Tech Talk
Opgeborgen en weggestopt
Alles wat ooit gepubliceerd is op pomtiedom.com, is hier gearchiveerd. Dus op zoek naar een bepaald artikel of reactie, dan is de kans groot dat je het in het archief terug vind
Naar Voren 2 jaar
mei 12, 2004
“Alweer twee jaar, hoera! Dat betekent dat we "the terrible two's" bereikt hebben. En op internet wordt een jaar graag vergeleken met hondenjaren, dus zouden we zelfs al 14 jaar oud zijn. Ook een puberteit waardig.”
Twee jaar goede en verhelderende artikelen over alles wat maar met webontwikkeling en -design te maken heeft. Tot op heden slechts met een bijdrage van mijn hand, maar er zit meer in de pijplijn.
Er wordt in het artikel trouwens niet zo -merkloos- verwezen naar mijn huidige opdrachtgever. Kunt u zien welke?
Volledig spamverbod in aantocht
april 22, 2004
“De Eerste Kamer heeft dinsdagmiddag ingestemd met een wetswijziging waardoor het niet langer is toegestaan om spam te sturen naar consumenten.”
We hebben er lang op moeten wachten, maar eindelijk heeft de eerste kamer een besluit genomen inzake het versturen van spam naar consumenten. Nu de roep, om ook werknemers te beschermen door een verbod op spam naar hen, in de tweede kamer steeds luider wordt lijkt het erop dat een volledig spamverbod slechts een kwestie van tijd is.
Nu maar hopen dat dat iets sneller verloopt dan het aannemen van het huidige verbod.
Web Services metadata exchange
april 01, 2004
“To bootstrap communication with a Web service, this specification defines three request-response message pairs to retrieve these three types of metadata: one retrieves the WS-Policy associated with the receiving endpoint or with a given target namespace, another retrieves either the WSDL associated with the receiving endpoint or with a given target namespace, and a third retrieves the XML Schema with a given target namespace. Together these messages allow efficient, incremental retrieval of a Web service's metadata.”
Een goed voorstel, maar waar zijn Oracle en Sun, om maar een paar namen te noemen. Dit neigt weer naar een "Microsoft" standaard.
Spraakbesturing voor Opera
maart 24, 2004
“ "Voice is the most natural and effective way we communicate. In the years to come it will greatly facilitate how we interact with technology," says Christen Krogh, VP Engineering, Opera Software ASA. "By making this technology available today for the wider Web audience, the serious work of voice-enabling the Web can commence." ”
Als ze dit nu ook in de Opera versies voor mobieltjes en PDA's stoppen wordt het mobiel internetten een stuk leuker.
Daarnaast zag ik een persbericht over betere DOM ondersteuning in versie 7 voor mobile devices. Dit is goed nieuws, misschien werken Bob's fancy comments in Pivot dan ook op mijn Nokia 7650.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.5?
maart 23, 2004
Release Candidate 1 voor Service Pack 2 voor Microsoft Windows XP is beschikbaar en bevat een aantal aanpassingen voor IE. Als ik de veranderde functionaliteit naloop zie ik alleen aanpassingen in verband met beveiliging en gebruikersfunctionaliteit van de GUI.
Er wordt helaas niks gerept over een mogelijk nieuwe rendering engine voor HTML en CSS. Dat betekent dus zelf SP2 RC1 installeren op een testomgeving en kijken of er onder water stiekem toch wijzigingen in de rendering engines zijn aangebracht.
Goed voorbeeld
maart 23, 2004
“Create a good customer experience.”
Google paste deze regel toe op alle facetten van haar business model en we weten waar dat toe heeft geleid.
Movable Type 3.0 alfa tester [2]
maart 19, 2004
“Welcome to the Movable Type 3.0 Alpha test.”
Vanavond eens lekker gaan zitten spelen nadat mijn artikel voltooid is.
Movable Type 3.0 alfa tester
maart 16, 2004
“Hello,
Thanks for volunteering to alpha-test Movable Type 3.0. Because we had a huge response to our call for testers, we had to randomly select two hundred people to be in this initial batch. We're sending this email because you're name was selected.”
