Microsoft Word is crippling the youth of America from having a brighter future.

Sort of. In regards to the entire history of education, the computer has barely scratched the surface; only gaining significant relevancy some short 15-20 years ago. But if the “recent” pace of growing technology has shown us anything, it’s that comparisons to the past are often moot points. I mean, sometimes I just look at my iPhone and think stupidly about how impossible I would’ve thought this was only 5 years ago. 5 years ago! Most of my favorite TV shows have been running for longer than the time it’s taken for technology to amaze me.

But I digress. The plain, documented truth is that the standard of education in America is lower than just about every other relevant country in the world. And the scary thing is that America is seemingly the most sluggish to find change. Matched with the acceleration induced upon the world by technological growth (see: the internet), the potential for an American landslide in progress comes closer to reality.

I’m going to propose a pretty heavy change to the standard American education. Rather than (only) teaching students how to use “word processing” programs like Microsoft Word to write essays, let’s have them write their essays in HTML.

I’m not talking about throwing Designing with Web Standards at the kids, and having them learn about Doctypes, the w3c, etc etc etc – I’m talking about teaching them raw, nitty gritty, HTML. A simple five paragraph essay, and I don’t know how many of these I wrote throughout my middle and high school careers, could read as follows:

And that’s it! Rudimentary, fundamental, semantic HTML. Now, web development becomes an easy entry point for any kid. On top of that; being taught semantically sound HTML is something SOOO many developers take for granted – if they learned how to separate their content from their design & logic at a young age, by just focusing on their content, imagine how much better the web would be.

But mostly? All Americans will be able to language that they can develop into a skill – and this will work seamlessly into the fabric of their continuing education. And not just any skill, a skill that can easily later get them a J-O-B. That’s what the country’s educational system sorely lacks – a way for kids to grow up and get good jobs. HTML is an easy to train, easy to learn, and easy to teach skill that can become invaluable if taught on a widespread scale as an integrated portion of a student’s basic skill set.

So how to conclude? With the fact that I only editorialize in blogs tehse days, it’s hard for me to figure out what to say. My apologies to Ms. McNanny, my freshman year english teacher who taught me how to write an essay in the first place – this conclusion isn’t gonna be stellar.

What will an American student who learned HTML be saying in 20 years when they grow up?

Suck on that, china.

One of my favorite Firefox plugins has been JSView. It’s a handy tool (pictured to the left) that lets you instantly view all JS and CSS files attached to a website. Sure there are other ways of going about this (firebug’s net panel is one), but it’s speed and ease of use have always been a crutch to me.

So of course I was disappointed to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 only to find out JSView didn’t support it! And it’s author’s domain went and expired, so it looks like he’s not getting around to writing an update anytime soon. Dude: if you’re reading this, there are enough people wondering. Why not just ask for five bucks on paypal for anyone that’ll donate? I bet you’ll get at least like, 15 dollars.

ANYWAY; cheers to Firefox user sjoiler for privately releasing an updated version on his site – grab at your own risk! Not officially released by Mozilla as an add on! But I tried it and it worked. Get it here –> http://it-centralen.dk/jsview/get.html

I thought I had beat him; but again with christ like abilities Sankho Chaudhuri has risen from the dead to take over the #1 spot for google searches under my first name.

Wanna know who he is? Well I’m damn sure not gonna give him any more link juice. I’m pretty sure the only reason he got his #1 status back was because I gave his wikipedia page another link in the first place! Terrible.

Not sure what I’m talking about? Strangely; still wondering? Check out what happened a few posts ago.

Wondering why I haven’t written anything remotely close to web development in months? Well that’s because it’s my blog – and I can.

Seriously? I’ve been insanely busy and promise I will get some new tutorials and thoughts on relevant subjects, other than my personal crusade for a better google page rank. I also will round out the design here shortly – for those unafraid of my ugly, un-styled comment form, please leave me some suggestions as to what I should do.

I use a few different browsers during my working day. To do my simple browsing, email checking, etc etc, I use Google’s chrome – because it’s fast. To do any web development; I use Firefox – because of the plugins. I can’t work without Firebug, the w3c Validator, and the Web Developer tool bar.

But near the end of a project, there comes that time to check the… other… browsers. Internet Explorers 6-8. I don’t use IE for even accidental surfing – strictly for cross browser checking. So I haven’t changed it’s settings or anything, and I’m forced to view it’s default home page.

Yeap. MSN.com.

Somehow, whenever I’m in the middle of debugging a site under IE6, I always manage to learn some new facts courtesy of Microsoft’s top notch web editors.

Bill Gates(‘ company) drops some knowledge on you:

1. The average annual salary of an janitor… in 1958. ($3,455)
2. The ever pressing issue of “Who looked hot” at the People’s Choice Awards
3. Fruit bats get kinky, just like us
4. Miley Cyrus! Not Hannah Montana Anymore!??
5. Old people get married at Whole Foods. Good old fashioned, hard hitting online journalism.
6. Does this city make my butt look big?
7. Puppy CPR

More to come!