Object, Echo, Tango

4 July 2003

Mark Pilgrim’s article The Vanishing Image: XHTML 2 Migration Issues over at XML.com takes a thorough look at Internet Explorer’s implementation of the HTML object element. Whilst being interesting reading from an XHTML 2.0 point of view, it also makes excellent accompanying reading to my Flash Satay article at ALA. (Hat tip: James Ellis)

Also worth a mention is The Echo Project, which I’ve been following for the last 10 days or so. The purpose of the project is to explore defining a new content syndication, publishing and archiving format, independent of any particular vendor, for the free use of the community. The planning is all going down on Sam’s Wiki, and comments are invited from anyone who has a valuable contribution to make. It’s very interesting reading, and a worthwhile project to give support to.

Mike Jones at Footnote* Consulting has relaunched their site this week. If you’re a design or development outfit looking for some overflow capability, Footnote* offer a reliable, no-nonsense service that comes highly recommended.

The more mundane news of the day is that I resigned from my job. Whilst the prospect of moving on to something new is exciting, it’s a horrible task having to resign from a job. What a strange mix of emotions today has been. I’ve got something new and interesting lined up, which I’ll speak more about soon. New job = exciting. Resigning from old job = terrifying.

About Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan has been hacking on the web since around 1996 following an unfortunate incident with a margarine tub. Since then he’s spread himself between both front- and back-end development projects, and now is Director and Senior Web Developer at edgeofmyseat.com in Maidenhead, UK (GEO: 51.5217, -0.7177). Prior to this, Drew was a Web Developer for Yahoo!, and before that primarily worked as a technical lead within design and branding agencies for clients such as Nissan, Goodyear Dunlop, Siemens/Bosch, Cadburys, ICI Dulux and Virgin.net. Somewhere along the way, Drew managed to get himself embroiled with Dreamweaver and was made an early Macromedia Evangelist for that product. This lead to book deals, public appearances, fame, glory, and his eventual downfall.

Picking himself up again, Drew is now a strong advocate for best practises, and stood as Group Lead for The Web Standards Project 2006-08. He has had articles published by A List Apart, Adobe, and O’Reilly Media’s XML.com, mostly due to mistaken identity. Drew is a proponent of the lower-case semantic web, and is currently expending energies in the direction of the microformats movement, with particular interests in making parsers an off-the-shelf commodity and developing simple UI conventions. He writes here at all in the head and, with a little help from his friends, at 24 ways.

Comments

§ Mike: If the first paragragh is ’Object’ and the second ’Echo’... why on earth is my para ’Tango’!

btw thanks for the plug... i even got feedback from one of your readers on it looking dodge on Mac/IE5 (probably the only combo not tested by my IRC friends!)

Where are you moving to? Similar role? Do your old co need overflow capability now? ;]
§ Drew: Maybe because your site is orange .. or maybe because it just sounded good after ”Object, Echo”.

I guess I had police radio call signs in mind ...
§ Mike: Roger that. Over and out.
§ Nathan Pitman: Hey Drew, I’m glad you have decided to move on to pastures greener, It will make you happy again, and that is good.

Make the most of your first few months, they are critical to your employers perception of you as a person, and your value to them as an organisation.

All in the <head>