HTML 5 will not be requiring support for specific audio and video codecs—Ian Hickson explains why, in great detail. Short version: Apple won’t implement Theora due to lack of hardware support and an “uncertain patent landscape”, while open source browsers (Chromium and Mozilla) can’t support H.264 due to the cost of the licenses.

PubSub-over-Webhooks with RabbitHub

2009-07-01T20:22:52Z

PubSub-over-Webhooks with RabbitHub. RabbitMQ, the Erlang-powered AMQP message queue, is growing an HTTP interface based on webhooks and PubSubHubBub.

Address Extractor

2009-07-01T20:03:11Z

Address Extractor. Running on App Engine, an address extractor web service using code from the EveryBlock open source release.

EveryBlock source code released

2009-07-01T20:01:23Z

EveryBlock source code released. EveryBlock’s Knight Foundation grant required them to release the source code after two years, under the GPL. Lots of neat Django / PostgreSQL / GIS tricks to be found within.