The truth is, I’m a Microsoft fan.

Yes, I know I’m typing this on a Macbook Pro. Yes, I know I’m surrounded by Apple computers, iPads, iPods, and probably soon, an iPhone.

I can understand why you don’t believe me.

But, you see, I worked in the nineties. Back then, we had Netscape 4, an Internet browser so unbelievably atrocious I’m still in therapy for it. In comparison, Internet Explorer 4 was a dream. Five was better, and six more reliable still. Without Internet Explorer, I’m convinced the Internet would still be a hyped-up academic side-project.

And there’s more. Windows 95 was an excellent operating system. It was possible for me, a seventeen year old geek, to run a small office network, build a networked database system and roll out email, all with simple icons and a mouse. Yes, I could’ve done that on OS/2 (which I ran on my home computer for some years), but it was always clear that Windows was to be the future.

Microsoft Word was awesome. And those squiggly-lined spellchecks? Perfect. Excel was and is the only spreadsheet system worth knowing. Google Spreadsheet don’t reinvent this wheel, they copy copy copy.

Windows 2000 and XP followed Windows 95 with bulletproof reliability. You didn’t have to reboot for a week. At least. Once you turned off the stupid green and blue bars, and went back to the familiar windows grey, they were indistinguishable from Windows 95, but for new features (better Internet support), new tools, and more reliability.

I’ve loved Microsoft.  They’ve helped me make a career in computing.  But now I’m a Mac user.

In fact, I’ve recently installed OSX Lion. You know what’s new? Nothing.

Yeah yeah yeah, I’ve got a few changed mouse gestures, a few new icons, and a new icon for maximize, because someone at Apple won’t admit that the existing green plus button doesn’t work.

But you know what? I love it.

Yep, they gave me nothing, I paid very little for it, and I’m chuffed.  And my next computer will be an Apple.

Microsoft had a dream in the nineties, to put a computer in every home. They did that. How cool is it, that they did that? How many corporations achieve a goal like that?

But somewhere along the way, they fell from the path. They stopped promoting PCs, and started selling operating systems. They started selling software.

Suddenly I needed a reason to upgrade my operating system, and a choice of six editions to choose from. I needed more memory, and a new computer, not because I wanted to do more stuff, but because the windows are all sparkly glass.

I was prompted to write this article because I read a blog post from someone who recently switched to a Mac from a PC.  I do feel his pain – it’s actually not an easy switch. I hated it, my wife hated it. But he actually complained that the grey bar at the top looked dated.

And that’s where the marketers listen.  But the truth is, he was still switching to a Mac. He was upgrading to a fast, responsive, reliable experience. A computer you take from the box and feel joy for the next week as you find delightful new features.

But the marketer believes you want a sparkly new spanglebar because you told him you did. It’ll become a priority for launch.

Microsoft shows us that we should stop listening to our customers, and start trusting our skilled, talented designers, where ‘design’ encompasses aesthetics, direction, purpose and technical build. You don’t want a sparkly spanglebar, you want nothing.

Each successive upgrade of the Window taskbar has confused me. The same can be said for the horrible Office ribbon. Both are solutions for problems that simply never existed.

Windows became like that software you get with your printer. It gets in your way, not out of it. But that doesn’t need to be so.

What I’d like to see most from Microsoft is nothing. Chuck out the chintz, fix some big bugs, improve what’s there. Be our rock solid base that others can build great apps on. Show me some PCs of the same quality as my Mac. Tempt me back, I dare you.

I’ve had mixed feelings about last year’s effort by PromoteJS to push MDC to become the top result in Google for JavaScript reference. While I like the idea of having a really good reference online, which is easily searchable, there were some issues with the effort.

• It is tied to Mozilla. I thought a better effort might be an independent site.
• The SEO effort seemed odd.
• While the articles are now the best available, there are still frustrations with using the site itself.

I’m going to hit each of these in turn, and because I don’t like reading heavy articles on the web, I’m going to try and do it all with bullet points.

Ties to Mozilla

• Why not simply create an independent site?

