Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

Glad to here some non-Mozilla browser praise, Asa.

It's a nice idea, but sadly I don't think it'll fix the problem of people being taught to make websites using bad wysiwyg-in-IE6 programs. In my own experience and from reading what others went through, the people teaching most "web design" courses are just parroting material they got from elsewhere... or worse, got paid to repeat.

"At Mozilla, we're going beyond just implementing those standards and actively evangelizing them"

There's also a lot of "embrace and extend" going on too. Mozilla does have brilliant standards support, and the evangelization has made huge changes to the way sites are developed. The web is now without a doubt much friendlier to the non-big-two browsers.

Unfortunately, Mozilla brings with it a whole bunch of Mozilla-specific technology, primarily XUL stuff, that IMO should only be available internally and not to public web pages. I've encountered several web pages and Javascript libraries that were standards-compliant except for the use of some Mozilla-proprietary items (eg moz-box-flex), and that naturally broke things in Opera and Safari.

It's not enough to stick "-moz-" in front of things and hope web developers won't use them in non-standards compliant ways. It ends up being no different to "filter" or "zoom". I have no problem with "-moz-" in front of proposed standards.

My brief perusal of Opera's cirriculum shows a strong coverage of HTML. I hope they follow it up with CSS coverage and some best-practices for Javascript.

Thanks for the good wishes, Asa. I've passed them onto Chris Mills, who was the brains behind the curriculum.

It's good that Mozilla sees the value in what we're trying to do. A more standards-compliant web helps all us in the browser business (yes, Microsoft too) as well as being better for the Web and better for consumers.

Bruce Lawson
Web Evangelist, Opera

"In my own experience and from reading what others went through, the people teaching most "web design" courses are just parroting material they got from elsewhere... or worse, got paid to repeat."
I think that's what Opera's trying to help with - instead of just being a reference for developers, it's a teaching resource that these soulless hacks can use to replace their outdated materials!

Some publishers should make hard copies out of it. And possibly make it translated (either by themselves or some community effort) so lazy newbies won't have excuse not to learn it and continue to use their IE to "learn" HTML, CSS and ECMAScript.

@Asa - Thanks for the kind comments Asa. I'm hoping that all the major browser vendors will eventually support this course, as it's aims really do benefit us all.

@Andrew - what's published so far is all of the background info and theory type stuff, plus all of the HTML tutorials (apart from one or two perhaps). The next release will add accessibility info and some of the CSS in depth tutorials (end of July hopefully), the one after that will finish off the CSS (end of August maybe), and the final batch will cover JavaScript basics (not a complete treatment, but enough to get the reader used to dealing with JavaScript when they see it, understanding best practices, and writing simple scripts. In depth JS is another course in itself!)

@Ephilei - "sadly I don't think it'll fix the problem of people being taught to make websites using bad wysiwyg-in-IE6 programs" - this is going to be a big challenge, certainly, but we are hoping to get as many universities as possible interested in the course, and to promote teaching best practices, as well as learning bet practices. This is something else I'll add to the course when I get time. I was thinking something along the lines of explaining concepts in a visual manner using say Dreamweaver, and then explaining the code behind the concepts in depth so they know what's going on under the hood. Dreamweaver spits out reasonsble markup these days, and it tends to be pretty standard in university courses.

@van - we've got translations and hard copies in the pipeline, don't you worry ;-) We are waiting a little while before making a serious start of these aspects of the project because there will be feedback trickling in for some time, and I want to make the project as correct as it can be before committing it to hard copy.

Asa, about impact, i'd be interested in browser statistics for several Mozilla (-related) webpages. Mozilla>IE and Opera 5% at my page, see http://svg.org/story/2008/7/11/12450/2955

Arrgh, use IE for a moment and see what happens above. Sorry Asa

"At Mozilla, we're going beyond just implementing those standards and actively evangelizing them"

could you be more specific about this comment asa?

Just out of curiosity how many full-time (paid) employees does Mozilla have these days?

Scott, Mozilla has about 170 full time employees.

- A

Rob Enderle is the "tech analyst" who was infamously in love with his Acer "Ferrari" laptop:

One impressive piece of execution is that when you fire the machine up it plays a WAV file of a Ferrari race car revving its engine. That alone is worth the relatively low $1,899 price of admission.

Hope Opera succeeds with the project. But if they don't, it won't be because they lacked Enderle's valuable insights.

"Rob Enderle is the "tech analyst" who was infamously in love with his Acer "Ferrari" laptop"
Tough one ! Well, at least that ferrari laptop doesn't cost as much as a ferrari, not even as a ferrari tyre ! So it's worth paying for it !