Don't depend on my markup for your application

When I was a certain corporate webmaster, I'd frequently be escalated because of a change in the markup for www·ibm·com. See, people would write applications which screenscraped something off www·ibm·com, perhaps the stock quote, our news headlines (which was perverse since we had a CDF feed from like 1997 on), whatever. People would screen–scrape and rely on the precise structure of the page, rather than request an API to the relevant content (likely because they couldn't justify the cost to us, or didn't have a legitimate reason to have access to machine-parseable content). Apparently this is happening more frequently as people write Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox. Just to repeat, a web page is not an API. It got to the point at IBM where we'd ban IP's we found doing machine harvesting of specific pages and republishing the content.

What people are doing with Greasemonkey is different, but somewhat the same: unless I as a webmaster explicitly say or make a covenant with you that a given URI is meant as an API (regardless of the format of the content), you're on your own. If I update it and it breaks your application: tough noogies. If you want to pay me to build a dependency on my application, then let's talk, but otherwise the idea that someone who provides content on the web is somehow obligated to make sure it works with random, arbitary applications is just bizarre. It was bad enough when we were expected that a given web page would work across every browser platform in creation.

Mess of links for 17.09.2005

At Access Matters, I found a nice writeup of results of testing the interaction between JavaScript and screen readers. As a followup I'm curious to find out how tweaking the DOM using JS affects screenreaders and other accessibility technologies.

The American peace activivist I wrote about earlier this week was deported, er, removed from Australia and billed AUD$11,700 for ASIO's removal services. I'm interested in this because the activites he was allegedely removed for a perfectly legal in Australia as well as the U.S. They may be annoying (dissent is always annoying, right?) but legal. He has yet to be told why he was deported except that he presented a security risk. So remember Americans: your rights cease when you leave the U.S. Express a contrary opinion (on a U.S. topic)outside the U.S. and

Also in Australia, the fig trees of Hyde Park (Sydney's Central Park are apparently dying due to three soil-based diseases. Authorities are to remove 34 fig trees in an attempt to save the remaining trees.

Mosquito is a parody of Firefly. Be sure to catch Serenity if you're a Firefly or Joss Whedon fan.

An essay I need to re–read a couple times: Gene Smith on cost of information discovery responding to a post on why tagging is expensive.

Saturday in Amagansett

Spending the weekend in Amagansett with Abigail, Alister, and Harriet Lewis-Bowen.

Went to the beach last night and this morning. The surf is rather high due to Ophelia passing by (and it was high tide as well). Frisket doesn't swim in the ocean here, but was romping around in the surf and splashing in the tidal puddles left behind on the dunes.

I'll post more pictures here when the connection's better, or you can go to my flickr account to see them.