11/6/09
7/30/09
Article in Wall Street Journal
"The Internet as Art" from the Wall Street Journal
A recent article which also includes Wikipedia Art, which we discussed in our course. Check it Out!!!!
A recent article which also includes Wikipedia Art, which we discussed in our course. Check it Out!!!!
6/19/09
6/18/09
Sean's Final Project
HERE is the link to my offline project. The firefox logo has a link to my online project too.
Joe's Projects
Hey everybody,
This has been really fun for me. I hope you enjoy these projects as much as I do.
Online Project: Frankompüter
Offline Project: Pixelrama
Thanks, cheers, and have a good rest of the summer.
- Joe
This has been really fun for me. I hope you enjoy these projects as much as I do.
Online Project: Frankompüter
Offline Project: Pixelrama
Thanks, cheers, and have a good rest of the summer.
- Joe
Anna's Project Online and Offline
Don't forget that if you view this site...BEWARE of the sound!!!
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/annakreb/danceoff/pages/dance1.html
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/annakreb/offline/pages/offline1.html
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/annakreb/danceoff/pages/dance1.html
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/annakreb/offline/pages/offline1.html
Final Submissions
Here is a link to my final project.
Donkey the Ducky
Here is a link to my online project.
THE INViTE
you will need to get a ticket to see this.
THE TiCKET
the password is always ducky. Keep checking back for official date release.
Donkey the Ducky
Here is a link to my online project.
THE INViTE
you will need to get a ticket to see this.
THE TiCKET
the password is always ducky. Keep checking back for official date release.
6/17/09
Web 3.0 in the Fertile Crescent, part 2
I came across this rather relevant article while blogging on politics.
Video Blogging Jordan Turns Citizens Into Journalists
It does kind of strike me as odd that the web as a tool for social and political commentary is woefully underrated and not taken seriously in the US. Here, bloggers are derided with scorn, while elsewhere in the world -- in the Middle East, Asia and Africa -- people are using the tools we consider to be toys and diversions to actually make their lives better and bring about real change.
Kind of makes me feel like history is really starting the pass the US by.
Video Blogging Jordan Turns Citizens Into Journalists
It does kind of strike me as odd that the web as a tool for social and political commentary is woefully underrated and not taken seriously in the US. Here, bloggers are derided with scorn, while elsewhere in the world -- in the Middle East, Asia and Africa -- people are using the tools we consider to be toys and diversions to actually make their lives better and bring about real change.
Kind of makes me feel like history is really starting the pass the US by.
More Videos - "Remind Me" by Royksopp and Areva ad by H5
Final Exam!!
1) Little Red Riding Hood (reinterpreted)
2) Mad Redecorates basement with $10 worth of Sharpie
3) R2-D2 DVD Projector by Nikko
4) 22 Creative Ads @ graphicfetish
Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.
2) Mad Redecorates basement with $10 worth of Sharpie
3) R2-D2 DVD Projector by Nikko
4) 22 Creative Ads @ graphicfetish
Remi Gaillard
Rocky
Mario Kart
Kangaroo : NSFW
Lottery Winner
Ice Hockey
Decathlon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4ZO2FD4pNA&feature=channel
Mario Kart
Kangaroo : NSFW
Lottery Winner
Ice Hockey
Decathlon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4ZO2FD4pNA&feature=channel
6/16/09
Iceworld
This super cool page was protected so I couldn't give you a preview but definitely check it out if you are into sculpture of the ice variety.
Photoshop
Here is a very cool website that has Photoshop competitions and galleries of amazing and hilarious works. And if you want a head start on the competition here is a great tutorial site. PhotoshopDisasters is an interesting blog that points out the mistakes and awkward/wrong angles etc. the designers made when adjusting the photos as we saw at the end of class.
Musak
For those of you who enjoy playing or are looking to learn how to play guitar, here is my favorite online instructor. Justinguitar.com is a guy who has posted video lessons for free, and accepts donations for those who really love it. Also tabnabber.com for piano tabs/chords/theory and of course ultimate-guitar.com is a classic choice.
Great Stuff
Here is the flash site to one of my favorite artists, Lebo. He works in Miami and uses his Cuban background as well as comics for inspiration. At Langerado, a music festival outside of Orlando, he made paintings during certain concerts which was very cool.
LASER ART with G4 cube...
