Archive for September, 2013

Reading List

Apologies for the irregularity of the Reading List at the moment; September and October are autumn conference season and my schedule is bonkers.

Responsive Images

A meeting at Mozilla Paris on how to solve Responsive Images, organised and summarised by Marcos Caceres concluded

  • Browser vendors agree that srcset + DPR-switching is the right initial step forward (i.e., the 2x, 3x, etc. syntax).
  • Agreement to then consider srcset + viewport size after some implementation experience (possibly drop height syntax from srcset spec). If not implemented, Width/Height syntax to possibly be marked at risk in srcset spec.
  • Browser makers acknowledge the art-direction use case, but still think <picture> is not the right solution.
  • Adding new HTTP headers to the platform, as Client-Hints proposes to do, has had negative impact in the past – so Client Hints might need to be reworked at bit before it becomes more acceptable to browser verndors.

So initially, we’ll use something like

<img src="normal.png" 
srcset="retina.png 2x"
alt="otter vomiting">

Browsers that have “retina” displays will choose retina.png as they have 2 CSS pixels to one physical pixel. Browsers that aren’t retina, or don’t understand the new syntax, fall back to the good old src attribute.

WebKit and Blink have implemented (but not yet shipped) srcset, Mozilla is planning implemention now.

Meanwhile, an alternative “srcN” proposal has been put forward by Tab Atkins and John Mellor (excitingly, “John Mellor” was the real name of The Clash’s Joe Strummer). It claims to solve Resolution-based discrimination, Art-direction discrimination and Viewport-based discrimination usecases. Discussion here.

UK Government Web

The Cabinet Office’s Open Standards Board is recommending open standards technology. The first two to be approved are HTTP/1.1 and Unicode UTF-8. Francis Maude, the Minister, allegedly said “open standards will give us interoperable software, information and data in government and will reduce costs by encouraging competition, avoiding lock-in to suppliers or products and providing more efficient services”.

This may not be revelatory to those of us in the web world, but it’s a Good Thing for the nation.

I had the pleasure of hearing Paul Arnett (now of Twitter, previously of gov.uk) talking about the gov.uk initiative at From The Front conference a few days ago, and thought it was a sign of schizophrenia that the same government that can allow subject experts make a world-leading governmental portal is the same government that disregards experts and its own consultation in wanting to censor the web.

I realise now that it’s the old Tory DNA: the belief in encouraging competition by economic liberalism, reducing bureaucracy, while remaining socially authoritarian and reeling from one moral panic to the other. So no change there.

Standardsy Stuff

Misc

(Last Updated on 7 October 2013)

On Romania

When I got an email from Gabi Schiopu inviting me to speak at the first front-end conference in Romania, I didn’t hesitate for an instant. I’ve wanted to visit Romania for a long time.

Years ago, I read an article in Guardian about how CeauÈ™escu, Romania’s dictator, paid off foreign debt by exporting much of the country’s agricultural and industrial production, and therefore causing great hardship to Romanians. As the birthrate dropped, fewer people had children because it was so difficult to survive, so he banned abortions.

I remember being thrilled when the 1989 revolution happened. The Guardian-reading Amnesty member in me was appalled when he was executed along with his wife on Xmas day, but the other half of me thought “gotcha!”. Tellingly, at his show trial, he and his wife Elena were accused of “suppressing the soul of a nation” which he doubtless tried to do. But, ironically, he didn’t achieve it. The reason that Romania fascinates me is precisely because it shows that brainwashing, personality cults and a quarter of a century of brutality didn’t suppress everyone. At some point, the people will rise up and free themselves. I hope the same will happen in North Korea and Iran, too.

Every wannabe despot should watch the video of Caeausescu’s last speech, and note the incredulity in his face (about 50 seconds in) when he realises that the game’s up; the people aren’t taking any more. And wannabe despots should be very scared by it.

Bucharest

Bucharest was called the “Paris of the East”, and it certainly has its fair share of elaborate buildings, wide boulevards and imposing structures. The historic centre is delightful, full of bars and restaurants. Unfortunately, half of it was razed, and its inhabitants banished to soviet-style concrete blocks in the suburbs, for a preposterous People’s Palace ordered by Caeausescu, who was shot before it was completed.

The Palace has 1,100 rooms and is the second largest building in the world (after The Pentagon). Our hosts took us on a guided tour; it’s impressive because of the size and workmanship of the fittings and decoration but, like Ceausescu himself, is dull, flatulent, pompous and uninspired. It’s a fitting monument.

SmartWeb Conference

I was in Bucharest for SmartWeb Conference, and what a treat it was. Excellently organised by EvenSys, it was invented and curated by Gabi because he wanted to go to a front-end conference but couldn’t, so decided to organise one in Romania. There were people from far and wide in the country, as well as some from Hungary and further afield, and a real buzz. It felt like a nation’s Web community coming of age, and it was a great pleasure to witness and be a part of it.

Slow-cooked lamb with 40 garlic cloves

I don’t usually follow recipes from magazines, because they usually need zillions of ingredients and take ages to prep. But I had six people around for dinner, and a whole leg of lamb, so Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Six-hour spiced lamb with 40 cloves of garlic seemed a good choice. (All of us like garlic, but it’s not actually death-by-alium, as you don’t crush the garlic, just add it to the juices.)

It took about 10 minutes longer to prepare than any other roast, and that was toasting the spices and pulversising them in a pestle and mortar, but it was time well spent as it was absolutely delicious.

It did list some ingredients I didn’t have, so I adapted it thus:

  • For the sauce, I didn’t have paprika, caraway or fennel. So I added a couple of cloves, and some chilli flakes (about a teaspoon).
  • After the first 30 minutes, when you’re supposed to add a cup of water, I added a mug of water and a cup of red wine. (I knew my guests would want lots of gravy.)
  • An hour before the end, when you add all the garlic, I also added a couple of sprigs of rosemary from the garden, a couple of handfulls of black olives, and another cup of wine.

The gravy was really intense, even before I squished some cloves of garlic and a few olives into it and sieved it. The remaining olives tasted great for people to munch while the meat was resting. I served it with carrots that I cooked around the lamb for the last hour, potatoes roasted in goose-fat, Yorkshire puddings, roast butternut squash and boiled broccoli and cauli.

Best lamb ever, my friends said.

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