Weer een ronde verder in het selectie proces. Al denk ik dat de selectie minder random was dan ze doen vermoeden. Dus misschien in de toekomst een alfa versie van Movable Type onder de motorkap hier.
Mozilla Firefox 0.8
februari 09, 2004
Een nieuwe versie van Mozilla's Firebird is gelanceerd vandaag. De naam Firebird is echter vervangen voor Firefox. Maar de rest is oud en vertrouwd en draait als een zonnetje. Installeren en het gebruik van plugins wordt eenvoudiger door middel van de installer voor Windows.
The behaviour layer
januari 29, 2004
“In the past JavaScript has been much abused, mainly because people misunderstood its purpose. Many sites used JavaScript for presentation only, for instance in ubiquitous and ultimately boring DHTML interfaces.
The average DHTML site is not very accessible, to put it mildly, and the countless "revolutionary" interfaces turned out not to be very interesting or useful, except for highlighting the cleverness of their programmers.”
Nu iedereen wel bekend is met (X)HTML, CSS en toegankelijkheid is de toegankelijkheid van gebruikte Javascripts een issue. In het artikel in het Digital Web Magazine wordt er door middel van een voorbeeld uitgelegd waar verbetering aangebracht kunnen worden.
Niet dat ik veel Javascripts gebruik, ik vermijd het gebruik zoveel mogelijk en laat een hoop server-side gebeuren, is het toch een goed artikel.
Movable Type 3.0
januari 09, 2004
Het duurt nog even (ik verwacht pas in maart), maar Ben en Mena G. Trott hebben Movable Type 3.0 aangekondigd. Ik kan niet wachten want comment spam wordt een steeds grotere bron van ergenis. In de aankondiging werden in ieder geval de volgende features genoemd:
- Comment registration. As a response to both comment spam and to the increased usage of Movable Type on large community sites, we'll be adding the option to restrict comments to registered users.
- Improved comment and TrackBack management features.
- New API hooks for plugin developers. Plugins will now be able to hook into many more pieces of Movable Type, including adding callbacks for saving and removing objects, building application methods with integration into the UI, and hooking into the publishing process. This opens up possibilities for plugins to add even more advanced functionality than they're able to do now.
- User interface rebuilt using CSS. We've seen with TypePad that a CSS-based interface gives users very fast application response times, and gives us a flexible interface for making application-wide changes, and we want to give this same speed and flexibility to Movable Type users.
- Support for the Atom API. We've already added Atom syndication feed support in version 2.65 of Movable Type, and we'll be adding publishing support for the API in 3.0.
Rounded corners
december 05, 2003
“Sites designed with CSS tend to be boxy and hard-edged. Where are the rounded corners?”
Wel, deze zijn te vinden in een drietal voorbeelden om afgeronde hoeken in je design op te nemen. Ik heb hier tijdens het ontwerpen van het nieuwe ontwerp van pomtiedom.com naar gekeken maar kwam er niet uit zonder dat het ontwerp danwel de semantiek in de XHTML code opgeeft danwel niet meer backward compatible is met IE5 en IE5.5.
Blijkbaar schiet mijn CSS kennis nog te kort, want nu is onafhankelijk van elkaar door drie personen aangetoond dat het wel mogelijk is.
Keep CSS simple
november 07, 2003
“Complicated CSS hacks are the modern equivalents of the frames and tables we used in wholesale lots back in the nineties. Their use serves to give the Web author a feeling of mastery, a false sense of security in the face of the countless things that can go wrong in browsers.”
[via]
Don't Test users, test hypotheses
november 02, 2003
“Whether you are testing your own design or someone else's, start by defining questions you want answered. Describe the assumptions implicit in the design. Make predictions about users' behavior and develop hypotheses about what they will do. That’s the first step. Then, structure your testing to address those hypotheses. That way, whatever the result, you have specific, relevant information about the design.”
