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On the web

All things web-related.

Articles

• Going solo in a month (4 April 2008)

  Love pink hair and working at home? Go enjoy Going Solo!

• 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.

• 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?

• Internet Explorer is the new Netscape 4 (14 October 2005)

  Why does this site look different in Internet Explorer and in a modern browser? Because there comes a time when you have to learn to let go. Here’s how the revelation came to me, a few Sundays ago around midnight.

• Atmedia 2005 wind-down: everything you’d want to know (or not) (14 June 2005)

  Here’s my own summary of the first event of its kind in Europe. Web developers, accessibility specialists, gurus, you want it you name it.

• Nickame or not? A recurrent question (28 August 2004)

  I’ve been wondering for quite a long time now about "noms-de-plume" on the internet: how can one establish a coherent and unambiguous presence online?

Blog entries

• Web applications: Why is there Air? (20 August 2008)

  Air, Flex and Silverlight are "back to the future" approaches for Rich Internet Applications (...)

• Derek Powazek on Permanence and Scars of Choice (11 July 2008)

  We all have tattoos already, of course. They’re our stories, our mental scars. The things we (...)

• On “antiquated” WCAG rules (10 July 2008)

  [O]ne more reason for being judicious in the use of JavaScript - I am predicting that within 3 (...)

• Why I Still Use Windows Despite the Peer Pressure (1 July 2008)

  I just read this “I still use Windows” statement. It hasn’t always been pretty (see: Windows ME), (...)

• BBC Rejects hCalendar Microformat Because Of Accessibility Concerns (25 June 2008)

  The BBC have announced that they’ll be removing hCalendar microformats from their online (...)

• CSS Variables (11 April 2008)

  Oh yes, we’ve dreamt about it and Daniel and David Hyatt have written the spec: CSS variables! (...)

• 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 (...)

• 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 (...)

• 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 (...)

• XML 10 @ W3C (13 February 2008)

  On 10 February 1998, W3C published Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 as a W3C (...)

• unadorned.org :: untitled (11 February 2008)

  the carriages roll forward to a previously predetermined destiny along an already planned path (...)

• “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 (...)

• Empty Links and Screen Readers (30 January 2008)

  An interesting study by Mike Davies about empty links and screen readers, triggered by the (...)

• 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 (...)

• 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 (...)

• 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 (...)

• 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 (...)

• Over-geeked (11 January 2008)

  Kingdom Come used to be an Elseworlds, but I think it’s part of the DC Universe proper now. (...)

• Lego ad campaign (10 January 2008)

  Just brilliant. What makes the accuracy of your playing experience is not the preciseness of (...)

• Understanding Web Design (10 January 2008)

  Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human (...)

• John Resig - Easy PDF Sharing (5 December 2007)

  I’m not sure I’m too fond of Slideshare either, so the solution by John Resig is nice to have. (...)

• Mozilla Prism (30 October 2007)

  Yeah, I’m sure alpha-geeks know all about Prism since the day before yesterday, but I had to (...)

• Wired: We Are the Web (19 October 2007)

  [T]he ways of participating unleashed by hyperlinks are creating a new type of thinking - part (...)

• Web Accessibility Issues in the Dojo Toolkit (15 October 2007)

  Now that user interface components are being created via scripted HTML elements such as div and (...)

• Web Typography Under the Bonnet (5 October 2007)

  The job of web typography is not to simply mimic that of print. Excellent analysis of ALA in (...)

• Matryoshkus (3 October 2007)

  Classy! (Via Ecrans.fr)

• Preconceived ideas on web contents (18 September 2007)

  A Web page is a "page" only when it is printed. We are also very constrained by (preconceived) (...)

• How People with Disabilities Use the Web (13 September 2007)

  How long ago should I have added this link here? Years!

• Wow: Eric Meyer’s CSS Layout Generator (23 August 2007)

  I would love to see a live demo of this. CSS layouts are always a pain except for a few (...)

• 8 ways to drive a graphic designer mad (21 August 2007)

  Ah, all too true. Nervously laughing at my screen. Twitching, too, now. And I’m not even a (...)

• See Who’s Editing Wikipedia (21 August 2007)

  I had heard of people hacking Wikipedia articles for their own good, but now the traces are (...)

• A good idea regarding search forms (20 August 2007)

  We’re used to doing search forms with links in them to restrict the search to images or videos (...)

• Faking the "Lomo Effect" (10 August 2007)

  That’s good that people fake the Lomo effect. I’m fed up with feeding 6x6 film into a crappy (...)

• 81% addicted to blogging! (10 July 2007)

  Wow, I’m geekier than I thought. (Via Olivier)

• On versioning and compatibility (6 July 2007)

  I’m catching up on the HTML 5 WG. I’ve just read Chris Wilson’s input on HTML compatibility. You (...)

