Posts Tagged ‘html’
CSS Hacks is bad for the carbon footprint
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
April 1st 2009
I just finished reading CSS Tip: Targeting IE 5.x, 6 and 7 Separately – Ed Eliot. It was written 2 years and 5 months ago.
I needed to find out about some code that one of our freelance web designers had put into the stylesheets of our website at work last week.
To use an example from Ed Eliot’s site
.box {
background: #00f; /* all browsers including Mac IE */
*background: #f00; /* IE 7 and below */
_background: #0f0; /* IE 6 and below */
_bac\kground: #f60; /* IE 6 only */
padding: 7px;
color: #fff;
}
Yes, I am talking about the star property hack, and underscore, escape hack.
It is different from the normal star hack in that the star is used inside the CSS style properties.
Sure, I do not mind putting in MS propriety code in my CSS – especially when it does not justify its own stylesheet.
But…
CSS hacks using browser bugs to cater for obsolete browsers is wrong on so many levels when you can use simple conditional comments.
<!--[if IE]> IE Conditional Comment: Internet Explorer <![endif]-->
<!--[if !IE]><!--> IE Conditional Comment: NOT Internet Explorer <!-- <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 6]> IE Conditional Comment: Internet Explorer 6 only <![endif]-->
If you really need to use CSS hacks to do something in CSS, then you have probably implemented it wrong.
My suggestion is to anyone who tries to cater to Internet Explorer, do use conditional comments. So what if it means another file, it will only be loaded by the browser you specify. Masochists using obsolete versions of IE (IE6 is seven years old) won’t know the difference, and seriously do not care about whether a site works fast or not. A millisecond longer load time won’t make a lick of difference to them. Users of standard compliant browsers will not care the slightest, because your code works for them. They are happy not having to download the propriety code for crappy CSS implementation that Microsoft is guilty of.
Do not let CSS hacks taint your code. It is wrong, makes the code hard to validate, confuses the heck out of people, makes CSS look very Web 1.0 and it kills puppies.
You do not want to kill a puppy do you?
Joomla vs. Wordpress
Monday, March 16th, 2009
March 16th 2009
OK, so now I am almost done moving my site and portfolio from Joomla to Wordpress. It has been an interesting experience, and on the WP side extremely smooth. It has been an eye-opener on how much you can customise this system.
I am still testing things out, so the site will be in flux for at least couple more weeks.
On the upside for Joomla though, is that templating for it is extremely straight forward, and the plug ins are extremely advanced.
Wordpress still kicks ass for sheer brilliance and smoothness of plugins and template design. It can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be.
CSS3 for the masses
Friday, January 30th, 2009
January 30th 2009
IMHO: CSS3 is a brilliant next step for presentational design for the web. And if you have been in the game as long as I have (around 13 years since my first webpage) then you know all about degrading your code so that alpha browsers get a really nice presentation with all bells and whistles (IE8, FF 3+, Opera 9+, Safari 3+), beta browsers get an OK presentation but might miss out on minor things. Gamma browsers (I count IE <= 6, IE for Mac, Netscape <=8, AOL users) well, seriously, just UPGRADE ALREADY.
In my latest project we are using CSS3, which appearantly even IE8 does a pretty good job of presenting.
One hump I got on my back is the implementation of columns in CSS3.
Typical column layout these days is done by floating or positioning div, depending on which school of thought you follow. This page for instance has a two column layout. It works and it is brilliant.
But is there any use for columns for content?
In normal newspaper layout you are used to read text in columns, and even that becomes hard at times, as the user looses track of where they were, especially when spanning several pages, or poor layouts. With the advent of columns for the web – users will not have a reference for dealing with this. Sure it is semantic and it will degrade properly, but my argument is that it will give a poor user experience, as users will have to scroll down for content, and print-designers think that their newspaper layouts automatically can be translated to the web. Bollocks to that. If anyone sees a good example of using multiple columns on a page, please let me know.