Don't Test users, test hypotheses
Sliding doors of CSS, Part II
oktober 31, 2003
“Here, we’ll cover a new scenario where no tab is highlighted, combine Sliding Doors with a single-image rollover, provide a fix for the clickable region in IE/Win, and suggest an alternate method of targeting tabs.”
Web design and integrated marketing
oktober 29, 2003
“Web sites are in their relative infancy compared to other media and communication touch points. As such, while well-designed corporate marketing typically exhibits excellent integration across more traditional media, Web sites often do not enjoy the same level of success. A big part of that is the lack of understanding that marketing professionals have for the media. For Web designers who do have a deep understanding of the Web, that spells opportunity.”
Web design and integrated marketing
The new ALA
oktober 22, 2003
The new A List Apart site has gone live yesterday and I must say I like the interface at first sight. Although it seems very familiar to design of others sites I visit frequently. Enjoy yourself with three new articles about Fahrner Image Replacement, Sliding Doors of CSS -- (this one is a must read!) I have been trying to get that effect with CSS for a long time, but failed sofar -- and an image randomizer.
See it all at the new ALA: A List Apart
De Facto standards on the web
oktober 14, 2003
“Will the web become more standardized? What are the usability risks of not following a de facto standard on the web?”
Examining the Role of De Facto Standards on the Web
Web Design Practices
When Bad Design Elements Become the Standard
Soft skills for IA
oktober 06, 2003
“For people looking to transition from their present role to take on information architecture duties, or for those who currently have these duties and would like to continue to grow and improve, an excellent approach to the softer side of IA is to build on a solid foundation of IA principles, techniques, and skills. Applying the soft skills correctly will help you organizationally and politically while you are actually applying the skills specific to information architecture.”
The business value of web standards
september 22, 2003
“Certainly, the redesign increased our credibility with Web-standards aficionados. But industry accolades aside, how important is standardization to an individual business like ours? Do Web standards give organizations a return on investment? Does the transition to XHTML and CSS make financial sense? The answer to those questions is yes.”
The business value of web standards
Containing floats
september 01, 2003
“As powerful and useful as they are, floats can make for tricky layout tools.”
[via]
Breadcrumbs
augustus 28, 2003
“In general, breadcrumbs serve two purposes:
- they provide information to the user as to where they are located within the site, and
- they offer shortcut links for users to "jump" to previous categories in the sequence without using the Back key, other navigation bars, or the search engine.
Breadcrumb paths give location information and links in a backward linear manner.”
Read all about it in these two studies about breadcrum navigation:
Breadcrumb navigation: An exploratory study of usage
Breadcrumb navigation: Further investigation of usage
Content? Or dis-content?
augustus 25, 2003
“In spite of the quaint simile tossed around in the '90s, we realize now that the Internet isn't a big, online library, although there are many libraries within it. The book/library paradigm is white-haired, wrinkled, and about a hundred years out of date.”
Example style guide
augustus 18, 2003
“The following document is a style guide for producing content for the [client] Web site. This document outlines basic principles for adding content to the site, defines the basic style sheet classes available to content managers and how they should be used, and defines principles, guidelines, and best practices for content.”
[via]
Internet Explorer 6 CSS bugs
augustus 12, 2003
“The problem seems to be with IE6 reflowing content after dynamically changing CSS properties that affect layout (such as background, padding, margin, display, visibility and so on). Removing such properties from the hover rule eliminates all these problems.”
[via]
ALA: Improve your search engine ranking
augustus 04, 2003
“Optimization campaign can generate more traffic than an expensive banner-ad program, or costly and time-consuming pay-per-click methods. Some of the best methods of optimizing a website are ensuring that a page is not overly heavy in file size, maintaining a good content to code ratio, using lots of relevant content, and filling the page with as much text and links as you can without "spamming" the search engine spiders.”
ALA: Improve your search engine ranking
Web traffic analytics and user experience
juli 30, 2003
“- Analytics -. The word sounds technical, number-crunchy, maybe even a bit boring. We information architects and user experience folks tend to prefer dealing with the real users, the designs, and the creative expression of our ideas, and not so much with the numbers. We spend our time developing prototypes, testing designs with users, and then interpreting those results for a creative solution that provides outstanding user experiences. But our exposure to the data and measurement end can be limited, or nonexistent.”