• Vote for me if you like my pictures (2 July 2007)

  I’ve just submitted photos to JPG Mag, and would like to see you vote for them, if you like (...)

• You Are Not a Robot (18 June 2007)

  We’ve got technical jobs, and the computer industry would be one of the ideal fields for (...)

• Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design (13 June 2007)

  The title says it all. Note to self: never ever forget this URL again.

• Avoiding Extreme Accessibility (13 June 2007)

  That’s a good one, and I sometimes find myself guilty of that. He also mentions Joe Clark’s (...)

• Isn’t it time to stop the consortium/corporation bashing when talking about web standards? (11 June 2007)

  All too true, all too true. A big thank you to Chris for venting out a bit.

• WCAG Samurai Errata for WCAG 1.0 (8 June 2007)

  This is very interesting, even commonsense in a way, and someone needed to speak up. Yet I (...)

• JavaScript 1.8 Progress (1 June 2007)

  Not for the faint of heart. I’m not sure I like the way it’s heading. I do like the readable (...)

• Calendar:Device Sync (22 May 2007)

  I want to help! I’m sick with being stuck with Outlook at work and nothing comparable at home, (...)

• And now, a quote by Matthew Pennell (17 May 2007)

  Our community, like no other I know, is built on altruism. All too true, all too true. The web (...)

• The Real Story of JPG Magazine (15 May 2007)

  That’s sad. (Via Philippe)

• Stephanie Booth - Challenges in Multilingual Blogging (2 May 2007)

  You need 45 free minutes, but I like this speech. It gives me insight on questions I’ve been (...)

• A List Apart: Contrast and Meaning (24 April 2007)

  Yet another must-read article on A List Apart. Learn the basics of contrasting content and how (...)

• Lame excuses for not being a Web professional (18 April 2007)

  Quick note to remind myself that I have to read this article more closely when I get the time. (...)

• A possible solution for cluttered computer desktops (23 March 2007)

  I’ll look into this solution: BumpTop 3D. It tries to give a usable but realistic-feeling (...)

• Seven Steps to Better Presentations, by Jeffrey Veen (8 March 2007)

  One of the most valuable set of tips about presentations: this is what I want to be able to do (...)

• YouTube - Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us (8 March 2007)

  Very nice-looking video. I guess there are many things missing. For instance it’s a bit on the (...)

• Many htaccess Examples (14 February 2007)

  A slew of Apache rules well worth the read, even if the style is dry.

• Managing user errors (2 February 2007)

  Never leave the user dumbfounded, always use errors in a creative way. Yay! My personal model (...)

• Gmail server error (25 January 2007)

  Wow, that’s the first time I see that. Another reason to stay wary of something that’s been live (...)

• Colour combinations (23 January 2007)

  Second Mark Boulton link the same day: like everybody, I always suffer when it’s time to choose (...)

• Whitespace (23 January 2007)

  I’m sure some people take it for granted, but every once in a while I need to be reminded of (...)

• Top Firefox 2 config tweaks (19 January 2007)

  A few good things to learn about tweaking Firefox (thanks Odin).

• Resolutions and display width (19 January 2007)

  The numbers clearly show that monitor sizes and resolutions are getting bigger. The most common (...)

• Photographic Palettes (5 January 2007)

  Definitely worth keeping in mind: how to come up with clever colour palettes based on select (...)

• The false fight between fun and business (5 January 2007)

  I can’t believe I missed this post — lucky the good people at 37Signals have year-end reruns! (...)

• Firefox 2.0 and Access Keys: cure worse than disease (22 November 2006)

  Gez Lemon points out quite rightly that the new accesskey combination in Firefox is broken. A (...)

• Description links (21 November 2006)

  I’m already using longdesc attributes (sometimes), and I feel it would be redundant to provide a (...)

• Reference typography books (21 November 2006)

  Roger Johansson shares an excellent list of typography books. I’m saving the URL here for future (...)

• A kid and his secret friend, thanks Michal (9 November 2006)

  My friend Michal is a very gifted artist, and I’ve loved what she does for a few years now. I (...)

• Tackling automatic field focus usability issues (6 November 2006)

  I’ve been bothered with that for a long time. Also, I’ve been bothered with automatic field (...)

• Closing the gap between list items in IE (3 November 2006)

  Mark Newhouse in Taming Lists had a solution for closing the gap for list items which is a side (...)

• Top CSS Tips (3 November 2006)

  Jonathan Snook’s list makes sense, mostly, and I should comment on it, but it’s the morning so I (...)

• Five Simple Steps to designing with colour (2 November 2006)

  Start with no colour... it may sound like a joke but it isn’t. As always the “Five simple steps” (...)

• How not to fix HTML (31 October 2006)

  Joe Clark has some serious grievances towards the way things are driven, either by the W3C or (...)