Of course, everyone’s built an independent documentation site. Without serious backing, they tend to fail.
With MDC,

• It’s a wiki, everyone can edit it.
• Other browser vendors are involved in writing the docs.
• There’s an investment of time and money that doesn’t depend on a sole owner.

Odd SEO Effort
There’s an ongoing SEO effort promoting the MDC docs. The aim is to drive MDC up the rankings at Google et al. Having worked with a fair few “SEO Consultants” in my time, I tend to approach such efforts with scepticism. In this particular case, the SEO effort, creating sensible links back to the site from quality tech sites around the web, makes perfect sense, especially when using the WordPress plugin to link JavaScript keywords. But the MDC site itself has SEO flaws:

• Often two pages with similar titlebars or content (example) are pages for different languages. This drives me crazy. MSDN has historically suffered from this too.
• PromoteJS and MDC are on separate domains. There’d be better results from joining domains.

It turns out that PromoteJS is a completely independent effort. As such, it can’t join domains, or fix trivial issues like titlebars. Thus the odd SEO behaviour. I wonder if the PromoteJS guy could brief MDC on some improvements.

The PromoteJS guys also promote other, quality resources. That’s neat.

Frustrations with the site
The primary cause of stress when developing is still the differences between implementations. Often in MDC, you have to hunt through the text to find that sort of information, or it doesn’t appear.

Also, I rarely arrive at the “right” method to use. The navigation between sections is still well hidden, and you either have to click breadcrumbs back up the tree, or head back to Google where you run the risk of hopping into the XUL reference by accident.

Ideas
So here’s some suggestions for the MDC:

• First thing I ever want to see: browser support table. Every page.
• Put “JavaScript” first in your title bar. Or DOM. Or XUL.
• Search box. Somewhere obvious. jQuery’s search is great.
• How about a Green/Red flag showing: “Can I use it now?”
• Maybe links to the HTML5 polyfills on GitHub provided for backwards compatibility?
• It’s a wiki? Can we make that clearer?
• Maybe some discussions underneath. Like php.net. Like jQuery. Like MSDN. I know they’re not ideal, but sometimes they give us pointers to new methods or patterns, or they point out bugs we didn’t know about.
• Create an algorithmic link between associated documents, and use keyword autolinking like PromoteJS.
• Don’t use a name like MDC (democratic opposition party in Zimbabwe) and drain their Google juice.

We can’t really add these through the wiki-editing, since they’re structurally built into the site.

A few simple tweaks and MDC could be the ultimate resource win.

Comments below refer to the original article.

Here’s my definition: A modern browser has been written recently.

Excellent. Cut, dried, simple. Next question: What makes a good browser?
Aha, much better. I would request the following:

• A good browser is still in active development.
• A good browser fixes rendering bugs as quickly as security fixes.
• A good browser publishes security fixes regularly.
• A good browser defaults to standards-mode rendering.
• A good browser is FREE. I shouldn’t need to buy an operating system to test with your browser.
• A good browser has a Firebug-like tool.
• A good browser is fast.

I think that’s it. Seems a much easier checklist than the wooly “modern” definitions. I think FF4, Safari and Chrome satisfy all of the above. FF3.6 fails the speed test for me, while IE9 fails the free test.

I’d love to see a commitment from the IE team to fix rendering bugs in IE9, without waiting on a new version. Regardless of how much testing you do, bugs always slip through. If IE had fixed floats and layouts in IE6, the world would be a better place – and we’d still have upgraded to IE7 for the new features. I’d love to think of IE versions in terms of features, rather than in terms of bugs.

What do I do?

Of course, I’m only saying this because I’ve been reading Charlie Brooker’s recent book on my Kindle while riding the bus to work every day, and he’s warped my brain into that of a deeply cynical sadistic sociopath, who should probably be placed into solitary confinement, not for my own good, but for everybody else’s. Upshot is: I want to see humanity suffer.

So back to the bus. The question is: how do you open the doors? They do not open automatically, even if you pulled the cord. And you don’t push them open. There’s a trigger. You’ve got to find it.

Notice the big “STOP” signs? Are they relevant? Should I get off at the front? Nonono. Actually they’re telling you not to get on at the back, even though they face inwards. No help there.

