Wow. This morning I launched a donations drive that was supposed to net me € 2,500 in, hopefully, a month or two or so. At least that’s what my “sensible” average projection was. Instead, it netted me € 3,200 in about six hours, and donations are still coming in.

Thanks, all. Awesome. Humbling. Scary, even, in a sort of way. I mean, I have to be extra good and stuff to repay you all.

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Just now A List Apart published my Smartphone Browser Landscape article. Despite having written for ALA for more than ten years, this is only my fifth or so article. But it’s a nice one.

I started on this article back in July by writing down absolutely everything that web developers had to know about the smartphone market. It was about twice as long as it is now. ALA rejected this draft — and with good reason. It took me from July to October to figure out which bits web developers didn’t have to know right away, and that was a useful process.

Anyway, enjoy the article. No comments here; you’ll have to go to ALA for that.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had essentially the same conversation with Georgi Petrov from Sofia, Bulgaria; Lea Verou from Athens, Greece; and Marco Cedaro from Bologna, Italy.

All three wanted to do something about front-end in their own town, but all three seemed to think there was some kind of black magic involved in getting well-known speakers to your conference or even getting together a few people to talk about geeky stuff.

So it’s time to talk about organising front-end meetings or conferences and how black magic is not necessary.

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I have decided to follow Dutch politics a bit more openly and to blog about it. Still, I don’t want to force this content on people that are just interested in web development. According to my own calculations the number of non-Dutch readers that are interested in Dutch politics is about twelve, so for those twelve, as well as the more sizable group of Dutch followers interested in politics, I’ve now created a politics homepage and blog.

Swept away by the literally two requests from non-Dutch readers, I’ve also decided to publish my political primer, which will ideally consist of eleven long background articles, of which only the first eight are written. I will publish one article every Wednesday until I run out of material.

Here on the main QuirksBlog I may write some stuff about the JavaScript graph functions I created for the primer (parliament graphs, tables). Unfortunately, right now any JavaScript-focused article would mainly consist of a long list of features I haven’t implemented yet. Most of the graphs aren’t really keyboard-accessible, for instance, because I’m not happy with the idea of adding dozens of useless <a> elements just to make parts of the graphs keyboard-focusable.

All in all I’m hurrying to catch up with events. I hadn’t planned to publish any of this, but the government crisis has forced my hands. Please excuse the occasional wart or bug.

As long-time visitors know I occasionally talk about Dutch politics here for the benefit of my Dutch readers as well as those twelve foreign readers that are interested in these matters. Since Dutch government fell late yesterday night, it’s time for another such post.

The Balkenende IV government (i.e. the fourth government that Balkenende (CDA) was prime minister of) was formed three years ago and consists of centre-right CDA (christian-democrats), centre-left PvdA (Labour), and orthodox-protestant left-leaning CU (Union of Christians). Yesterday evening the PvdA ministers resigned over a conflict about the continuing Dutch military presence in the Afghan province of Uruzgan.

In a week and a half local elections will be held, and the PvdA was slated to lose a lot of seats everywhere. PvdA party leader and finance minister Bos clearly hopes to stem the electoral tide by his resignation, and he might well be right.

Update: This will be the last political entry on the main QuirksBlog. I now have a separate politics section with a blog as well as an article series about Dutch political history.

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Well, a new year has started, and it’s tradition to give an overview of where you’re standing. So here’s mine.

As longtime readers may remember, I was totally burned out at the end of both 2007 and 2008. I’m happy to report that that trend has been broken; although I was glad to have a little holiday at the end of 2009, I returned to work without noticeable problems. So that’s good.

However, I have decided that certain aspects of my professional life are in need of a change; notably my public speaking and my compatibility tables.

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When I was in San Francisco back in April it didn’t take long for me to get introduced to the most popular social game in town: how will Twitter make money? I played the game in three or four different groups, made some obvious beginner’s mistakes, and had fun.

Unfortunately for those still playing the game I think I solved the problem. I now know how Twitter should make money. Judge for yourself.

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Well, another year had ended and a new one has started (in case you hadn’t noticed). As you’ve seen in the past few months I haven’t exactly been active on my blog; the core reason is that I was completely stressed out after my Spanish workshop at the end of October and have done little to no web development since then.

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I’m usually not much given to political posts, but in view of the earth-shaking things that will take place in the US tomorrow I’m gladly breaking that rule. In this post I’d like to personally thank all US politicians and mainstream media talking heads who’ve offered me countless hours of enjoyable browsing, reading, learning, and laughing.

