Pages Tagged “Category: Web Design”
Blog Posts
- Ideas for Unifying a Fragmented Website
My website’s built with a mix of WordPress, hand-coded HTML, and multiple Eleventy instances, which means tags and search are fragmented.
- The Web Was Responsive From The Start
I’ve been meaning to write a post about email newsletters that still assume you’re reading on a desktop and send out layouts that rely on a wide screen size and end up with tiny 2-point type on a mobile phone — you know, where most people read their email these days. Then I stumbled on […]
- Subdomains vs Subdirectories, IndieWeb and Identity
In response to girrodocus’s question: #PersonalWebsite creators… what’s your rationale for deciding when to use a subdomain or a subdirectory? I usually prefer to put sections in subdirectories. That makes it possible to make the entire site portable (depending on authoring tools, anyway). Ideally, I want something that could be zipped up and moved. Or […]
- Venting on Metadata Schemes
For human-readable HTML, I can write: <a href=”https://example.com”>Lois Lane</a> For machine-readable HTML: <a rel=”author” href=”https://example.com”>Lois Lane</a> For IndieWeb microformats: <a class=”p-author h-card” href=”https://example.com”>Lois Lane</a> But for inline Schema.org I have to write: <span property=”author” typeof=”person”><a property=”url” href=”https://example.com”><span property=”name”>Lois Lane</span></a> I’ve been grumbling about all the redundancy in putting multiple sets of metadata on a page: […]
- Overstuffed Websites
I’m not ready to give up on the flexibility of WordPress for my main blog yet, but holy crap are these pages heavy. Even with compression. There’s no reason it should take 450K (before compression) and 20 requests to display a 500-word post. And I don’t even do ads, popups, social sharing buttons or anything […]
- Minimum Viable Blog?
What’s the minimum viable blog feature set these days? Rich text posts (output; the source can be anything) Titles Permalinks Tags/categories Navigation RSS feed Images hosted locally Media embed (remote or local?) Author info for multi-author blogs I won’t back down on RSS/Atom, because there’s SO MUCH you and subscribers can do with it. I […]
- Trying to get at the features left out of the mobile app
If someone wants to use the functionality you’ve left out of your mobile site or app, and is willing to slog through the desktop site on their phone or tablet, you should at least let them get at it!
- Broadcasting “Likes”
I figured out exactly what bugs me about Twitter & Facebook putting friends’ Likes in the timeline.
- Recent Links: Geography, Internet and Comics
Live wind patterns, historical travel times, reliability of social networking, the importance of web page weight, emergency gadget power, UNIX Daemons and Seurat’s Justice League.
- A matter of perspective
XKCD’s Umwelt art project is the best use of browser-sniffing I’ve ever seen.
- A lot of web developers have forgotten the lessons of IE6
A lot of web developers have forgotten the lessons of IE6, and just as they used to build desktop websites coded only for one engine, now they’re coding mobile sites specifically for Webkit, even when other browsers would be perfectly capable of rendering the designs they want. This is exactly the sort of thing that […]
- Web Intents
Cool idea: Google is designing a “Web intents” system for web apps similar to intents in Android. For those who haven’t used Android, “intents” allow apps to register actions they can take — such as “I can share (or edit) images!” — and other apps to hand data over to them. That way your camera […]
- Recent Tech Links: Unmaintainable Code, XKCD on The Cloud and More
How To Write Unmaintainable Code – what not to do when programming. Computer de-evolution: Features that lost the evolutionary war – ITworld ComputerWorld (via Slashdot) Two XKCD comics: First, “The Cloud” explained. Second, anyone who has used command-line utilities on Linux will appreciate Manual Override. International Usability – Big Stuff the Same, Details Differ (Jakob […]
- Recent Links: Moon and More
Linkblogging: SMBC, XKCD, space pics, Flash Forward, mobile web usability and more.
- Webkit display:table-cell Problem
Bug: I wanted to retrofit an old table layout with CSS to help out iPhone & Android users, but WebKit only applies block style to some table elements.
- Comic-Con Hotels 2010: Reviewing the Reservation Form
Travel Planners finally streamlined the process to minimize the impact of the massive traffic spike that always accompanies Comic-Con reservations.
