HTML is the new HTML5

Ian Hickson:

The WHATWG HTML spec can now be considered a “living standard”. It’s more mature than any version of the HTML specification to date, so it made no sense for us to keep referring to it as merely a draft. We will no longer be following the “snapshot” model of spec development, with the occasional “call for comments”, “call for implementations”, and so forth.

Behold, HTML’s living specification. The w3c is still looking to publish a “snapshot” of HTML5.

A Comparative Analysis Of The Differing Approaches Twitter and Facebook Take To “Share” Buttons And What It Might Say, Philosophically Speaking, About Each As A Company

Visually, the “Share” and “Tweet” buttons are very similar, and are structured identically.

On the code-side, however, they are very much the product of two different companies with, I would argue, different outlooks on the web as a whole and HTML specifically.

Facebook’s “Share” Button

Share

There is no such thing as a share_url attribute in any published version of HTML. Facebook just made it up because they felt like it, and it was the easiest way for them to do what they wanted. They’re also mis-using the type attribute, here. type should be a mime-type string, as specified in the HTML documentation, not whatever random data you decide will be helpful.

It would be possible to see these as harmless and (possibly) clever hacks, but this is not a startup based in a garage, this is a billion-dollar company with hundreds of employees. Philosophically it speaks to Facebook’s general lack of regard for the internet as a whole: Facebook does what it wants, and you can go fuck yourself if it bugs you. In other words: Who has two thumbs, a $100 billion valuation, and doesn’t give a shit about your web standards pedantry? This guy.

Twitter’s “Tweet” Button

Twitter uses the HTML5 data attributes, which were created for specifically this purpose, which is embedding useful information in HTML without having to make up your own attributes. As a result, Twitter’s code is not only valid and logical, it’s ahead of the curve. Philosophically this says that Twitter considered the ramifications of this a bit more than Facebook has. This code will be embedded in millions of webpages, many of which will never be updated, so it matters in a big way that it be done right. Yes, the HTML5-style data attributes are a little bit too new for some people to get behind, but today isn’t the only thing that matters. Tomorrow is pretty important, too.

In total, what these buttons say about their companies is pretty simple: Twitter cares about being a good web citizen. Facebook? Not so much.


Update 28 October 2010: Changed conclusion text for clarity.

Introducing Typekit

A platform for css3’s @font-face. The real test of this will be how many hoops you have to jump through to embed a font, and how it handles failure:

We’ve built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.

The upside is that having a central place to access these fonts will be great for caching.

Tal Leming on Embedded Web Fonts

A rare take on embedded web fonts from someone who actually makes fonts and sells them for a living. He suggests a DRM system using a “root table” that says what fonts can be used on what domains, but then says this:

There is nothing that can be done about this. All we can do is present a person with a fork in the road. The person can license the font to give the designer the respect he/she deserves for creating something that the person likes and wants to use. Or, they can ignore the Golden Rule and hack the font.

If that’s the case, and he knows it’s the case, then why not forget the DRM entirely? Why not trust people to do the right thing from the start, and call them out on it when they don’t?