I’m no big fan of Netscape 4 anymore, but there are times when I have to use it. Notably, when I’m on my boss’s computer and he specifically doesn’t want to see a long trail of places I visit

. I’m the tech guy. He’s not interested in the stuff I look into.)
I accept that many pages are going to look better in standards-compliant browsers than in Netscape 4. But they should at least render somewhat legibly. There is such a thing as overdoing the standards support.
MozillaZine (which graciously hosts this weblog) is utterly incoherent in Netscape 4.x. At the time I supported their move to break compatibility with Netscape 4.x, but now seeing that you can’t read a damn thing on the main page for MZ, I’m really annoyed about it. Their page validates as HTML 4.01 Strict.
There are other people whose “advanced” and/or “standards-compliant” pages look like garbage in Netscape 4. I thought the idea of complying to W3C Recommendations was to help make HTML pages *MORE* readable by every kind of browser, not less!
Even worse when someone does the “This page is built for such-and-such browser, and if you’re using an inferior browser, you really suck.” Again, I don’t have a choice sometimes which browser I use (say, at the library when I’m stuck with IE6). Which really stinks when I’m trying to read Ben Goodger’s weblog!
Of course, when I’m on my Mozilla or Firefox builds, I usually have a totally opposite opinion (why the hell are you using Netscape 4.x?). But when you make it harder for “lesser creatures” to read your pages, that’s self-defeating in evangelism.

Wow. This is actually a pretty cool feeling.
I’ve been fielding about a half-dozen requests for more information — and better yet, dialogues! — with several different people interested in my MathML editor project. The serverpost widget is finished, and one or two people have asked for the source code for that. I’ve given it to them.
But the MathML editor is waking people up, and I haven’t even got a working demo yet on Abacus. I’m about 50%-65% there, trying to simplify things considerably so that I can launch the project on mozdev with as little difficulty as possible.
The good news is it’s only a matter of time before I have it working. The bad news is I don’t know how much. I do have other things on my mind (almost none of them Mozilla-related), and at this point the editor is itself something I work on in my spare time. So it’s sort of a challenge for me to figure out how to do it right.
One of the big things stopping me now from putting together a demo is deciding just how to store the templates that this editor will use. I thought I had a pretty good XML format for that, but then a good idea regarding clickable icons struck, and I haven’t fully figured out how to integrate that idea into the templates yet.
I should have a couple new widgets to release here in the next few days. One is a simple integer control box, where you can use arrow keys or scroll buttons to adjust the value of a number (0, 1, 2, etc.) That one works, but it’s not generic enough for my tastes. Another will be a character picker, which lets you choose a character from any of the 65,000-ish characters which XML supports.
All in all, things are looking up. Except in terms of actual employment… I’ve been offered a part-time job by a friend. I hope I can hold it (he’s quite the professional, and it’s a high standard to accomplish…).
Still, having others within the Mozilla community voice support for me and my particular project is a very nice feeling. I hope it (the support, not just the feeling) last more than fifteen minutes. 🙂
Of course, not everybody’s going to like it, I suspect..

.

A few days ago, I attended the Mozilla Developer Day @ the Mozilla Foundation’s headquarters. I’d made a good impression (and handed out a couple resumes) talking for about 30 seconds about my serverpost widget and asking a few questions during the sessions. Since then, I’d put my MathML editor project on hold, as I heard a rumor that someone else had a MathML editor nearly finished.
Having heard nothing about this supposed editor since then, I decided I was going to start working on mine again today.
And then this little gem showed up in my e-mail:

Dear Alexander,
Congratulations! You have been accepted as a presenter for
the O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2004 at the Portland
Marriott Downtown, Portland, Oregon, July 26, 2004 - July 30, 2004.
The following proposal has been accepted as a 45 minute
session for the event:
"Mathematics and the WWW:  The abacus.mozdev project"
The exact schedule will be determined soon, and you will
be notified of the time of your sessions(s), although the
times and dates are subject to change 
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Needless to say, I’m very happy. I get to attend all the sessions I want, I’m promoting Mozilla at OSCON, and I have a deadline to get things going, including a good slideshow presentation. My work on new stuff for Mozilla App Suite is starting to pay off. The only thing that could make me happier would be a job offer.

My boss and I have decided to part ways. At first it wasn’t very cordial, but after a quick phone call a couple hours later, we’d calmed down, and then I confirmed the decision.
It’s been a long time coming. But now, I find myself needing a new job.
Anybody willing to hire someone familiar with XML and Mozilla, who wants to develop new toys for Mozilla? Anybody willing to hire someone for a MathML editor in Mozilla?
It doesn’t have to be work relating to Mozilla. That would be nice, but some sort of stable employment where I can afford to live and get around would be quite acceptable. All I’m looking for is a fair deal — for both parties.
I’ve done data entry before; I actually loved it. I’m not much good at advertising, and I’m capable of physical labor, but if it’s office- or computer-related, I can definitely hold my own

.

My Internet service got cut off again (this time, likely to be permanent — thanks boss). But that’s not this entry

.
I spent about two weeks in my spare time hammering together a nice, working XUL widget to interactively modify the DOM of a MathML+generic XML fragment. I bumped into a large number of problems, including some fun with XUL trees.
Yesterday, I had the bright idea that maybe I should show the user the content as a string of XML code in a textarea. Of course, if they can see it, they should be able to edit it directly, right?
After less than ten minutes working with the textarea, it occured to me that the textarea was so much easier to use than the XUL widget I had so painstakingly developed. I guess I’m glad that code didn’t go anywhere but in my blog.

(1) File a bug.
(2) Write up a demo and evangelize on why this is a good idea.
(3) Spend two weeks turning your demo into a working piece of code.
(4) Write up a spec because someone asks for one.
(5) Spend another week fixing your working code to conform to the spec, and start tweaking the spec.
(6) Write documentation on the whole thing.
(7) After doing steps 1-6, only then do you ask if the module owner would actually like to have your code checked into the place you’ve been writing your patch for. UNTIL THEN, assume you can do whatever the hell you want.
Most importantly, never, EVER read http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/new-features.html

. They don’t know what they’re talking about.
On the other hand, if you want to add new code to the tree, it might be wise to think about more than the code you’re writing… <alex:grin type=”rueful”/>

I posted my draft on http:serverpost a few minutes ago, and I was stunned to see 227 comments on my blog total. I didn’t know I was ever that popular…
Turns out it’s apparently called blog spamming. It was obviously artificial (a whole bunch of people I’ve never seen before, talking about something other than Mozilla, all on the same day, within minutes or even seconds of each other, repeating the same stuff over and over again, etc.)
At first, I thought they were trying to advertise something, but after reading a few of the comments, I’ll be damned if I could figure out what..

. so whatever they were trying to do, they failed.
Confusing, and time-consuming to clean out. But stephend had it worse: 3000+ comments. Ouch.
One guy did fool me into reading his post with the name, “Baron David”. For obvious reasons, I glanced. dbaron may want to see about filing a lawsuit to protect his good name, if anyone ever figures out who it was who did this.
All I can say is, “Go figure.” It’s not like I’m that big a person in the Mozilla community.