How you could build a search that the fediverse would welcome

Mastodon and the fediverse are clearly taking off, bringing in millions of new users, and also organically inspiring a wave of technical innovation that dwarfs...

Call and Response

Lots of nice writing out there that either replies to or references some recent posts here. Highlights: Dictatorship Versus Democracy in app store politics at...

It's still a Phoenix

Before it was called Firefox, or Firebird, Mozilla’s lightweight browser was known as Phoenix. An appropriate name, given than it rose from the ashes of...

It's the circle of (web) life!

Picture Terry Semel holding a little lion cub up in the air with both arms extended. What’s that? It’s the Circle of Life! Well, maybe Circle of Life 2.0? Okay,...

Uncanny Prescience

The E4X support I’d mentioned in my web trends predictions post has just shipped as part of Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 . Though the the release notes track a little bit...

Greasemonkey Insecurities

Today’s most interesting mailing list posting : Uninstall Greasemonkey altogether. At this point, I don’t trust having it on my computer at all. I would think...

What Firebird Needs

My recent ranting about fonts notwithstanding, I’m usually seen by the web development community as a Microsoft apologist. I use (and like using) Windows and my...

Upon the demise of Netscape

Now that Netscape’s more or less officially dead, it occurs to me that it might be worthwhile for Google to bankroll the Mozilla Foundation , either by donating...

fixing web pages on the fly

I was thinking about the fact that browsers have to fix up a page internally in order to render it correctly if elements are incorrectly nested or are left...

task-specific browser UIs

When Jason asked " Why are Safari and Sherlock two different applications? " it made me realize that what I want is a desktop application, similar to...

review of the Elements, and updates

New in Magazine , a review of The Elements of User Experience , JJG’s new book . Yes, he’s a friend. Yes, I (mostly) praise the book. That’s because it’s good....

Introducing the Microcontent Client

Microcontent is information published in short form, with its length dictated by the constraint of a single main topic and by the physical and technical...