This is pretty sweet... I don't get why he talks about his diet at the end but wither way. LASERS!
Light Criticism
This is similar to something I'm trying to do with project offline. I wish Milwaukee had more LCD ads like NY does. Then i could cover all of them up.
French "rubix cube" artist
I was blown away by this. I imagine he uses some type of software to graph out the colors and positions.
Poster Boy
Here is a great graffiti artist who uses the materials given to him on the streets... oh and a razor blade. Thats it! This is hilarious and genius at the same time.
Just Seeds
If anyone didn't get a chance to see the the Justseeds Installation here at uwm last spring.... here is the video that shows the whole process of the installation, as well as the final result. It was a great show!
Vanashing car!
I frist read an article about this online... when I first saw the picture I thought this was just a well done photoshop job... But its NOT!
Puppy flushed down toilet and survives!
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Make-up Project
This was easier for me to do...so I made a quick page to view my submissions. CHECK IT OUT
Internet Gold
I found this while searching for pictures for the extra project. I typed "taxidermy" into google images and found this little piece of internet GOLD!! CHECK IT OUT
Opera Unite - A Browser-based Web Service
Whoa, so this thingey is brand new as of this morning.
Cutting to the chase...Download Opera Unite.
Opera Unite is a feature of the just-released build of the Opera 10 web browser that provides a web server for sharing local data on your computer with others without having to upload anything.
Simple concept, but fairly cool. Imagine this scenario:
I'm working on a project, and I have a video I'd like to send to my friend. Normally, I'd do this by uploading it to YouTube, sending an e-mail, or uploading it to my own web server. There are problems with these approaches:
I've set up Opera Unite on my machine, so feel free to give it a try: Joe's Opera Unite Page
Use "panthertr1ck" as the password when requested.
Now, there are a few caveats, the main one being that Opera Unite won't work if Opera isn't running on your local machine. For example, you won't be able to do much with the above link if my laptop isn't running.
It doesn't seem like Opera Unite was meant to replace a full-fledged web server, however. Opera Unite look more like a solution for sending large files or otherwise sharing files quickly with others at a given moment. I do this all the time, so I'm really excited by this service's potential.
I also like / don't mind the Opera web browser itself...Opera Software has always shown a strong commitment to web standards and openness, so while the Opera web browser may not see nearly as much use as Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer, its unique features and overall quality give it a special place in my Applications folder. If you haven't given Opera a try, I'd encourage you to do so, especially now that Unite is part of the equation.
Cutting to the chase...Download Opera Unite.
Opera Unite is a feature of the just-released build of the Opera 10 web browser that provides a web server for sharing local data on your computer with others without having to upload anything.
Simple concept, but fairly cool. Imagine this scenario:
I'm working on a project, and I have a video I'd like to send to my friend. Normally, I'd do this by uploading it to YouTube, sending an e-mail, or uploading it to my own web server. There are problems with these approaches:
- All three of these approaches require me to transfer my video, which could be pretty large, to another web server in some form before I'm able to pass it on to my friend. The transfer will probably take a considerable amount of time.
- Depending on my proficiency or level of access with my web server or web service, I may not be able to easily restrict access to this file.
- With YouTube, I'd have to wait for the site to convert the video into the correct video format.
- With e-mail, my e-mail server may prohibit me from sending such a large file.
I've set up Opera Unite on my machine, so feel free to give it a try: Joe's Opera Unite Page
Use "panthertr1ck" as the password when requested.
Now, there are a few caveats, the main one being that Opera Unite won't work if Opera isn't running on your local machine. For example, you won't be able to do much with the above link if my laptop isn't running.
It doesn't seem like Opera Unite was meant to replace a full-fledged web server, however. Opera Unite look more like a solution for sending large files or otherwise sharing files quickly with others at a given moment. I do this all the time, so I'm really excited by this service's potential.
I also like / don't mind the Opera web browser itself...Opera Software has always shown a strong commitment to web standards and openness, so while the Opera web browser may not see nearly as much use as Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer, its unique features and overall quality give it a special place in my Applications folder. If you haven't given Opera a try, I'd encourage you to do so, especially now that Unite is part of the equation.