Nonetheless I’m glad it’s over. I’m starting to suffer from Obama Overload, and I’m way behind on my work. (Please don’t ask me about adding Chrome to the Tables; I know, I will, as soon as all this is out of the way.)

I’m also going to give a small inpromptu presentation on the US elections tomorrow in Amsterdam. If you don’t know what to do with yourself, join me.

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In this entry I give some impressions of AEA Boston, as well as an attempt to compare the current web dev world with the old potlatch system.

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I'm afraid I've reached the end of my energy reserves. The new Fronteers site is online (Fronteers was previously known as the Guild of Front-End Developers); IE8 supports the Acid2 test, but I just don't have the energy to treat these important issues in the way they deserve.

Yesterday I published an entry about Opera's antitrust complaint that I removed today. Although I still think I have a point of sorts, that point should be made in a different way (and possibly by another person).

I've deserved a holiday. I NEED a holiday VERY BADLY.

I feel that I'm slowly going mad. I don't want any contact with any person; and DEFINITELY not about anything having to do with web development.

So this entry serves as notice that I'll be completely unreachable until January 7th. Clients, web developers, others, I'm sorry, but I won't answer you now. Please try again next year.

Yesterday morning I returned from my first visit to San Francisco, where I delivered my first real solo presentation at the Voices that Matter: Web Design conference, as well as visiting Yahoo! and wandering around town a bit. All in all it was a wonderful experience.

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Phew.

Last Tuesday, exactly one week ago, was one of the busiest and most exciting days of my life, and I think that it was a success all in all.

For me, it was the first time I organised a conference, moderated a panel, founded a front-end professionals' organisation, and went into a personal battle that for a moment threatened to become very bitter, but fortunately didn't thanks to the generosity of my opponents and an extremely professional chairman. And all that on one day.

Anyway, it's wrapped up now, and I thought I'd give my international readers some idea of what I've been working on these past months.

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Zoals ik eerder heb vermeld, heb ik het idee gekregen om een Gilde van Front-Enders op te richten. Dit idee heeft behoorlijke weerklank gevonden; tot nu toe hebben zich 85 front-enders als potentieel lid ingeschreven. Ik wil hen, plus alle andere geinteresseerden, van harte uitnodigen voor het oprichtingscongres van het Gilde, dat gesponsord wordt door het PIBN.

(English summary: This is an invitation to the founding conference of the Guild of Front-End Programmers. The conference is in Dutch, so this entry is, too.)

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To anyone following my Guild adventures it will not come as a huge surprise that I hope to be elected chairman at our meeting on the 18th of September. Last week, another candidate for chairmanship, Lon Boonen of Q42, entered the fray.

When I read through his ideas, I came across a few points that I absolutely disagree with. Furthermore I believe that the difference between Lon's and my ideas nicely summarises a fundamental decision the web standards movement has to take in the next year or so. I wrote this entry because this is something all standardistas should think about.

Basically, Lon wants to create yet another online community and pressure group—a grassroot movement, in other words. I, on the other hand, want to create a quite different type of organisation.

I believe that grassroot movements (of which the WaSP is the most important and well-known example, but far from the only one) cannot take web standards much further than they have done until now, because they don't reach the large website creation companies, which are crucial to the long-term success of the standards movement.

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Just as last year, I've got a session planned for SxSW 2008. Its title is "In Praise of Elitism", and of course I hope that my readers will vote for me so that I get free entrance to SxSW.

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Last week, two blog entries caught my eye because they discussed a problem I've started to notice, too. In Reflection Jeremy Keith bemoaned the lack of blog comment quality for the umpteenth time; while in The HTML 5 circus Roger Johansson explained that he temporarily left the HTML WG mailing list because there were too many people who just shouted at others without making any positive contribution.

Jeremy and Roger are talking about the same problem. There are quite a few semi-professional web developers who have excellent knowledge of the web standards but spend their time shouting at other people on blogs, forums, or mailing lists, and they are taking over most public spaces of the web standards movement with their ideologically pure drivel; proving the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory beyond any possible doubt. We ought to get rid of them, but I don't know how.

Who are these semi-professionals? How do they differ from professionals?

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Currently I'm reading Framing the Early Middle Ages by Chris Wickham, which treats Europe and the Mediterranean in the years 400-800 (this, especially the West, was my specialisation back when I was a historian). Wickham has been courageous enough to attempt a general definition of an "aristocrat", and I couldn't resist the temptation to apply his criteria to today's Web development aristocrats.

