dean.edwards.name/weblog/2004/09/hello-world/

Hello World!

Everyone else has a weblog and I was feeling left out…

This site is oriented around the projects it hosts (IE7, moz-behaviors, packer etc). However, I do get the occasional complaint that it is difficult to keep track of site updates. That’s what weblogs are for. So the other day I installed WordPress.

I’m impressed with the WordPress package. It was pretty easy to install (I also had to install MySQL) and I was up and running within a few hours. Customising the software was also straightforward. I only have a rudimentary grasp of PHP but still had no problems imposing my bland site style on the weblog interface.:-)

I’ve decided to allow comments on my blog. Nobody likes to work in a vacuum and the reason I started this site was to share my work and get some feedback. So please, comment away…

Current Projects

IE7

The main project hosted on this site is IE7. This has recently had an update. I’ve only fixed bugs in this release. For any piece of software it is important to reach a stable point. Hopefully, this release will act as a really usable version. I’ll finally add support for printing before going beta. This is all I will say about IE7 for the time being as I intend to publish a full status report in the near future.

Web Forms 2.0

I’m honoured to be a member of the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group). Our first deliverable is a specification extending the forms module of HTML 4.0. Web Forms 2.0 adds new functionality and provides a neat declarative mechanism for common developer scenarios. An example in plain English, we can define <input type="date"> and get a date picking widget without having to write complex JavaScript to make it work. Read the current specification for full details.

To really make something like Web Forms 2.0 fly, you have to make it work on Internet Explorer. When IE7 is stable, I am going to switch my attention to writing an IE implementation of the Web Forms 2.0 specification. I’ll be using DHTML Behaviors as the mechanism for extending forms behaviour. I am also going to strive to make it work on Mozilla platforms using the XBL wrapper I developed at the beginning of this year.

There is a very early prototype of a Web Forms 2.0 implementation here: /my/wf2/test/

OK. That’s it for my first post. Next, an IE7 status report.

Comments (17)

Leave a comment

Just call it a blog (weblog sounds really weird:-))

I’m going to add the RSS to my feeds list. You should really re-add the buttons for the feeds somewhere, so people don’t have to go hunting…

  • Comment by: Doug
  • Posted:

Display some feed buttons goddamit! I don’t want to have to trawl through your code to subscribe!
+FRANK

  • Comment by: Frank Spammer
  • Posted:

I just started my own weblog too (dantecubed.blogspot.com).

This is the first I’ve heard of Web Forms 2.0 since PPK’s comments on Quirksmode.

Adding a feed would make staying in touch with this blog easier, though.

My greetings. It was really hard to track news of your projects before this blog.

I’ve found some issues in Web Forms 2.0 “Form Repetition” prototype:

– fields ‘name_[row]’ and ‘count_[row]’ are submitted – maybe behavior should disable them or remove their names?

– when I add field names ‘name_0’ and ‘count_0’ duplicated in submitted data (template attribute repeat-start="1" missing)

  • Comment by: YuppY
  • Posted:

While I think the WHATWG initiative is a good thing, I can create a date wiget today with minimal effort just add class=”date” to an input element (thanks to re-usable javascript components). See file:///C:/John/Editor/Date/Test-date.htm for an example.

  • Comment by: John Lloyd-Jones
  • Posted:

Sorry, I hit the submit button too soon. The example URL is http://www.lloyd-jones.net/Date/

  • Comment by: John Lloyd-Jones
  • Posted:

I think that adding non standard attribute or creating a new DTD is a bad idea. Why not instead take the advantage ot the modularity of XML ?

I mean you can add your own attribute in another name space;-)

This will enable you to claim for XHTML complience while bringing advanced feature:)

This is what I did by the way …

  • Comment by: BJB
  • Posted:

[…] titz nehmen) und überarbeitet das CSS. Der Aufwand ist gering, der Nutzen groß. Hut ab vor Dean Edwards. […]

Will you publish all future modifications on your site here? (than I could just subscribe to RSS and read everything at Bloglines:-)

Yes. I intend to publish all site updates through this blog from now on. Project specific information may still be published elsewhere on this site but I will log those updates here also.

I think bloglines is great too!:-)

  • Comment by: -dean
  • Posted:

Why not instead take the advantage ot the modularity of XML ?

Because XML doesen’t work in web space. I recomend you to read a Thought experiment by Mark Pilgrim

  • Comment by: YuppY
  • Posted:

Why not instead take the advantage ot the modularity of XML ?

This has been debated extensivley on the WHATWG mailing list.

  • Comment by: -dean
  • Posted:

IE7 IE7 isn’t the latest incarnation of the popular Microsoft web browser, Internet Explorer. What IE7 is, is a compliance patch for Internet Explorer that allows it to properly parse compliant Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). What IE7 does: IE7 loads and…

Excellent! Your thoughts now line themselves up neatly in a Mozilla Thunderbird folder.

Want to change your weblog name to something more fun than “dean.edwards.name/weblog/”? (The real reason for me to ask for this is just because that string doesn’t fit in the “Sender” column without the dreaded “…” appearing too.)

  • Comment by: Nelson Menezes
  • Posted:

Aww. It’s too late to change the name of my blog.:-(

If I ever redesign my site maybe I’ll think harder about page titles…

  • Comment by: -dean
  • Posted:

How about giving us full text feeds?

  • Comment by: Roy
  • Posted:

I’ve now added links for RSS and Atom feeds. Select weblog from the menu and the links are at the top of the page.

  • Comment by: -dean
  • Posted:

Comments are closed.