Following up on recent posts: Support and HTML5/CSS3

If you haven’t heard already, openSUSE 11.3 was released last week, to mostly rave reviews. I’ve been running some of the pre-release versions in VirtualBox, and am planning to convert my laptop Linux from Kubuntu to openSUSE 11.3 this weekend. Will let you know how that goes.

In the meantime, there are a few items to share with you:

• I can’t resist telling you about an interesting thread on the differences between forums and mailing lists that developed on the openSUSE mailing list today. Felix Miata had a pretty perceptive explanation (if you overlook his lack of distinction on the quality of answers):

In many many years on the internet, I’ve found people tend to prefer one or
the other.

Forums:
1-invariably mousetype (rude, tiny text; certainly applicable to forums.opensuse.org)
2-higher ratio of unanswered questions to answered questions
3-higher ratio of good answers to unhelpful answers
4-better moderation
5-subject miscategorization widespread (leads searches in wrong directions)
6-pulled (more work to get, but get no processing forced)

Mailing lists:
1-displays text legibly and comfortably at users preferred size
2-better ratio of questions asked to questions answered
3-better ratio of good answers to unhelpful answers
4-poorer moderation
5-topics lack categoration within particular lists (hard to narrow searches)
6-pushed (less work to get, more work to process)

This ties in somewhat with my post of a few weeks ago on learning about KDE, etc. My completely unscientific poll seems to indicate that forums are pretty popular, but did not address specifically the quality of answers you get from a particular venue (BTW, you can still vote in the related poll–Click the link at the top of this paragraph). What do you think? Comment below.

• Let me give you a few more links related to HTML5 and CSS3, discovered this week:
  • I found the TinyMCE Advanced plugin, which adds some excellent standards-compliant features to the WordPress default Visual Editor. Unfortunately, some WordPress 3.0 users are complaining that it doesn’t install. See Comment 964 for a possible workaround. This plugin does not address HTML5 directly, but perhaps with a few persuasive notes, that can change.
  • The fine folks at SitePoint are offering cheap online classes for HTML5 and CSS3, starting next week. John Allsopp, one of the founders of the Web Standards Project is teaching them, and it sounds really interesting. The two-week HTML5 course begins July 26, and costs just $9.95, and the three-week CSS3 course that follows is just $14.95. Take ’em both, and it’s just $19.90. Even though I will be on vacation for part of this time, I think I’m signing up.
  • Over at the About.com HTML site, they’re taking a poll on interest in CSS3, with a few links highlighting some of the features you can use now.