Web Development
Show Your <body>
April 8, 2008, 9:55 AM | 0 Comments
It’s time for the 3rd annual CSS Naked Day! I am again participating in this year’s web standards awareness “event” and baring all in the name of web standards awareness. As of right now, my site is a little… uhm… free.
Thanks Microsoft!
March 3, 2008, 10:16 PM | 0 Comments
I’ve purposefully stayed out of the much-debated decision that Microsoft had apparently made with IE 8 to use version targeting because I can honestly say that I see both sides to the argument and I don’t feel very strongly about either position. Today though, I’m breaking my silence on the topic because Microsoft has made an important decision.
In a complete reversal of their position, Microsoft today announced that IE 8’s new standards mode will be on by default. What this means is that developers will have to explicitly tell IE 8 to act like IE 7, not the other way around as had been previously planned.
Web Directions North 2008
October 17, 2007, 7:44 AM | 0 Comments
Web Directions North is coming back to Vancouver, Canada for the second straight year! Last year I was fortunate enough to attend the conference and I really hope I can make it again this winter.
YUI Theater
September 22, 2007, 11:59 AM | 0 Comments
Anyone who works with advanced JavaScript on a regular basis will tell you that it’s one of the most misunderstood and under documented languages there is. Fortunately though, the resources are getting better and I just thought I’d draw attention to one of the better ones I’ve enjoyed over the past little while.
Yahoo!’s YUI library has been increasing in popularity over the past year or so, and for good reason—Yahoo! has done a lot of great work with YUI. One of the great things about YUI is that it’s probably one of the most thoroughly documented JavaScript libraries around. Personally I think that one of the things that makes a language like PHP so popular is the great documentation that the PHP developers have released alongside it. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing for some of the JavaScript libraries out there… which in turn make some of them a bit of a chore to work with.
Safari CSS/JavaScript Overflow Issues
June 18, 2007, 9:30 PM | 3 Comments
If you’ve seen my portfolio lately you’ll know that it’s currently undergoing some changes, but the latest project to have its URL land there is one that caused me a bit of grief in Safari. What I’ve been able to gather based on more than a few Google searches and discussions with other web professionals is that Safari seems to have a big problem when trying to adjust the overflow property of an element with JavaScript.
One Problem with Template-Generated Content
April 24, 2007, 11:32 PM | 1 Comment
Content Management Systems (CMS’s) are great. The power and flexibility they offer website owners make them an invaluable piece to any “modern” site. Every now and then though, CMS’s can show their weaknesses. Whether it be limiting the front end of a site because of what the CMS can or cannot do (which should never happen, but it does) or it just makes it too darn easy to publish some content, CMS’s have some drawbacks.
Continue reading One Problem with Template-Generated Content »
Takin’ it All Off for CSS Naked Day
March 31, 2007, 11:30 PM | 1 Comment
It’s that time of year again, time for the 2nd annual CSS Naked Day! If you’ve been following my feed you will have noticed the link to the CSS Naked Day website a couple weeks back. Well, Dustin’s accepting signups now for those who want to take part this year.
Web Directions North: Day 2
February 14, 2007, 8:44 PM | 0 Comments
Day 2 of Web Directions North picked up where day 1 left off and was another great day packed full of inspiring speakers and good times.
The opening keynote for day 2 was a great talk about designing for lifestyle by Kelly Goto (that’s pronounced ‘Go Toe’ in case you’re wondering). The main point Kelly talked about was design that mimics physical environments, such as the iPhone, touch screens and more.
To those I met at Web Directions North
February 9, 2007, 4:26 AM | 0 Comments
This goes out to all of those who I met at Web Directions North. It was great to meet so many really nice people but there’s just one problem… when you meet so many people all at once in such a short amount of time it’s really hard to keep everyone’s name straight.
So, for those of you who I met, gave my card to, or those who were there who I may not have met (and are finding your way to my site), please post a comment, use the contact form, or email me to remind me who you are, where you’re from, what you do, etc. Also, feel free to post your thoughts on the entire Web Directions North experience.
Web Directions North: Day 1
February 8, 2007, 9:37 PM | 2 Comments
The first day of Web Directions North turned out to be a pretty full day. First off, every session was great and I’ve definitely learned a lot, had old ideas resurface and I’ve definitely thought about things in new ways.
The opening keynote with Molly Holzschlag was both enjoyable and interactive. I’d never heard Molly speak live before, but she’s definitely a very talented presenter. Her session entitled ‘WSI:Vancouver - Crimes Against Web Standards’ was an interactive session where she both demonstrated some of her own crimes against web standards and also got the audience to open up on some of their crimes. It was almost like a geek therapy session.