So today's questions are: what makes a Web development aristocrat a Web development aristocrat? And what are aristocrats good for, anyway?

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Last Monday I invited all Dutch front-end programmers to become members of my soon-to-be-founded Guild of Front-End programmers. I also promised to publish some more information in English.

This entry covers the certification we're planning to introduce. While reading it, please remember that all items I describe below are just plans right now (some of them my personal ones). They may still be voted down by the certification committee or the Guild members.

(lang="nl" interstitial: Mensen die meer informatie willen, kunnen onze huidige plannen bekijken en/of zich inschrijven voor de aankondigingslijst.)

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Hierbij nodig ik alle Nederlandstalige front-end programmeurs uit zich aan te sluiten bij het Gilde van Front-Enders dat ik bezig ben op te richten. We hebben al 50 leden, maar we kunnen er nog veel meer gebruiken.

(English summary: I'm in the process of founding a Dutch Guild of Front-End programmers. This entry is a national call to action and is therefore in Dutch. Later I'll post something in English about my plans.)

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While writing my Changes entry I re-discovered the fact that I seem to be one of the very few well-known standardistas whose natural habitat is the world of large website creation companies instead of the freelance/small business/institutions world that powers most of the standards movement.

I noticed this fact immediately when I entered the standards-aware web world back in 1998. I vaguely worried about it back then, but I was so caught up in my day job and my extensive publications that I didn't do anything about it. When I went freelance in 2002 I submerged myself in the mainstream of the standards movement, I forgot about this problem.

In recent weeks, however, I spoke to a lot of lead front-end programmers who work for large companies, and I quickly re-discovered my roots, as well as the fact that they differ from the roots of the average standardista. I was also able to pinpoint the problem more accurately.

I feel there is a rift between large website creation companies and the standards movement, and a week ago I decided to write a more detailed entry about this problem. When the first draft was ready it was clear that it had become a new major article and was more suited to A List Apart than to QuirksBlog.

Therefore I submitted it, and after a brief editing round it was accepted and published as Evangelizing Outside the Box: Web Standards and Large Companies. Enjoy!

In early February I wrote about losing my sense of fun in web development. Basically, from mid November until the writing of this entry I was in a kind of extended haze. I worked as little as possible, and when clients old or new came knocking on my door for yet another HTML/CSS template or yet another small, unexciting script, I did everything in my power to turn them away. In fact, there was a short time in December when I seriously considered quitting web development altogether.

February was a normal month. I did a lot of work and sent out a lot of invoices, but I wasn't what you'd call happy about it. In this respect, my visit to SxSW was an excellent chance to take some distance from my everyday life, and when I returned home I knew I wanted to change a lot of things. I realised that I didn't want to code for a living any more.

Which begs the question: if I would quit coding, what would I do for a living?

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Back in February I wrote an opinion piece for the British .NET Magazine. I considered it a dress rehearsal for my SxSW presentation, and as such it allowed me to focus my thoughts.

Meanwhile the opinion piece has been published in .NET's latest issue (162; confusingly called the May issue, even though it will remain April for 20 more days). It will allow people who weren't at SxSW to read a summary of my presentation.

This reminds me of a question I wanted to ask anyway: which good, standards-aware web development magazines are there? .NET is definitely one. Unfortunately its Dutch counterpart NetProfessional, for which I occansionally wrote a piece, folded back in 2003. I don't know of any others, though I suppose they exist out there.

If you know of another standards-aware web development magazine, please leave a comment.

In a stunning reversal of its stated policy, Dutch government last Friday decided to abolish the Web Guidelines and revert to tabled-based layouts. A government spokeswoman declared:

If the stated policy [ie. the Web Guidelines] were to be implemented, thousands of deserving web developers would have been robbed of their daily bread. For a government dedicated to creating more jobs, this is unacceptable.

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The standards revolution here in Holland proceeds apace, so I though I'd give you an update. Most importantly, I have finally managed to find an English translation of the Guidelines, which will allow non-Dutch-speakers to judge them for themselves. I added a few notes to clarify translation points or vague spots.

One of the most important comments on my previous Guidelines post was: "Who's going to enforce them?". The answer seems to be: nobody. Far from being a weak point in the standards revolution, this non-enforcement is one of the strongest reasons in favour of implementing the Guidelines.

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Just encountered this page with a list of Free JavaScript books. I didn't know you could get them for free! I usually pay for them (unless the authors give me a free copy).

