Lately I find more and more people in comments fighting for the need for “view-source” in our web products and claiming it to be a “vital part of the open web” and a “great way of learning for new developers”. This ails me as it is in my point of view a very outdated idea of learning and building web sites. I am not saying that view-source is not important – I am saying that there are better ways of learning and analysing code.

When view-source was king

Back in the days when I started working on the web you learned by looking at the source code of other peoples live web sites, copying and pasting what they’ve done and reverse engineering the workings to see how you can use or improve it. This is how I learnt JavaScript as there were no free blogs, tutorials or articles out there to tell me. The books available (basically the JavaScript Reference) dealt with the technologies themselves and not their application in a browser world. JavaScript for example was still considered a toy language in comparison to the mighty Perl or ASP or PHP or Java.

A few years before the web I learnt Assembly Language by analysing games on my C64 and trying to get endless lives. I did this by freezing the game, checking the part of the screen that changed when I lost a life (the counter) and then hunting through the memory to find the code that altered the counter on the screen (finding the DEC). I learnt how to cheat the system – not how to write Assembly Language. That came later when I had spent a few years reverse engineering.

That kind of commitment we don’t have time for if you want to learn web development.

View source gives you a view and not the source

Despite the time spent, the problem with looking at a web site with view source is that you don’t see the source, but you see a view:

• If you build web sites with performance in mind and in high end environments you send browser-optimized views to different browsers. This means that learners would see what is optimised for Firefox and then try it out in Safari. Or worse, they see what we need to jump through to make old IEs behave and consider this the best way of developing.
• Live code is normally minified and concatenated and has comments removed. So you learn the how but not the why. Some of the things you see might be terrible hacks but necessary for the environment used to build the web site.
• Checking generated source is even worse. Browsers add browser-specific code that the original writer never added.
• Live web sites are normally built by committee and have a lot of things in them the developer feels dirty about: tracking codes, third party ads with ridiculous code quality, quick hacks to get the thing out the door at the agreed time and date.
• Most web sites these days are not written by hand – if you build for the web and you don’t use the power templating, CMS and databases and web services offer you are missing out on a lot of great opportunities. HTML is the end product of a methodology and a build process – not the start of it.

Open source is the new view-source

If you really want to learn about how web sites are built and how to use certain technologies, look at the source code repositories instead. GitHub, SourceForge, Google Code and all the others are full of great examples. This is where developers communicate with each other and show off the newest technologies.

As the final product is created and not written by hand you will find the important comments as to why something is the way it is there.

Say my entry to the 10K competition World Info. If you look at the source code you will see minified JS and CSS, all of it inline. I would never code that way. This is the result of a build script. I tell the world that:

If you look at the source on GitHub you get step by step comments how I have built the solution.

What would a new learner get more information from? This was not much more work for me – as I document where I write I keep things up-to-date. Even more interesting, I actually fixed a few problems and change my code while I was documenting it – as I was forced to look at it again from a different angle after having written it.

Learn the why not only the how

The main problem with teaching people how to become good web developers is that there is a massive lack of patience. Instead of realising that knowing the syntax of a language doesn’t make you a developer we think this is all that is needed. It is like learning the grammar of a language and then trying to communicate without having the vocabulary. Or analysing the syntax of a poem without looking at the metaphors and their meaning or the historical environment it was written in. Most of what makes development and writing art and craft is lost because of the lack of patience.

W3Schools is a great example. It tells you the quickest solution and gives you something to play with. This is why it is massively successful. It is a terrible resource though as it doesn’t explain what can go wrong, when this would be a bad solution and it gives people the idea that they know everything by knowing the syntax. The PHP documentation is better as you learn in the community comments how to apply the functions and how they fail.

If you really want to learn about web development and standards then there are a few very good resources:

• The Opera Web Standards Curriculum
• WaSP Interact
• HTML5 Doctor
• CSS3.info

And far too many personal blogs that I could list here now. None of these are 2 second lookup tasks – but once you went through some of them you will know the why and the how and you will be able to see what is sensible to take on from a source view and what is probably not that a good idea.