Web traffic analytics and user experience
Keep Javascript simple
juli 29, 2003
“For some reason, people think JavaScript is simple. Sure, writing "Hello World" in a form field is simple, but creating an accessible, usable, and cross-browser compatible W3C DOM script is anything but.
Nonetheless, the misperception that JavaScript is simple (therefore low status) still survives, especially among "hard" programmers. Some of them don't find it necessary to understand JavaScript. Instead, they want it to understand them. They want it to behave like the languages they already know. They want it to be a complicated, high status language like, for instance, Java.”
Prototyping with style
juli 28, 2003
“In the user-centered design circles, these discussions focus on general Web standards, programming languages, and proprietary software. Visio, Illustrator, and OmniGraffle are mentioned frequently, as are technologies like HTML, XML, and relational databases.
Rarely mentioned, however, are technologies that control the display of information - mainly CSS.”
Accessible Interdependent Selectboxes
juli 22, 2003
“In the constant struggle to make web sites accessible to everyone, we sometimes have to reconsider some of the techniques we use in web development.
One of the main obstacles is to "de-script" forms. For years we have been spicing up forms with Javascript, and, if we didn't consider the consequences, didn't know better, or weren't allowed to elaborate due to tight deadlines, we made forms dependent on Javascript.”
Accessible Interdependent Selectboxes
Ten Quotable Moments: Challenges and Responses for UI Designers
juli 16, 2003
“Interfaces don't become simpler by hiding information and requiring more clicks; they become simpler when they provide the right information at the right time.”
Ten Quotable Moments: Challenges and Responses for UI Designers
Forms, usability, and the W3C DOM
juni 10, 2003
“Despite the specification having been around for nearly five years and a workable level of browser support for about three, the average Web developer doesn’t yet have a clear view of what the W3C DOM can do for Web sites.”
Forms, usability, and the W3C DOM
A webdeveloper's worst nightmare
juni 04, 2003
Because I have been busy for a couple of days, I missed out some important newsfacts. Fortunately Jeffrey Zeldman summarized them for me and reveals a webdeveloper's worst nightmare senario for the next few years if he is right.
On the other hand he points out that it could be the breakthrough of Mozilla and other alternative browser to IE.
What it will be, will the future tell. But I wish for the breaktrough of Mozilla and alternative browsers.
- IE/AOL/Netscape: what happens next?
- Microsoft to abandon standalone IE
- AOL, Microsoft's peace a sign of times
Movable Type 2.64
juni 03, 2003
“Version 2.64 of Movable Type is now released. This is a maintenance release, fixing various CSS, XML-RPC, UI, and Creative Commons errors. This release also plugs a number of cross-site-scripting (script injection) holes for search queries, comments, TrackBacks, and notifications, and is recommended for anyone using any of these features.”
I totally missed this release. I will install it very soon to try out some moblog applications on my Nokia 7650.
Optimal line length: Research supporting how line length affects usability
juni 02, 2003
“As computer monitors were used more in these studies, longer line lengths seemed to enable faster reading performance. Duchnicky and Kolers (1983) found that a full screen length of 7.4 inches (187 mm) resulted in 28% faster reading times over a 1/3 screen length of 2.4 inches (62 mm). In fact, both full screen and 2/3 screen line lengths were read reliably faster than the 1/3 screen length.”
Optimal line length: Research supporting how line length affects usability
Towards next generation URLs
mei 31, 2003
”For many years we have heard about the impending death of URLs that are difficult to type, remember and preserve. The use of URLs has actually improved little thus far, but changes are afoot in both development practices and Web server technology that should help advance URLs to the next generation.“
The sociobiology of Information Architecture
mei 30, 2003
“To approach information architecture from a purely anthrocentric perspective is to overlook the lessons of billions of years' worth of evolutionary history.”
