Dear WebKit Open Source Project

Regarding you recent blog post: “Understanding HTML, XML, and XHTML”.

Before we begin, I’d like to point out that I did read the whole thing. I didn’t just scroll to the bottom to see how it ended. However, this letter is about one of the last things in the post. I’ll get to the rest of it some other time. Here’s what this letter is about:

The Safari 2.0 version of WebKit had a special quirk for treating script elements with the self-closing syntax (like this: ) as if they were actually properly closed. At the time Gecko-based browsers like Firefox had a similar quirk, and we decided to copy it for compatibility with particular web sites. However, future versions of Firefox will remove this quirk, and this kind of behavior is going to be explicitly outlawed by future standards that build on HTML, such as Web Apps 1.0. So we will probably remove this quirk in future versions of WebKit as well. Unfortunately, HTML relying on this parsing quirk has crept into a lot of Dashboard widgets. A WebKit that didn’t support this quirk would lead to broken widgets – the external script code would never run.

I am strongly opposed to this course of action for the following reasons:

1. All of Apple’s own widgets (at least all the ones I checked) have this style of self-closing script tags. However, Apple has the advantage of being able to transparently update all of their widgets and the user would be none the wiser. So I guess I have to start over.

Starting over.

1. As the article implies, many, if not most third-party widgets use the self-closing script tag. Now, I think it’s important to point out that this style of tag is fully legal under XHTML 1.0. However, this post pointed out the fact that WebKit (and other rendering engines) doesn’t really care what the doctype says. They only care about the MIME type, which 3rd party widget developers have no way of controlling. So, this would basically be punishing widget developers for following standards.

Update: It was pointed out to me in the comments that widget developers can control this by simply using a ‘.xhtml’ extension, instead of a ‘.html’ extension.

2. Who, exactly, would this course of action help. What would you gain? All you’d get is a lot of pissed off developers and even more disgruntled users because their widgets no longer function properly. So what’s the point?
3. Corollary to #2: what do you lose by not changing this? Seriously, what’s it to you if you allow valid XHTML to work the way it’s supposed to, even if it’s in a text/html document.

Another problem I have with this: there’s no explicit timeframe. If it’s updated with Leopard then 1) I can understand them not giving us dates because of the NDA and 2) it will allow us to give users a more coherent reason as to why users need to update their widgets. However, if this is changed with 10.4.8… I don’t even want to go there. The real complaint here: not enough info to developers.

So please, WebKit, look over all these points and rethink this decision.

Warm regards,
Galen D. W.
A concerned widget developer.

Competing With Apple

It happens every time Apple introduces a new version of Mac OS X: some third-party developer is out of the job. In the case of Leopard, Apple’s newest OS, there is now a backup utility, a virtual desktops manager, a launcher (a la Spotlight), and lots more built-in. Many of these were previously handled by third-party utilities. So what are the makers of these utilities to do? Well, improve upon them, of course!

In this post, I’ll be talking about Web Clip. Web Clip is a new technology from Apple that allows users to create new widgets simply from a part of a web page.

Now, this is a bummer for widget developers. Many widgets are simply Dashboard incarnations of a certain web page. So, many widgets may be obsolete because users can just make their own versions.

At Taco Widgets, we have one widget that may be affected by this: Old Faithful. Old Faithful is a widget of the webcam of the Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone National Park. This webcam is available on a web page, so users could just go to that web page, and make their own version of the widget with Web Clip.

This is a problem, right? Sure. But it also has a solution: make our Old Faithful widget better than anything that could be made with Web Clip. Basically, Web Clip doesn’t put widget developer out of business. It just raises the bar and means that widgets must be one level above where they have been.

So, what did we do to Old Faithful? We added features that users can’t get from Web Clip. We added resizing, saving, manual refreshing and a few other things. Sure, Apple’s a really big company, but that doesn’t mean that indie developers can’t do things better. Besides, where would Apple be without developers?

Morale of the story: Apple (or some other big company) may release a product that’s going to put yours out of business. Deal with it. Either move on to The Next Big Thing or make that product even better than Apple’s.

Holy Interface, Batman!

Well, I’m assuming you heard about the-increasingly-inaccurately-named iTunes 7. This release features a lot of cool things. As a friend of mine put it: “This version of iTunes kicks more ass than any version of iTunes before.” But instead of talking about the big new features I’d like to talk about something more subtle (or not, if you’re like me): The interface widgets.

