Wednesday 5 March 2008

IE8 Beta and Readiness Toolkit

Here it is folks, an actual IE8 beta, overview of features, changes and enhancements, and a readiness toolkit for developers.

Check it out, now, my web soul brothers and sisters!

Filed under:   general, standards, software, web design and development, WaSP, w3c, conferences, announcement, browsers, microsoft, ie7, ajax, javascript, ie8, MIX08
Posted by:   Molly | 12:08 pm | Comments (60)

Monday 6 August 2007

The Best Thrill of Your Life

Some people want to go faster than light. Others just want to drop from 1,000 feet and live because hell, it makes them feel immortal.

Me, I’m still looking for the best thrill of my life.

Filed under:   general, faith(less), creativity
Posted by:   Molly | 5:55 pm | Comments (28)

Tuesday 24 July 2007

CSS 2.1 Finally Moves to Candidate Recommendation

While my real wet dream is seeing this darn spec made a recommendation already, this is at least a very overdue crawl in the right direction.

From the W3C:

“W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of “Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS) 2.1″ to Candidate Recommendation. Implementation
feedback is welcome through 20 December. CSS is one of the Web’s
most widely implemented languages. By separating the presentation of
style from the content of documents, CSS simplifies Web authoring
and site maintenance. CSS 2.1 is derived from and is intended to
replace CSS Level 2. A snapshot of usage, the specification brings
the language in line with implementations, fixes errata and adds a
few highly requested features including the inline-block value for
the display property, the color orange and the values pre-wrap and
pre-line for the white-space property. Visit the CSS home page.”

You can read about the move to CR and keep up with CSS news and advancements, too.

Filed under:   general, professional, standards, web design and development, w3c, announcement, community
Posted by:   Molly | 2:31 am | Comments (43)

Monday 2 April 2007

Moving Ahead at Microsoft

I’ve posted an overview of what we worked on last week at Microsoft main campus in Redmond. I hope you’ll be as excited as I am to see some of the things we’ve got in the plans for the road ahead.

You can visit the post and comment directly, I really look forward to your thoughts!

Filed under:   general, standards, web design and development, w3c, announcement, browsers, microsoft
Posted by:   Molly | 4:23 pm | Comments Off

Thursday 22 March 2007

Happy Birthday Molly’s Mom

Today is my mother’s 74th birthday. I love my mother, oh yes I do. Happy Birthday Mom!

Filed under:   general, family
Posted by:   Molly | 12:52 pm | Comments (46)

Friday 1 September 2006

No Labor This Weekend

Due to the short notice and the fact that I’m really feeling poorly, I think we’ll have to aim for another time. How does November strike people? Maybe second week. This way we could actually plan out the work/study/hang out time in advance.

Let’s think about it, and thanks!

Filed under:   general
Posted by:   Molly | 1:29 am | Comments (19)

Saturday 31 December 2005

Your Three Web Standards Wishes for 2006

WEB STANDARDS WISHES can come true. At least in my little fantasy they do!

Put aside all thoughts of possible or impossible and dream up the three most desired improvements, changes, or new perspectives that you would like to see in the Web standards design and development arena.

I have so many it’s difficult to ask for three, but here goes:

• CSS 2.1 formally becomes a recommendation
• WCAG 2.0 gets sorted out
• More companies, organizations, and agencies get into best practices

Then, let’s choose the top three and see if we can’t make them happen for real. Let’s have your best, and a very happy 2006 to all.

Filed under:   general
Posted by:   Molly | 11:51 am | Comments (46)

Wednesday 6 April 2005

Munged DB at Molly’s

YES MY DB IS MUNGED for the moment. Thanks everyone for sending in emails that say “your comment and recent post links don’t work.”

I appreciate the heads up and have one of the greatest minds behind WordPress trying to figure out WTF is going on - thank you Chris!

Patience is a virtue they say, and I’ve often been accused of having a lack of virtue. But just a little patience is in due order while this problem is being worked on. I promise to keep you . . . posted.

Filed under:   general
Posted by:   Molly | 12:14 pm | Comments (23)

Saturday 5 March 2005

the end of the free press?

THE END OF the free press? As Apple wages a court battle against bloggers, the question of “what makes a journalist?” is raised yet again to divided sectors.

Apple is in the process of suing three California-based blogs for reporting on trade secrets. They are asking that the bloggers reveal their sources - thought to be Apple insiders. The EFF is arguing that web publishers are in fact journalists and that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - as well as California law - protect the bloggers from having to disclose any sources.

Let’s review the amendment here, just for clarity:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Apple’s attorney George “please get a clue” Riley says that free speech only pertains to “legitimate” members of the press and not to web site publishers. Freedom of the press is for the press, meaning the traditional media only, claims Riley.

Now wait a minute! What is traditional media anyway? And how is a “legitimate” member of the press made legit? Historically, the First Amendment in part grew out of the trial of John Peter Zenger, a newspaper publisher sued for libel in New York in 1735. Zenger, a German immigrant, had no press credentials, and yet is essentially the father of the First Amendment as it applies to the press.

When the First Amendment was ratified - it might interest Riley - there was no telegraph, no radio, no television, no recording device, no satellite, no ditto machine, no copier, no electronic press, no photo reproduction or photography, no film, no AP newsire, no FOX or CNN or MSNBC. Not even a ballpoint pen.

So, what’s left other than what comes off an old printing press as the definition of “traditional” media?