The sociobiology of Information Architecture
The information design approach to web development
mei 26, 2003
“Information Design is geared toward information solutions in general - as opposed to Web solutions in particular. That broader understanding of the dynamic inter-relationship of the myriad contexts, strategies and tactics pertaining to the creation of successful information is invaluable. It is also particularly relevant in providing excellent direction for Web development.”
The information design approach to web development
Color Blender
mei 20, 2003
“This tool is provided without warranty, guarantee, or much in the way of explanation. Note that use of this tool may or may not crash your browser, lock up your machine, erase your hard drive, or e-mail those naughty pictures you hid in the Utilities folder to your mother. Don't blame me if anything bad happens to you, because it's actually the aliens' fault. The code expressed herein is solely that of the author, and he's none too swift with the JavaScript, if you know what we mean, so it's likely to cause giggle fits in anyone who knows what they're doing. Not a flying toy. Thank you for playing. Insert coin to continue.”
[via]
To PNG or not to PNG
mei 19, 2003
“In short, PNG was designed to replace GIF as the standard image format for lossless compression on the internet. It claims better compression than GIF, full alpha transparency, and gamma correction. All common browsers today support PNG, and all except Internet Explorer for Windows claim to support PNG's killer feature -- full Alpha transparency. PNG is royalty free, unlike GIF, and is a recommendation of the W3C.”
Views and forms: principles of task flow for web applications
mei 15, 2003
”Creating web applications that support the full and valid completion of specific tasks, operations, and database transactions, require some understanding of how to manipulate the medium to that purpose.“
Views and forms: principles of task flow for web applications
Six tips for improving your design documentation
mei 13, 2003
”Writing effective design documentation (like design itself) is really all about making sure you serve the needs of your audience.“
Six tips for improving your design documentation
The ideal web team [2]
mei 09, 2003
“In the previous column, an ideal Web team consisted of no more than seven people with clearly defined responsibilities who constantly communicate with each other. The project manager held prime importance, while an overly active account manager might cause problems.
The focus of this column will be on server-side and client-side specialists.”
Designing with Web Standards
mei 08, 2003
Can't wait till this book is available in the shops. A must have for any one who reads A list Apart and zeldman.com frequently. The book will be available at May the twelfth.
Just read the sample chapters to get an idea of the book.
Syndication: Sharing content across websites
mei 06, 2003
“The Internet is rapidly becoming a popular way to disseminate content or to collect and redistribute it via other websites and intranets. The term syndication was originally used in the world of print media to refer to a news agency that sells news articles, comic strips or crossword puzzles to many newspapers under the assumption that readers buy only one of them. On the web, the idea of content syndication is basically similar - one party makes the content of its website available in such a manner that many other parties can pick it up via the Internet, automatically and as often as needed.”
Syndication: Sharing content across websites
Internet Explorer's dumbest bug ever revealed
mei 05, 2003
“Bored of creating buffer overflow possibilities and security gaps an electronic elephant could walk through, Microsoft's Internet Explorer development team has turned its attention to good old HTML. Thankfully, this bug just crashes IE. Embarrassingly for the Vole, it's done with just one malformed line of HTML.”
Internet Explorer's dumbest bug ever revealed
And you're still using IE?
Rules-based design
mei 01, 2003
“Grids are used to balance the design of books, ads, posters, and paintings. They are also often used in web design, particularly when it is executed via HTML tables or Flash. The grid has a long and noble history in the design of two dimensional media. But it is not the only way to design web pages and it is certainly not the webbiest way.”
Something that will be used alot in the upcoming omkat of JW's Braindump.
The Google dance
april 28, 2003
“Every month many website owners sit in front of their computers and press their browser's refresh button repeatedly as Google begins its monthly update. The update, now widely know as the "Google Dance", has become a monthly online festivity where webmasters closely watch as Google's new index gradually comes online and either rejoice or despair over their new rankings.”
Flashes of brilliance and use-centered design
april 24, 2003
“Can Macromedia Flash really add value to a Web site? Or is Flash content on the Web so prone to usability problems that it can never be fully effective?”
Flashes of brilliance and use-centered design
Building a metadata-based website
april 23, 2003
“The intent of using a centralized metadata repository as the basis of navigation for a website is to separate business concepts from the content or functionality about those concepts.”