6/15/09
More on Iran
Saw this today and, since we talked about it a little this morning, thought I'd post it here. Click through for more:
Iran's Disputed Election - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Iran's Disputed Election - The Big Picture - Boston.com
gumart
In response to the post about jelly bean art here are a couple of chewed bubble gum art links: gumblondes and gumart
Prelinger Archives
The prelinger archives are a part of archive.org. They have some really amazing videos that date back to the beginning of film! CLICK HERE
6/12/09
Classical and Classical Fusion
Classical Music -Pakistan-Language Saraiki/Punjabi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL2Gs2r8vMQ
Classic Fusion -Pakistan- Langauge Urdu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL2Gs2r8vMQ
Classic Fusion -Pakistan- Langauge Urdu
Aaroh :
Aaroh (literally means ascending in classical music) is a Pakistani rock band That surfaced into mainstream scene after winning the Battle of the Bands competition in 2002 sponsored by Pepsi. The band split in 2004 and Haider Hashimi was recruited as the band's lead guitarist.
Aaroh's music is a fusion of western rock music and eastern style of vocals. As implied by the word "aaroh", which refers to the ascending scale in the eastern vocals such as "Sa Re Ga Ma",the band's music epitomizes the classical eastern music fused with rock. Aaroh's acclaim to fame is due to their exuberant live performance backed up with thought provoking lyrics.
French Dance Style
Tecktonik (often abbreviated as TCK), also known as Electro Dance, Milky Way or Vertigo, is a style of street dance danced to electro music based on a blend of techno styles (late 80s vogue, 90s waving and old school breakdancing), and 70s disco, started in the early 2000s in Paris, France, at the club Metropolis.[1][2] It has grown in popularity through word-of-mouth and video sharing sites such as Dailymotion and YouTube.
The term Tecktonik is a registered trademark, and this has created issues for dance events or other uses of the name.[3] The creators of the Tecktonik brand (most notably, Cyril Blanc, the artistic director of Metropolis[4]) sell official products, such as clothes, CDs, energy drinks, etc. Hip-Hop style clothes are the typical dress for Electro dancers . Dancers also tend to have "futuristic", sometimes even gothic hair cuts. The neon colours on shirts are linked to the London Nu Rave fashion scene.
Tecktonik was featured prominently at the 2007 Paris Techno Parade on September 15.[4]
6/11/09
6/10/09
Bob Ross tribute in NYC
Bob Ross Tribute Party on the Lower East Side
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- Hundreds came out last night to honor the late, great painter Bob Ross.
Bob Ross certified painters flew in from Florida to give lessons to the lucky few who were able to snag a seat.
Who knew 14 years after his death, his "happy little clouds" still make an impression on people.
Watch for the dancing Bob's and Larry Zimmer, the "lucky painter"!
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- Hundreds came out last night to honor the late, great painter Bob Ross.
Bob Ross certified painters flew in from Florida to give lessons to the lucky few who were able to snag a seat.
Who knew 14 years after his death, his "happy little clouds" still make an impression on people.
Watch for the dancing Bob's and Larry Zimmer, the "lucky painter"!
Evacuation
kanarinka documents Boston's new(ish) evacuation route, measuring it by the number of breaths it takes to traverse it. I thought it was an interesting concept given the effects of the dust from the twin towers upon collapsing and also the method through which dirty bombs disseminate their payload: through the air.
kanarinka describes the project as an attempt to measure our post-9/11 collective fear in the individual breaths that it takes to traverse these new geographies of insecurity.
The method she uses for documenting the project and displaying it is also quite intriguing. She recorded her breaths from the run along the evacuation route and replays the recordings through speaker cones suspended in glass jars that are proportional to the amount of air expended during a given stretch along the evacuation route. Without bringing the viewer to the actual path and making them run it this method of representation provides a sense of immediacy that viscerally connects the audience to the project.
Link: It takes 154000 breaths to evacuate Boston
kanarinka describes the project as an attempt to measure our post-9/11 collective fear in the individual breaths that it takes to traverse these new geographies of insecurity.
The method she uses for documenting the project and displaying it is also quite intriguing. She recorded her breaths from the run along the evacuation route and replays the recordings through speaker cones suspended in glass jars that are proportional to the amount of air expended during a given stretch along the evacuation route. Without bringing the viewer to the actual path and making them run it this method of representation provides a sense of immediacy that viscerally connects the audience to the project.
Link: It takes 154000 breaths to evacuate Boston
image archive
Here's another public image archive. There are some high resolution photos available for free download.
