I’m heading off to Web Directions Unplugged!

Well, not right this second. I’m writing this post right now. But in just a short bit I’ll be out the door, off to the bus station, and then I’ll be heading to Web Directions Unplugged. I’ve had the amazing fortune to be invited by John Allsopp and the talented people behind Web Directions to attend as the event’s Official Cartoonist. As such, I’ll be chronicling the going-ons in my typically irreverent but always adorably fuzzy fashion. I am humbled, grateful, and totally psyched.

I’ve attended Web Directions events in the past, and owe a bit of thanks to them in that regard. It was in the blustery opening days of 2008, while attending Web Directions North in Vancouver, that the first fuzzy sketches of CSSquirrel came to be. (This may or may not be while I was having a total man crush on Andy Clarke during his workshop.) As such, I am totally pumped to be attending yet another of their events, and to participate in this way.

If you’re going to Web Directions Unplugged, and you want to say hello, I’ve love to meet you. I’ll even make it a point not to make chittering noises and flee to the nearest tree. Also stay tuned for an announcement on how you’ll be able to help me exploit your labor chronicle the event as Squeee Correspondents.

Seattle, here I come!

Today’s comic features John Allsopp, the trouble with aligning text vertically, and the Outback. No, not the restaurant. The vast arid part of Australia. Mind you, I have in fact been to the restaurant, and I was disappointed for a number of reasons.

At least one of which is the entire lack of kangaroo steaks.

My apologies to the vegetarians among you.

There’s two non-restaurant related points to the comic. The first is that almost everything I know about Australia I learned from Crocodile Dundee. Which means that large knives, boomerangs, and poisonous animals are everywhere. The second (and more relevant) point is that I am more than a little annoyed at the task of vertically aligning text with CSS. And clearly, John agrees with me. But, naturally, when he discusses the point it sounds so much cooler because of that dreamy Australian accent.

Let’s get to it. CSS has been around in some shape or form since, what, 1994? And most of the early web was all about text. Red text. Blue text. Flashing text. Marquee text. Text that was occasionally on fire with a sword going through it. Epic, taste-shatteringly bad text. In the entire intervening generation since, why has nobody in a position to do something about it said, “Hey, if we want to vertically center more than one line of text… how do we do that?”

Really, why? How wild and crazy is the concept that you may want to vertically align a paragraph of something in the mouth of a giant robot, or otherwise arrange it delicately between two slices of bread?

I’m aware that I can center text vertically inside an element that’s been given display: table-cell. And when the need arises, I’ve even used it. But it leaves my mouth tasting almost as bad as it did the day I chewed on a tiny blue plastic donkey I found in the playground when I was five. It’s the kind of rancid, oily taste that ruins your meals for the next several days. No, really. Kids, don’t chew on blue donkeys.

What if I want an inline-block? What if I don’t want all the behaviors of a table-cell? What if I hate tables with such a passion that I’d rather eat my meals while standing rather than bring back memories of table-based layouts with either using a CSS style that imitates them or eating on a wooden surface that shares a name with them? Huh? What then?

Well, in such a circumstance, I believe I’d be screwed.

I’m not entirely sure how necessary it is to have a Marquee module in CSS3. Don’t get me wrong, panning text is… er, hot… but along with all the whiz bang animations that CSS3 brought us, can I please get something that makes me capable of vertically aligning some bloody text in a bloody parent element with a single bloody style? Especially without invoking tables?

Thanks. Loves and kisses.

P.S. John Allsopp is a nutter. I say this, because he’s running a five week online course, HTML5 Live With John Allsopp, over at SitePoint. My evidence for his insanity is that this course contains 8 structured lessons, 2 Live Q&A sessions, practical exercises and a yak! All for under $10. Ok, it doesn’t have a yak. But it has the rest, and looks to be an in depth look at harnessing HTML5 hotness today and tomorrow (markup, native audio and video, canvas, ARIA and more!)

It’s a crazy good bargain. Go take advantage of it.

In one of his recent lengthy, marathonesque comments in other people’s blog posts, John Allsopp said the following quote in response to Bruce Lawson’s post HTML is a mess: “I guess one of the reasons folks are resorting to raising their legitimate concerns in public fora, rather than directly with the HTML WG (or should that be the WhatWG, or maybe both?) is possible they don’t have a tonne of faith in the process.”