Building a metadata-based website
The ideal web team
april 16, 2003
“Anyone can tell you that to create a good Web site you need a good Web team. Less people can tell you exactly how this team should go about creating the site. This two-part series presents one view of the ideal Web Team.”
Towards next generation URLs
april 15, 2003
“For many years we have heard about the impending death of URLs that are difficult to type, remember and preserve. The use of URLs has actually improved little thus far, but changes are afoot in both development practices and Web server technology that should help advance URLs to the next generation.”
[via]
The process of redesigning a logo
april 09, 2003
“The concepts we picked along the way were strongly influenced by the personal flavor and suggestions of the reviewers and my style of design. The most important (and also the most widely varied) perspective we had to keep in mind was the reader's. The time between the first concept and our final product was about three months.”
The process of redesigning a logo
Writing smart annotations
april 02, 2003
“One of the most tedious, yet necessary, tasks of an information architect or interaction designer is annotating wireframes.
Now that you've figured out the navigation, placed the content, and figured out page flows, it's time to explain just what exactly that collection of "Lorum ipsum" greeking, HTML widgets, and X-ed out boxes are, how they work, and how they meet the site goals. That's where annotations come in.”
A beginner's guide to trackBack
maart 30, 2003
“This document is an introduction to TrackBack from a non-technical perspective. The goal is to illustrate how the system can be used to enhance cross-site conversations and build community.”
A beginner's guide to trackBack
For those who didn't understand trackback till now.
The ROI of ROI
maart 26, 2003
“So you've thought about calculating the ROI of a proposed change to your Web site or for proposing upgrades to servers, software, hardware, or anything else that has to do with your project. When facing this daunting task, you choose to skip it because it's too time consuming. Perhaps you want to measure the ROI of a change you made, and you're either lost at how to do it or overwhelmed at the time it will take to track and measure it.”
Three approaches to intranet strategy
maart 25, 2003
“Intranets have become immensely popular over the past few years. While they were usually found only in large organizations five to ten years ago, the past few years have seen companies, non-profits, and institutions of all sizes beginning to see the value of creating a Web site specifically for internal use.”
Three approaches to intranet strategy
T36 : Papers etc.
maart 24, 2003
“ This will be a growing collection of papers, case studies, talks and future lectures. Right now there is only the Designer's Guide here for download. However, I am currently working on the below list in the order they appear and will post them to this area as soon as humanly possible. I am also working on preparing the guide to be fully published online to enable comments and discussions - but I have to receive permission to use all the content that I've collected so far. The guide is available from the other side of this 'page' - and will most likely move to its own area within this section.”
[via]
XHTML Basic
maart 21, 2003
“The XHTML Basic document type includes the minimal set of modules required to be an XHTML host language document type, and in addition it includes images, forms, basic tables, and object support. It is designed for Web clients that do not support the full set of XHTML features; for example, Web clients such as mobile phones, PDAs, pagers, and settop boxes. The document type is rich enough for content authoring.”
I will define a set of templates soon, so JW's Braindump will be available on PDA's, i-mode or WAP 2.0 enabled phones. Especially for me and my soon to come Nokia 7650.
Very annoying
maart 18, 2003
I have installed the new version of Mozilla, Mozilla 1.3. But there is something very annoying about this version. When using a right mouse click in the tabbed bar, the first option in the menu is now " Close tab" instead of "New tab" in the older versions.
Very annoying when right clicking for a new tab without thinking. Any one else finds this annoying?
Another thing which annoys me is; when dubble clicking in the address bar, the whole text won't be selected, but just a small part of it.
So I have to adjust my websurfing behaviour (again).
Cascading versus indexed menu design
maart 17, 2003
“If there is one basic truism about the Web it is that every designer has their own opinion concerning the best method for presenting menu items on a web page. Two common ways to present menus are to either hierarchically cascade the menu items upon mouse-over, or to simply place most, if not all, of the menu items in a categorical index. Cascading menus have the advantage of requiring little screen real estate. However, they have been much maligned for several reasons.”
