1. My latest XML.com article is up: The Vanishing Image: XHTML 2 Migration Issues. Evan Goer is also exploring XHTML 2. We both have too much free time.
  2. My Safari bug list is up to date with the final (1.0, build 85) release of Safari. Many important bugs were fixed. Surprisingly few bugs remain. Kudos to Dave and the entire Safari development team; they’ve really whipped this into shape in record time. I use Safari as my primary browser on Mac OS X now.
  3. Sam Ruby has taken an early snapshot of the (not-)Echo model and prototyped a feed in the new format. I have a prototype Movable Type template and the corresponding live feed that it generates. This is a 0.1 release; it will change. Even the namespace is a placeholder. Anyone who implements tools based on this snapshot and later complains that it changed will be suitably ridiculed.

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Thirty seven comments here (latest comments)

  1. >>will be suitably ridiculed.

    No doubt about that! ;->

    — Dave Winer #

  2. PapaScott's Quick Links (trackback)

  3. Joel has an echo feed as well:

    http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2003/07/01.html

    — David #

  4. Here’s a mod to your template that does the UTC stuff. See comments for details. http://www.mystartmenu.com/necho-template.txt

    — Chris Wilper #

  5. I’ve updated the template to include issued and modified dates per entry. Modified dates requires the LastModified plugin:

    http://www.staggernation.com/mtplugins/LastModifiedReadMe.html

    Looking at Chris’s template, it looks like a plugin to create UTC-style dates would be a good idea too.

    Remember, this is all very preliminary. We’re prototyping precisely so we bring these kinds of issues to light now rather than later.

    — Mark #

  6. Mark, a question because I haven’t been watching this closely: will Echo work with an existing RSS reader? Or, do I need to wait until my reader supports the new format? Thanks.

    — Ken Walker #

  7. Ken: the new format is not designed to be backwardly-compatible with RSS. If you have a program that supports RSS, it will need to be updated to support the new format as well.

    There have been a number of attempts to define a new format that *is* backwardly-compatible with RSS (i.e. a “profile” of RSS) and they have all gone nowhere, due to a mixture of technical and political problems. In fact just a few days ago, Rogers Cadenhead started a mailing list to make another go at it.

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ssf-dev/

    I don’t expect the effort to succeed (based on my own experiences in similar efforts in the past), but I wish him the best of luck.

    — Mark #

  8. idly.org (trackback)

  9. I could be wrong, but isn’t the use of conditional comments in the XML.com article hiding the object from *every* browser? You’d need to use the other (non-XHTML-compatible) type, “downlevel-revealed”.

    — Anonymous #

  10. “I could be wrong, but isn’t the use of conditional comments in the XML.com article hiding the object from *every* browser? You’d need to use the other (non-XHTML-compatible) type, “downlevel-revealed”.”

    You are correct sir!

    To hide the nested objects from *only* IE the conditional comment should be constructed like this:

    <![if !IE]>
    Mozilla should see this but IE won’t.
    <![endif]>

    Simple oversight on Mark’s part, however, it does ruin his example as using conditional comments in this way (above) is not valid XHTML.

    — MikeyC #

  11. I actually posted this type of example months ago:

    http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/04/13/object_and_internet_explorer.html#c001238

    or located directly at:

    http://members.rogers.com/divx/object/

    Funny enough, the fallback is actually for the sake of Mozilla as the outer object is an SVG and the inner object is a jpg. If the SVG plugin isn’t already installed in IE, then you will get the empty box with grayed-out scroll, just like Flash Satay.

    — MikeyC #

  12. Doh. MikeyC, could you do me a favor and post that correction on XML.com? I know it’s a hassle with the registration and all, but few XML.com readers read diveintomark. ;)

    — Mark #

  13. “Doh. MikeyC, could you do me a favor and post that correction on XML.com? I know it’s a hassle with the registration and all, but few XML.com readers read diveintomark.”

    Sure, I’ll give it a shot.

    — MikeyC #

  14. “I know it’s a hassle with the registration and all”

    Registration actually wasn’t a hassle at all. I was expecting to have to go through email verification…

    Anyways, here’s what I posted:

    http://www.xml.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/1235

    — MikeyC #

  15. Raw Blog (trackback)

  16. re; Safari’s ‘other rendering bugs’ section -

    Just to be anal about things, title attributes on links do appear in Safari’s status bar. Nothing appears if the status bar isn’t being viewed. It seems to be the only use of the title attribute that is supported.

