arunerblog

When we tell the story of how the web is advanced, we encounter a lot of personalities — passionate advocates of the open web, who have been doing needle-moving things since the fractious era of the (first) browser wars. Tantek Çelik is one such personality, and I’m pleased to say that he’s going to be working with Mozilla as a consultant for a few months to help us out with important projects in the CSS and identity space. Both are his sweet spots. Long-time Mac users will recall with fondness IE 5 for Mac, which Tantek was responsible for. At the time, it pushed the CSS envelope even further than IE on Windows did (making Tantek our favorite renegade Microsoft engineer). He’s also the progenitor of the CSS Box Model Hack, former CTO of Technorati, as well as one of the forces behind microformats.org.

Tantek and I first met as competitors in 2002 at an event called Meet the Makers (organized by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey), where he was the IE guy and I was the Netscape guy. Along with Doug Bowman (who had just redesigned the Wired news site with pure CSS), we were on a panel at that event discussing web standards with a bunch of web developers. And while at that time we each worked for organizations whose fierce competition characterized the early evolution of the web (*sigh with Netscape moving from underdog to extinction), I was struck by how motivated Tantek was to get standards right.

It is remarkable what the passage of time can do. Not only are we furthering common goals for the betterment of the web, as we have in the past, but now we’re both working in various capacities for Mozilla. Tantek will help us out with the CSS3 Flex Box Model, figuring out what the right thing to do with respect to stylable HTML5 form controls are, and help us with fundamental questions of identity and the open social web in connection with the account manager initiative in Firefox.

Update: here’s a bit on C|Net about Mozilla working with Tantek.

These are excerpted from my notes each night while traveling through India on Mozilla work.

February 28, 2010

We’re in Bangalore. I’m excited to have sethb and ragavan hang with me in my home town, meet some of my friends, and generally get some exposure to the city where my parents live. As far as work trips go, this one has been a rollicking good time so far. We got a chance to visit a Bollywood studio in Mumbai, actually had a celebrity sighting or two, and met some amazing people. But the Mozilla DevDay we are organizing in Bangalore is really the main part of our trip. We’ve “co-organized” the event with Mahiti, an open-source non-profit based in Bangalore, and the Centre for Internet Society. We bought plenty of schwag: t-shirts, wrist bands, posters, and even a few Firefox plushies. We’re expecting over 200 people (at least!) at the National Institute of Advanced Studies campus, where the event is held.

Full Post »

Excerpted from my nightly notes as I traveled through India on Mozilla work. This part covers our voyage to Pune and Mumbai.

February 21

The guy working at the bakery knows where it is, or so he says. He gesticulates emphatically, pointing to the alley behind the neon INRI above the cross, which serves as an illuminating reminder that we’re in a big Roman Catholic neighborhood. I’ve been leading sethb and pike on a tour of Mumbai’s narrow winding lanes, all to further the discourse about the Open Web. We’re in Chuim Village on a Sunday night, after having left GNUnify 2010 in Pune. We’re on our way to the pad.ma offices and are following Sanjay Bhangar’s detailed directions. We’re here to talk to some of the Mozilla Mumbai community about HTML5, video, and emerging web technologies, and to ingest beer and delicious biriyani. We find out that Jan Gerber (who wrote Firefogg) and Sebastian Luetgert are in Mumbai as well, representing the impressive 0xdb.org movie database and working with pad.ma. It promises to be a very interesting evening, if we can actually find the place.

Full Post »