Cascading versus indexed menu design
Guiltless Image Use
maart 12, 2003
“Do you still crave the typographic control of creating headlines and decorative type with images instead of pure HTML text? Even with all the options we have for styling text with
[via]
MozBlog
maart 06, 2003
“MozBlog is a tool to enable people to blog with mozilla while they surfing. A more comprehensive history of blog here. Conventional way to do it is though blogger website or a bookmarklet.”
How do people evaluate a website's credibility?
maart 05, 2003
“Can you trust what you find on the Web today? There's no simple answer to this question.
With more than 50 percent of the U.S. population having Internet access, the World Wide Web has become an important channel for providing information and services. As the Web becomes a part of people's everyday lives - booking travel, finding health information, buying products - there is a growing need to help people figure out whether a Web site is credible or not: Can I trust the information on this site? Can I trust in the services this site describes?”
How do people evaluate a website's credibility?
[via]
Selling Information Architecture
maart 02, 2003
“The bottom line is that no one wants a Web site. A Web site is just a way to help someone get whatever it is that they really want.
The problem with “selling information architecture” is that too often it is assumed that people want Web sites, or that people want wireframes, or a content matrix, or a taxonomy. People don’t want any of these things, even though they say that they want them or might think that they need them.”
Selling Information Architecture
Example CSS lay-outs
februari 28, 2003
I guess already well known by the most of you, but this side is very handy to see what you need for a two-column or three-column CSS driven lay-out.
The elusive CSS footer
februari 27, 2003
“Yesterday while crunching, munching, belching, and…well, typing a bunch of CSS code and template markup for a project I'm working on, I was smacked upside the head with one of the greatest weakness of using CSS (and not tables) for element positioning - those blasted footers.”
It is a real pain in the ass. I know because I ran into the same problem for a project I am working on.
Update: whatdoiknow.org changed the extentions of it's files from .php to .shtml, so I have updated the link.
Getting Creative With Specs: Usable Software Specifications
februari 26, 2003
“Building architects don't have to think much about what the actual deliverables are to contractors and their clients, because their industry has traditions and standards for blueprints, balsa wood models, and computer-generated renderings. As user interface consultants, we have to think about this anew for every project. Each project is a little different and each client has different needs and preferences. Over time, this has given me the chance to evaluate the effectiveness of the different kinds of user interface specifications I have produced and used.”
Getting Creative With Specs: Usable Software Specifications
How Accessible is Safari?
februari 25, 2003
“When Apple released Safari on to the unsuspecting world earlier this year, it caught a lot of people off guard. The ripples are still being felt - Mozilla's source code was rejected in favour of the smaller code base of KHTML, and more recently Opera has suggested that it may no longer make a version of its browser for the Macintosh platform. And then, of course, there's the whole issue of how web developers can keep up with yet another browser foisted upon them - does it support agreed web standards? Or does it break standards-compliant sites in horrible new inventive ways?”
Nightly builds
februari 24, 2003
“Beginning today, we are also be releasing nightly builds of Movable Type, based on CVS snapshots. These are development releases and are geared towards users comfortable with running development versions of software.”
The new R&D: Relevant & Desirable
februari 21, 2003
“Somewhere in the process of evangelizing user-centered design, user experience professionals seem to have forgotten the value of vision-driven design.
User-centered design has been a useful antidote to prevailing software and web development attitudes, which are reminiscent of early 20th century production-driven marketing approaches. As Henry Ford put it, you could buy a Model T in any color as long as it was black. Likewise, the dot-bomb implosion showed the risks of basing the success of your business on a wild (and often bad) idea.”
The new R&D: Relevant & Desirable
Practical Applications: Visio or HTML for Wireframes
februari 19, 2003
“Wireframes provide specific, screen-level information, detailing which elements need to appear, the implementation of these elements, and the hierarchy among them. They also describe the various navigation mechanisms and help orient the viewer to the current location within the proposed application. They suggest an optimized layout, but often do not dictate these constraints to a visual designer.