No, I’m not talking about Dashboard widgets; I’m talking about the things you use to control the interface: the button, scrollbars, toggle controls, etc. Anyway, even a casual observer would probably notice that iTunes doesn’t look the same as the rest of Mac OS X. Well, that’s very true. It would appear that Apple is moving away from the Aqua style to a more subdued style. I’ll call it the “flat” style for the sake of this entry. Besides, I’m sure Steve Jobs will have a better name for it (more on that later).

What I Like

There are many things I like. I like the overall grayish-look-and-feel of the table headers, the scrollbars, checkboxes, and such. It looks a lot more professional than the “Fisher Price” look of the rest of OS X.

I also like the new Source List. It’s much more organized than the previous one. This helps to make sense of stuff better. It’s not much, but I like it.

Also, I love the new style of the buttons on the top bar. I think the light gradient just works with the dark gradient behind it. The buttons on the bottom bar are ok, but they should be more like the ones on the top bar.

Finally, I like that all elements have an inactive state. When you leave the window, the interface changes itself to reflect that its in the background. This is very nice on a large screen, but somehow this kind of stuff sometimes gets forgotten in the modern age of make-it-look-as-cool-as-possible. Kudos Apple.

Ok, enough about what I like. Here’s what I hate.

What I Hate

First and foremost, I hate that glass-style bar that shows the selected option in the Source list (it’s also in the Party Shuffle). It looks so out of place in the new interface, which clearly stresses more smoothness and less of that glass stuff. On top of all that, it just looks ugly.

This glass bar is sort or a recurring theme throughout this update. Just look at the front page of the new iTunes Store update. These all need to be replaced with that old blue-gradient. That was fine.

Next on the hit parade is the bar at the bottom of the Podcast and Party Shuffle screens. That big blue thing right above the bottom bar is what I’m talking about. It seems so out of place. It doesn’t really match anything, and it stands out, while it really shouldn’t be standing out because it’s just a settings box. The old grey box would’ve looked right at home here. Bring that back Apple!

Finally, there is a problem with the scrollbars, checkboxes, and a few other interface elements: They’re a weird color. In Mac OS X, you can set your System Preferences so that you either have a blue of a gray theme. It seems like the new scrollbars in iTunes 7 are trying to do both at once.

These things should not go back to the aqua-style they were. They should be more of a combination of both. Use the new style, but at least try to meet the user’s theme preference.

And a Concern

With all these interface changes, I can’t help but be a little worried about one thing: it looks like iTunes is becoming a little too monochromatic. Take iTunes out of Cover Flow view and just look at it; it looks a little too bland.

Now I know that iTunes has never been the most colorful application, and I know that this kind of stuff can be hard to judge from just looking at one interface, but I can’t help but worry that iTunes 7’s new grey interface looks a little too much like OS 9.

Maybe this monochromatic thing is a good thing: if it does one thing it highlights the main content of the window pretty well. Only time will tell. What do I mean by that? Well…

iTunes: The Guinea Pig

Historically, iTunes has been the first of Mac OS X apps to adapt a new interface style. I have no reason to believe that this new “flat” style will be any different.

This trend is as old as iTunes itself: iTunes 1 introduced the brushed metal window that we’ve grown to love or hate. More recently, iTunes was the first to sport the new “smooth” metal style that has lately been found creeping into the new iLife apps.

So what does all that mean about this time around? Well, Apple’s got a new OS coming up (Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard). It’s not out of the question (or even far-fetched at this point) for Apple to do an interface refresh with that update.

So what did I mean by “Steve Jobs will have a better name for it”? Well, Apple’s got at least one more chance to show off Leopard before its big debut, at Macworld San Francisco 2007. It’s entirely possible that this new “flat” style will rear its head there.

There’s only one thing I beg of Apple: make these new styles available to developers! There isn’t even a standard way for developer to implement the smooth metal theme. Please fix this!

Developer Humor

Engineers at Apple obviously have a sense of humor. Evidence can be found in the developer tools.

One of my favorites is in the ASCIIMoviePlayer. What this code does is pretty comical by itself: it plays a movie, in Terminal, using text to display the footage. Basically, a very advanced form of ASCII art.