Back in June Dan Frydman of Inigo Media Ltd submitted a petition to the UK government to encourage government departments to upgrade from IE6 and 6223 people signed it.

A short time ago we got an answer by her Majesty’s government which was a no – of course.

Government says no

Disregarding the horrible PR mumbo-jumbo re-assuring us that the government takes security serious (when they are not leaving personal data files on trains) it gets actually interesting:

Complex software will always have vulnerabilities and motivated adversaries will always work to discover and take advantage of them. There is no evidence that upgrading away from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure. Regular software patching and updating will help defend against the latest threats.

This of course is a wonderful example of stating the bleeding obvious, but it is interesting that there is “no evidence that upgrading IE6 makes computers more secure”. I wonder why Microsoft then keeps advertising that IE8 is more secure? True, IE6 can get all the patches for massive attacks but phishing warnings and other interface changes in latest browsers do not get added. So we protect users under the hood but we still leave the barn door wide open for social engineering attacks. A malware warning like Firefox, Chrome or more modern IEs have would help there (unless it gets removed when it affects advertising). If there actually is no proof it would be a good opportunity for Apple, Google and Mozilla to collect some numbers and publish them – not on blogs or other “in crowd” media but in the magazines read by the people who make IT decisions for governments and large corporates.

Security patching not an issue?

The government statement then continues to stress the great relationship they have with Redmond for security related matters:

The Government continues to work with Microsoft and other internet browser suppliers to understand the security of the products used by HMG, including Internet Explorer and we welcome the work that Microsoft are continuing do on delivering security solutions which are deployed as quickly as possible to all Internet Explorer users.

There is a distinct lack of information about what they are – both the other suppliers or the measures. My guess is that Google is starting to approach governments with Chrome and the online office suite. Let’s note down though one thing here: that there is no problem to deploy fixes very quickly to all IE users – we will go back to that.

No centralised security mandate?

Each Department is responsible for managing the risks to its IT systems based on Government Information Assurance policy and technical advice from CESG, the National Technical Authority for Information Assurance. Part of this advice is that regular software patching and updating will help defend against the latest threats. It is for individual departments to make the decision on how best to manage the risk based on this clear guidance.

So, wait – beforehand we were told that there is continuous patching with ease as Microsoft helps a lot and now we learn that it is up to the department to really follow that advice. It is not a mandate, but only a guidance. This means actually that there are probably terribly outdated IE6 in use as changing the IT infrastructure is quite low on the list of priorities for a lot of departments when there are people in the waiting rooms complaining. Which means that if upgrading and patching is not centrally mandated there is no chance we’ll ever have a secure and homogenous IT environment in government bodies.

A departmental decision?

Public sector organisations are free to identify software that supports their business needs as long as it adheres to appropriate standards. Also, the cost-effectiveness of system upgrade depends on the circumstances of the individual department’s requirements.

Which means that a department could switch to other software – especially when they could save money? The catch here is “appropriate standards” which probably means a EULA. Or what, exactly? The other big “oh well, we really can’t do that, can we” here is the cost-effectiveness of a system upgrade. In many cases of Microsoft systems this probably means that the hardware in use is not up to scratch to support other OSes than Windows 2000 or XP1.

Upgrading is an issue?

It is not straightforward for HMG departments to upgrade IE versions on their systems. Upgrading these systems to IE8 can be a very large operation, taking weeks to test and roll out to all users.

How so? Earlier we heard that patching IE is not an issue, so how is replacing IE an issue? Unless of course we’d own up here and admit that it is the infrastructure and the hardware that was defined and set in stone around the millennium when all were scared about Y2K and believed that the IE6/XP Suite will never have to be upgraded.

No time for testing?

The other issue seems to be that testing our systems is hard:

To test all the web applications currently used by HMG departments can take months at significant potential cost to the taxpayer. It is therefore more cost effective in many cases to continue to use IE6 and rely on other measures, such as firewalls and malware scanning software, to further protect public sector internet users.

This to me says that there are systems that were built in a short-sighted manner a long time ago – for IE6 and windows 2000 when they were the new black and every consultant got his Microsoft certification training and out of a sudden was a real expert who can predict the future of the next 10 years. So instead of fixing and replacing the rotten core of the system we add new doors with shiny hinges and a security guard before it and it will be fine. This is like hiring a bouncer for a club where people fight on the dance floor.

