Peter Wooley’s Blog

As soon as I learned that XHTML 1.1 disallows the use of the target attribute, I was torn. The ability to force links to open in new windows seems quite powerful. What if you want to link to off-site articles, but be sure to keep them on your site? The reason doesn’t even need to be selfish: wouldn’t it confuse the user if they left your site with no obvious way back? My hope would be that the Back button is now obvious, but perhaps we can’t count on that? For well over a year, I’ve been searching for just why target has been removed. Tonight, through a bit of research and a lot of link hopping, I unexpectedly found it:The reason for deprecating those items is that the W3C wants to promote the separation between content (HTML), presentation (CSS) and behaviour (JavaScript). Making an element centred [sic] within the viewport is a presentational issue; thus it should be handled by CSS instead of a center element. Opening a new browser window is a behavioural issue; thus it should be handled by JavaScript rather than a target attribute. —37 steps to perfect markupAnd it dawned on me. When I force a link to open in a new browser, I am telling the browser what to do; and JavaScript usually controls that. The argument that immediately came to mind was, “Well, when you link to something, you tell the browser to open that.” After some thought, I realized why I was wrong. When marking up, you are creating a relationship for the content to what it relates to. Using an anchor tag relates that marked up content to another document; you’re not telling the browser what to do at all, the browser’s default reaction is to open that document when clicked, simple as that.I’d suggest that everyone read Tommy Olsson’s Bulletproof HTML: 37 Steps to Perfect Markup. It may even make you re-consider your user of the i and b tags, if you can believe that.

Ready for a Metroid / Halo mash-up machinima? Yeah, neither was I.However, there is a beautiful piece of work I think everyone should see.

Now that I have an office, I needed something from The Office. And what’s better than a Dwight K. Schrute Bobble Head? I got it today!

As I sat in church this morning, listening to a visiting speaker discuss Islam and Christianity, a delightful tone rang through my ears. It was my mobile, and as quickly as I heard it, I was reaching through my pocket jamming any button I could to silence it.It was then I realized there are many features missing from our mobile service, even though we’ve come to expect such features in our Instant messaging and calendaring services.For starters, when making calls, we have no idea what the recipient is doing. I’m not suggesting we should attempt telepathy, but giving users the ability to set their status (”I’m Available”, “I’m away, I’ll call you back”, “I’m sleeping”, etc.) could help when people call in. If, for instance, someone marks themselves as “I’m sleeping” either a text-to-speech or pre-recorded message will alert the caller before the phone is actually rung. This may impede the caller, but if I could be told that someone was say, at church, it would be great to be able to cancel the call or send a message straight to voice mail.Taking that idea further, why not allow iCalendar-based calendars to be linked with the phones, so if there is a preset calendar item, the user’s status could be based off of that! (This coming from my experience this morning; my Google Calendar said I was at church!)Along the lines of notifications, I don’t entirely understand why callers aren’t given the ability to set call priorities or choose to send calls straight to silent or vibrate mode. Yes, telemarketers could abuse the priorities and set theirs to high, but users could decide to only allow priorities to be set by people in their immediate calling plan or in a user-defined list.Essentially, this is a small list, but I constantly think of little things that bug me that do not appear to be phone-specific, but rather service-wide. The iPhone is sure to add some brilliant functionailty, but I’m unaware of the abilities I’ve listed to be included.And lastly, usability and design experts may say adding this kind of functionality would only confuse the end-user, but I would argue that any well design phone and phone system could setup default values that make the experience for every new user the same or better than it is today.

On the Super Site for Windows, Paul Thurrott wrote on choosing a video game system. In it, he discusses the three next generation systems (XBox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii), in an attempt to help people decide what’s right for them, based on his experiences and views.His coverage of the 360 and PS3 were reasonable, pointing out things most followers of the Next-gen console race would all ready know (but we’re not the audience for this article). The language gets interesting as he approaches the Wii. To start (and leave a bad taste in my mouth) he offers the header, “Wii: For the Kiddie Crowd”.Now, I understand it’s his site, but can’t we all agree that’s going to start people off with a rather negative opinion of the Wii, assuming they’d rather not be part of a “Kiddie” crowd? Paul (can I call him Paul? I do listen to Windows Weekly, so I feel like I know him…) starts mentioning how the Wii “has been widely cheered for foregoing high-end specs and sticking to the fun factor.” He goes on to say it’s a “one-trick pony,” referring to the Wii Remote and its unique gameplay.Once he has covered explaining how the Wii Remote works, he gives us this gem: “While the Wii Remote will appeal to very young kids, college students, and, in a somewhat creepy way, adults hosting alcohol-laden social events, the novelty of the controller system wears off quite quickly.” I understand this is only his opinion, but he’s making a sweeping generalization, and is he saying it will appeal to college students (me, for 5 more months) and then wear off quite quickly? I believe he is. No matter, here it is four and a half months after I got my Wii, and when I finish writing this I’m going to play some hard-core tennis in Wii Sports and then maybe kill a few bad guys in Red Steel. Beyond that, I cannot wait for Super Mario Galaxy to come out so I can Wii my way to Mario bliss.He then brings up Call of Duty 3 and uses it to blast how annoying the Wii is. The trouble with that argument is that anyone with Call of Duty 3 (myself included) knows it’s a sham. Activision was attempting to get their game onto all of the Next-gen system, and in their hurry, forgot to feature a ton of features we Wii users come to expect (like using the Wii remote as a cursor in the menus and good in-game controls). If anything, using the Call of Duty example shows off how poor the Wii experience can be when game developers do not take the time to produce a quality game given the feature available.Paul ends up suggesting his family will be getting rid of it, which is fine, but Paul, if you’re reading this, feel free to send it to me and I’ll give it to a Wii-loving, but Wii-less friend.