How about just underneath? Where it says “Thank you for riding the MUNI”? No help there – in fact, this is a particularly redundant message. I doubt it leaves any MUNI-riders happier.

How about above, where it says “Caution”. Aha, we’re on to something. It says not to stand in the stepwell, because the doors open inwards. A good clue there. Whatever we’re doing, we shouldn’t stand on the steps. Don’t want to get slapped in the face. Thanks for that.

Except that’s wrong. These doors are ingeniously designed such that they will only open if you step down onto the first step. The sign is right at the top there, perfectly positioned only for basketball players and rack-tortured guantanamo escapees. So nobody reads it.

So what happens is that you just stand there and wait like a goon. It takes a second and a half for the rest of the bus to catch on to your naivety, and help out, by shouting “STEP DOWN” in unison. It usually takes a second chant “STEP DOWN” before you catch on, probably because you’re confronted with myriad “STOP” and “CAUTION” instructions.

Just in case you think this is normal, let me correct you: this is only applicable to a particular kind of bus. Others require you to touch the door handles to open, while others still need you to physically push them open yourself. These buses are equally well marked.

It’s brilliant, and really brightens up my ride. Shouting at tourist twice a day is almost as good as “aheming” tourists off the wrong side of the escalators back in London. Born yesterday, I think smugly, as though it never happened to me.

Of course this probably isn’t a particularly healthy way to think. I’m going to need a brain reboot. Can anyone please suggest some slightly more happy and life-affirming reading material?

My name is ### with iTunes Store Customer Support. Got your message, and I understand that you’ve been trying to ###. Sorry to hear that’s become an issue, Kenneth. I know you must be eager to get this taken care of.

Finding a solution for you is important to me, so I have requested assistance with the issue you reported. You will receive an email after the matter has been investigated and further information is available.

Thank you for your patience here, Kenneth. We’ll be in touch as soon as we can with some answers for you. Mind that we won’t be open tomorrow. So you take care and focus on having yourself some happy holidays in the meantime.

Sincerely,

###
iTunes Store Customer Support

http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/ww/

Please Note: This week I work Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Saturday from 9:30 – 8:00 each day. I will be in the following Sunday, same shift. All times are CST.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

The door is everywhere. To call it common is an injustice – it is as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, the water we drink, the taxes we owe. It is in our homes, our offices, our transport. It keeps us safe while we sleep, while we drive. It is our protection against the room next door, and the world outside.

The door is part of our vocabulary, our language. We “open doors”, we “close a deal”. We have an “open door policy”. We swing them open, we slam them shut. The door is our slave and our servant. The door is our bitch.

But the door is also our enemy. It attacks us, it frustrates us, it makes us look like fools.

The Toilet Door

The toilet door is my nemesis, the number one on my list of dastardly doors. And I’m not even talking about the cubicle door, that never gives you enough room to close without brushing your legs against the outside of the toilet bowl.

Nor even, the American cubicle door, starting a mighty three feet from the ground to allow full thigh viewing from urinal alley, and the inch-wide gap between the door and walls. One wonders whether Americans in public toilets in England feel lonely in their out-of-sight claustrophobic boxes. But these are not my primary concern.

My target is the exit door. The exit door? you ask. The exit door, I nod.

When leaving the toilet, or bathroom, or restroom, or outhouse, or water-closet, or so forth, the typical gentleman (for this is all I am permitted to observe), will customarily choose one of the following options. He will either wash his hands, or he will not wash his hands.

I shall not question the wisdom of the non-washers. Presumably they believe their hands to be unsullied by their efforts, usually involved in a mere “reveal-tug-dangle” gesture followed by the “tug-shake-tuck”. An inspection of the spray-deck in the men’s urinals does not reassure me that hands are quite as sanitary as their conscience. But I do not judge, I shall simply note that this practice exists and is commonplace.

A washer, indeed myself, would avail himself of the facilities, providing of course, and this is not always the case, that the washing facilities are cleaner than the sewage facilities. Equipment provided is usually an unpleasant soap, scaldingly hot water in one tap, lukewarm water in another tap, based around a basin area. The controls on the taps are judged to encourage the maximum use of water, such that there will always be one tap running for no apparent reason, which is impossible to shut off.

