-
Workshops For Web People: Andy Clarke
The inimitable Andy Clarke is going a solo workshop in Leicester, England. Andy’s definitely amongst the most entertaining speakers on the web design circuit, so if you’re in the UK, you don’t want to miss this.
Visit -
Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor
Anyone who thinks there are no good uses for Flash hasn’t seen this website. Rock!
(Oh, the product sounds cool, too!)
Visit -
Daniel Mall and Shaun Inman: Cross-Pollination: Breeding a Better Web.
Even though I don’t like the crowd-sourcing, I”m still not above suggesting everyone go and vote for this panel. I’d love to see it, myself!
Visit -
Gabe da Silveira on the myth of content and presentation separation
“I find it shocking how some people take it to the extreme of total semantic purity. Presentational semantics are not an oxymoron—in fact they are a critical part of the web.” Exactly. This person really understood what I was getting at in my latest post.
Visit -
I’ve joined the Vitamin advisory board.
Carson Systems’ Vitamin asked me to join their Advisory Board, and I jumped at the chance. I’ll be helping them “determine what’s important in the web industry today, what topics we should cover, which products we should review and who should be our next interview.” James Archer and Jina Bolton are also new board members.
Visit -
Mark Boulton: Blueprint. A CSS Framework.
Besides Mark’s writing, take a look at the comments, especially where Simon Willison gets in on the action. Simon seems to share my view that non-semantic class name may be a necessary evil — and he articulates the position well. It’s not that we think semantics are unimportant, it’s just that we also think practically is important. Simon says:
(The non-semantic nature of Blueprint’s class naming scheme) does bother me, but what bothers me more is how incredibly difficult it is to write maintainable CSS that can be updated and managed by a team of people.
Exactly.
Visit -
On separation of content and presentation…
“Separation of content and presentation is a continuum, not a binary proposition, and only begins with clean HTML and CSS.”
I really hate it when someone manages to say everything I was trying to say more succinctly and elegantly than I every could have. :)
Visit -
The myth of content and presentation separation
One of the hallmark attributes of web standards-based design is the concept that proper use of semantic (X)HTML and CSS completely abstracts the presentation of a site from its content. One key real-world benefit of this separation is that come redesign time, one only needs to change or replace the CSS stylesheet, and needn’t lay so much as a finger upon the hallowed grounds we call markup. I’m here to say that this mantra isn’t much more than a fairy tale.
More -
Subtraction: The Framework Formally Known as ’Prints
Khoi interviews Olav, the guy who has packaged up a lot of the work we did at LJWorld.com (along with some more work!) into a handy CS framework called Blueprints. It’s a great little interview.
For the record, I was surprised and a bit taken aback when I first saw that someone else had packaged up a lot of our work and released it publicly, but in the end I’m very pleased about it. There some great stuff in there, and Olav has added to it, and done a great job of documenting it and supporting it. And, he definitely gives credit to everyone involved — he was never trying to rip us off. He just wanted to provide something useful, and I’m glad he has!
Visit -
Blueprint: A CSS Framework
Blueprint is a CSS framework based very heavily on the work Nathan, Christian and I did at the Journal-World (and also taking some cues from Wilson Miner and Khoi Vinh). I’m happy to see it out there and someone else supporting it (since we never could have), but I do sort of wish I’d at least gotten a heads up that someone was planning to package and release it. I suppose Olav didn’t need to ask for permission, but it would have been the polite thing to do. We never really intended our work to see the light of day, but I’m not really bothered that is has. And, Olav does give credit where credit is due.
Anyway, it does look good. It’s got a few minor improvements on what we had built and is packaged very neatly. Give it a look, if you’re interested in this sort of thing.
Visit -
A List Apart: Frameworks for Designers, by me!
I wrote a shot piece for A List Apart on how the concept of frameworks can apply to designers, and specifically to CSS. We hear about frameworks all the time these days, but the concept is usually relegated to programmers doing JavaScript or server-side scripting. It turns out a good set of abstracted CSS idioms can also be very effective in speeding up your web design process.