- E-Flashback
Yesterday I received an email newsletter from Webring promoting guestbooks and counters. Wow. The 1990s really *are* back.
- Card Usability
Usability question: Is it better for a form to auto-detect the credit card type from its number, or have the user select it as an error check? (Consensus on Twitter and Facebook was to have the user select it.)
- Best Way to Label Dead Links
Strikethrough implies that text has been changed, and arbitrary formatting provides no clues. Using a low-contrast color might be the solution.
- Color-Switchin’ Coraline Apocalypse
A file format mix-up switches the color channels on Coraline artwork, making for a hellish-looking image. I ran afoul of the same problem w/a company logo.
- Alternative Browser Alliance Update
Just a quick note: I finally got around to updating the Alternative Browser Alliance website. Not the full rewrite that I was planning to do two months ago, but at least it’s now current on things like Google Chrome, Firebug, Dragonfly, etc. I’ve also released that site under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, […]
- Double-Digit Danger
Andrew Gregory points out that some browser detection scripts might have trouble when Opera 10 eventually rolls around. (Edit: Hallvord also comments.) Why? Because one of the easiest, ways of testing for a version number is to do look for the the “Browser n” or “Browser/n” patterns. The problem is that this strategy only grabs the […]
- Blocking IE6: You, Me and…PayPal?
On Thursday I stumbled across a campaign to Trash All IE Hacks. The idea is that people only stay on the ancient, buggy, feature-lacking, PITA web browser, Internet Explorer 6, because we web developers coddle them. We make the extra effort to work around those bugs, so they can actually use the sites without upgrading. Well, […]
- Foolish Links
IE9 to include alternative CSS.2012 standard instead of following anything remotely like the rest of the world. Social tagging initiative from WaSP to physically tag bad web designers. Opera hits 106/100 on Acid3 after discovering an Easter egg in the test. The openSUSE mailing list announced OpenSUSE 4.1, with KDE 4.1, GNOME 4.1, MP41 support, OpenOffice 4.1, XEN 4.1, VirtualBox 4.1, […]
- Acid(2) Stare
After looking at how Safari 3.1 handles the Acid2 test, and finding that under some circumstances/platforms it fails the test, I realized: that one line, with the eyes, has been the cause of most regressions in browsers that previously passed the test. Rows 4-5 test fallback behavior for objects. The idea is that if a […]
- Web News: Acid3 and IE8
Two items of interest today: First, the Web Standards Project has announced the completion of the Acid3 Test. Like Acid2, it’s specifically designed to test features that are in the specs, but that have incomplete, buggy, or nonexistant support in current web browsers. Acid2 focused primarily on CSS, and Acid3 focuses more on scripting. Also, […]
- Getting a Hotel for Comic Con (2008)
Tomorrow morning at 9:00 PST, rooms in the convention block go on sale for this year’s Comic-Con International. I was going to write up a bunch of tips last week, but CCI beat me to it by launching their own blog, Staying In San Diego. Visit it today, because it’ll probably be swamped tomorrow. (Though […]
- The Perfect 404
Digg has a link to a story on creative 404 error pages. Amazingly enough, I managed to look at the page at the exact moment that it had 404 diggs. How perfect is that? Full screenshot below:
- Don’t Hurt the Web
The Mozilla Developer Center has just posted some desktop wallpaper promoting open standards, (and the MDC itself) with the theme, “Please don’t hurt the web. Use open standards.” Apparently the design was a big hit as a poster at SXSW. For those who haven’t seen it, the MDC is a great developer resource for web […]
- Unlikely Partnership
Here’s a surprise: web standardista extraordinaire Molly Holzschlag is now working with Microsoft to promote web standards within the organization. Improving interoperability, especially at high-profile services like many of Microsoft’s, is critical to the future of the web. I can only hope that the emphasis on standards will feed into the design goals for Internet […]
- Advantages of standards-based design: Compatibility
Microsoft is really pushing for people to make sure their websites and apps are compatible with IE7. Apparently this is a real concern for a lot of people who relied on certain proprietary features, bugs, and quirks in IE6. I guess they figured they wouldn’t have to worry about future versions. (Hmm… I wonder where […]
- Browser Discrimination hits IE7
I just read an interesting post from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team on The IE7 User-Agent String. This statement in particular illustrates a problem not unfamiliar to Opera users: There are a few remaining sites which fail to recognize IE7 because they are performing exact string matches to look for specific IE version strings. Those checks […]
- IE7 disappearing float bug
I’ve reported this bug to the IE team as suggested on IEBlog, but I’m posting it here as well. Bear with me, this is a fairly obscure one.