Morguefile.com
Morguefile.com
More Examples of Information Aesthetics
Though perhaps more aesthetic than informational, the following are examples of creative visual interpretations of data from multiple sources.
See also: another video of Magnetosphere.
Kano also created an interactive exhibition piece titled "People Forest":
Be sure to check out Mamoru Kano's website - if you're on a Mac, you can download and use any of his compositions as a screensaver.
Britain from Above
The BBC's Britain from Above provides visualizations of the airplanes, taxis, and lights as seen from high above the metropolitan cityscape.Magnetosphere
Magnetosphere is an audio visualization program originally developed by the barbarian group, developers of interactive physical and digital artwork. Apple purchased Magnetosphere in 2008; it now lives on as iTunes' gorgeous built-in music visualizer:Magnetosphere Demo - Musique by Daft Punk from Joe Kohlmann on Vimeo.
See also: another video of Magnetosphere.
Futurizmo Zugakousaku Quartz Composer Lab
Digital artist Mamoru Kano has created dozens of realtime visualizations using Quartz Composer, a free application from Apple:Kano also created an interactive exhibition piece titled "People Forest":
Be sure to check out Mamoru Kano's website - if you're on a Mac, you can download and use any of his compositions as a screensaver.
Extreme LED sheep art!
Seriously. The people of Wales apparently have a lot of time on their hands...
One week of art
Amazing video of Japanese artists creations during one week! They paint on a big wall, painting them out and starting over.
Photoshop Sweded, and other sweded things
First, check this out (don't forget to view the full resolution image on Flickr):
Conceptually, sweding is rooted in the use of homemade or otherwise amateur materials and performances to parody an original film or other source material. Certainly the idea is nothing new, but Be Kind Rewind's contribution of a label for the collection of techniques has led to a substantial "sweding" phenomenon on the Internet:
Original: Star Wars - Empire Strikes Back Sweded | /Film
See also Sweded Movies, a collection of user-generated sweded films, and segments from the "actual" sweded movies that appeared in Be Kind Rewind.
Sweding
The term sweded or sweding comes from the 2008 film Be Kind Rewind, in which the characters of Jack Black and Mos Def state that their re-done versions of classic films as "sweded," thus accounting for their higher cost and longer arrival time. Below is an example:Conceptually, sweding is rooted in the use of homemade or otherwise amateur materials and performances to parody an original film or other source material. Certainly the idea is nothing new, but Be Kind Rewind's contribution of a label for the collection of techniques has led to a substantial "sweding" phenomenon on the Internet:
Original: Star Wars - Empire Strikes Back Sweded | /Film
See also Sweded Movies, a collection of user-generated sweded films, and segments from the "actual" sweded movies that appeared in Be Kind Rewind.
6/9/09
Photoshop Arms Onto Birds!
Seriously, this is way to funny not to share! Edit: Fixed the image.
Photoshop Arms Onto Birds! via Something Awful via Reddit
Tom Mabe Prank Call
Guys I have always found this very funny to watch, have a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shqq6SL3ED4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shqq6SL3ED4
6/8/09
Midterm Challenge - Terminal Panic!
Play as British Airways CEO Willie Walsh in Heathrow's Terminal 5 as you scamper to get that luggage through the new, state of the art terminal! Be mindful of those regulations against taking bottles of liquid onto the planes!
(As God as my witness, I will never go flying again!)
Great Internet Challenge!
Frozen Grand Central
Over 200 people freeze in place on cue in Grand Central Station in New York.
So THAT's what happens to all the lost luggage!
Even MORE Wii Fun!
For those of you that have a Nintendo Wii of your own and still love yesterday's Nintendo, there is an app for putting emulators on your console to play virtually any game from SNES, Genesis and others. The Homebrew Channel. You do need a copy of the most recent Zelda game and an SD memory card, but all said and done, it's worth it.
6/7/09
A Crash Course in "A List Apart"
Written by Joe Kohlmann
Chances are you’ve heard of A List Apart by now. Hopefully you’ve taken a tour of ALA and have checked out some of the [really] neat tricks that many of the articles describe, but hopefully you’ve also skimmed a few of the articles that take a standard technique used across the web and offer a better solution.