    — Raena #

  17. I’ve enjoyed the discussion on XHTML2, now and in the past. The migration thing is something I thought about in the past too – but the question I have now is, why migrate?

    XHTML2 is supposed to be not-backwards-compatible as I understand it; so besides the lack of standards support in browsers there are likely to be things which just plain don’t work anyway – to display XHTML2 in HTML4 browsers is going to require a hack.

    Why not negotiate the content on the wire – I currently do this for XHTML in terms of the mime-type negotiation, and it does indeed deliver slightly different pages to browsers that accept the xhtml mime type. Maybe that’s the answer – assign XHTML2 a new mime type (well, how many browsers support the current XHTML mime type…) and negotiate the page format.

    — AlexH #

  18. Mark: Regarding your comments about SSF-DEV, thanks. I know we’re tilting at windmills, but even if it fails there ought to be a few tangible benefits to the effort. One is that we found a glitch in the RSS Validator’s interpretation of duplicate elements in 2.0.

    By the way, thanks for designing that with Sam Ruby — it’s a great learning tool for RSS. This error page ought to be read by everyone trying to figure out how to create feeds:

    http://feeds.archive.org/validator/docs/

    — Rogers Cadenhead #

  19. Raena: that test case is specifically about the title attribute on images. Safari supports the title attribute on links, but not on images.

    — Mark #

  20. Mark – thanks for the template. Just implemented it on my site.

    I noticed one small glitch, though. The author tag has the name sub-tag hardcoded to “Mark Pilgrim”. Would it be possible to change this (on your end) to MTEntryAuthor, or maybe MTEntryAuthorNickname (despite the fact that I don’t see anywhere to set MTEntryAuthorNickname anywhere)?

    — Dan Dickinson #

  21. Dan: I’m using MTEntryAuthorNickname now. From your main MT menu, click “Edit Your Profile” and enter your name in the “nickname” field.

    Why we’re not using MTEntryAuthor (and why my first cut simply hard-coded my name):

    http://philringnalda.com/blog/2002/10/say_my_name.php

    — Mark #

  22. Also using MTEntryAuthorURL for entry/author/homepage. Thanks, Dan, I didn’t even know these MT tags existed.

    — Mark #

  23. “<title>http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/07/03/other_things.html&lt;/title&gt;“… um… That’s not a title. :P

    — Jesper #

  24. Yeah, I was wondering about that when I added the n-Echo feed to my aggregator (nntprss; someone hacked in unofficial n-Echo support today and it works well for a one day hack) and the titles were messed.

    Just change MTEntryLink to MTEntryTitle.

    I’m going to see if I can’t find a way around some of the open issues since I’ve got some free time this weekend.

    — Dan Dickinson #

  25. Good call, Jesper and Dan. Fixed.

    — Mark #

  26. Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog (trackback)

  27. “We both have too much free time.” What can I say, it’s been a lazy summer…

    — Evan #

  28. Már Örlygsson (trackback)

  29. : that test case is specifically about the title attribute on images.

    Ah, gotcha – I couldn’t tell that you meant that; the sentence kind of suggests ‘not supported at all.’

    — Raena #

  30. the iCite net development blog (trackback)

  31. FYI, David Czarnecki also now has a necho template for blojsom, and a live necho feed on his blog:

    http://www.blojsom.com/blog/blojsom/?permalink=84A3D736459F4670EEA0C4C0194B62F1.txt

    — Jay Fienberg #

  32. Blosxom users can try out a sample Necho flavour here:

    http://www.freeke.org/ffg/tech/computers/blosxom/necho.html

    — d.w. #

  33. Már Örlygsson (trackback)

  34. OK, here’s an MT plugin for displaying UTC dates:

    http://www.staggernation.com/mtplugins/UTCDateReadMe.html

    I tried to make it fairly flexible…

    — Kevin #

  35. Thanks, Kevin. Works like a charm. I’ve updated my template to use it.

    — Mark #

  36. Glad it works. By the way, you don’t need to pass it the [MTEntryDate]–within MTEntries, there’s a date context, so it will automatically use the entry date. I’ll try to clarify this in the docs.

    — Kevin #

  37. But where’s the necho icon (preferably not orange)? Are you mad?? I can’t use a feed without an antipixel icon!

    — eliot #

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