• Uncanny Valley (31 October 2006)

  One never ceases to learn. (Via A photo by Martin, entirely unrelated)

• If You Pick One Color, Pick Them All (30 October 2006)

  It will never be repeated enough: Always specify a background colour.

• Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book, article... (25 October 2006)

  Every time you do a presentation you wonder how to grab your audience. Here’s the trick. A (...)

• Creativity Jam Session: Find the Flaw (18 October 2006)

  I must take a picture. Feel free to remind me if I don’t. Edit: I did

• Text-Resize Detection (17 October 2006)

  I can’t believe I missed this article, although Chris told me it was coming. I must do more tech (...)

• Mozilla Accessibility Summit 2006 (13 October 2006)

  Boy how I’d love to be there. But of course I won’t (it ended up yesterday, so I should have said (...)

• How I Explained REST to My Wife (12 October 2006)

  REST is still a bit hazy for me (especially in te mornings), although it sounds like a basic (...)

• In search of the missing run-in value (11 October 2006)

  Implementers implement what they implement. (...) To get implementation we have to make noise. (...)

• Good writing on the web (9 October 2006)

  Usually, not much is said about content, much is said about containers. This said, how can one (...)

• Long Live the Q Tag (6 October 2006)

  ALA features an excellent article on the Q. I came to the conclusion that italics are the way (...)

• Blahg (6 October 2006)

  Jeffrey Zeldman asks How about you? Still blogging? Still all fired up about it? The whole post (...)

• Glassdog (4 October 2006)

  Lance Arthur is one of the few people who inspired me enough that I had to quit everything and (...)

• Designing a web page (2 October 2006)

  Things are so often like that: functionality first, design for it second. (Via (...)

• Greenpeace targets Apple (29 September 2006)

  Copyright infringement for the design? Interesting diversion from Greenpeace. They’ve never been (...)

• Why go to conferences? (27 September 2006)

  Find the motivation: meeting people in real-life makes you want to do better. Too true. (Via (...)

• Unicorn: a unified quality checker (27 July 2006)

  This reminds me of the French-speaking Opquast, but with a good deal of automation. I’ll keep my (...)

• Chris’s book is out! (14 July 2006)

  This is good news. I can’t begin to imagine how much hard work has to be put into writing a (...)

• Eolas for ever (19 June 2006)

  I worked on a site today, assessing its accessibility, and saw a Flash insertion through (...)

• WebAIM’s Site Redesign (12 June 2006)

  WebAIM has redesigned and provides us with the case study. Some things I’d have done (...)

• Designers: Learn to Write! (18 May 2006)

  Derek Powazek is a long-time advocate of the idea that people do read text on the web; here he (...)

• AJAX and Screenreaders: at last a long study (17 May 2006)

  Like everyone I suppose I’ve been studying at the office the outcome of Ajax interactions (...)

• Atmedia 2006: without me (25 April 2006)

  I thought I would go to atmedia 2006. How deeply mistaken was I to think so. For those who (...)

• We’re not as good at multitasking as we think (11 April 2006)

  We are not, repeat not, multitask in essence. Cognitive overload is happening at a pace our (...)

• 2006 evolt.org Design Contest (11 April 2006)

  Yes, there’s going to be a redesign. Read on if you’ve got some inspiration. It’s good for your (...)

• An unusual signature (4 March 2006)

  Unusually someone came up with a nice «sender» name for a spam: «Stridently O. Cloudiness». (...)

• O’Reilly: What Is Web 2.0 (31 January 2006)

  A bit «one-name-fits-all» and over-enthusiastic, but Tim O’Reilly’s paper is worth a glance (...)

• Cool accessibility quote (20 January 2006)

  Says Bert Bos in An essay on W3C’s design principles: The word "accessibility" refers primarily (...)

• Atmedia 2006: Gotta be there (12 January 2006)

  I was at atmedia 2005, and will definitely be there for 2006 too. That is, if the Powers That (...)

• A practical guide to web typography (26 December 2005)

  Richard Rutter has chosen to adapt Robert Bringhurst’s book The Elements of Typographic Style to (...)

• Thinking Outside the Grid (20 December 2005)

  Molly hinted at this train of thought back in June in London, and now she’s written it down: we (...)

• Is your homepage immature? (2 December 2005)

  Is your company’s home page crowded? Chances are that you don’t master your web grammar yet. Indi (...)

• Checklist for the WCAG 1.0 (23 November 2005)

  I did not know there was such a concise document. I didn’t look deeply enough, I suppose. Thanks (...)

• Wired redesign: 3 years already (24 October 2005)

  Douglas Bowman looks back at the Wired redesign, three years ago. This was the milestone that (...)

• Resolution-dependent layout with Javascript (13 October 2005)

  Cameron Adams is a clever guy. To accomodate thevariety of screen sizes we have nowadays, what (...)

