Today’s comic explores a subject that is one of the most difficult, for me at least, to approach humorously. Featuring Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman and Dylan Wilbanks (I love his site’s content), I think I manage it with the grace and agility only a fifty-foot lizard could manage.

Over the past couple weeks, some people have died. Well, thousands die every week, even without disasters like the one that has recently struck Haiti. With no disrespect meant to the many who have died, it was the death of two specific individuals that caused an attention-worthy explosion of conversation in my Twitter feed, and I didn’t know either one of them: Brad L. Graham and Jack Pickard. I linked their Twitter feeds, as I don’t know how enduring the website of either individual will be after their death (a topic addressed in more detail below).

Their passing started a discussion on death, both theirs and that of others.

Eric Meyer had a couple of tweets that highlighted the poignancy of loss, even over a digital medium. Jeffrey Zeldman, in a post entitled Posthumous Hosting and Digital Culture, addresses the Big Question (well, its little cousin): “Where do our sites go when we die?” I’d like to think that the entire readership of my site are aware of how fragile the survival of sites on the Internet is, as highlighted in this strip that discussed the end of Geocities.

If we hope to have any lasting legacy for friends, family or a curious future, we can’t hope for a copy of a book resting on a shelf for a few hundred years. Instead, we need to think, while alive, about how we’re going to preserve our digital identities (which have become a huge part of who we are) long enough so that those who come after can decide for themselves whether it was worth it.

Dylan Wilbanks recently had a presentation at Ignite Seattle about this very topic. Everyone Coredumps, he reminds us, and he addresses both the grieving process and how to preserve your online data for future generations. He also discusses viking funerals. Check out his slides for thoughts on the topic, especially the tips on keeping your websites alive beyond the grave.

I recently was reminded by my registrar that I need to get this site’s domain registration renewed. It’s disturbing to think that if a bus hit me today, the laughs I’ve created would simply disappear at the end of the month, well before any tears from my passing would (hopefully) have ended.

I think I’m going to go get that renewal handled right now.

I wasn’t at An Event Apart: Chicago 2009. But along with other desk jockeys, I followed along via A Feed Apart. One comment that got re-tweeted about seventy million times during the conference was the following quote by one Jeffrey Zeldman:

“Real web designers write code. Always have, always will.”

When I made a comment about the amount of retweets occurring on this post, I got a reply from Molly Holzschlag (who I respect, but am incapable of pronouncing the last name of):

“Bless my pals at AEA but the entire comment is bait or a very misguided statement to make on the brink of 2010.”

When two people who helped define the industry as it is today have a difference of opinion, I’m left on the sidelines wondering which to agree with. One the one hand, I agree with the concept that design needs to occur more in the browser and less in Photoshop, but on the flip side I suspect Molly has some insights that I’m simply not taking into account.

So I’ll throw it to the web at large. What’s your opinion on this topic? Do designers need to start doing more design in (X)HTML and CSS, or are we coders going too far in expecting the to put Photoshop aside in the early design phase?

Today’s comic, which features a massive ensemble cast of Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Cederholm, Jeremy Keith, Eric Meyer, Ethan Marcotte, Tantek Çelik, Nicole Sullivan and Wendy Chisholm (guest starring Chris Wilson astride a unicorn), is something like gloss and candy. It’s not tackling a serious issue. Rather, it’s tackling a humorous name created by a group of great people who are themselves tackling a serious issue.

As this photo conclusively proves, the people above (minus Chris Wilson and the unicorn) gathered in the recent past to discuss something very vital. Contrary to popular rumor, it was not the secret location of the Holy Grail or harnessing the power of cold fusion. Nay, they were instead talking about HTML5. More importantly, they were talking about HTML5 as “authors”. For pretty much anyone who reads this blog and doesn’t work for a browser manufacturer, that means you, or your son (if your my parents. Hi mom! Hi dad!)

Like the Hardy Boys, these people were industriously searching for clues, especially clues along the line of “what the hell is HTML5 anyway, and how does it apply to a web designer?” After spelunking the depths of the spec, they surfaced with two things: Firstly, they declared that it was good. Secondly, (and for my purposes, more importantly) they chose  an identity to bind them: The HTML5  Super Friends.

Today’s comic is comedic salute to their bravery and choice of identity. They’ve already done us a great deal of good by recommending alterations to the footer element (which was already a source of annoyance to yours truly) which has now come to pass.

Keep up the noble work, dear heroes.

(And in case you wanted to know, Chris Wilson’s appearance was due to his tweet here regarding the presence of the unicorn on the HTML5 Super Friends page.)

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.

Jeffrey Zeldman was the subject of a .net interview (glossy PDF version is available here) last week. In addition to slick photos of the man himself in the PDF version, the article’s main meat is near the end, where Zeldman offers advice on surviving the crunch, which includes some basic customer-service skills that I wished was common sense to anyone in any industry, but sadly isn’t. He also includes a tidbit that mirrors advice I’ve taken to heart in the past:

“And a final piece of advice: do cool free stuff that doesn’t make you any money. It will totally grow your brand and get you clients. Putting yourself out there with your writing or your design (especially if you’re a quiet, socially shy nerd who doesn’t like going out and socialising at parties) will help a lot.”

I like that. And, frankly, I’m glad he’s done that himself. The articles and information at A List Apart was a key component from my transition of website wonkery as a side hobby to a career.

To close things up, Zeldman is called “The Godfather of CSS” in the article’s closing paragraph. Immediately my mind slipped to bad movie cliches with that, so today’s comic follows that mobster-related tact, also guest-starring Jason Santa Maria. (I know he’s not a Happy Cog employee these days, but I’m sure he still helps Zeldman out in a pinch.)

It’s a short read, so go read it. There’s some good advice in there, as well as a nice perspective on the past and future of web standards.