Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#21

Post by masklinn » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 4:52 PM UTC

mrkurt wrote: post #6

Wow, weird to see markup of mine show up in a blog somewhere. Meta tags are the most standards compliant way to do those jump menus. I don't buy the idea of hijacking a menu tag to alter browser chrome. From an implementation perspective, I'd much rather they let me link to a manifest file of some kind than add multiple meta tags in places, but it's not a horrible choice. As an aside, I can tell you that if they'd im…

> I don't buy the idea of hijacking a menu tag to alter browser chrome.

The tag does it with no big issue. Though an external ed file (à la RSS/ATOM) would be much better. Meta tags are not really structured and forces everybody to download a bunch of browser-specific crap they don't carte for.

> As an aside, I can tell you that if they'd implemented it as a menu tag, we wouldn't have put it on Ars for the purposes of that article.

Why not? If you don't already have a menu with these "essential tasks" it becomes a great one, and if you do have one and don't want to bother with reimplementing it as (yet anyway) display: none on the jumplist menu.

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#22

Post by runjake » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 5:11 PM UTC

alextgordon wrote: post #9

I think the best way to do it would be an XML file referenced from a meta tag. This is a property of websites, not web pages, so it makes sense to put all the information in one place. Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/ Ars Technica: Serving the technologist for 1.2 decades News http://arstechnica.com/ http://arstechnica.com/favicon.ico Features http://arstechnica.com/features/ http://static.arstechnica.net/ie-jump…

Though I'll never use IE as a daily browser, I do love the possibilities with this new SSB (Site Specific Browser) and jump list functionality. That said, I like your way of doing it better. It's much cleaner than the "spam the main file" method they're using now.

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#23

Post by jasonlotito » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 5:21 PM UTC

sigh This again? Okay, Apple does the same thing with meta tags and links. I don't see the issue here. MS is using the standards. I mean, this guy is basically asking for MS to break with convention and do something people might not have intended. Rather, this way is explicit.

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#24

Post by jasonlotito » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 5:23 PM UTC

_e_ wrote: post #10

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #4

Just FYI, you've got a typo in your markup that's preventing your page from validating: should be

Actually it's not me the author. I run in the link at reddit (the conversation there wasn't that interesting about the topic) so i thought to submit it here. Take care, _e_ Ps: I sent an email to the author of the blog post inviting him to join the conversation here. If interested.

The conversation on reddit wasn't that interesting because the post itself isn't that interesting, or insightful, or worth anyones time.

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#25

Post by dingle_thunk » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 5:24 PM UTC

bl4k wrote: post #5

I can tell you right away what their response will be, and it is that meta extensions are an accepted way of extending HTML5 with browser-specific features, see: http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions "You may add your own values to this list, which makes them legal HTML5 metadata names. We ask that you try to avoid redundancy; if someone has already defined a name that does roughly what you want, please reuse it…

I think the other thing that they will say (if they have any guts) is that this is a beta, and that the point of a beta is to get technical feedback and respond to it. Therefore, it is entirely unnecessary to take such a strongly negative tone in making this relatively minor and mostly incorrect criticism.

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#26

Post by rbanffy » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 5:47 PM UTC

stanleydrew wrote: post #18

dstein wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for that matter HN has a fixed minimum width defined which makes it unable to display properly on an iPad (ie. without scrolling back and forth to read comments).

That's odd. I never have to horizontally scroll comments in my Android browser.

Well... Since we are reporting bugs, the Nook browser is also unable to properly show HN without horizontal scrolling.

That and logging in, but this one I suspect is a browser problem.

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#27

Post by jonknee » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 6:32 PM UTC

dchest wrote: post #11

rscott wrote: post #8

I wish his "HTML 5 from early 2008" site would support zooming on my iPad, pretty obnoxious it doesn't.

I wish people stopped complaining on HN that linked websites don't work on their iPads, and instead sent bug reports to Apple or authors of the websites.

It's not a bug, it's intentional (and thus obnoxious):

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#28

Post by armandososa » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 6:57 PM UTC

I don't have access to IE9, but maybe it's possible to create the necessary meta tags using javascript to clone a (or or a list with links for that matter) the same way jQTouch creates the apple meta-tags on the fly?

I'm guessing this will be in a jQuery plugin very soon.

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#29

Post by alsomike » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 7:00 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #2

I don't know if I buy it. The jump list isn't really part of the page itself, it's metadata attached to the 'website' in question, so I sort of understand them putting it in ... at the very least, I don't think it makes sense as an inline element in the middle of the page content. It sucks having all those meta tags there, though, since that's a huge blob of html that has to go in the header of every page when it rea…

His solution is to put the menu in the page content, and use a CSS work-around to not display it. What about screen-readers? I don't think he thought this through.

Re: Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness

#30

Post by qeorge » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 7:03 PM UTC

bl4k wrote: post #5

I can tell you right away what their response will be, and it is that meta extensions are an accepted way of extending HTML5 with browser-specific features, see: http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions "You may add your own values to this list, which makes them legal HTML5 metadata names. We ask that you try to avoid redundancy; if someone has already defined a name that does roughly what you want, please reuse it…

I must confess, this post makes me feel a bit like Edward Everett. In the future when I attempt this argument, I'll just quote you:

"A lot of us would prefer that every browser maker simply implements the standards, but a lot of innovation in web technologies (img tag, applets, xmlhttprequest) started life as browser-specific extensions. Frowning upon, or not allowing any differentiation would remove a lot of motivation for pouring resources into browser development."

Very well put.