As wireframes have such a varied and diverse audience, both internal and client, the format within which they are developed has been an often-debated topic. Currently, there are two primary schools of thought on this issue. One touts Microsoft's Visio, a diagramming program available on the market since 1991. The other firmly believes in HTML-based wireframes (also described as “high-fidelity prototypes”). While the two schools are not mutually exclusive, an individual IA tends to settle on a preferred method and work with it as much as possible.”
Practical Applications: Visio or HTML for Wireframes
Nothing has changed
februari 18, 2003
“It's been 10 years since Marc Andreessen and colleagues at the University of Illinois launched Mosaic, the first browser to navigate the World Wide Web.”
Conversation With Marc Andreessen
Upgrade to 2.62 now!
februari 17, 2003
Due to a huge vulnerability in the version 2.6 and 2.61 of Movable Type you have to upgrade to 2.62 immidiately. If you found the vulnerability, don't spread how to exploit it. Ben and Menna Trott insist on it!
Thank you, Ben and Menna, for the quick respons on email and releasing the 2.62 update so soon.
Movable Type 2.6 released
februari 14, 2003
I will install Movable Type 2.6 tonight because I have no FTP access from my desk at work. And this summer the Movable Type Pro version will be released.
Movable Type 2.6
Movable Type Pro
Weblogs and power laws
februari 12, 2003
“Many systems and phenomena are distributed according to a power law distribution. A power law applies to a system when large is rare and small is common. The distribution of individual wealth is a good example of this: there are a very few rich men and lots & lots of poor folks. A familiar way to think about power laws is the 80/20 rule: 80% of the wealth is controlled by 20% of the population.”
Toward a more standards compliant IE
februari 07, 2003
“Microsoft has corrected Internet Explorer's nonstandard CSS box model by using a doctype "switch" at the top of an HTML document. Any one of several different doctypes can be placed at the start of the page file, telling modern browsers how to handle the code. For instance, if I use the "strict" doctype (I like the sound of that), Internet Explorer (IE) 6 knows not to use the old IE box model (where borders and padding are included in the specified box width), and the program switches over to the standard model (borders and padding outside the stated width). Thus IE6 and other modern browsers can operate in two different modes: standard mode, and the old rendering style, "quirks" mode.
This decision could not have been easy for Microsoft, considering the number of sites written with IE in mind. I applaud them for doing the right thing, but the job's only half-finished. Another major behavior variance still exists in Internet Explorer, and it involves that most interesting of CSS properties - the float.”
Toward a more standards compliant Internet Explorer
What is a web application?
februari 07, 2003
“ The first step toward differentiating web applications from traditional content-centric websites is to focus on the "application" part of the equation. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, an application is (among other things), "...a computer program designed for a specific task or use." That last phrase, "specific task," is perhaps the most important.
The fundamental purpose of all web applications is to facilitate the completion of one or more tasks. Unlike visitors to traditional, content-centric websites, users of web applications invariably arrive with specific goals, tasks, and expectations in mind. Of course, that's not to say that visitors to content-based websites don't also arrive with certain goals and expectations, but rather that the motivations for using a web application are almost always explicit and precise.”
HTML's time is over
februari 06, 2003
“HTML's time is over. Let's move on.
As the web finds users and builders demanding more and more richness, we need to re-evaluate the technology that 99% of it is built on. No matter how sophisticated our back ends get, the front ends seem to remain stagnant. Yes, HTML transformed to XHTML, but that is such a small step and it is a problematic one when we consider the still eminent requirement of multi-browser, multi-platform, multi-device support.”
Opera 7 Released
februari 05, 2003
Old news, but quite a good review.
“The seventh Windows version of the Opera web browser has been released after an almost - quarter - year public beta testing period. Opera is the third most widely used browser in the world, and that's saying something if you consider that it costs an ad banner or USD39. It is a relief from the world of bloatedness and meaningless version numbers (ahem, Netscape 7), and there are plenty of new features to explore.”
How to spot Arial
februari 04, 2003
“Many of the characters in Helvetica and Arial are very similar to each other, although none are quite identical. Other characters are quite a bit different, and they are the key to telling which is which.”
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