- Widget Mania
The Opera web browser has introduced a Dashboard-like Widget feature in Opera 9 Preview 2. I believe this is the first 3+ platform widget framework out there. Dashboard is, of course, Mac OS X only. Yahoo! Widgets (formerly Konfabulator) is Windows XP and Mac OS X only. The KDE Desktop (mostly used on Linux and […]
- Conditional Opera Banners Using JavaScript
Posting an Opera button on your website or blog is a great way to encourage people to try out the browser — but what if the visitor already uses Opera? It shows solidarity, but what if you could show them something else, something that is new to them? You might want to replace your regular […]
- Conditional Firefox Get/Upgrade Banners in JavaScript
It’s redundant to show a Get Firefox! banner to someone already using Firefox, but it’s useful to show them an upgrade banner if they’re on an old version.
- Acid2 Timeline
April 13, 2005: Acid2 test announced by WaSP. April 27, 2005: Internal builds of Safari pass it. May 22, 2005: Public beta of iCab passes (but no one else notices for a week). June 5, 2005: Development builds of Konqueror pass. October 31, 2005: Safari 2.0.2 becomes the first non-beta web browser to pass the […]
- Triple-Dub
WWW, while convenient to type, is rather unwieldy when spoken (at least in English). “Double-U double-U double-U dot some site dot com” takes a while to say. It’s not like, say, AAA, which can be easily spoken as “Triple-A.” Fortunately, these days most major sites have their servers configured to return the same web with […]
- Missing Links
Slashdot posted a story about a new web browser called Flock. The source was an article at BusinessWeek. Now here’s the interesting part: It’s a fairly long article about a web browser, and it mentions a few other web browsers including Firefox, Opera and IE. It also mentions websites Amazon.com and del.icio.us. But the only […]
- Take Action: Browser Choice for an Open Web
Domination by a single web browser harms the web, whether it’s Internet Explorer or Chrome.
- WaSP/Microsoft Collaboration
The Web Standards Project has announced a joint task force with Microsoft to promote web standards in products like Visual Studio and ASP.NET. I imagine this was probably a factor in the decision to divest themselves of Browse Happy last month. Certainly this project is more in line with their core mission—promoting the use of […]
- iCab beats Acid2?
On Sunday, a development version of Konqueror passed the Acid2 test. In the comments, someone posted a screenshot of iCab also passing the Acid2 test. I did a double-take. iCab? Das Internet-Taxi für den Mac? The browser with the nice “Make iCab smile” campaign to encourage non-broken HTML on websites but CSS capabilities that have […]
- Acid2: And the Winner is…
Dave Hyatt has succeeded in making Safari pass the Acid2 test. (And on the eve of Mac OS X Tiger’s release, too!) No word on when the fixed version will make it into users’ hands (probably with the first update to Tiger), but he’s posted all the patches for KHTML, so the Konqueror team can […]
- Title goes here
I’ll always remember a line from a play I was in during college. It was an original musical, and the composer couldn’t come up with a good line by the time he had to hand out the scripts, so he filled it in with “Come around and schmoo” just to keep the rhyme in place. […]
- Gaming search engines with WordPress
It’s always something. Apparently WordPress.org has been dabbling in black-hat SEO, hosting thousands of keyword-based articles on their high–page-ranked site and placing hidden links to them on their home page. Way to go, guys. This makes the paranoia over remote images almost look reasonable. What’s next, putting ads in the next default template? The free/open […]
- Stupid Censors
Remember last year when I realized some net filter was looking at teentitans3.jpg, breaking the words in the wrong place, and concluding it must be adult content and therefore should be blocked? (It replaced the “offending” words with spaces, which get encoded as %20 in URLs.) At the time I left it, since I figured […]
- Note to Purveyors of Pop-ups
In the past few weeks, advertising developers have come up with scripts that will work around Firefox’s pop-up blocking. This is rather like a telemarketer calling someone on the do-not-call list. We installed a browser that blocks pop-ups for a reason. We are not your target audience; we are the people for whom pop-up ads […]
- Hazards of Templates
Here’s a good one: The Daily Sucker has found 300+ organizations using a legal statement containing the phrase, “Wow You actually came to this page.” Highly professional, that, along with “Our lawyers made us include it and made us use a precious link on our home page to get you here.” Which isn’t to say […]