In any case, the first free JavaScript book deserves to be quoted in full:

Quirksmode - ppk on JavaScript pages new

This is not a book properly speaking, but the pages on quirksmode organized to follow the book ppk on javascript by Eric Meyer.

I think Eric and I will have to have a chat about copyrights and such.

When I received my personal copies of the book back in October, I was of course overjoyed at being a Published Author. Nonetheless, I was sorely disappointed at one feature, or rather, the lack of one feature.

The pages of my book were gray, even though they were supposed to contain some blue accents. Unfortunately all blue colours, shades and nuances had been replaced by their gray equivalent, except on the cover. That made the book harder to read.

Meanwhile the problem has been solved, and gray copy owners can win a blue copy by participating in my contest.

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There's one aspect of SxSW that I didn't discuss in my previous entry: the reason why I went to only a few parties. Most nights I was back in my hotel around 11:00. That's not really sociable, is it? Unfortunately I was unable to attend most parties BECAUSE OF THE FUCKING NOISE.

I'm wondering if it would be at all possible to just turn off the LOUD BACKGROUND MUSIC at conference parties.

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I've caved in to peer pressure and signed up for Twitter. My nickname is (obviously) ppk and for the moment all my updates will be public. Follow me if you'd like to.

First conclusion: Twitter's search interface is confusing.

While visiting SxSW I'll also sign copies of the book for anyone who's interested. The signing session will take place on Saturday 10 March at 4:30 at the Adobe Day Stage Café.

While I'm there I'm also planning to pick up signed copies of Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke, Javascript and Ajax for the Web by Dori Smith and Tom Negrino, Bulletproof Ajax by Jeremy Keith, CSS Mastery by Andy Budd, and probably a few other interesting books.

I'll see some of you there.

As I posted before I'll be in Austin on Thursday, and I'll be looking for something to do. Meanwhile two get-togethers have been organised:

1. Noon at Las Manitas on 211 Congress Ave.
2. 6:00 pm at the 219West.

I hope to see some of my Austin-based readers there; and maybe a few others who, like me, have decided to arrive early for SxSW.

I suddenly realised I hadn't yet officially announced that my presentation "JavaScript: the Big Picture" has been accepted by SxSW. It will run on Monday 12th of March in the afternoon, and it will be a 25 minute power session. I already wrote about the topics I want to treat. Right now I plan to talk for a maximum of 10 minutes, after which a discussion is supposed to fill the remaining 15 minutes. My plans may change, though.

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On 1 September last year the new Dutch law on the quality of government websites went into effect. At the time I read a short note on a Dutch blog that the new law made accessibility mandatory, nodded sagely, decided it was about time, and went on with my work without actually looking at the new law.

It was only last Friday that I studied it in detail, and to say that I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. The law's stated purpose is to make sure that every Dutch government website is accessible by following the guidelines as formulated by W3C. In order to do so, a corpus of 125 guidelines has been created to define best practices for creating accessible sites. These guidelines go way beyond WCAG; they also embrace modern, standards-compliant web development as a whole.

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Just as last year, Drew McLellan has created his web geek advent calendar 24ways, in which a few web developers of note share some tips and tricks to impress your friends. Today my contribution: Hide and Seek in the Head.

In my continuing series on Dutch politics I present the next background page: The Rules of the Game, in which I discuss government, parliament, elections, and coalitions.

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As promised, I will continue my reporting of Dutch politics. Because right now the situation is confused even for Dutch standards, and foreigners won't easily get the finer points of our ten-party system, I'm also preparing a load of background articles. Today the first installment: The Ins and Outs, in which the three large parties and their dance around the centre of power are introduced.

Meanwhile the situation remains confused. After Wednesday's elections (results) nobody has the faintest idea what kind of government we're going to get.

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I've decided to write a few more entries about Dutch politics, and I hope to explain it so clearly that even foreigners who're used to boring two-party systems will learn to appreciate our ten-party system. If you don't like politics, you should avoid QuirksBlog for a while. Nonetheless I invite all JavaScripters to take a quick look at my politics appreciation app.

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For once a non-technical post about the elections in Holland that are taking place today. I'm not sure how many of my readers are interested in this subject, but since I myself am fascinated by the weird turn the elections are taking, and I'm sure that at least some people will share this fascination once I explained it, I'm going to post about it anyway.

Rather lengthy. If you're not interested, ignore.

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Zoals ik twee jaar geleden al zag aankomen, beginnen bedrijven serieuze behoefte te krijgen aan junior webontwikkelaars met gedegen CSS-kennis, en is het uitermate lastig die te vinden.