This comment by John sent me down several interesting paths of consideration. Firstly, it made me think that Mr. Allsopp might spend more time writing in other people’s blogs than his own, much like Jeff Croft (who I had the fortune to see at Refresh Bellingham last week) appears to spend more time in every other city in America than the one in which he lives.

Secondly, I briefly thought that I’d start spelling “ton” (American spelling) like “tonne” (which appears to be the Australian, and I’ll bet also the UK spelling). I quickly discarded that plan, since it’d just limit my word count in Twitter. Which made me wonder, do Japanese users of Twitter get to use kanji in their tweets? If so, that seems highly unfair. They could fit a War & Peace sized comment in a single tweet that way. (Note to self: learn Japanese.)

Finally I really got to the meat of what he said in that sentence (one of many that expressed his thoughts on the mess topic Bruce had posted about). Why should you or I bother with figuring out how the hell to send an email to the proper mailing lists for the HTML5 WG? Or the WHAT WG? Heck, I’m not even sure which group is more relevant. The former has more technical authority, but the latter is actually making all the calls. RDFa, ARIA, and other fruits of the loins of other W3C chartered working groups are being disregarded by the HTML5 people consistently, or being carefully argued away with a pleading for use cases, a suggestion that their expertise is flawed, or that alternate solutions (read that: the WHAT WG’s solutions) are the better option.

People who’ve spent decades in service to their fields are being shot down by non-experts. Consider the issues with accessibility. Laura Carlson recently sent a proposal (signed by a lot of notables including accessibility guru John Foliot and HTML5 doctor in residence Bruce Lawson) that suggested the audacious idea that there be a formal procedure that describes how HTML5 will seek accessibility guidance from the W3C WAI groups.

HTML5 editor-for-life Ian Hickson evaded the issue by listing all the unanswered questions he has waiting on such topics instead of addressing the proposal. Sam Ruby one-upped Ian by expressing his disappointment that the proposal even existed.

In a situation like this, where motivated, caring experts in their fields are being ignored or deflected when using the official channels, why should your average John Everyweb even consider unraveling the process involved enough to attempt to address concerns, knowing the almost certain result of such efforts?

I can’t think of any motivating reasons.

Today’s comic features John Foliot (representing accessibility efforts) submitting such a suggestion to the HTML5 group(s), with my squirrel alter ego looking on in horror at the results. Consider it a softened metaphor that reflects my own growing dismay at the direction HTML5 seems to be heading when working with others.

Last week, it was declared that the XHTML2 WG was being discontinued, so the resources could be focused on HTML5. I briefly mentioned it here, and Jeffrey Zeldman spoke about it here. It’s a simple enough matter, and drew a lot of mixed responses. That in itself isn’t surprising.

What was surprising was how all of a sudden it seemed that it became open hunting season on insulting developers that used XHTML 1 (which is not XHTML2) and gloating over the corpse of the standard before it had even cooled. As two examples, Henri Sivonen produced an unofficial “Q&A” complete with snark, and Mark Pilgrim invented a taunting childish rhyme that reveled in the folly of those he disagreed with. Pilgrim in his case even named Jeffrey Zeldman directly in his taunts (and got even worse in behavior in his comments on that post.)

This sort of behavior annoys me on two levels. One, it’s not a great way to treat your professional peers, as it crosses the line from attacking a technology to attacking people. Two, it confuses (in some cases intentionally) XHTML and XHTML2, making it seem as if the death of the latter somehow invalidated the former, which isn’t the case at all.

Fortunately, good men didn’t let that sort of behavior slide. John Allsopp rightfully called some of the taunters out for their snark (as recorded in this tweet here), and that became the basis for today’s comic, which imagines a post-apocalyptic world where this sort of poor manners must be corrected by brave warriors in the wasteland.

Also helping correct misconceptions and bad behavior were good posts by Jeremy Keith and Jeffrey Zeldman. If you’re confused about the whole XHTML issue this week, take a look at what they’ve written. It’s instructive.

Was XHTML2′s death a good thing? I don’t know. I do know that we can discuss the technology in a fashion that doesn’t involve insulting the people involved, though. Keep it clean, folks.

Note: I wrote this in about eight minutes at the end of my lunch. As such, it might expand later when I have the chance to be more verbose and thoughtful.