Web Directions North: Day 0
February 7, 2007, 11:31 AM | 2 Comments
Yesterday was the unofficial start to Web Directions North, with 3 separate all-day workshops going on. The conference itself officially gets started in about an hour, but I wanted to sum up my thoughts from yesterday.
I was fortunate to attend the “Accessibility 2.0” workshop that Derek Featherstone put on and was really impressed by Derek and the material that he presented. If you’ve never had the privilege of hearing Derek speak before, you’re definitely missing out. Not only is he funny, but also he presents in a way that is very open to audience involvement.
Switch Journal: Software
January 12, 2007, 12:40 AM | 1 Comment
In some cases, one of the biggest differences between the Mac and PC is the software applications created for each environment. Although more and more programs are being developed to be cross platform, the majority of really good niche apps (such as text editors, instant messaging software, FTP clients, etc.) are only available for a specific platform.
My switch to Mac has been made easier by the fact that a lot of the major applications I use on a day-to-day basis are available for the Mac platform. Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, and Mozilla Firefox are all great examples of major applications that are available on both. With that said, there are still a lot of programs that I used every day on my PC that aren’t available for the Mac, so I had to go out and find alternatives.
Home or Homeless?
January 3, 2007, 10:00 PM | 4 Comments
Earlier this week a few colleagues and I were discussing the merits of having (or not having) a “home” link in a site’s main navigation. More specifically we discussed whether or not the now standard practice of linking a website’s logo back to the home page is a good enough substitute for not having a specifically labeled home link. We ended up having a fairly good dialogue in which several opinions and points were raised, but I thought I’d take it one step further and open up the topic for discussion here.
The Separation of Style
December 18, 2006, 6:57 PM | 4 Comments
As web professionals we’re always trying to find ways to improve our development practices. Whether it’s finding a better, more accessible method of replacing some text with an image or figuring out a better way of enhancing a site with unobtrusive JavaScript, “best practices” are constantly evolving, so discussion about them is also constant, and that’s a great thing. The more we discuss our best practices, the more we can help make the web better for everyone.
Web Directions North
November 25, 2006, 2:25 PM | 2 Comments
If you haven’t noticed the Web Directions North badge on my sidebar, let me introduce you to the premiere web development conference in Canada in 2007. Web Directions North will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada at the Renaissance Vancouver Hotel Harbourside in downtown Vancouver in February of 2007.
IE Conditional Comment Update
October 20, 2006, 12:53 PM | 2 Comments
Well, with Internet Explorer 7 now released to the public, I thought I’d post a short update to a post I wrote back in May about Serving Up IE Specific Stylesheets.
IE 7 is better than IE 6 as it should be; it only took Microsoft 5 years between releases and a lot of things have changed since then. From a developer’s standpoint though, IE 7 is significantly better with its CSS support. Transparent PNGs are in, dotted 1 pixel borders are actually dotted (as opposed to dashed), the “double-float margin bug” is history, the :hover pseudo-class is supported across the board, etc. etc. etc.
What are your RSS habits?
October 11, 2006, 10:02 PM | 4 Comments
I’ve read a couple of postings over the past few days on the state of personal websites these days (Jeffrey Zeldman’s “Blahg” and Greg Storey’s answer to that over at Airbag titled “Boxes”) and they (and some of their comments) have gotten me to thinking about how people use RSS feeds.
Makin’ it worse: Packers.com redesign
September 1, 2006, 5:55 PM | 0 Comments
Yesterday the Green Bay Packers launched their latest redesign of Packers.com, the official website of the Green Bay Packers franchise. At first I was excited to hear about the redesign, hoping that they would improve upon their 2005 redesign, which was a giant step forward. I’m sad to say however, that the new version of Packers.com is a step backwards in many aspects.
Serving Up IE Specific Stylesheets
May 17, 2006, 7:31 PM | 0 Comments
Yesterday Nathan Smith posted a few thoughts on using CSS hacks (specifically the * html hack) inside your main stylesheets. There has been a lot of talk recently on what’s going to happen to sites that use a lot of IE specific hacks once Internet Explorer 7 is officially released, and the consensus is that it’s best to serve up specific stylesheets for IE and leave out hacks all together.
I whole-heartedly agree with this opinion and have been practicing this technique for a while now. If you’ve read my article on how to use transparent PNG images in IE, you should already be familiar with these methods. I realize that this is not a new technique that I’m posting, but for those of you who haven’t seen it on this site or anywhere else on the web before, I thought it would make a nice addition to my collection of CSS Tips.