In de afgelopen twee weken heb ik twee aanvragen gekregen voor juniors die in vaste dienst willen treden. Vandaar dat ik met spoed op zoek ben naar mensen die CSS grondig onder de knie hebben, een eerste of tweede schrede willen zetten op een carrièrepad als professioneel webontwikkelaar, en die per direct beschikbaar zijn voor een vaste baan of een langdurige freelance-klus.

Herken je jezelf hierin, vul dan het formulier in en ik neem contact met je op.

Two new reviews of the book appeared early this week. Roger Johansson reviewed it on his own site, and Mike West did so on Digital Web Magazine.

Thanks, both of you, for taking the time to read and write about my book, and for being so very positive about it. In the remainder of this entry I'd like to say a few words about an interesting difference of opinion that surfaces in them: the value of historical overviews in programming books.

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WebReference has published an excerpt of chapter 8 of the book. If you're still wondering whether you should buy it, take a look and decide.

Op Naar Voren is te lezen een voorpublicatie uit het boek. Het gaat om enkele secties uit hoofdstuk 9: CSS modificatie.
Vertaling: Marrije Schaake.

(English: Naar Voren has translated and published part of chapter 9 of the book. Since it's in Dutch it's not of much interest to my international audience.)

Just a reminder that my book release party in Amsterdam will take place next Friday (27 October). See this post for the details.

I'm still planning a London book release party, too, but unfortunately there's no news yet (translation: for the past few weeks I've been too lazy to arrange it).

Do we need a professional organisation that tests and certifies web developers? This question is suddenly very much in the picture, with Mark Boulton, Richard Rutter, D. Keith Robinson, and Eric Meyer discussing it at length. I decided to throw in a few of my own thoughts and offer a field-tested rough-and-ready method that is quite reliable for separating the chaff from the wheat: the 2 minutes CSS test.

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I've been interviewed by Russ Weakley of Web Standards Group about the QuirksMode redesign, the book, the Ajax hype, IE7, and more.

Read the interview: Ten questions for Peter-Paul Koch.

Well, it seems that the book is finally taking off.

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As I said before, I'm planning book release parties in Amsterdam and London. The Amsterdam one has been finalised; details below. The London one is still under construction. It will take place early in November; details will follow when I have them.

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I added some information to the Book section: an example scripts page and an errata page.

The example scripts page lists the example scripts, links to the working version and the JavaScript files, and gives a detailed list of where in the book the scripts are treated.

The errata page, unsurprisingly, contains the few errata I've found so far. I still haven't found a typo, though I did find three plurals that should be singulars, one of which is smack bang on the very first page of the very first chapter. As far as I'm concerned these aren't really typos, typos are just words taht are speled incorrectly.

Even though I went through most of the book now and found no typos, I'm still not convinced the book is actually free of them. No doubt a few will turn up once people start actually reading it.

Right, I seem to have been a bit premature in my book release entry. Although the book definitely exists by now, it turns out that it might easily take a few weeks before it has been shipped from printer to distributor, from distributor to the bookstore warehouse, and from the warehouse to the shelves. Therefore it's not strange that almost no-one has a copy of the book yet: you'll have to have a few more weeks patience, I'm afraid.

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Next March I'll be heading off to Austin to be at SxSW. Thrifty as always, I'm looking for ways and means of getting free admission, and the most obvious solution was to send in a panel proposal. Since this year SxSW allows people to vote for panels they'd like to see, you should vote for me if you'd like to hear me speak about JavaScript (and get me a free ticket). The panel is called "JavaScript: the Big Picture" and it's somewhere near the top of the list in SxSW's Panel Picker.

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Well, today's the day. "ppk on JavaScript" has been released—in the US, that is. If you are actually holding a physical copy, please leave a comment with your location. This will allow me to follow my book as it penetrates the JavaScript world.

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As I promised before, I've now published the larger part of the Introduction of my book "ppk on JavaScript". Apart from some general notes, it introduces the eight example scripts that I use throughout the book. As you'll see, all these eight example scripts were written for real-world clients in order to earn real-world money.

The example scripts themselves are also online, and you can study them. The Introduction links to all of them. Since I refer to these example scripts throughout the book, I expect my readers to have a general idea of what they're doing and why.

I hope this pre-publication gives a better insight in the kind of book I've written.

Unfortunately the publication date has moved forward to 13 September (US). The rest of the world will have to wait about a month longer.

