Diacritiques

J’ai indirectement fait allusion aux standards du web, en mentionnant les CSS qui, avec la langue xhtml forment le couple sur lequel se basent les normes en vigueur de la conception de sites. A ce sujet, deux ressources précieuses en langue française:

• Pompage, site dont la mission est de « traduire en français certains articles importants des revues faisant autorité dans la communauté du web design anglo-saxonne »
• Standblog, « un journal sur les standards du Web et autres futilités » de Tristan Nitot.

Sur Standblog, il y a bien plus que des textes techniques. Je recommande vivement le billet qui parle du Service Pack 2 de MS Windows XP.

Mise à jour: Rajoutons Openweb, site francophone conçu par « des professionnels de la conception, de la réalisation ou du graphisme, du marketing ou du journalisme, mais aussi des passionnés » des standards du web. Merci, Stephanie !

I’m famous! All right, not really. But Creative Commons write on their blog about their new and improved search engine. And test it with the request “Show me all photos of Paris that I can make derivative works from and sell afterwards”. Result: the first two results are from my Paris gallery!

I am actually a bit embarrassed. I didn’t use the Creative Comments license in order to present myself as a great photographer or, as far as this web log is concerned, thinker. As far as I have researched the matter, I find that Creative Commons licenses typify a way to make text, images and multimedia documents, ie much of what falls in the categories of creative works and thought, accessible to and useable by a wider public. It may well be one of the most efficient ways to distribute one’s content as long as it can reasonably be kept outside a purely commercial setting. My “Creative Commons” buttons are there for two main reasons: to advertise the scheme and, to a lesser degree, to state my ownership of the not otherwise attributed documents on this site in a less pompous way than by reserving “all rights”.

I am also embarrassed because my photography pages urgently need redesigning. They were done years ago, before I had heard of CSS. I’d rather you looked at the picture dump index.

I had seen this before but lost the link before I could blog it. Luckily Carthik stumbled upon it as well; he even has a picture. This is about an American company that makes backpacks and bags and, if I remember correctly, sells a sizeable portion of its production in Canada, and maybe (hopes to be present) in France as well. Whatever the reason, the washing instruction lables inside their products are bilingual, English and French.

Here is the English translation of the French version, taken from the above linked site; but with a few (irrelevant) corrections:

• Hand-wash in lukewarm water
• Use mild soap
• Dry flat
• Do not bleach
• Do not machine dry
• Do not iron
• We are sorry that
• Our president is an idiot
• We didn’t vote for him

According to this urban legends site, the company’s owner Tom Bihn claims to have been unaware of this initiative, which was taken by one of the bag manufacturer’s employees.