Dylan Schiemann

In response to the recent Joe Clark article on A List Apart “Facts and Opinion About Fahrner Image Replacement“, Peter-Paul Koch wrote an article about a possible JavaScript Image Replacement alternative. Somewhat independently, Christian Hellmann wrote an article also for JavaScript Image Replacement. Peter-Paul Koch had a pair of responses, basically saying to Christian: you took my idea, didn’t give me enough credit for it (i.e. link to my site), and your script contains several syntax errors and flaws. I give Peter-Paul credit for standing up for himself, even though he did alienate some people out there with the way he responded. I respect Peter-Paul for speaking his mind pubically and not being afraid of what others think about him, much as Dave Winer does, and much the way I took David Flanagan to task for his Netscape 6 petition. David’s article had several errors, and at a time when most comments agreed with David, I felt that his article and petition were doing a great disservice by miseducating the public and I told him so. David agreed in part and published a follow-up to his article. Because I spoke up about this, David also respected me enough to ask me to provide technical review for the DOM sections of the 4th edition of his JavaScript the Definitive Guide. Peter-Paul provides a great service to the JavaScript community, and does a much better job of writing tutorials than I do (mine tend to be quickly written and never finished or polished). I prefer to quickly learn about how something works, and provide technical feedback to those that write great tutorials.