Once hands are adequately washed, one would look for the hand-drying facilities. These are allocated on a ratio of one drying unit to every three washing units, on the basis of physics completely unknown to science: that it is quicker to dry your hands than to wet them. The drying units will have been provided further back into the toilet area, to encourage awkward confrontations with other toiletting members of the public, and to generally persuade the user into joining the wet-hands-exit, wipe-on-trousers masses.

Further encouragement into this camp is provided by the drying unit. This has a fifty percent chance of existing, a forty percent chance of working, and a ten percent chance of actually doing any drying, since models manufactured before 2005 seemed to be modelled on the average drunk’s morning breath. Of course, you may just have one of those clever Dyson units, which are really neat but still leave a few drops on the fingertips don’t they?

Doors, doors, I’m coming back to doors. The exit of a toilet is always, always, always a pull door. Always.

Why. Why why why. I’ve just spent four seconds exquisitely washing, and four hours slowly drying, my clean clean hands. And now you’re asking me to grab hold of a door handle that has been held by every “tug-shake-tugger” and “wet-hand-wiper” who’s ever been in here.

That handle is never cleaned either. When the attendant (not a cleaner, never a cleaner), when the attendant comes to check the facilities, he (or she) will wedge the door open with their mop-bucket, and give a quick wipe to the spray deck. But we know they never check behind the opened door. That’s why that cock you drew in 2005 is still on that cubicle door over there. Wasn’t funny then, isn’t funny now.

To make matters worse, there’s often two doors as well. In case you waited long enough for someone else to come in (don’t ever try that), you’d still have the second to contend with. Your hands will be soiled when you head back to your table, and your hamburger/nuts/asparagus/finger food. It’s disgusting.

It’s disgusting and the door is at fault. Remove the door. Or let them be pushed, so I can kick it open. Either way, when we all die of goldfish-flu, this blog post is my “I told you so”.

CorriDoors

See what I did there? Clever, isn’t it. But not as clever as the build regulations that state that fire doors must be installed throughout buildings, and that those doors need to be closed at all times.

Which gives us the corridor doors. Harmless enough, just a barrier between you and where you want to be. Just give them a push.

Or is it a pull?

Hope it’s a push anyway, I mean, I’m carrying an armful of stuff.

But, hey, it’s got a handle. It’s a pull. One of those simple, clear, obvious rules of life. Right?

Wrong. Fifty percent of the time, your average push door is going to have a handle. Why? We don’t know. Maybe they’re future-proofing against change. Maybe the unions are in on it. In fact, if the door swings both ways, it’s even more likely to have handles. And most people will pull the doors, which is both awkward, and inconvenient. And unbelieveably, even though they pull to go through it one way, and pull to go through the other way, most people will never realize the doors go both ways. At this point, the door is looking cleverer than we are.

And one more point lost by humanity, to the door, is locks. Not the bold padlock, or the fancy chubb. No, I mean the slot locks at the top and bottom of the door. For we all know that when opening a set of doors in any building, the caretaker, janitor, or security guy will only ever open one of the two. God knows why – maybe they only see the doors at night, when they’re used by one person at a time. Next thing you know, you’ve got a hundred people pushing on both sides, before trying to squeeze through, ten abreast. Certainly at my school it was a regular scrum to get between classes, there’d be a cry of “bundle!” and a whiff of Hillsborough in the morning. This is how I lost all my teeth. True story.

Automatic doors

What an amazing invention it is, the automatic door. Sliding briskly aside as we approach, it is hard to believe that this work-driven slave to our presence could be a bad omen.

It is more of a trojan horse. For you never know how long it’ll take to open. And it’s always slightly longer than you’d like. Maybe the sensors are just waiting for you to get close enough, so you have to pause, wait, and then go on. It’s winding us up, little by little.

Either that, or they’re waaay too sensitive. You want to hang around in the warmth of the hotel lobby? Sure, but you’ll get looks, because even a hundred yards into this room, and you’re keeping the doors open. The doors will alert other visitors to this faux-pas, by inching in slightly, as if to say “have you moved yet”, before opening again. They’re playing a game, and they always win.