There are many of these articles, but here’s a sampling of the ones I very often refer back to when building a website:
Usually we need to do this because of how CSS floats work – the floating element causes proceeding elements to flow around it. Though less of a problem with modern, CSS-compliant web browsers, consider how a web page using this technique will look on a mobile phone that doesn’t support CSS, or the order in which a screen reader will read the page to the user. In both cases, the sidebar will come first, and depending on your own design philosophy, this might not be what you had in mind.
The article presents a technique that allows you to place the main content before the sidebar in the HTML code, allowing the viewer to get straight to the most important content, no matter how they access or navigate the page.
Chances are you’ve heard of A List Apart by now. Hopefully you’ve taken a tour of ALA and have checked out some of the [really] neat tricks that many of the articles describe, but hopefully you’ve also skimmed a few of the articles that take a standard technique used across the web and offer a better solution.
There are many of these articles, but here’s a sampling of the ones I very often refer back to when building a website:
Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins
This technique solves a potential usability problem that the standard technique of creating a floating sidebar presents: why must the sidebar content come before the main content in the HTML code?Usually we need to do this because of how CSS floats work – the floating element causes proceeding elements to flow around it. Though less of a problem with modern, CSS-compliant web browsers, consider how a web page using this technique will look on a mobile phone that doesn’t support CSS, or the order in which a screen reader will read the page to the user. In both cases, the sidebar will come first, and depending on your own design philosophy, this might not be what you had in mind.
The article presents a technique that allows you to place the main content before the sidebar in the HTML code, allowing the viewer to get straight to the most important content, no matter how they access or navigate the page.
Exploring Footers
Ever wanted a more versatile footer in your web page? This ALA article describes a technique for a footer that will display after the bottom of a page’s content, or at the very bottom of the browser window if the content is too short.Faux Columns
You may have noticed that giving a sidebar a background color or background image does not cause that background to extend beyond the height of the sidebar’s content. Using a background image and some more tricks, you can style your page with a sidebar background that extends to the entire height of the browser window.Cross-Column Pull-Outs
Though CSS 3 supports multi-column layouts, some web designers can’t wait for all major browsers to support these standards (because, frankly, they’d be waiting an excruciatingly long time!). Meanwhile, you can use the techniques in this article to create print-like columns and text flow on the web.CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death
If you only read one of these articles, make it this one. Web design master Dave Shea describes the definitive technique for making CSS-based image rollovers. Sure, DreamWeaver can do image rollovers, but not as cleanly or as elegantly as you yourself can, using only CSS. This technique is easy to master, easy to appreciate, and, in my opinion, absolutely indispensable.Also Recommended
A List Apart is a long-running web magazine that both amateur and professional web designers read and comment on daily. In this author’s opinion, there’s nothing else out there with the same amount of detail, quality, and polish as ALA.thoughtless acts?
We discussed this book/website in my design class last semester. It's an interesting look at the way we react to the world around us and the kind of real-world observational approach that can inspire designers or anyone involved in creative endeavors.
"Welcome to Macintosh!" Recreates System 7 on the Web
Written by Joe Kohlmann
Ever wondered what an old, 1990s-era Macintosh looked and ran like? Thanks to the Internet, you can relive the "glory days" (meh, I beg to differ) through Retromac.de's Virtual Performa 6116CD.
The Flash-based recreation of Mac OS System 7.0 also features a partially functioning replica of eWorld, a web portal Apple offered to Macintosh users from 1994 to 1996.
This virtual System 7.0 offers a glimpse of how the Internet looked (or would have looked) in the last decade. The web was still a fairly static, multimedia-poor, bandwidth-less medium out of necessity, given that an Internet user's computer and connection were incapable of facilitating anything greater. Nowadays these two critical shortcomings have been all but obviated, paving the way for so-called "rich" Internet applications and multimedia experiences.
Ever wondered what an old, 1990s-era Macintosh looked and ran like? Thanks to the Internet, you can relive the "glory days" (meh, I beg to differ) through Retromac.de's Virtual Performa 6116CD.
The Flash-based recreation of Mac OS System 7.0 also features a partially functioning replica of eWorld, a web portal Apple offered to Macintosh users from 1994 to 1996.
This virtual System 7.0 offers a glimpse of how the Internet looked (or would have looked) in the last decade. The web was still a fairly static, multimedia-poor, bandwidth-less medium out of necessity, given that an Internet user's computer and connection were incapable of facilitating anything greater. Nowadays these two critical shortcomings have been all but obviated, paving the way for so-called "rich" Internet applications and multimedia experiences.
