A really good lunch with Ralph. The kind of excellent friend conversation one would hope for, and which is too nice to be blogged. (the Taco Shack is tasty & cheep)
Kimberley Blessing, is she the ETF person?
I think Molly is rad.
Drew on the history on the WaSP, browsers supporting standards. must be more specific now, everything on the web is more specialized.
“not one person can do every job on the team” heh. I still need to write that article idea.
the task forces break into those new specialties.
ATF had a sit-down meeting here. (Matt May) Andy Clarke, Derek F., Jim Thatcher(?), Matt & Molly.
did a bit of name surfing. when I started paying attention again, Matt is talking about helping create knowledge around accessibility for designers/developers, spread the knowledge around. also want to work with software developers, all the tools. being involved with WAI.
Molly on ACID2. came from Opera, has flaws that need to be address, to test any kind of rendering/user agent. absolutely an agenda. and the test is not an accurate measure of what they really wanted? does something, what that means is up to you.
a time to review Acid2: what’s the next steps? no clue or consensus yet. collaboration?!
Dori Smith. co-leader with Jeremy Keith. JS: don’t call it little! because of the origins, people either think of the language as not-real or themselves as not-programmers. enough browsers support “good enough” JS that it’s time for good practices. now it’s DOM scripting! they aren’t about lobbying the browser makers, not now. digression re: XMLHTTPRequest (or whatever). longer term will be server-side developers, and they aren’t ready yet. plan on articles, members working on books. if you’re writing, let them know and they’ll point. if you have a good article & nowhere to post, let them know.
best practices…unobtrusive scripting. Dori’s having a hard time talking. not either/or js vs. access! graceful degredation. usability. separating behavior from content :: css does sep presentation from content.
DW task force. project manager for dw! many of original goals (as of 2001) were met with MX release, a good first step. a rallying point within the company. some progress, room to improve. “genius of the obvious”: standards & accessibility matter. in DW8 default is for alt on insert to be on, and they get feedback: do more for accessibility!
but we can’t save users from themselves. no kidding. they learn from us out here on the ground. in the combined company, they have lots of tools that author stuff to the web, and want to bring the whole company to the task force. (she looks really familiar, like that Jen who was in my college spanish class.)
yep, Kim’s the ETF gal. a wide audience. indeed. two objectives: teaching standards, promote creation of standards within academic sites. (we rawk…table-free since 2001!) came prepared to announce 9 members of ETF: Mark Trammell (I need to find him!!!! UFlorida!) & four other higher ed people.
edu-tfpp — proliferation project. anyone (like me!) can join. many students have joined: “I’m being failed because I’m using standards!” instructors learning to change how they teach. 70+ people on the list. IRC channel. (I wonder if I should try that.)
participate in events for higher ed webbies: HighEdWebDev. looking to expand their role there. fsck. I wish I could go.
W3C QA group is interested in investigating a standardized curriculum, and will be working with ETF. sexy.
what’s missing is the applications that students have to use: online registration, grades, calendaring, application, etc., etc. the big vendors.
recoginzing for good or for ill, supporting people in need of help. questionnaires about programs that are in their area, to get data and investigate.
MsftTF head has been with MS IE since mid-90s after working on Mosiac. but has also been an open standards guy from the beginning, career focal point. challenging position at microsoft. TF has helped by giving web developers a voice w/in MS.
not just about IE. .Net, etc.
his participation in WaSP was covert before, he wanted them to be good at guiding MS. he came back to IE to drive standards forward. his problem with Acid2: people take it as an expression that MS doesn’t care about standards. he mentioned the 3-pixel-jog, my personal nemesis. no, actually, the disappearing text bug is my true nemesis. it hurts, hurts, hurts.
he said some stuff, but I was im-ing with C.
time for questions, open annual meeting will be at 5pm.
q: have big company employees felt that you were putting your careers at risk by being standards advocates? Jen from DW: absolutely not. it’s been bringing the customer’s viewpoint into the company. MS guy: hasn’t put job at risk…he started with standards as a goal. his boss wanted to put NS-style frames in, and he advocated for including CSS instead. (back in IE3 days.)
q: when will IE7 be released? trying to think of how specific he’s supposed to be…. the intent is to release with Vista. might ship anyway in 2nd half of 2006 if Vista ain’t done.
q: what do you wish there were time & resources for? Molly sez they want to hear about that in the open meeting. CSS & mobile are the ones she has at the top of her mind.