The fascinating part of the firewall and malware scanning software is that it makes the life of the end users even more hell than surfing with IE6 already is. One of my favourite things when I switched to Mac/Linux is that my processor can now deal with stuff I want to do rather than analysing my traffic and incoming requests and that I can work without being interrupted by a “scanning all your files, come back in 2 hours” message.

Who is to blame?

The answer of the government was not only predictable, but (in a very shortsighted and limited view) also understandable. Nobody wants to own up having been cheated. And consultants telling people that a network will never have to change do cheat people – no software is 100% future-proof and you cannot run an office on 10 year old hardware without upgrading. The speed of innovation and wealth of information we encounter these days can not be easily consumed on systems that were meant to be used when having a 100kb JPG on the homepage was a huge decision and meant you lost 1/3 of your visitors.

Funnily enough the easiest and favourite target of web geeks in this issue – Microsoft – is not to blame. They do offer a simple way to make their new software support IE6 with a meta tag or – much more appropriate – with a header send by the server (IIS in this case). So the argument that software built for IE6 has to be tested by every department on IE8 is moot as Microsoft solved that issue for us. That the government probably didn’t even know about that option is where it gets interesting:

Reactions like this to an obvious upgrade are our fault

To a degree I have to say after all my years on the web and as a developer, writer, blogger and editor we are the first to blame for no movement in large corporations and the government.

When luminaries of the web design and web development world only showcase things made up to use a certain new technique instead of real world examples it is not surprising that developers working for government agencies don’t get sent to conferences or get their books.

When famous designers say that working for a large company or government is “boring work” and “that there is no point for a creative person to deal with politics in companies” then I really wonder if we have become self-sustaining and complacent. We moved on from shaking the foundations of web development and making people understand the massive opportunity the web as a media and the open web technologies as tools represent to inventing for ourselves rather than for the end user. What will have more users who are much more frustrated when something doesn’t work? The readers of a famous design blog or people who have to pay their council tax online?

When industrial grade research information and tools from companies like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are never read or – even worse – reproduced in a shinier but less consistent manner by one man army companies and considered to be better (until the one man army is bored of it a month later and never updates) then there is no wonder that other companies don’t believe in these solutions either. Furthermore it means that these companies – who really formed and run the internet as we know it now – will stop sharing their tricks or spending time and money writing them down in a manner that makes sense for people not on the inside.

Shifting our focus

The only way that I can see how responses like the one from the UK government can be prevented in the future is by shifting our focus:

• Instead of design prototypes and made-up web sites to show a certain technique let’s demand real production case studies and their effects (I remember one @media where the redesign of blogger was shown and how much traffic shifting to CSS saved the company – more of that, please).
• Ask Microsoft to invite experts, host videos and tutorials of experts with modern solutions and distribute them on their network of clients
• Make a massive comparison of government web sites and praise what some have done well (nothing works better than competitiveness)
• Collect success stories of switching to open source solutions and how it saved money and time
• Take a horrible IE6 only solution and show what it could look and work like if HTML5 and CSS3 were supported
• Stop plotting shiny pixels on canvas elements and call it a cool HTML5 solution and instead build a complex online form or spreadsheet system using all of the goodies of HTML5
• Stop applauding people for redesigns of their blog and instead shift people into the limelight who made a difference in an environment like large financial systems or local government

I’ve had these and other points in 1:1 discussions for years now and I yet have to see movement in these areas. Right now, we are happily thinking we innovate and push the envelope where in reality we are making each other go “Oooohhhh” while a large chunk of the audience that could benefit from our knowledge is stuck with really poor experiences on the web. I’d like to pay my council tax on my mobile phone’s browser and get notified when I need to do it – right now there is no way to do that.

One of the, oh heck, the only really good thing about flying Delta was their Fly-in-Movie competition. This is a section of their entertainment program where they show short movies of budding movie makers who compete to be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York this coming April.

The green film

One of the movies in there is The Green Film and I loved it (“Cold call” was also very good).