Now that Andy Clarke has shown the courage to throw his true biography out into the open, I've decided that I can't keep silent any more. I know that some people will not believe my real story, and that others will ridicule me for it, but Andy's set a noble example that should be emulated.

So without more ado, here's my official, authorized, unadulterated biography:

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When I posted my book announcement on 2 June, I thought the huge project was almost done. Unfortunately I was wrong; right now I'm still working on the book. I thought I'd give you a quick update on what I'm doing right now.

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Today I celebrate my 36th birthday by going out into the sun, having drinks with friends, and generally taking it easy. Happy birthday to me!

Incidentally, today Rembrandt would have turned 400. I cannot fault the great painter's taste in birthdays.

Official website (unfortunately web standards hadn't yet been invented in Rembrandt's days).

Rembrandt portal of the Dutch public broadcasting corporations. I include this link because it leads to my current project. Click on the "Bekijk uitzending" link next to the last portrait, and you'll see a (Dutch) TV programme on Rembrandt. (You have to select a format (Windows Media or Real) and a quality (broadband or smallband) first, by the way.)

I created the player the programme (and in fact all public broadcasting programmes that are available on the Internet) runs in.

It's not quite ready for formal publication yet, because at the last possible moment I had to sacrifice the noscript version to solve a very nasty Explorer bug. In the next two weeks, however, I hope to reinstate the noscript version while not triggering the bug. When that's done I'll formally discuss this project.

During the @media conference several people asked what the book is about. Although the short answer is obviously "JavaScript!", they wanted a more detailed reply. This entry gives them (and anyone else who's interested) more information.

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The Hot Topics panel that closed the conference featured one excellent question that set me thinking about socio-political questions:

Isn't the recent mass movement of high-profile web designers to large companies like Yahoo and Google a little worrying in terms of objectivity and in terms of creativity?

You can read the discussion that followed in the transcript, but my own thoughts went in a slightly different direction.

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Two minor book-related points.

The book will probably be released in the second half of August, and not the first half, as I said before. That's the US publication only; Europe will have to wait another month since the book is printed in the US and literally shipped to the rest of the world.

By request I added the Table of Contents to the book page.

It's done. My book is finished; I just delivered the last chapter (chapter 2, actually). It's called "ppk on JavaScript", it's published by New Riders, and I'm as proud as any parent of my newborn baby.

You can already order it through Amazon (US, UK, Canada, Japan), if you're so inclined.

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Quite recently Google published the results of its Web Authoring Statistics research, in which about a billion HTML documents were parsed for popular class names, used elements and attributes, use of JavaScript and so on.

Sounds fascinating? You bet. There's just one slight problem: the actual data is totally inaccessible.

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For at least a year I've been worried about the total lack of relation between JavaScript and "serious" programmers. Unfortunately it seems as if JavaScript is still beneath their notice. That starts to annoy me.

The advent of Ajax makes a solution to this problem mandatory. Who will create the Ajax applications? Those who don't know how to write an application, or those who don't know the language the application will be written in?

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My previous entry The New Amateurs has generated so many interesting comments that I decided to reply to them all in a new entry, which will continue the discussion.

To my astonishment it turns out that some New Amateurs read my site, and that some of them even agree with me. It seems they aren't even too much annoyed by the label "amateurs". Great!

Let's review a few of their arguments.

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Andy Clarke started it, Molly Holzschlag added her powerful voice, and Roger Johansson and Holly Marie Koltz jotted down some interesting notes. It's time for New Professionalism in the website industry.

Basically the idea is that any web developer who refuses to learn CSS and modern, unobtrusive JavaScript, either from ignorance or from a refusal to break old habits, is no longer worthy of the name "professional".

I completely agree; in fact I have been worrying about this problem for quite a while, and no doubt others have, too. Such movements aren't created out of nothing, they are ideas waiting to find a voice, and I'm glad that it happened. We have to reach the New Amateurs and transform them into New Professionals. But how?

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The November issue of Treehouse contains an interview with me about browsers, JavaScript teaching, Ajax, web applications, and more.

Since the comments to my previous posts contain a few useful links to memory leaks and closure resources, I thought I'd create a linkdump for future reference. Note that I only included those articles that explain what they're doing and why and give code examples. I ignored the pages that just throw scripts over the fence and leave it to the reader to figure out what they're all about.

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Zoals ik een jaar geleden al zag aankomen, beginnen bedrijven serieuze behoefte te krijgen aan junior webontwikkelaars met gedegen CSS-kennis, en is het uitermate lastig die te vinden.

