RSS feeds: keep them well hidden June 22nd, 2008

All the minimalists in the house say “Yo!” All the maximalists say “Well, it really depends on a number of complex and mutually antagonistic factors….”

Pretending that Javascript is XSL, part 2: jQuery++ December 19th, 2007

If you’re here, then you probably came from here, and you want to make Javascript more functional. If you didn’t come from there—and this is getting a bit like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, isn’t it?—then you might want to go there first, to see if you want to be here.
So: functional Javascript. Not just functional, but [...]

Pretending that Javascript is XSL, part 1: XSL, CSS and JS side by side December 18th, 2007

There are three main technologies that your browser employs to present HTML for you: XSL, CSS and Javascript. The first two of these are functional: that is, they turn your incoming (X)HTML documents into a set of functions, or behaviours if you like. Because CSS isn’t generally considered a language, let alone a functional one, [...]

Programming shouldn’t be degrading September 19th, 2007

Steve compares “graceful degradation” with “progressive enhancement.” Mostly he takes issue (rightly) with the rhetorical spin that the former applies to the idea of building a website. But I think you can compare them with each other as if they were two different types of crowbar instead: two ways of prising open the task in [...]