SEO for an idiot
Friday, January 30th, 2009
January 30th 2009
Right, SEO is a really complex subject matter. There are so many different strategies to get your site in that number one spot on Google and yahoo!.
My experiment into SEO is now “Blondy & Blacky – balklänningar, brudklänningar & smokings” and how to get them higher on the search engines rankings. The problem I face is the following:
I redesigned and moved the site from the web-address blondy.nu to blondyblacky.com in early December. At the same time we moved the shop into the textalk.se system – which is on a completely different server. Of course we dropped from the Google results immediately, and now my task is to get us back on the frontpage again. All the while trying to do this without having to fork out for the extra cost of search engine option on textalk.
I will post about my progress in this matter here
About freaking time
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
January 23rd 2009
Just a quick post to let people know that the latest iteration of the popular Joomla CMS has finally reached a stable 1.5.
I am a big fan of the content management system, and have used it almost exclusively for my projects ever since it was just a twinkle in the eye of Mambo .
I skipped fiddling around with the betas last year, so I could focus on this new version instead. Needless to say, I will download immediately, and figured I might as well update my website while I am at it. During this process, I will write a detailed review, as I go along.
Watch this space for full details.
Firefox 3 – A new hope
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
June 18th 2008
I have no doubt that the more tech-savvy of my visitors already know that Firefox 3 is launching on Tuesday 17th June 2008. As the geek and internet-entrapreneur that I am, this exites me a lot. Of course I have already adapted the beta as my main browser, but it has a few things that have bothered me. Most of my major tools work absolutely fine, but I really miss my Google Toolbar (strange but true – I like Googles products as I see them as productivity enhancements).
Anyway, I don’t want to get side-tracked. Firefox 3 is the first of the Alpha browsers latest updates. Internet Explorer 8 will be launched during 3rd quarter of 2008, which I myself find strange, as IE7 still is not widely used, and IE6 users keep on annoying me. Seriously, everyone should take the 5 minutes it takes to keep their browsers updated. Not only because of aestethics but also because of security issues. I know, I know. Mr Joe-Average User does not care about these things – he “just want it to work”. Well, life is not that easy unless you make it so. These days there are automatic updates for almost all major softwares used both in the home and at work. Windows update is probably the one normal users are most familiar with, but unfortunately it still gives normal users too much power – They can still turn down updates if they are connected to the web.
Firefox has so far one of the less intrusive ways of updating, it can be controlled in the options menu. The software will check if there is a new version and either download it for you and inform you when it has installed it, or if you need to download a new version, then it will let you know the steps to get the latest version.
Anyway, if you want to read more about the new features of Firefox three, then I suggest you head over to Mozillas site. I don’t see any reason repeating the functionality here.
Although, the new bookmarking facility makes the download completely worth it.
Consistency between browsers
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
April 16th 2008
Why is it that both professional web producers and clients alike insists on comparing the look and feel between different browsers? Especially between what is considered Alpha browsers (Firefox2+, IE7+, Safari 2/3b and Opera 9+) and Beta browsers like Internet Explorer 6 – the scourge of the internet.
I understand everything there is about presenting a coherent look and feel, that presents the clients brand in a consistent way.
But let’s face it: It doesn’t matter. The target group will not sit there with 4 different browsers open, comparing the differences! Most likely they will either never update their browsers because of lazy IT staff (I mean you Simon Hill 
, and therefore never see a proper version of the site.
Or if they are relatively IT-competent, they keep their browser updated at least at home.
Now, my argument is this: intentionally MAKE sites look really good in Alpha browsers, and passable in Beta and below. Why? Because coding for deprecated browsers take a lot of time, and cost a lot of money.
“Oh but if you code correctly, you don’t need to worry about that” and “Over 90% use Internet Explorer 6″ I hear you cry!
Absolute bull! I am not talking about browser snobbery, trying to convince people to switch to standards compatible browsers like Opera, Firefox and Safari, but to simply reward people who keep their browsers and computers up to date.