In de afgelopen week heb ik niet minder dan vijf aanvragen gekregen voor juniors die in vaste dienst willen treden of een freelance-klus van minimaal een maand willen aannemen. Helaas heb ik Nee moeten verkopen, omdat mijn netwerk op dit moment uitgeput is.

Vandaar dat ik met spoed op zoek ben naar mensen die CSS grondig onder de knie hebben, een eerste of tweede schrede willen zetten op een carrièrepad als professioneel webontwikkelaar, en die per direct beschikbaar zijn voor een vaste baan of een langdurige freelance-klus.

Herken je jezelf hierin, vul dan het formulier in en ik neem contact met je op.

Well, I'm back from all my holidays. My throat problems are mostly over, although I still don't have hot water in my house. Even so I'll start working again tomorrow, and I've spent a large part of the weekend in catching up on QuirksMode.org related matters.

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Thursday night I returned from a relaxing holiday in Greece. I'd planned to do some work on Friday, before leaving for the countryside again on Monday.

Unfortunately Friday was a rather disastrous day. My central heating unit, which also provides my hot water, suddenly began expelling flames when I turned it on, and a hurriedly fetched mechanic told me it cannot be used any more due to the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. No hot water, no showers, no shave.

Then the dirty, nearly windless air prevailing here in Amsterdam started working on my nose and throat, and right now I'm taking tea with honey, orange juice, and more such medicines in an attempt to stave off a cold.

All this means that I'm going to extend my holiday silence considerably. I'm disastrously behind on all jobs except for comment approval, but that's not going to change in the near future. No replies to the 200 or so mails still waiting for me.

If you need me, sorry, you'll have to have more patience; my unavailability has been extended for at least another week.

Today I leave for a two week holiday in Greece. As usual I won't touch a computer while I'm over there, so everything that requires my personal intervention will have to wait until at least Friday 19 August.

I'll be only patchily available during the rest of August, and I don't take any new job, no matter how small, paid or volunteer, before 5 September.

See you all later.

As everybody and his dog know by now, IE 7 Beta 1 has been released. Read Chris Wilson's entry over on the IE Blog for the details. Since I do not have a copy of it, I will not discuss it in detail. It is my strict policy to discuss only browser features and bugs I've actually seen for myself. Expect a full report as soon as I've got it installed on my computer, but not before.

The MSIE team seems to have used my site for bug testing, although almost all discussed bugs come from Position is Everything, and rightly so, since Big John and Holly Bergevin have far more interesting and detailed bug reports than my own CSS section.

Meanwhile this good news is being overshadowed by an apparently quite vicious campaign against Molly Holzschlag, who seems to have had the temerity to suggest that the IE 7 beta is actually good news for web developers and the standards movement in general, a message that encounters quite a bit of resistance among web standards fascists.

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Micro-interview in Timo Wirth's ongoing "Falling in love with CSS" series: Peter-Paul Koch declares his love to CSS ...

While I was busy writing largish amounts of JavaScript for money and not paying attention to the wider world, everyone suddenly started talking about footnotes on the Web, a subject I happen to be highly interested in.

Back in 1998 I created my very first site, a summary of my research into the Thidrekssaga, and since it was supposed to be a scientific publication I needed a footnote system. I ended up using a footnote frame, and back then I was pretty impressed by my own creativity. Meanwhile the wow-factor of this solution has decreased rather dramatically.

Seven years later, four articles about footnotes caught my eye within about an hour.

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Today the WaSP announced the DOM Scripting Task Force of which I am a member. Its purpose is:

reaching out to standards-aware web developers who have not yet discovered the power of DOM Scripting and to experienced JavaScripters whose current practices do not include web standards and accessibility. In addition, the Task Force will provide accessible, cross-browser example scripts.

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Today is my 35th birthday.

Happy birthday to me!

I'm going to celebrate by not sitting in front of my computer all day.

Today the Web Standards Project and Microsoft have announced the formation of a collaborative Task Force that will provide technical help in moving Microsoft products like Visual Studio and ASP.NET closer to web standards.

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It's getting busy on the JavaScript front. For a good overview of what's happening right now you should read the three articles I mention below. They discuss different aspects of the change JavaScript is going through at the moment. As an extra I've thrown in a little trick I've been using quite a lot lately.

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Op zondag 26 juni vanaf 15:00 uur vindt er te Amsterdam een kleine JavaScript bijeenkomst plaats, georganiseerd door Bobby van der Sluis en mezelf.

Er is geen echt programma; we gaan gewoon wat met elkaar drinken, wat over JavaScript praten en we zien verder wel wat er uit komt.

