Web Fundamentals
Day one of Fundamentos Web just wrapped up here in Gijón.
I got my talk out of the way pretty early on: I was the second speaker, right after Bert Bos. He invented CSS; I… um… build websites… sometimes.
Not everyone was listening to the simultaneous translation. I estimated that less than 50% of the audience were wearing headphones (I’m assuming that they weren’t all listening to their iPods). Either way, I made a conscious effort to speak slowly. In fact, I overdid it a bit and over-ran. If recollection serves, that’s something I’ve never done before.
I played it pretty straight, leaving out a lot of jokes and culturally-specific references. I couldn’t tell whether the audience was completely bored or just paying close attention. People came later and told me they liked it so I hope it was the latter.
One person who told me that I made Ajax understandable was my interpreter. I thanked her for the compliment but I was kind of surprised. When I’ve talked to interpreters, I got the impression that the key to simultaneous translation is to become a conduit—to remove yourself (literally your “self”) from the equation. So I’m amazed that my interpreter, Priscilla, was able to translate and pay attention to the content at the same time. But then, I’m somewhat in awe of the ability to do simultaneous translation. As Priscilla said, when it’s done really well, it’s invisible—kind of like what Jared says about good design.
I wonder how Priscilla managed to cope with the talk after mine. If you’ve ever seen Jeff Veen talk, you’ll know that he’s quite animated. I must find out how she translated “Tingle Fizz.” Jeff managed to out-do my pitiful attempt at localisation: I just translated some slides; he gave a short speech in Spanish (although that’s still not quite as impressive as Joe’s Icelandic benediction).
The day wrapped up with an impressive panel of representatives from browser vendors: Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, Konquerer and Nokia, moderated by Bert.
I noticed a certain dichotomy in the panel (dichotomy is a milder word than hypocrisy).
There was a lot of talk about standards and innovation and debates about what features browsers should implement. The general concensus was that browsers should implement what the developers are asking for… or, even better, implement what developers are actually doing.
That’s fine. It sounds great in theory. But the reality that I saw was that each browser vendor had their own hobby horse. For some, it was SVG. For others, it’s canvas. The actual technology is irrelevant. That reality conficts with the theory: instead of implementing what’s relevant, browser vendors sometimes push their own agendas. That’s all well and good but the real problem arises because those browser makers are W3C contribitors. Those hobby horses don’t get checked at the door. The result is that browser verndor politics end up having a big influence on the W3C process—they become W3C politics. And who gets the blame? The W3C.
I started typing this in the hotel bar in Gijón and, as I was writing, the browser representatives one-by-one showed up. So now I’ve ended up having this rant IRL as well as having a good ol’ blog rant.
Ah, that feels better.
Update: You can download the slides of my presentation and scoff at my attempts at localisation.