Uhm, no, thanks.
(Update: A few people have wondered if I did not install Silverlight merely because it is produced by Microsoft. This is not the case, as you can read in more detail in the discussions in the comments to this article. Thanks.)
Facebook Minus JavaScript
I was just checking out a website with JavaScript disabled, then surfed over to facebook (accidentally) without switching JS back on, where I was welcomed with the following page (click on it to see it in its full beauty):
I love how gracefully they degrade to... an empty page...
Relying on JavaScript completely and just not returning a page at all if you don't have it is a no-go in web development. At the very least, you should display a page stating why your services can't be used without a particular technology, and provide hints on how to fix that.
Probably, the empty page only occurs because I logged in with JS enabled, then returned to the page with it disabled, but still it's not a great user experience either way.
Depending on the software architecture, it is even relatively easy to provide a working page for "no script" users while keeping fancy JavaScript elements.
At AMO, we make an effort to keep all public parts of the website accessible to non-JS users as well so that the site can be used by the widest audience possible, and the development effort is far smaller than I imagined, due to language constructs like <noscript> that allow displaying buttons etc. that wouldn't be needed in the "AJAXy" version of the page.
When I look at this, I hope facebook was not infected by its evil German stepchild "StudiVz", as far as code quality is concerned. That apparent facebook clone, when it was first introduced, was infamous for its numerous, severe shortcomings in such minor regards as security, privacy, user experience, and probably a number of other important buzzwords as well (also stated by Facebook themselves in the context of their intellectual property lawsuit against StudiVZ: "As with any counterfeit product, Studivz's uncontrolled quality standards for service, features and privacy negatively impact the genuine article.", but I am digressing...)
Summiting
Well, greetings from Whistler, BC! It's raining, but sessions have started so we don't really hang out too much outside at the moment anyway. And while meals are outside, they are luckily in a tent. Phew.
Of course at lunch, I was stirring the salad dressing and promptly a round piece of glass at the bottom of the jar broke out and decided to flood my pants with what I believe was yummy while still in the jar. Always good to have a pair of spare pants.
I added some pictures to ipernity already, so go over there if you'd like to see what I took pictures of. I also wrote some code to import ipernity into summit.mozilla.org, where I hope it'll show up soon.
Enjoy!
Off to the Mozilla Summit 2008
Yay, I am out and about for the Mozilla Summit 2008 in the beautiful Whistler, British Columbia, Canada.
It's going to be an exciting week with a lot of people I know and haven't seen in a long time, and there will be many new people to meet as well. I am looking forward to it!
Whistler itself is a breathtaking place, they say, so I am particularly thrilled that such a great place was picked for the event. I know at least one of my friends is jealous because he'd love to go mountain-biking there!
If you want to see what's going on at the Mozilla Summit, hop on over to summit.mozilla.org, a new mash-up site showing tons of media related to the summit. Soon it'll look much fuller than this:
I'll write again when I'm there :)
GMail Separates Auto-Generated From Other Contacts
Just recently I ranted about how bad it is that GMail auto-adds every possible email address it can get its hands on to your contacts, making them utterly cluttered with the most random people on the planet, including "remove me from this mailinglist" addresses and others you never want to see again.
It seems as if Google heard me (and many others): They now introduced a new section "suggested contacts" that they dump everybody and their brother's email address into, but the people you actually want to have as contacts stay in an also newly created "My Contacts" folder.
This gives you the convenience of still adding people you email to the auto-complete feature (which, in and by itself is not so bad), while not hopelessly cluttering your contacts. Exactly what I want!
Well, thank you, Google. Read more about it on the GMail blog.
Nice Firefox Wallpapers
I just stumbled across a collection of very nice Firefox background images.
Some of them I've seen many times (like "always wear protection", which always reminds me of the "natural mail enhancement" pic), others are new to me, but they seem to be the work of some very talented designers in the Mozilla community, so make sure to check them out.
Firefox + World Record = Hot
Here you see Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, receiving the Guinness World Record certificate at the London Firefox 3 party. Awesome!
(Thanks for the link, laura)
Bonjour, iPhone
I recently saw this on the local network at the unversity:
Well, at least the user was honest :) If he was aware that his iPhone would tell everybody of its existence through Bonjour? That, I don't know.
Tweeeeet
Now it has happened: As an effect of the urgent need for a weekend, I registered with twitter. Only adding people I could think of easily, I am not "following" 37 people ;)
Of course, my twitter experience started all peachy right off the bat, by first giving me site errors:
(hey, at least they are pretty)
... and then I noticed something weird about the times they show on every page:
"ungefähr 1 Stunde ago from web..." ... is that... Germenglish? Englerman?
But let's not be discouraged. They probably just started their announced maintenance window four hours early ;)
Anyone else think I forgot to "follow" them on twitter? Leave a comment.
Userfriendly on the Second Microsoft Cake
Userfriendly.org published a funny little picture about the second Microsoft cake:
They should have covered the Firefox 2 cake instead: After all, it still rendered in black and white ;)
(Thanks for the link, Jean Pierre!)