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CSS Variables (11 April 2008)
Oh yes, we’ve dreamt about it and Daniel and David Hyatt have written the spec: CSS variables! Once this is implemented, we won’t be able to code without them.
Going solo in a month (4 April 2008)
Love pink hair and working at home? Go enjoy Going Solo!
Hypertext on the Web (27 March 2008)
Too much to ask? Probably. Why? As an author linking to this stuff, I’d have to know all this stuff beforehand...or at least know where to find it. That’s a lot of work. No wonder we ended up with sidebars and shallow links to other pages.
The Web is here today...hypertext will have to wait some more.
Jason Kottke wrote this ten years ago. Yes, ten years ago.
Have we moved forward? Not so much.
Ten years in Internet time is like a century out there, and we’re still dealing with (…)IEBlog : Microsoft’s Interoperability Principles and IE8 (4 March 2008)
We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.
Let us clap our hands at the courage needed from the IE team to decide such a change. Congratulations, IE team. From what I hear, it was a tough decision.IE8: let’s take a step back (20 February 2008)
I’ve read a lot of what had to be read on the IE8 controversy. I’m not sure it’s such an earth-shattering issue in the long run.
My mom googles the guys I date (15 February 2008)
i’m a bit nervous about the story. i don’t really like writing that personally that publicly (anymore).
This is a concern that’s growing in many of the discussions I have with friends by email.
People are becoming wary of the volume of personal history online that others can find.
I’m beginning to share the concern: I saw that Jeffrey Zeldman (wise man if there ever was one) mentions his daughter as “A—”.
I’m beginning to think in terms of censorship. Evidently, what you write on (…)XML 10 @ W3C (13 February 2008)
On 10 February 1998, W3C published Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. W3C would like to thank the dedicated communities — including people who have participated in W3C’s XML groups and mailing lists, the SGML community, and xml-dev — whose efforts have created a successful family of technologies based on the solid XML 1.0 foundation.
XML is 10! Impressive when you think that I was in a web agency in 1999 and it was already part of the technical surroundings. It (…)unadorned.org :: untitled (11 February 2008)
the carriages roll forward to a previously predetermined destiny along an already planned path
Thank you Steph. I was having a bad morning and your literary musings gave me a nice dose of musical literature.“Interesting, but of no commercial value": The problem with emerging social media tools (5 February 2008)
There are many people who criticise social media tools because they perceive them as ways to waste time; these criticisms in turn enter the consciousness of large enterprises and form part of enterprise immune systems, ably and effectively shutting out the pioneers who are seeking to derive value from the tools.
(Via Steph)
The other day I had to showcase production usage of Ajax and if possible of interations on social websites. The guy in front of me did not even know Flickr. He was (…)Empty Links and Screen Readers (30 January 2008)
An interesting study by Mike Davies about empty links and screen readers, triggered by the microformats include pattern, triggers in its wake another interesting bit of information by pixeldiva:
I know that this test was concentrated on screen readers, and that it may be perfectly fine to hide links offscreen for screen reader users, but it causes serious issues for those who *can* see the links.
If links are moved out of the viewport, the focus indicator follows the links and disappears (…)On the controversy regarding version targeting (24 January 2008)
Jeffrey Zeldman says:
Maybe we just need to wait for the dust to settle and calm voices to come into the mix.
My thoughts exactly.
I have never believed in heated debates, I like to take a step back.
I kind of understand both sides, as often.
Points that should help us make our opinions clearer: HTTP header for X-UA, the need to go forward, the number of people who couldn’t care less about new browsers and standards and living on the edge (joke aside) and always learning (and (…)No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July (24 January 2008)
I love No one belongs here more than you. I know it’s not accessible per se, it lacks good alt text etc.
But 1. the code is brilliantly simple (yeah, geeks will be geeks) and 2. the site is in itself a good read.
I was reminded this site while reading the comments of another good read at Subtraction: The Story So far.
Go read both, go, go.Has Internet Explorer Just Shot Itself in the Foot? (24 January 2008)
The big irony is that, by doing this, Microsoft have set up the ideal conditions to marginalise their own browser. Clueless developers won’t know about this behaviour so every new site they build will automatically be rendered as IE7. Clued-up developers will use this as an excuse to freeze support for IE and turn their attentions to better browsers.
Food for thought. Andy Budd’s account of the problem with the IE team’s decision for version targeting is, so far, the most thoughtful one. (…)Bobulate » Nothing to Write Home About (22 January 2008)
Upon a quick examination of my photos, it seems that it’s not about the camera at all—the contents of my photos themselves are changing.
It seems that we tend to write less and document our world with photographs more. Moreover, Liz Danzico points out that if I want art, I’ll draw my nice camera, if I want to document something, I’ll use my cameraphone as a notepad.
Very well said and observed. This was hovering at the back of my mind for some time, she said it so much better than I could.The Ingenuity of Unintended Uses (22 January 2008)
No matter how hard we try to create designs for certain uses, people will always utilize them in their own way. These unintended uses can be strange, even brilliant. In the end, you have to tip your hat to the ingenuity.
To welcome 2008, the B&A Staff digs into our collective experience to tell a few stories of misappropriation of both the real (things you can buy) and ephemeral (ideas and thoughts) that we misuse for our own devices.
I love the way people use things in unintended (…)Are pixel font sizes still so bad? (21 January 2008)
Absolute pixel fonts, according to the spec, should not prevent the user from increasing fonts if need be. Internet Explorer had had it wrong for many years. Now all browsers are almost on par. Isn’t it time we reconsidered our adamant rule about not using pixel fonts in our CSS?
Blurred photos are not necessarily bad (16 January 2008)
There’s still a deep-rooted idea that blurred photos have to be thrown away. I beg to differ.
Over-geeked (11 January 2008)
Kingdom Come used to be an Elseworlds, but I think it’s part of the DC Universe proper now. Apparently, Kingdom Come is Earth-22 now.
Oooh boy, I’m utterly over-geeked. And me who thought I was a comic-book-come-web geek, I feel like I’ve just grazed comics when I read comments like that!Lego ad campaign (10 January 2008)
Just brilliant. What makes the accuracy of your playing experience is not the preciseness of the blocks themselves, but the ease of assembling and... your imagination. (Via Cameron Moll)
Understanding Web Design (10 January 2008)
Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.
A must-read. I’ve been fighting for a long time —since Jeffrey Veen’s articles of old saying that the web is not print, or that constraints are part of every medium, print or web equally— to defend the specificity of web design.Jeffrey Zeldman expresses it beautifully.