Turbo
I thought Anna (you're the one with the dance off project, right?) might get a kick out of this vid.
Turn up the volume.
Turn up the volume.
6/6/09
6/4/09
i am always here
This site was probably one of my first forays as a viewer into the net.art universe back in 2006.
This site was probably one of my first forays as a viewer into the net.art universe back in 2006.
6/3/09
Where No YouTube Has Gone Before
Proof that some internet memes will exist forever.
(You got Quarkroll'd!)
Proof that booze and state dinners don't mix.
(I sometimes wonder if this is what state dinners at the White House under the Bush administration must have been like.)
Proof that there are some aspects of human behavior that technology will never change.
(The song is from a musical called Avenue Q incidentally.)
I'm not sure how everyone feels about whether this is art or not. It certainly seems to me like this can be considered an art form... it encourages one to look at the subject matter in a new and different way, for one thing. It also requires a fair amount of skill to pull one of these off really well -- all three of these videos have some sort of complicated editing, they aren't mere splices of existing footage. What do you guys think?
-- Chris Poff
Just for fun....
I thought you guys my like to play with this app I made in Processing last semester. It's a tye-dye generator to create your own work of art! LINK
CSS Zen Garden
I found this site really fun and interesting for designers. This was a required project for Lisa Moline's web design. It's called CSS Zen Garden. The point being that the content never changes but the styles do. Many people upload their own versions of the site. Here is what I did.
Milwaukee Local Celebs
This was a group project I worked on in which we tried to compile a list with descriptions of Local Milwaukee Celebrities. If you haven't seen these people or places your just a visitor to the Brewcity. LINK
Erotica Extensiva
This web project isn't for the faint of heart. I wanted to make a comment on pornography's strong hold on the internet. WARNING ADULT CONTENT. User Site
6/2/09
5/31/09
5/29/09
5/28/09
Web Browsers & Web Standards, past and future
Hi there, I'm Joe. My first post here on PantherTrick provides an overview of the problems web designers face when bringing their creations to life, how the situation has improved in the last decade with better browsers, and a preview of what future technolgies will bring to the web.
Where we are today…Web 2.0 and Web Apps
In the last year or so, web technologies have evolved into something we all call Web 2.0. Web 2.0 differentiates itself from the "old web" a big way – web sites are no longer mere static documents. Nowadays, the user-generated content revolution is built upon the backbone of sophisticated websites called rich internet applications, or web apps.
These applications push the boundaries of HTML to deliver an always-connected user experience that matches or eclipses that of a desktop application. Improving the user experience greatly eases the learning curve required to publish content on the web, and as a result, the web has blossomed into an even larger, more democratic community than it ever was in the early days of the Internet.
How did we make it here?
Web applications weren't built overnight. It's taken a lot of new technologies to make the jump from the early web to today's world of YouTube, Reddit, and Facebook. It's also taken more of a struggle than one might imagine to actually implement and widely distribute these technologies across multitudes of computers worldwide.
There has historically been one common problem that has prevented web applications and other technological advancements from really coming into their own: browser support of web standards. This is very nearly the absolute root cause of the web's multitude of problems.
What are web standards?
Web standards are design specifications made and agreed upon by browser vendors, designers, and standards bodies, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) or The Web Standards Project (WaSP). These are standards that cover many aspects of web design, such as how to display an image, how styling should work, how a web page communicates between a browser and a server, or even how HTML itself is architected.
Within the realm of web design there are currently three pertinent standards: HTML 4.01, CSS 2.1, and JavaScript, also known as ECMAScript. The latter two standards, maintained by the W3C, have a recommendation status, meaning that they are widely enough accepted to be the first choice when building a website that conforms to the most stable, most agreed-upon standards.
Why are web standards important?
As with any convention or standard, web standards establish a target for web browsers to hit when implementing web technologies. This prevents duplicative efforts as well – rather than have two browser vendors implement the same idea in incompatible ways, a web standard allows vendors to simply conform to an accepted specification. The hopeful goal of these standards is to make conforming websites look and function correctly in all web browsers that support these web standards.
So web standards are great, but what's the real fuss here?
Simply put, not all web browsers correctly implement or even support the currently recommended web standards.
