The DaVinci Coder (or Thoughts on Leonardo's Laptop)

In Leonardo's Laptop, Ben Shneiderman writes about “old computing” and “new computing”. Old computing is actually current computing, where programs aren't always designed to be user-friendly. These “old” programs crash too often (and randomly), spitting back ugly and incomprehensible error messages.

On the other hand, there is new computing, the knight in shining armor to save us from old computing. New computing is the way of the future, where programs are aestethically pleasing and easy to use. They are stable, but when necessary they give the user helpful information about errors.

In Mac OS X, when a program crashes, there is the option to send an error report to Apple. I almost always send the report, because as a programmer I know the value of knowing exactly went wrong with my program. Knowing what the user saw happen is one thing, but being able to see the state of memory and the error returned by the system is much more useful. The more error reports Apple gets, the better and more stable they can make their OS. As Eric S. Raymond said in what has become known as Linus's Law, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

I consider Mac OS X and the iLife suite to be a big step toward new computing. While errors still occur in the OS — and I think they always will &mdash I rarely, if ever, have problems with iPhoto, iTunes, or any of the other iLife programs. They are easy to use, and I think the Aqua theme looks pretty good.

Another interesting question is: “How would you envision the environment of the photographic hobbyist 15 years from now?” I am actually surprised that film cameras have stayed alive this long. While in the short-run it may be cheaper to buy a film camera than a digital camera ($100 ~ $150 for a film camera, compared to $150 ~ $300 for digital according to CameraWorld), it is certainly cheaper in the long run to go digital, as film is only getting more expensive. I imagine that the number one factor stopping people from buying digital cameras is a fear of computers, which is due to the problems of old computing. If in the future we head toward new computing, people might be more likely to buy a digital camera. The only people still using film cameras will be those who simply enjoy the darkroom experience.

Works Cited

"Programming". Wikiquote. 4 Mar 2007. 21 Mar 2007. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Programming

Shneiderman, Ben. "Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies". MA. MIT Press. 2002.

Outlook 2007: Pushing E-Mail Ahead -10 Years

Microsoft has been getting a lot of flack lately over some of its products. There's the Zune, whose DRM makes sharing music (its big selling point) a pain in the neck, and sometimes impossible. Then there's Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's big chance to jump ahead of the competition (read: Mozilla Firefox), which was received to lukewarm response by the web browsing community. But I don't think any of us expected Outlook to hit that list, or to hit as hard as it just did.

I never had a big problem with Outlook (although I do use Mozilla Thunderbird). Sure, its security was lacking, but that is to be expected from just about any Microsoft product with internet access. But Microsoft has decided that Outlook 2007 will be switching to the Word rendering engine for HTML e-mail. At first, this may not be a big shocker; after all, we've all be using Word for years without any difficulty. What does this mean for us?

Up to now, Outlook has used the Internet Explorer HTML rendering engine. Now that Microsoft has released the new IE 7 with all its new features, Microsoft has decided to switch engines for “in the interest of security”. (Utter) Unfortunately, the CSS support in Word is — to put it mildly — terrible. This means that “e-mails that use certain advanced HTML and CSS features will be somewhat degraded in appearance in Outlook 2007”, although advanced seems to be a relative term. ("Outlook") Check out this article for a comparison of one HTML e-mail in Outlooks Express and 2007. Kevin Yank, web developer and author of several books on web development, wrote,

Not only that, but this new rendering engine isn't any better than that which Outlook previously used — indeed, it's far worse. With this release, Outlook drops from being one of the best clients for HTML email support to the level of Lotus Notes and Eudora, which, in the words of Campaign Monitor's David Grenier, “are serial killers making our email design lives hell.”

Here's a nice list of the CSS short-comings in the Outlook/Word 2007 rendering engine from that same article:

• no support for background images (HTML or CSS)
• no support for forms
• no support for Flash, or other plugins
• no support for CSS floats
• no support for replacing bullets with images in unordered lists
• no support for CSS positioning
• no support for animated GIFs

These are all basic functions — things HTML and CSS have been doing for years; not only that, they are pretty much expected by developers.

The best part is that Microsoft is now trying to defend their decision. Among their reasons are that “customers ‘wanted the richness of the editing experience they were used to from Word integrated throughout Outlook. While Internet Explorer 7.0 is great, it was never intended to be an editing tool.’” ("M-Dollar") Also, Outlook e-mail apparently needed a uniform appearance and greater security. Wait a minute, wasn't IE 7 (the ex-rendering engine) supposed to be the most secure IE yet?

No matter what Microsoft can dream up to justify the switch, it's not going to satisfy the writers of HTML e-mails, who will now have to work harder to make sure their e-mails are sufficiently simple to be viewable in Outlook 2007. Shouldn't support for CSS and HTML should be improving, not jumping backwards at Microsoft's whim?

Works Cited

"Internet Explorer 7". CNET. 2007. 8 Feb 2007. <http://reviews.cnet.com/Internet_Explorer_7/4505-3514_7-32111537.html>

Reimer, Jeremy. "M-Dollar: Microsoft defends lackluster CSS in Outlook". ARS Technica. 2 Feb 2007. 8 Feb 2007. <http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/2/2/6873>

Reimer, Jeremy. "Outlook 2007 change sends HTML email back to the future, for better and worse". ARS Technica. 15 Jan 2007. 8 Feb 2007. <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070115-8619.html>

Utter, David. "Kiss Your CSS Goodbye With Outlook 2007". Web Pro News. 12 Jan 2007. 8 Feb 2007. <http://.../wpn-49-20070112KissYourCSSGoodbyeWithOutlook2007.html>

Yank, Kevin. "Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007". SitePoint. 12 Jan 2007. 8 Feb 2007. <http://.../microsoft-breaks-html-email-rendering-in-outlook/>

"Zune". Wikipedia. 2007. 8 Feb 2007. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune>

Remember I was talking about Internet Explorer?

As I mentioned in my last post, coding for IE is a bit of a joke; one never knows what code will work and what won't without doing a bit of research. Unfortunately, I can't easily test any of the new features I add to this blog in IE (I'm on a Mac -- the best Microsoft will give us is IE 5). I've tested it extensively in Firefox and Safari (the Apple browser), but I have to log onto a PC to test in IE.

So, if you notice anything not working in IE, please comment or send me an e-mail (or just tell me when you see me). Thanks a lot.

Internet Explorer icon courtesy of Aaron Burrows.