Today marks the release of Pronto - All is Golden. Pronto is the side project of Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen. Don’t let the Wilco association give you preconceived notions of the sound of the record. It’s less of the Wilco alt-country sound and more of a grass roots Americana sound. I’ve heard some refer to it as AM Radio rock. I’m not exactly sure what that is (I hear the older folks used to listen to it), but what I do know is that it sounds damn good and you should pick yourself up a copy at the the Contraphonic web store, iTunes or Amazon.
In addition to the new album, today also marks the launch of the new Pronto site. I assisted in the XHTML/CSS development and WordPress implementation. Visit today to find out the latest band news, tour dates and sign up for their newsletter. They’re also on that hip new thing called Twitter, so you can follow them there as well.
Full Disclosure: The exceptional drummer of Pronto, Mr. Greg O’Keeffe, is not only a friend of mine, but also my employer. While that may insinuate some bias in my opinion of the album, it doesn’t. I’d just as openly let him know that it sucks if I thought it did… right after my yearly review.
Yesterday the W3C announced the formation of a new HTML Working Group with goal of updating the HTML & XHTML standards and bring them into the modern age. I personally have only 2 concerns with the new effort.
One, there won’t be a formal specification until Q3 2010. Yup, 3 1/2 years. And that’s if they keep to the timeline. But the other issue with that is once it’s a final spec, it’ll be another 2-3 years before these features are commonplace enough in the browsers for them to be useful. Of course the browser makers can be proactive and start implementing these features before the spec is a final recommendation. But considering the current recommendations (which are around 7 years old) still aren’t fully implemented, I’m not overly optimistic that will happen.
My second concern is that the co-chair of the new working group is Chris Wilson, the Group Program Manager for Microsoft Internet Explorer. My concern is not about Chris as an individual (I don’t know him), but that he’s employed by a leading browser manufacturer. And not necessarily because it’s Microsoft, I’d feel the same if it was someone from Mozilla, Opera or Apple. Having a browser manufacturer heading an organization with the task of updating the HTML standard seems like a conflict of interest. But considering the other co-chair is Dan Connolly from the W3C, there may be some checks and balances in place.
On a very positive note, the discussions related to the new recommendations will be open to all in a public forum. From the press release:
“Based on significant input from the design and developer communities within and outside the W3C Membership, W3C has chartered the group to conduct its work in public and to solicit broad participation from W3C Members and non-Members alike.”
So if you feel you have the expertise to contribute to the new HMTL/XHTML recommendations, sign up.
This is a very exciting development for anyone who works in the world of HTML. A lot has changed since the last recommendations were finalized in the ways we build web sites and web applications. It’ll be great to have markup that accounts for that and allows for developers to push it even further.
Just don’t let this take away from any CSS love :)