Locatie: Café De Jaren, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 20-22, Amsterdam, vlakbij de Munt. Tram 4, 9, 16, 24 of 25 vanaf het Centraal Station, bij de Munt uitstappen, links de brug over de smalle straat in en dan kom je er vanzelf.

Ik hoop daar een paar van mijn Nederlandstalige lezers te treffen.

Wegens een recente en interessante uitbreiding van mijn netwerk ben ik met vernieuwde ijver op zoek naar junior webontwikkelaars die een eerste of tweede stap in hun carrière willen zetten en op termijn uit willen groeien tot gespecialiseerde, professionele client side programmeurs (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).

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English as written by Chinese companies never ceases to amaze. Today I bought new trousers, which turn out to be Chinese (hence not very expensive), but after reading and re-reading the text on the label for ten minutes I still don't understand it, and I doubt whether anyone merely English-speaking can.

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By coincidence I found this page that states:

Peter-Paul-Koch is currently not defined

I have to disagree; I'm perfectly well defined. Nonetheless it's heartening to see other people worry about my state of definition, even if they add an extra dash to my name for good measure.

In the past few days three excellent JavaScript articles have been written that I agree with so completely I have to mention and quote them. In addition, there's one excellent JavaScript site that I discovered months ago but haven't yet come around to mentioning.

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When I first read Jesse James Garrett's article Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications my reactions were "What a silly name", and "Not really new, is it?" Although both points of critique have been repeatedly and heatedly mentioned in the ensuing discussion, the concept seems to be taking the Web development community by storm. This can mean one of two things: either it's a promise or it's a hype. To decide the case, I offer an annotated link dump.

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Right now I have a large writing job (not a book, unfortunately), and it takes rather more time that I thought it would. Since I'm working on it almost every waking hour, I'm getting a bit tired of writing. That's the reason I'm not posting any blog items right now, and I'm afraid this situation will continue throughout March.

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Found this one through Arjan on annoyances.org. Although it's funny, it's also a sad comment on the general state of affairs on forums, mailing lists, blogs and other places of social interaction. There are too many silly people who just want to be heard, regardless of the lack of quality of their remarks. Sometimes I'm tempted to instate really strict comment moderation.

Q: How many forum members does it takes to change a light bulb?

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Since XMLHTTP is becoming more and more important I thought I'd create a linkdump, both for my own future reference and for other developers. Additions and comments will be gratefully accepted.

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Today (one day earlier than I expected) A List Apart published my first article in more than four years. It's called JavaScript triggers and it's about JavaScript triggers — and if you don't know what JavaScript triggers are you need to read the article.

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The six patron saints of graphic design by Lynn Garrett. Very funny, and it accurately captures the spirit of Catholic hagiography.

lang="nl" Nieuw artikel op Naar Voren: Structuur in de chaos. Hoe zet je een XHTML-pagina op die voldoende aanhaakpunten biedt voor CSS en JavaScript?

lang="nl" Voor enkele van mijn klanten in Amsterdam ben ik op zoek naar goede junior webontwikkelaars met gedegen CSS-kennis. Zoek je werk, hetzij een vaste baan, hetzij freelance-opdrachten, en heeft CSS geen geheimen voor je? Lees dan verder.

Received today:

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Perform Weddings, Funerals, Perform Baptisms, Forgiveness of Sins
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I subscribed forthwith. The prospect of forgiving sins while visiting correctional facilities, especially, is alluring.

I'm back in business, after a restful and relaxing holiday in Greece, a major network breakdown, a long weekend in the countryside, and lots of sipping alcoholic beverages on sunny terraces.

I've even done a few minor updates today:

1. A reader sent me the correct syntax for createAttribute(). See the W3C DOM Core tables - Attributes under createAttribute().
2. Another reader told me that the odd document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'div{margin:0px;}'"); syntax is the correct one for Explorer Windows. I didn't test this one.
3. Added one new portfolio item: Ubachs Wisbrun. To my surprise, this site became table based.

The new buzz word is definitely "Web Applications". Unfortunately, recent publications on this topic are extremely confusing. Web applications require a massive deployment of JavaScript, but everybody skilfully pretends they don't. Besides, I haven't yet found out what Web applications are because no one has bothered to define them.

Are Web Applications here to stay, or are they just another hype?
See Dave Shea's Web Apps are Hot for an overview of recent publications. See also Joel Spolski's perceptive How Microsoft Lost the API War article.

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Dummy entry to get the Archives category working.