- The trouble with web ads
A truism of television is that they aren’t in the entertainment business, they’re in the advertising business. Their job is selling commercials, and the shows you watch are nothing but an enticement to get you to watch long enough that you’ll see the ads. This is true for ad-based websites as well. The content is […]
- Web Clutter: An Object Lesson
Here’s a pair of excellent articles about how to avoid cluttering up your website so that people can actually see your content. The article is, however, hampered by appearing on a site that seems to violate every usability principle imaginable…. to the extent that the second one showed up on the Cruel Site of the […]
- Robots in Disguise
Wondering just how many Netscape 4 visitors this site gets, I pulled up some server stats and noticed two very strange patterns. The first appears to be a spider, calling itself Mozilla/4.08. It’s already suspicious, since the real Netscape 4 includes the language and OS, as in Mozilla/4.08 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U). Then there’s the pattern: lots of hits […]
- Taking the Web Beyond the Typewriter
I recently stumbled across an old copy of the Demoroniser (which my American-trained sense of spelling keeps trying to spell as demoronizer), a script designed to correct some of the, well, moronic HTML generated by Microsoft Office. Aside from flat-out coding errors, Office would use non-standard characters for things such as curly quotes or em-dashes […]
- A little scripting humor
After updating some links, the following dialogue occurred to me: Sallah: Indy, why does the web… move? Indiana: Give me the URL. (The location looks like a Python script) Indiana: Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? Sallah. ASP. Very dangerous. You go first. (Actually, I have to credit Katie for the Python reference. […]
- Gravatars
Well, I signed up with Gravatar, mainly so I could test the plugin. Basically the idea is that you can define an avatar that will follow you around the Internet, anywhere you post. All that’s necessary is for the site you’re commenting on to be Gravatar-enabled at the time someone visits. The one thing I’m […]
- Pixels as Magic Numbers
All the Linux desktop action these days is in KDE and GNOME, but on older hardware, servers, or anything else where you need to squeeze every last ounce of performance from the box, something lighter is needed. My Linux box at work — a 300 MHz Pentium II — runs WindowMaker. It’s familiar, it stays […]
- What’s in a User-Agent String?
Some people browse collections. I collect browsers. Mostly I just want to see what they’ll do to my web site, but I have a positively ridiculous number of web browsers installed on my Linux and Windows computers at work and at home, and I’ve installed a half-dozen extra browsers on our PowerBook. One project I’ve […]
- Silly Censors
A few weeks ago I was looking at the website error logs and noticed some attempts to access images with names like /flash/images/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20ans3.jpg. I got around to looking at it today, and all of them are the same name, all of them from browsers looking at my profile of the Teen Titans, which includes an […]
- Eeeww! (EvilML)
I just caught a reference to Arve Bersvendsen’s EvilML file. What is it? It’s an HTML document designed to make use of the fact that HTML is, technically, SGML, which has all kinds of strange shortcuts you can use. Of course, no one has ever bothered to make a web browser that actually handles all […]
- Linkrot, Part Deux
While looking for more ideas related to my earlier post on fighting link rot, I came across some interesting articles: Web Sites that Heal [archive.org] considers some of the causes of linkrot, including: changing CMS systems (which I’ve dealt with here twice), poor structure (starting small and simple, but finding that as the site grows, […]
- Weblog Etiquette vs. Link Rot
On an ideal Web, pages would stay put and links would never change. Of course, anyone who has been on the Internet long enough knows just how far away this ideal is. Commercial sites go out of business, personal sites move from school to school to ISP to ISP, news articles get moved into archives […]
- Stop flashing me
As one of the many working stiffs who can access the internet from work but has to share a connection, I would like to make a request of the corporate world at large: STOP REQUIRING FLASH TO VIEW YOUR SITE!!!!!! Everything I look at on the net while at work has to go through a […]