If people insist on using old style browsers, then they just won’t get the full experience. Simple as that.
And also, if there is a difference of 2 pixels here and there when compared between browsers – IT DOESN’T MATTER. The user experience will not vary because of this anyway! As long as the general composition is the same, and typography adhered to, then this is a moot point.
The need for professionals
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
March 5th 2008
Since I have been around the block, both one or two times since the dawn of DTP, I have struggled to convince people that it is worth to pay for professional design. Fighting off clients’ meager attempts in Word or Publisher, to convince them that even if they CAN do it, it doesn’t mean that they SHOULD do it.
Of course, these days the same thing is happening on the web. Anyone can put together a webpage, and learn the basics of HTML, but it won’t make you a designer. Just like with DTP, the web is maturing, and surrounding knowledge of the medium is becoming increasingly important.
Where people in print realised that knowledge like typography, picking the right paper, and know how to layout a page was still a good sales arguement, in web it is just as important to have the same knowledge. And that is what set aside professionals from happy go lucky amateurs. What is the point to have a page that looks fantastically pretty if no one knows how to navigate it – or worse – cannot even find the page in the first place. Build a page incorrectly and it will most probably break, or load slowly, just to download a pretty header that takes up most of the content space above the fold.
After all, Web is just a medium and I think the content is still king – without proper content a site will die.
I will revisit this topic again in the near future.
Bite the head off a chiclet
Monday, January 28th, 2008
January 28th 2008
Chicklet… chiclet… no matter how you spell it, it is still some guys “clever” marketing speak for small buttons. You know the kind: “Digg This”, “Add to Facebook”, “Add to bookmarks”.
Some guy appearantly thought it would be clever to name them “chiclets”. For those in the know chiclet is actually a brand of chewing gum, the name of keyboard buttons as on a calculator or remote control.
Sure the buttons are as annoying as getting chewing gum on your shoes, because we designers tend to put them in the footer. Is that why it got that name?
People where I work now want these everywhere. It is painful to hear people blurting out these “trendy” names. I have two things to say to the person who minted the expression for these buttons: “Please STOP”.
If something is a button, then it is a button. Exclamation mark. Refer to things as “graphical button” or “styled button”. It is not something new and fantastic or even very hard. Most of the time it is an image or textreplaced link leading to one of the social bookmarking sites.
It is NOTHING new, and NO it will not make you sound clever.
If you want to invent a new terminology, PLEASE for the love of the gods make sure it actually DESCRIBES the function or use of the item.
Here are some acceptable replacements:
- “Social-link”
- “Styled button”
- “cross site link”
and my favourite
- “button”
How to build a site in less than 8 years
Saturday, August 18th, 2007
August 18th 2007
Have you ever heard the tale of the Cobbler’s children?
Once upon a time there was a cobbler, who had many children. He was quite a successful cobbler, and always had plenty of work creating shoes for the townspeople. Unfortunately he never had time to tend to his childrens feet, and they had to walk the streets with rags around their feet. Until winter came and his whole family died from pneumonia.
Sad tale isn’t it?
The same can be said when you are a fairly successful web designer as well. I keep on building all these sites for clients across the world, but have not built a website for myself since 1999. The less said about that website the better. It was completely horrible, but landed me a good job with AOL.
Anyhoo, I finally decided to build a website around 8 years ago, but have been sidetracked by other projects that have seemed more urgent. Until now when I realised:
My biggest problem was that I didn’t have a clue on what to put there.
Well, now I have settled for a blog like structure, where I will share my ideas and philosophies with the world. Also I will use it to promote my work to potential clients in my portfolio section. Later on I hope to launch my online comic on these very pages, which might help to both drive traffic and realize an old dream of mine to actually be able to call myself a professional cartoonist. Sure, it won’t be as popular as Penny Arcade or Little Gamers, but if anyone likes it that is good enough for me.