In this 6 minute movie a self-righteous film director proclaims pompously and full of enthusiasm that they are producing the greenest movie ever. All the food is organic, everything gets recycled, all the make-up is free of animal testing and there is not a single thing that is not in the correct order and would cause a frown on the faces of the friends of the earth.

The wrong doers and how they should be lectured

When the main actress arrives she rolls up in a stretch limo and asks for her trailer. The director tells her off for not cycling or using a bus and shows her a deck chair and an umbrella which is to be her “trailer”. He goes on to explain all the bad things that do not happen on his set and especially goes into a detailed sermon over plywood used on other sets and that it actually is based on rainforest wood. He also is very insightful about using the right light bulbs on the whole set.

Getting caught out

The actress on the other hand starts wondering about the professionalism of the whole setup – which culminates in her wondering if the movie is shot on film rather than digital. The director then goes nuts on the mere idea of movies being shot in digital and that digital film is just “TV on big screens”. His rant goes so far as to proclaim that art could never be done with digital cameras. To the arguments of the actress about film processing involving toxic chemicals and shipment of reels all over the world the only thing the director comes up with is “but we recycle – a lot!”.

The movie ends with the actress filming herself in the woods using her mobile (cellphone for Americans).

How this applies to us

This is exactly how we get stuck when advocating best practices on the web. One interesting exchange that shows this is Chromatic Sites advocating for CSS vs. Table layouts and Mike Davies shining a massive big light of truth on the arguments provided.

Another interesting “oh not again” moment was Jeffrey Zeldman doing the inaugural testing of the top 100 sites in a validator causing an avalanche of comments.

You know what? We’re wasting time and energy in these discussions and we are so immersed in our own “doing the right thing” that we forgot to care about what we wanted to achieve in the first place. We get into meticulous details of explaining certain technologies and invent idea after idea based on the same technologies we tried to make people understand by force years and years ago and failed.

Standards and best practices are there for a single reason: make our work predictable and easy to work with other developers. This only works if everybody is on board and understands these best practices – in essence, following them needs to make their job easier. If following a “best practice” doesn’t make our lives easier but produces extra overhead it will not catch on.

Instead of concentrating on showing the benefits of working in a predictable manner we concentrate on ticking all the right boxes and telling everybody who is unfortunate enough to listen about all the details we had to think about to get where we are. We know all about the plywood and the right light bulbs but we forgot to talk in the language of the people we want to reach with our ideas. We are not concentrating on how we deliver the message and that there might be better techniques and technologies available nowadays than the great problem solvers of the past.

Web development is evolving and changing to new channels of distribution and re-use. Widget frameworks allow re-use of the same little application across the web, mobile devices and now even Television sets. These things is what we should have our sights on and not if a certain document passes a dumb validation test or not. Validation is the beginning of a quality control process, not the end of it. Semantic value cannot be validated by a dumb machine but needs a human to check. Zeldman did point this out in his introduction to the test, but this message always gets forgotten in the uproar of indignation over and unencoded ampersand.

The last few months Chris Mills from Opera was busy gathering a lot of great web development experts around him (with a lot of pimping by yours truly) to assemble probably the most thorough and up-to-date web standards curriculum on the web: The Opera Web Standard Curriculum

Several dozen articles, all licensed with Creative Commons will be available to cover the tasks of web development: from understanding the principles of the web up to Ajax interaction. During the whole course the main focus is on usability, accessibility and writing maintainable code. We deliberately left out browser hacks and backward facing solutions and build on the ideas of progressive enhancement and unobtrusive JavaScript.

I wished this would’ve been out when I started, it’d have saved me a lot of time learning bad practices and un-learning them (which is always a painful process).

So, read it, use it and teach younglings the way of the standards Jedi: The Opera Web Standard Curriculum

The lovely people at Paris Web just released all the videos of the 2007 conference on dailymotion. My talk is the only English one and deals with the topic of how following web standards helps your team to be more successful:

Slides:

The other videos are pretty interesting insofar as they cover accessibility and internationalization matters from a technical, social and legislative angle. My favourite was the IBM server that automatically transcribes videos by running voice recognition over the audio stream.