• Jeremy Keith interviewed (11 October 2005)

  I was lucky enough to see Jeremy conferencing on the DOM, and this interview is a nice read. Go (...)

• ALA’s Print Styles explained extensively (21 September 2005)

  A detailed explanation of ALA’s new print CSS. Where it’s said that floating elements in a print (...)

• Web standards will be adopted if we force them through (14 September 2005)

  Keith Robinson explains that, basically, customers couldn’t care less about standards. So we (...)

• Rounded corners without extraneous markup, thanks to the DOM (11 September 2005)

  We were talking about such a method a few weeks ago at work, and never took the time to (...)

• Spooky! (5 September 2005)

  Chris DiBona took a weird picture in black and white (ha, ha).

• A DHTML news scroller that doesn’t suck (14 July 2005)

  Congratulations to Chris for doing such a nice job.

• CSS: workaround vs hack (1 July 2005)

  It’s true that it’s better to take into account the possibilities of CSS rather than the current (...)

• Work/Life Balance (29 June 2005)

  Dan Cederholm has a sad thing to say about when things get off-balance. Here’s to hoping that (...)

• How can governments help accessibility? (20 June 2005)

  Andy Clarke said during atmedia that legislation on disability is dangerous ground indeed, and (...)

• The job of a front-end developer: a must-read (1 June 2005)

  Chris Heilmann sums up what makes our job so hard and so fun at the same time. "Programmers (...)

• Atmedia 2005, take three (24 May 2005)

  YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! After more than three months beating about the bush (what, four (...)

• Atmedia 2005, take two (10 May 2005)

  That’s it, four months after I said I would try to come to atmedia2005, I’m supposed to register. (...)

• Symbolizing accessibility: redoing an icon (17 January 2005)

  I was surfing Joe Clark’s website for an upcoming project (teaser, anyone?), and found this (...)

• Atmedia 2005 (14 January 2005)

  http://www.atmedia2005.co.uk/ The atmedia 2005 conference will be held in London on the 9th (...)

• SimpleBits redesigns (5 January 2005)

  I like what Dan Cederholm did with his site. It’s more subtle than a huge makeover —at least (...)

• Crazy skeletons (31 December 2004)

  I love what Michael Paulus did: rip off cartoon characters’s skins and try to imagine the (...)

• When does a job become a way of life? (4 December 2004)

  When you are so close to your work, it’s no longer just a job, it’s a way of life. Exactly the (...)

• RSS Reading Habits and Aggregator Design (9 November 2004)

  Phew, I’m not the only one not reading all the unread items in my feed reader. He he. Seriously (...)

• How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content (5 November 2004)

  The home page is no longer the centerpiece of sort it’s always been assumed to be in a user’s (...)

• Metadata for the Masses (25 October 2004)

  Peter Merholz explains how freely-entered keywords (adaptive classification, so to speak) can (...)

• TOevolt 2004 (13 October 2004)

  I forgot to add a link to TOevolt, Tara’s endeavour into organising a world-sized event in (...)

• Real World Web Design (27 August 2004)

  A list of what a realistic web site development process should incorporate. And its follow-up, (...)

• Information Architecture Heuristics (25 August 2004)

  A ’rule-of-thumb’ listing of basics one should not forget when putting up a web site, (...)

• Search Engine Optimization, The Best Way (25 August 2004)

  I’m not really after having nice google ranks, because on this site there’s nothing really (...)

• Real-life validation (20 August 2004)

  I read Jim Byrne’s Accessible Design tips newsletter and like it. Yet his last tip on (...)

• Fitts’ Law (20 August 2004)

  According to Fitts’ Law: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size (...)

• The Daily Flight: Long Live Line Length (18 August 2004)

  Note to self for future reference: 10-11 words on a line, 10-11 words on a line, 10-11 words on (...)

• RSS won’t get you laid (9 August 2004)

  Funny, but quite realistic. Mark Pilgrim has a point: But really, you should ask yourself if (...)

• Have Content? Get Blog. (5 August 2004)

  As often, D. Keith Robinson is pertinent. His point is that especially if you provide a (...)

• Planning for redesign, 1: Establishing the context (3 August 2004)

  Adam Greenfield presents us with a shortened version of all the preliminary work one should do (...)

• Redesign and tag transformation (30 July 2004)

  Dunstan Orchard does a magnificent job of explaining how his manic mind reworked all the tiny (...)

• Gmail, Orkut, etc... (24 June 2004)

  I’ve been thinking a lot recently about, on the one hand, all the "social networking systems" (...)

• Web Design Not Sexy Anymore? (19 May 2004)

  D. Keith Robinson rants about the idea that being a web designer is not as sexy as it once was. (...)

• Bilingual, soon (24 February 2004)

  As you may have noticed, the last two articles are in french and in english. This site is (...)