New MSN.com = Yahoo!?
May 15, 2006, 7:41 PM | 2 Comments
I was browsing around the other day when I stumbled across the new MSN.com. Now, originally I didn’t think much of it because it looks very similar to the old version (or current version at the time of this writing) of MSN.
It wasn’t until today that I felt a little déjà vu though when I went to the Yahoo! home page and was reminded of that new Beta version of MSN. Perhaps I’ve been under a rock for a while, but I can’t help but notice how similar these new designs look. In my defense, I never use Yahoo.com, I never really have. I just have never found their site to offer me better products or services than other sites - but that’s hardly the point of this.
Welcome to May
May 1, 2006, 9:03 PM | 1 Comment
It’s hard to believe that it’s already May 1st. Even counting the first 4 months of 2005 (in which I was not only enduring my last semester of college, but also preparing for my wedding, searching for apartments and weighing career options), this has been the busiest 4 months in memory by far.
So here’s a run down of what’s been going on in my life lately, and why the posts around here have been few and far between.
We’re Going Streaking!
April 3, 2006, 5:35 PM | 4 Comments
OK, I don’t mean this in the literal sense obviously - let me explain. On Wednesday April 5th I will be taking part in the first annual CSS Naked Day. Dustin Diaz has come up with the idea that on April 5th, hundreds of blogs will streak around the internet to promote web standards and usability.
Many popular bloggers will be taking part in this exercise including Dustin Diaz, Mike Davidson, and Nathan Smith to name a few. I thought I’d join in the fun and strip my site of all style for one day, all in the name of accessibility. So don’t be alarmed when you come to my site on Wednesday and it looks a little… uhm… bare.
Using Transparent PNGs in Internet Explorer
March 25, 2006, 11:45 AM | 10 Comments
Up until a couple of weeks ago, I thought that there was no way to use transparent or semi-transparent PNG images in IE. I was wrong. My only excuse is a bad one too: I read it somewhere.
The truth is that there is a pretty good way to use transparent PNG images with CSS. It’s not without its drawbacks (I’ll get into those later) and it doesn’t use valid CSS, but while we wait for PNGs to be fully supported by all major browsers, it seems to me that it’s a fairly good solution.
Continue reading Using Transparent PNGs in Internet Explorer »
February’s Random Thoughts
February 27, 2006, 10:05 PM | 0 Comments
February turned out to be a much busier month than I was anticipating. Despite being extremely busy though, I did manage to find time to work on the site. For those of you who subscribe to the RSS feed - you’ll notice that I’ve added the Recent Links section of the site to the feed. A lot of the other things that I’ve been working on will be launched soon.
Getting back to February, there were a lot of ideas I had to post about, but never got a chance to actually write them. Plenty of ideas, but not enough time right now. So here’s a few of the things I’ve had on my mind over the past 27 days.
Securing PHP Mail Forms
February 25, 2006, 12:40 PM | 0 Comments
Over the past several days, I’ve been doing a fair amount of research on PHP’s Mail function and the specific vulnerabilities that it suffers from. Because of the way the Mail function works, there are specific ways that hackers or spam-bots can utilize seemingly innocent forms to spread their spam.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing PHP’s Mail function or it’s developers in any way. On the contrary, I find that PHP’s Mail function is well thought out and very powerful. However, to quote a line from the movie ‘Spider-Man:’
TinyMCE 2.0
February 7, 2006, 10:30 PM | 2 Comments
If you’ve ever gone on a hunt for a good ‘What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG) text editor to use for your web applications, you’ll probably know that there are many options out there. I’ve used several different editors, all with their own pros and cons. htmlArea, Xinha, and FCKEditor are all fairly common free or mostly free WYSIWYG editors that will get the job done without too much hassle.
A List Apart 211
January 31, 2006, 7:12 PM | 0 Comments
If you haven’t had a chance to read today’s issue, or you’ve never heard of A List Apart before… you’re missing out.
Today’s issue of A List Apart (an awesome webazine for developers) contains 2 very good articles that every web developer should put on their must-read list and immediately add to their favourites. Just a suggestion though.
Microsoft is on the Standards Train
January 7, 2006, 11:57 PM | 0 Comments
It started earlier this year with Microsoft’s (mostly) standards-based redesign of MSN.com. Now, it’s nice to see that Microsoft is continuing in that vein by designing their new Windows Vista homepage using a standards-based design.