Lift doors, or elevators to our American friends, are widely know to be evil incarnate. Who knows what will appear behind those doors? Will there be a lift car, or will we fall to oblivion? Will they close at all, without us squeezing uncomfortably backwards into a lawsuit from Debbie in Accounts? This is why we face forward. We need to keep an eye on the door, but we also need to be able to push backwards without going face to face.

Automatic doors may not be killers, but they will add to your stress levels in a thousand different ways.

Door Etiquette

In this brave new world of unwritten etiquette, it is the men who suffer most. Do we buy dinner without asking, or should we split it. The success of the date depends on it. If she suggests splitting it, do we refuse? And if so, how many times? And the only thing we know for certain is that we’re not going home without paying something. It’s a lose-lose situation.

And so it is with the door. In days gone by, it would be appropriate to hold the door for a lady. Nay, it would be appropriate to open the door with gusto, and to wave the lady through.

Now, we’re in a quagmire. We all try to hold the door. Even when it’s not actually convenient. Especially when it’s not convenient. We hold it for guys, girls, and in case we can’t see anyone, a passing breath of air. I am not even going to cover the long distance holders, for whom you must race to be helped, for I think they’ve been dealt with repeatedly.

But it’s madness. Every time someone opens a door for me and waves me through I feel like wrenching out his throat and hanging it from the door frame. It’s a door, not a ten tonne weight! I’ve got it. I’ve got it.

Am I carrying heavy bags? No. Am I in some way unable to open the door myself? No. Am I wearing a hot dress that you’ve like to check out from the back? Not usually! Let me handle the door myself, and get out of my way!

The worst cretins, the real bastards, are the guys who try to hold a door open from the wrong side, while standing in it. I don’t even credit them with a throat-ripping. I give them a “what kind of plant life are you” look, and send them straight to hell. Girls, it doesn’t just happen to you (though I bet it’s a lot more frequent), it happens to everyone.

Let’s just agree now. You want to go through a door, go through it. After you’ve gone through, if someone else is about, just hold it open a second longer (just one!), and let go. Your friend has it from there.

It’s a door. We can take it on alone. It won’t kill us (unless it’s a toilet door). It won’t hurt us (unless we’re getting slammed by an automatic). It can’t chop us into tiny little pieces (unless it’s a revolving door). It’s no obstacle (unless it’s a corridoor). And we can get through it together (unless you’re holding it for me).

Or we can just move to Hawaii, where they don’t need doors. Personally, I’m on the next plane.

Good man. But what of the rest? The “www.” that was so unpronounceable is already obsolete, and personally I think twitter can take credit for popularising the contemporary non-dubbed url form. Boffins in lab coats has worked tirelessly to make memory ubiquitous and cheap, but we’ve just stuck some character limits in there to be fashionable or something. Hey ho. But the “www” is gone.

Can anyone tell me why there’s a huhtetep, “http:”, still shown in my address bar? What’s it for? What does it tell me? I don’t actually have to type it in these days, but it appears there anyway. Why?

Is it to show that I’m looking at a document provided by HyperText Transfer Protocol? I don’t care about that!

Is it to show that I *could* be looking at an FTP site, using the same browser? Ok, fair call, but that’s so rare to do so, that you could default to not showing “http:”, and then only show “ftp:” when FTP sites are used. It’s not like every browser has a built-in FTP client anyway. Same goes for local files.

Is it to show the “s” when I look at an “https” page, meaning that the connection between my browser and the website is encrypted? Well, ok, but what was wrong with the padlock? Why is there such a strong connection between certificates and https anyway? They mean completely different things. I don’t need a certificate to know gmail.com is Google. Equally, a certificate costs about 20 bucks and has so few checks that I’m hardly reassured when dealing with a new site by the presence of the certificate. What I want to see is a padlock. Drop the “https” and show me a padlock.

Is it for future extensibility, to enable a future Internet to use new and unusual protocols? Like “about:”? Again, it would be simple enough to recognise a default of http. If you go to about:config, then display the protocol. Why is this hard? If a new protocol came along to overtake http, then I think a bigger browser update would be needed anyway.

