by Joey deVilla on January 7, 2010
My philosophy is that Microsoft should focus less on “compete” and more on delighting the users. Or, as I’ve said before, “the best tech advocacy is to make tech that helps people rock.”
One important path to building tech that helps people rock is interoperability. In today’s networked, heterogeneous world, no tech is an island (my apologies to John Donne). It’s best for Microsoft – and everyone else – if the company plays well with others, adopts open standards and the open web and actively participates with standards-making bodies. I see things like The Empire’s participation at W3C’s Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee Meeting in November, Microsoft’s being a Gold Sponsor at the upcoming ConFoo conference and the work being done by the Open Source Teams in both Redmond and Toronto as signs of what I call the company’s “Sea Change”.
So it pleased me to see an Ars Technica article titled Microsoft’s Collaboration on SVG is a win for the Open Web pointing to the announcement on IEBlog that Microsoft is joining the W3C working group on Scalable Vector Graphics, a.k.a. SVG.
Patrick Dengler, Senior Program Manager for the Internet Explorer Team, writes:
We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next generation Web platform. As evidenced by our ongoing involvement in W3C working groups, we are committed to participating in the standards process to help ensure a healthy future for the Web. Our involvement with the SVG working group builds on that commitment.
To date, I have had several interactions with the SVG working group, and their clear dedication to creating a great technology for end users and developers alike stands out. I personally look forward to future and more direct involvement with this great set of folks.
It’s not a formal announcement that SVG support’s going into future versions of IE, but I certainly hope that this is the first step towards that.
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
Tagged as:
Internet Explorer,
interoperability,
standards,
SVG
by Joey deVilla on December 6, 2009
In the corner of my room sits a power strip devoted to recharging various USB-rechargeable bits and pieces: a beige rectangle with various black plastic blobs sticking out of it, each one feeding juice to a USB cable. The USB ports vary in size and shape on the device end, but on the power-providing end, they’re all the same – that “standard”-sized USB outlet, just like the ones on our computers. There’s been many a time that I’ve thought “There’s a standard for power provided through USB; why aren’t there USB wall outlets?”
Someone at Instructables thought that too, because they’ve posted an article on how to build your own USB wall outlet. If you’ve got a penchant for DIY, some soldering skills, a willingness to fool around with house current and about a half-hour to kill, you to can rig up your house with easy USB power.
There’s another option for the do-it-yourselfers who’d rather not get into soldering and who’d also like the option of having both 3-prong 120-volt power and USB power. FastMac is offering the TruPower UCS outlet (pictured above) that lets you recharge your 21st century devices and still provide juice to those more archaic 20th century devices that require more than 5 volts and half an amp (which alas, includes desktop, laptop and netbook computers). They sell for US$10.00 each, but aren’t shipping until the new year. Still, if you’re setting up a new office, renovating an old one or just thinking about learning some simple DIY projects for your house, this one’s a nice simple project.
My question is now: “When will someone make a power strip that has both three-prong and USB ports?”
Tagged as:
power,
recharging,
standards,
USB
by Joey deVilla on June 24, 2009
This would be a very good time to remind you, the Gentle Reader, that Global Nerdy is my personal tech blog and that the opinions expressed within are mine and mine alone. They are not necessarily those of my employer, Microsoft Canada, nor its parent company, Microsoft Corporation, nor or any other Sith Lords, Stormtroopers, Family Guy monkeys or any other agents of evil in the employ of said organization.
You’ve probably heard the buzz in TechCrunch: Here’s how a properly-coded HTML email, where HTML is used for content and CSS is used for presentation, appears in the version of Outlook that came with Office 2000:
And here’s the same HTML email, with the same properly-formatted HTML, as rendered by the current version, Outlook 2007. It uses Word as the rendering engine, and Word will be the rendering engine for the upcoming Outlook 2010:
I understand why the empire wants Word-Outlook interoperability, which is why Word was chosen to be the HTML rendering engine for Outlook. But Word’s HTML renderer isn’t standards-compliant, which is why Outlook renders HTML in such a janky way. Outlook relies on old tricks such as using HTML tables for layout and other non-recommended ways of building web pages. IE8 plays by the rules, why doesn’t Outlook?
In my opinion, this is wrong. It runs counter to the spirit of interoperability, the embrace of open source and the following of standards that has accompanied the “sea change” within Microsoft (and it’s this sea change that help solidify my decision to join the company). I believe that it is in both Microsoft’s and the industry’s best interests for The Empire to be more standards-compliant.
(Besides, I just came back from presenting at a “Building Accessible Web Sites” conference where I told the audience to write compliant HTML. Damn right I’m going to push for everyone – Microsoft included – to do just that!)
That’s why I’m encouraging you to sign the Twitter petition to fix Outlook’s HTML rendering at FixOutlook.org. Outlook 2010, along with the other parts of Office 2010, is in beta right now, and Microsoft is soliciting opinions. This is the time – tell them to fix Outlook!
Tagged as:
FixOutlook,
HTML,
Microsoft's Sea Change,
Outlook,
standards