What’s even nicer is that the homepage is actually quite attractive (unlike MSN.com). It doesn’t have a whole lot of content in there yet, but it’s a good start so far. The markup isn’t terribly incredible (no lists for links, etc.) and it doesn’t validate, but that’s not really the point here. As we all know, validation is not the number one priority. Accessibility is.
Heading for the Polls!
November 28, 2005, 11:54 PM | 1 Comment
Well, I wasn’t exactly planning this, but it turned out pretty well. Canadians are headed for the election polls on January 23rd. Today, Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Liberal minority government was finally defeated by a non-confidence motion, effectively ending his current term as PM.
Reinspire.net is also heading for the polls, but I’m talking about a completely different type of poll. I’ve been hard at work on a polling system for this website that I’m happy to unveil today. As I said, I wasn’t really planning this to coincide with the election call, but so be it.
CSS Vertical Stretch
October 11, 2005, 12:24 PM | 58 Comments
Update: Due to Microsoft’s release of IE 7, parts of this article have become outdated. Please be aware that the * html hack for IE 6 causes some issues in IE 7. As an alternative, the best way to apply CSS rules for IE 6 is to use a separate stylesheet that is only read by IE 6 (or lower). Please read my article “Serving Up IE Specific Stylesheets” for more information. To apply the same rules that are listed with a * html hack below, remove the * html portion of the CSS rule and put the rest in your IE 6 stylesheet. If you have any remaining questions, feel free to contact me.
CSS Hyperlink Styling
September 19, 2005, 1:49 PM | 3 Comments
In this CSS tip, we’ll be looking at various ways to style hyperlinks using CSS. There are many different methods and techniques that you can use to create uniquely styled links, and we’ll explore some of them here.
By default, hyperlinks in browsers are underlined. Normal links are blue, visited links are purple and active links (depending on the browser) are red. Designers do not want to live life by default though, so CSS provides some powerful ways to style your hyperlinks, allowing you to create a look and feel that best suits your design.
CSS Font Styling
September 15, 2005, 1:35 PM | 0 Comments
CSS is very powerful when it comes to font styling. From line height to letter spacing, CSS gives designers complete control over their text and how it appears on the web. I do not claim to know all there is to know about font styling, but I thought I’d at least post some of the methods of font styling as a starting point.
While the web is still a little bit behind on giving designers a flawless way to use whatever font face that they want (although, several people have come up with awesome solutions using Macromedia Flash - see sIFR), CSS allows you to customize how your text appears, even if you are forced to use the more standard fonts.
CSS Centered Layouts
September 10, 2005, 1:03 PM | 9 Comments
So you want to create a centered layout, but you don’t want to use a table to accomplish your goal. That’s fine, CSS has been the way to go for quite some time now, and centering your layout is actually pretty simple.
I’ll go through some examples and explain the old way of doing things, and the new way of doing things. If you’re new to CSS and wondering why using CSS is considered a better practice, you may want to take a look at some of the following articles:
CSS Tips
September 6, 2005, 7:37 PM | 0 Comments
I’ve been thinking about this for the past few weeks now, and I’ve finally decided to move on it. I’m going to start a CSS Tips library that will be updated frequently and filled with tips and how-to walkthroughs of various CSS techniques.
These tips will probably start off at the beginner level and will progress in difficulty as they move forward. In honour of these new tips, a new category has been added to the Blog called CSS Tips, where all of the Tips will be filed.
Dynamic RSS Feeds
August 21, 2005, 11:17 PM | 0 Comments
I was trying to decide how I was going to implement an RSS feed for my site. My original thought is that I would just generate a new XML file every time I posted a new entry to the blog using PHP and creating an XML file much like a text file. (Using the Filesystem functions).
I fired up Google and did a search for ‘PHP Generating RSS XML File.’ After browsing through the first few results I came across this site which has a brief tutorial on how to create a dynamic RSS feed.
Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 1)
July 28, 2005, 11:29 AM | Comments off
Well, Microsoft just released some information about their forthcoming release of Internet Explorer (Version 7).
Beta 1 of IE 7 is now being tested by all those fortunate enough to be MSDN subscribers. Here’s the info from Microsoft:
Discussion Forums
June 21, 2005, 9:54 AM | Comments off
I’ve always used discussion forums as a way to gather information, advice, tips, tricks and other helpful tidbits. Usually it relates to work (programming & web development), but I’ve also frequented fitness forums, music gear forums (Line6), and even forums specifically about my car (so that I could get some advice on hooking up the amp for my subwoofers to my car’s battery).