Information gatherers working in any medium, including the web, are by that reasoning non-traditional. This puts bloggers in grave danger: The very institutions that we are reporting on have the power to stifle our First Amendment rights.

The suggestion that one needs to have some stamp of approval from a governing authority in order to have First Amendment protection, at least in this journalist-slash-blogger’s opinion, turns the First Amendment on its head. Doing so would require us to obtain permission for First Amendment protection when the First Amendment is already our right as citizens of the U.S.

Hat tip and help: Linus

Filed under:   general, policies, blogging
Posted by:   Molly | 3:29 pm | Comments (32)

Monday 28 February 2005

goodbye, marqui paid to post

GOODBYE MARQUI PROGRAM. It’s been three months of an adventure that not only shook up the web world with controversy, but shook up my personal world, too.

Sometimes things happen for a reason, and I am confident that Marqui’s paid-to-post blogger program has taught me lessons that needed to be taught. Primarily, I learned that I can’t blog naturally if I feel forced to do it, and that’s intriguing because I can write in just about any style. But, it turns out my blog is really personal, I take it personally, and I need it to be that way.

This process really helped me clarify my own thoughts about marketing and promotion. In fact, at the end of my time with Marqui, I do have to say I think that there’s still a lack of clarity about the product. In the next months, the bloggers going forward with the program will be writing a lot more in depth about the actual product, so there will be less hype about the hype and more focus on what Marqui really does.

I wish my fellow paid-to-blog bloggers all the best and a special thanks to the good folks at Marqui for providing such a compelling, growth-oriented experience for me.

Filed under:   general
Posted by:   Molly | 11:55 pm | Comments (40)

Tuesday 4 January 2005

glad tidings

GLAD TIDINGS TO all, and a very happy 2005!

I apologize to those folks whose comments I mistakenly deleted in the weekend’s spam fest. I’m sorry. If you meant to comment, please do so again.

I had a very difficult weekend as my beloved cat Tara became seriously ill. By Saturday morning she was so out of it I had to rush her to the vet’s office. She was in renal failure (she’s nearly 16). She’s home now and I’m so relieved, but if you’re not among the folks who have ever met my cat - well, I hope you’ll get that unique pleasure.

Tara is the strongest-willed most stubborn feline I’ve ever met. Yes,
“strong willed” and “most stubborn” sorta goes along with the feline race, but if you’ve known this cat you’ll know what I mean.

It’s interesting what happens - I was questioning faith, you know? And all I needed was one solid day thinking I might lose the spirit most beloved to me in all the world to set me to rights.

I suppose folks who aren’t pet lovers might think I’m nuts, but who cares? The truth is this: I have never loved anything, anybody so much as certain cats. I mourned more for the loss of my beloved cat Avatar when my father died around the same time some 20 years back.

Does that make me terrible?

Filed under:   general, faith(less)
Posted by:   Molly | 10:51 am | Comments (31)

Friday 19 November 2004

clip-n-seal this

CLIP-N-SEAL, two pieces of plastic that clip and seal just about anything, was invented by fellow WaSP DL Byron, who is now sponsoring a design contest to see who can come up with interesting and cool uses for his invention.

So, get your industrial design hat on and clip-n-seal away. Looking for ideas? Check out the shoe.

Too cool!

Filed under:   general, blogging
Posted by:   Molly | 2:44 pm | Comments (23)

Tuesday 9 November 2004

love poem to firefox

LOVE POEM TO Firefox, celebrating its release one day today, posted to the WaSP Buzz blog.

Stats for Molly.Com show Firefox/Mozilla at about 23% of my readership in September. Current stats for November (and we’re only in the second week, my lovelies) are over 32% for same. Alas, IE still remains at 34%.

Help me change that by going and grabbing Firefox 1.0 today!

Filed under:   general, standards, software, web design and development
Posted by:   Molly | 1:11 pm | Comments (34)

Tuesday 2 November 2004

voting day

IT’S VOTING DAY here in the U.S. Not that anyone on the ‘net is unaware of that little fact. I’ve done the deed, and fortunately, the experience was smooth and easy.

I went to my precinct polling place expecting lines, but I must have chosen a perfect time, because hardly anyone was there despite reports of very long lines earlier in the morning. As has always been my experience when voting in Arizona, the process was calm and everyone very pleasant.

I don’t think I’ve ever had such a spread between partisanship on any ballot I’ve voted on, though. Arizona isn’t a swing state by accident - we have odd politics here. Consider that I voted for Kerry, but the very next ballot item was state senator, where my vote was for John McCain, a Republican. In several local spots, I voted Libertarian. Looking over my ballot, I was struck by how, at least for me and at least this year, voting is definitely not a partisan concern.

In related news, Technorati has an experimental voting project you’ll want to check out (hat tip: Tantek).

Filed under:   general, faith(less), policies
Posted by:   Molly | 11:54 am | Comments (25)

Thursday 21 October 2004

domain appraisal: snake oil or worthwhile?

ARE DOMAIN APPRAISALS snake oil or worthwhile?

I have several domain names that people have asked about that don’t mean much to me and I would sell, but I have no idea how to price them. I did a little surfing around and found that there are appraisal services that run anywhere from 8 dollars US, to much higher than that.

Are these services bunk or helpful? If bunk, what’s a good way to determine the potential value of a domain name? If helpful, any recommendations on reputable offerings?

Filed under:   general, professional, web design and development
Posted by:   Molly | 12:03 pm | Comments (40)