Anyway, the file of code used as an example has a number of comments in it. One of these comments has some pretty humorous parts:

/* Top X Tips for better ASCII QuickTime Movie Viewing
10) Grow your terminal/console to fit the Movie
9) Ask marketing folks if you can incorporate this code into your latest QuickTime product and see if they think you're serious, then do it behind their back anyway
8) Set your terminal to White on Black for optimal look
7) Download your favorite movie trailer
6) While you're at it, download some Graphics Importer sample code (why not?)
5) Jedi mind trick your manager "...you want to send me to WWDC"
4) Order the pizza.
3) Dim the lights and turn up the audio
2) Turn off terminal transparancy for fastest performance
1a) Usage [smelltheglove:/Volumes/Spock] moof% ASCIIMoviePlayer sillymovie.mov
1b) Usage C:\ ASCIIMoviePlayer.exe sillymovie.mov
*/

I particularly liked numbers 9, 5, and 4. If you don’t get it or you don’t think it’s funny, that’s ok; it probably just means that you’re normal.

The full file can be found here.

Oh yeah, the title

You may be wondering what the hell “Slash dev Slash null” means. Well /dev/null is a special file that deletes everything sent to it. It’s basically a black hole for bits. As in “Please send comments to /dev/null,” or “All your base are belong to /dev/null.” (More on /dev/null.)

About the Links

You’ll notice on the right side of the main blog page, there’s a section called “Links” that contains a couple (dozen) links to some of my favorite blogs. If you went through my NetNewsWire feed list, this is roughly what you’d find. I thought I’d take a minute an go through this list.

27B Stroke 6 – This blog is by Wired. It focus on what happens when technology meets law. (The “Official reinforcer of the correctness of executive decisions.”)

Boing Boing – Um… well… with the motto of “A directory of wonderful things” Boing Boing is pretty much all things interesting.

Crazy Apple Rumors Site – You will never find a more accurate rumor site. Never.

Daring Fireball – “Mac nerdery, etc.”: One of the best blogs on any topic I’ve ever seen. And long posts.

Engadget – All things electronic. No, really all things.

inessential.com – By Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire.

Mac Mojo – By Microsoft’s Mac BU. Ever wondered what it’s like to carry a PowerBook around MS’ Redmond campus?

Mac OS X Hints – The ultimate site for Mac OS X power users.

Macworld – The ultimate site for any Mac users.

O’Reilly Radar – A blog from the guys who brought us those Programming Books With Animals On The Cover.

Phill Ryu – A designer’s Mac blog.

Red Sweater Blog – Daniel Jalkut, an independent software developer for Mac.

SkyHawkRider – By Austin, who’s a friend of mine. No, this link’s not just a courtesy link. There’s some good stuff there.

Surfin’ Safari – The blog of the folks who gave us WebKit.

Taco Widgets – Heh.

The Omni Mouth – For a blog that’s written by marketing weasels™, this is actually a pretty fun/cool/amusing blog.

Theocacao – By Scott Stevenson. He really knows what he’s talking about.

This is Broken – How not to make stuff.

TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog; need I say more?

Wil Shipley – Wil Shipley, another Mac developer, and another good one.

Well, there you have it. If you can think of any good additions, post them in the comments.

The Perils of 1.0

Whenever there’s a release of a big new piece of software, I always have internal fear inside me: that even after long days and nights of testing, fixing, and re-testing, that there’s still some significant bug hidden in there somewhere. In a version 1.0, these bugs are typically easily fixed and really annoying.

In 1.0 software (or the first public release, whatever version that may be), typically the only people who have seen it are the people who have worked on it. So, when it’s released to an audience that is several orders of magnitude larger than it was perviously, the number of people “testing” it is sever orders of magnitude larger. That typically means that if there’s a hidden bug still lurking somewhere in the program, it’ll probably be found.

For example: Old Faithful. This widget was released as version 1.0. A few days later we had to fix a couple bugs with version 1.0.1. A couple weeks later, we had to update it to fix the webcam: version 1.0.2. And so on. Old Faithful is now at version 1.1.1. And we’ve got another update coming to that widget soon.

I know I’m not the only one who has experienced this. Daniel Jalkut at Red Sweater Blog had a similar experience with his recent release and subsequent update of his new application, FlexTime.

Moral of the story: When using 1.0 software, keep in mind that the only people to use it before you were the developers.

That Big First Post

Well. Here it is. The first post. This is usually the post dedicated to introducing me and what I plan to do here. So…

My name is Galen D. W. I’m the head developer at Taco Widgets.

There. How’s that for an introduction?

In this blog, I’ll be talking about what it’s like to program widgets for the Mac, and what it’s like to use the Mac in general. No, this won’t be another one of those blogs echoing the rumor sites about every little Apple announcement.

I’m not going to set a definite schedule for posts here because that would cause me to post just for the sake of posting. I’ll only post here when I have something that’s at least mildly interesting.

Ok. Enough of this post. Real content coming soon.