I think browser manufacturers should take treat it like the port. Every web page is served by a port, and for most of the web, that’s port 80. You could look at this website by typing http://kenneth.kufluk.com:80. But mostly, the 80 is assumed. You only ever type in a port if you’re not using port 80, such as for local development. If you type “:80″ into a web browser like Chrome, it disappears. Let’s do that for “http://” as well. if you’re thinking there might be confusion between ports and protocols, you’re wrong. Protocols are letters-only, Internet domains need at least one dot, and ports are only numeric.

I’m using Chrome version 5, the latest in a long history of browsers. Surely it’s long past time to kill off the http://. And if you look closely, you’ll see the iPhone already has.

But the Chancellor’s Budget introduced a new scheme which could give him a complete solution to everyone’s satisfaction, without him spending a penny. It’s not clear if he’s seen it.

Identification is vital to many forms of communication on the web, and we all have dozens of logins and passwords distributed across dozens of system.

OpenID is not software or a service. It’s not a company or organisation. It is simply a method of allowing you to use a single login for multiple websites. The key to this is that you choose who to handle your details, whether it be Google, Microsoft, Twitter or even your own server. You’ll have seen this when you see one of these “The application xxxx would like to access your Facebook details. Do you trust them?”.

The Chancellor announced bank accounts for all citizens. Effectively, everyone will have a bank account. Bank accounts issue credit/debit cards to their account holders. And these are forms of ID.

Those IDs could be used anywhere. If the government want to check your ID to give you a passport/pension/health/benefit, they could check your bank card. The banks will be able to add any security methods they like in order to secure the identity of the provider, be it biometric, photographic or secret key.

The government doesn’t have to spend a penny on issuing unpopular ID cards. There will be no national database of people. I can choose who to trust with my ID. And most people are already signed up.

That’s £6bn saved. Now all we need is to swap the NHS database for Google Health, and we’ll have saved ourselves the national debt.

2) I expect you to allow me to deauthorize a computer remotely. For example, I’ve just lost my hard disc. How do I deauthorize it? You tell me I’ve got 5 out of my 5 computers authorized. Ok, which ones? Unlike 1975, five is not a big number of computers. How about automatically deauthorizing a computer after 12 months?

3) I expect you to tell me that I can’t play HD films on a non-approved TV BEFORE I buy it. Or, to be honest, never. I’ve never heard of such ridiculous bullshit. I’m not about to go and buy a new TV, just because it doesn’t have your DRM built in.
The discussion here has 8 pages, and the last one says “Apple Support has no idea this problem exists.”
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8472731

4) If I tell you I own an MP3 I expect you to trust me. Allow me to copy and transfer it like any other file.

We like our iPods, we love our iPhones, and when our wives aren’t looking, we might secretly give our MacBooks a cuddle. But no-one likes iTunes. And not because it’s a bad idea. It’s just clunky and unusable.

If I were the EU, I would consider Apple bundling iTunes in the same light as Windows bundling Internet Explorer. Let’s start the fine running at €1m/day and start talking openness.

I was taught this in English class, and it’s official.  It’s not in dictionaries, and Google doesn’t recognise it.

Correctly, it should be two words.  ”Thank” and “you”.

But hold your horses there.  As I understand it, one of the key benefits of the English language is its flexibility.  The first Dictionary was, I believe, German, and it laid down exactly how all the words of the language should be.  The English huffed and puffed about this, and openly mocked the idea.  They then sat down in a library and formed the English language by reviewing every English word ever written.  They set out to be descriptive rather than prescriptive.

And our dictionary evolved.  The scholars in Oxford smugly release a new set of words every year, which they promise we’ll all be using a year from now.  Now they didn’t invent these words.  They acknowledged their use somewhere, and described them.

Ok, so I accept that another idea of a dictionary is to provide a single spelling for each word.  In a language with few rules, none of which are not broken, a defining way of spelling helps us all be understood.

But thankyou is a word.  It has become a word through common usage.  It has a specific meaning and use.
It has 12,500,000 matches on Google.

Let us not reject it.  Let us accept it.

Please sign my petition here:
http://tinypetition.com/thankyou

Thankyou.