Chances are you've already experienced this first-hand through the confusion of seeing a web page appear different in two different web browsers. As layouts get more sophisticated, you can bet a week's worth of sleep that the time spent testing and debugging the design in multiple web browsers will steeply increase. (Fortunately, this really has improved even within the last year. Whew!)
Now, imagine you're building and testing a web application that both look and behaves differently in different browsers! Oftentimes this frustrating predicament inspires elaborate hacks to work around the shortcomings in one or more particular web browsers in order to achieve a modicum of consistency for a given design.
So who's the culprit?
(Brief personal disclaimer … I'm a longtime Mac user, and I use both OS X, Windows, and Linux on at least a weekly basis. With the understanding that Apple clearly is not the end-all of computing, I do think the following blame is very rationally and properly placed…)
Microsoft's Internet Explorer has plagued web designers with incorrect, incomplete, or otherwise non-standard ways of rendering HTML, CSS, and even JavaScript instructions. This is a very real problem – for years, building a complex, sophisticated website has required endless hours of debugging and testing of techniques before achieving a look and function that may only be mostly consistent across different browsers at best!
This is nothing new. Once Internet Explorer began shipping for free on every Windows-based PC, IE's ubiquity, paired with its history of near-flagrant disregard for web standards (despite the company's membership status in the W3C), have meant that hacks and workarounds are often an absolute requirement if a designer hopes to reach the ~90% or so people using Internet Explorer as their web browser.
Got any good news, then?
Fortunately for everyone, the situation with web standards has greatly improved in the last six or so years. Internet Explorer itself has improved…somewhat, but other pioneering teams of web browser engineers have taken on the Herculean effort of moving web technologies forward.
New Kids on the Block – Firefox and Safari
The Mozilla Foundation's web browser technology, rescued from the sinking ship of Netscape Navigator, evolved into the runaway hit Firefox in 2004. The underlying technology Firefox uses, a rendering engine named Gecko, was built from the ground up to support and take advantage of web standards. Firefox has offered designers the correctness and consistency that web designers have yearned for, and it has also opened the door to newer technologies that sparked innovation in web design after a period of stagnation from about 1999 to 2003. (Sidenote: Gecko debuted in subsequent versions of a reincarnated Netscape browser, as well as Mozilla's eponymous Mozilla browser suite, both of which came into existence early in the decade and predate Safari.)
Meanwhile, Apple released the Safari web browser to the public in 2003, which drew its efficient, highly standards-conforming rendering technology from the WebKit project. WebKit now powers Google Chrome, several browsers native to Linux, as well as at least four major mobile devices' browser applications.
The WebKit project's dedication to web standards, speed, code portability, and innovation have taken the browsing world by storm. One company (so far), Palm, Inc., even considers WebKit so robust that they have built an entire mobile operating system (webOS) with WebKit at the core for the upcoming smartphone, the Palm Pre.
The Road Ahead
The improvements that Firefox and Safari have brought to the web have finally moved designers past the point of worrying about existing standards and onto the process of building the next web standards. These standards, which Firefox, Safari, and Chrome have already begun to implement, will facilitate even greater web application interactivity.
HTML 5, the frontrunner of this new generation of standards, aims to greatly simplify embedded audio and video, add new web app-inspired HTML elements, and allow websites to store data in a local database. The standard was started by a group of web designers and browser vendors, so the focus has been on creating more elegant support for effects already accomplished today through hacks or misappropriations of HTML elements.
The WebKit team has steadily added support for advanced styling, such as CSS gradients, CSS transforms, such as scaling and rotation, and even CSS animation. Meanwhile, CSS 3 has also been proposed and partially implement in Safari, adding slick features such as drop shadows and even robust multi-column layout attributes to the existing CSS 2.1 standard.
Other WebKit-created enhancements, such as the <canvas> HTML element, allow designers to create interactive pieces of artwork that may quickly rival the power of Flash animation in the near future. The <canvas> element also tells the story of an evolving web – what was once a Safari-only feature is now not only supported in Firefox, but is also a proposed standard as part of HTML 5.
The web has been a world filled with innovation and creativity since the very beginning. Its changing role as host to both the user-generated content revolution and the game-changing universality of web apps will most certainly continue to ripple through popular culture at large for years to come. Though the web's dark ages have set us back a bit, the promises of new technologies and fiercely competitive improvements in web browser technologies have truly rekindled the flame.
Additional Reading
Read more about the browser wars at Wikipedia.
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