HN user

cfq

44 karma

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/cfq; my proof: https://keybase.io/cfq/sigs/rPePeAGngUCdbvoYPAbeM6nJIOl-RVuRrs9fluH7VzE ]

Posts2
Comments13
View on HN

If you're interested in this, you should definitely check out the documentary Birdmen of Istanbul[1]. Turn on captions for English subtitles. It tells the story of the residents of bird cafes in Istanbul and the very old tradition of goldfinch, greenfinch and siskin training for singing.

They're completely obsessed with birds, dedicating their whole lives to finding and training them. They have special vocabulary for classifying different bird songs. It's known to be a dying tradition as well but this documentary might have rekindled the interest.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-M5JVR1JlM

Introducing HTML5 15 years ago

I own and read both books. Mark Pilgrim has a more straightforward approach and his book seems to be more about getting things done. I usually use it to get ideas whilst working on an implementation or use it as a reference.

Whereas Introducing HTML5 is a great read and gives a lot of background information about certain design choices. It also covers almost everything. It's my favourite HTML5 book.

As for one last comparison, I think a newcomer would find it harder to follow Dive Into HTML5 but you get sucked into Introducing HTML5 really fast. In a couple of chapters, it gives you enough to start playing with this new thing you've learnt.

Here's a real life scenario:

1) Develop a project in a rush

2) Becomes successful

3) Boss/Client decides to launch it in 2/5/10/22/34/82 countries

4) Project becomes one big hack

One simple Unicode test and 10 minutes of initial thinking would've saved all this trouble.

I read the HTML and wondered what I should be making of it. So I took a trip down to the old HTML5 specification at: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html

"The i element represents a span of text in an alternate voice or mood, or otherwise offset from the normal prose in a manner indicating a different quality of text, such as a taxonomic designation, a technical term, an idiomatic phrase from another language, a thought, or a ship name in Western texts."

"The b element represents a span of text to which attention is being drawn for utilitarian purposes without conveying any extra importance and with no implication of an alternate voice or mood, such as key words in a document abstract, product names in a review, actionable words in interactive text-driven software, or an article lede."

And none of that markup made any sense to me.