Douglas Crockford's The Department of Style

Beauty is a viviparous oblong fish
Sean McGrath gave the closing presentation at XTech 2008 last week in Dublin. He quoted from Jorge Luis Borges's The Analytical Language of John Wilkins. Wilkins was an 17th Century English scientist. (He is also one of the characters in Nea
Black and White and Gray
Gray code is a binary sequence encoding in which any state differs from the next or previous state by only one bit. This is an example of a four bit Gray code: BITS 4321 0000 0001 0011 0010 0110 0111 0101 0100 1100 1101 1111 1110 1010 1011 1001
JavaScript: The Good Parts
I relied on two models when I wrote JavaScript: The Good Parts. The first was Kernighan and Richie's The C Programming Language. It is a brilliant little book. I thought there should be a K&R for JavaScript. When it seems that most tech
Suppose They Gave a Format War and Nobody Came?
Blu-ray won. Sony ultimately paid off enough of the other studios to tip the contest in their favor. Toshiba has withdrawn HD-DVD. But Sony's victory may have come too late. The expectation was that when the format war ends, that sales of Bl
Yahoo! pimping malware from banner ads
The Register reported yesterday Yahoo! pimping malware from banner ads. They say that banner ads displayed on Yahoo have contained malware: The ads pitch women's deodorant, but behind the scenes, they contact servers that have been u
Rush's Dream
Last week Rush Limbaugh gave his version of the I Have a Dream speech. In Rush's dream, his Operation Chaos is successful in inciting violence at the Democrat [sic] National Convention in Denver. Limbaugh was also quite harsh to McCain, accusi
Happy Earth Day!
Q&A
What made you write the book? It was a story that must be told. JavaScript is the world's most misunderstood programming language. The language has so much expressive power that it is possible to be somewhat productive with it without knowing wh
Money for Nothing
In the realm of music, it is pretty clear now, even to the so-called Music Industry, that DRM is not a viable business model. Apple's thralls still shop at iTunes, but The Rest of Us aren't buying it. So the cartel is exploring a taxation mode
The Psychology of Everyday Things
In 1988, Donald Norman published The Psychology of Everyday Things. It was about the products we use, and why they are often surprisingly difficult to use. He provides useful advice to designers. He shows that much bad design is due to desig