Visit -
J-Bolt: Breaking Out of the Box
Jina shows you how to craft a grid-based design that doesn’t look all boxy and boring. Because straight lines are boring. Ask anyone. Especially the readers of JeffCroft.com! They obviously hate straight lines!
But seriously — there is a misconception amongst web designers that grid-based layout means boxiness. It doesn’t. Jina’s example is full of swooshy, curvy goodness, but still maintains the underlying grid, for a best-of-both-worlds result.
Grids are there to unify your design and tie everything together. They’re not (necessarily) there to be seen. You don’t have to wear your grid on your sleeve like myself or Khoi Vinh in order to get the benefits of using one.
Visit -
Andy Budd suggests CSS 2.2
A great post by Andy in response to the incredibly slow pace of innovation in CSS. Most of the CSS3 modules have been more or less ready to go for five years, and yet no browser really supports them. WTF? Andy suggests an interim CSS 2.2. Personally, I’m not as interested in interim solutions as I am in solving the core problem: why the hell must we wait five years in order to use the next version of CSS?
I left a long comment on Andy’s post detailing my thoughts — which include the suggestion that maybe Flash is the way to go, if the W3C and CSS can’t keep up.
Visit -
A List Apart: Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid
Wilson Miner’s first A List Apart article has been posted, just in time for me to cop all the ideas for use in my upcoming workshop on web typography in London.
Wilson’s been working on this for quite some time, and it shows. The topic — aligning text to a baseline grid — is something I’ve been working on a lot myself lately. It’s not quite as simple on the web as it ought to be, but Wilson shows you how it can be done with the minimal amount of pain. And the result — well, the result is just a much more professional-looking page. It really makes a big difference.
Wilson ends the article with a note on sizing text in pixels, which bring me to a slightly related topic. Did you know you can actually resize text set in pixels with IE6? Yup, you can. You can have turn on the “Ignore font sizes…” option in the accessibility dialog, but it can be done. This led me to wonder (again) how much responsibility should fall on users (especially those with unique needs) to learn their tools. In a comment on Roger’s site, I said this:
I have neck and back problems, myself. Because of that, I have to buy a decent chair and take the time to configure it for the optimal support. If I don’t, I’ll end up in pain when I’m reading a book at my desk. If I choose to sit in a crappy chair, or I choose not to configure my chair the way that is best for me, or I simply don’t learn how my chair works — whose fault is that? I’d say it’s my fault. You can maybe make an argument that it’s the chair manufacturer’s fault, because they didn’t make it easy enough for me to use my chair properly. But I don’t see any way in hell you can blame it on the book I’m reading. Do you?
Go read Wilson’s article. It’s really great.
Visit -
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
Web Standards Creativity
-
IE NetRenderer: Shows screenshots of your sites in IE
Free online HTML tool that shows instantly how your website looks like in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, 6 and 5.5. Handy indeed. Could be better, though — it doesn’t show full page screenshots (only like 1024x768 windows) and it’s only a screenshot, not anything you can test interactivity with. But still — pretty useful for CSS authors.
Visit -
Dan Rubin is naked, and I’m pissed.
Tonight I’ve found it damn near impossible to get any screenshots of the sites I’m wanting to use as examples in my slides for my upcoming typography workshop because everyone has stripped their g’damned CSS. Grrrrrr!
Visit -
456 Berea Street: IE 7 does not resize text sized in pixels
Roger says:
IE 7 does not, repeat not, resize pixel-sized text. It partly compensates for that by allowing the user to scale/zoom the entire page, including images (which quickly leads to massive horizontal scrolling because of its bad implementation).
He’s right, of course. However, anyone who uses this fact that suggest that there’s still an accessibility issue with pixel-sized text in IE7 is wrong.
IE7 can increase the size of text set in pixels. Roger can make the distinction between text zoom and page zoom all he wants, but the bottom line is that you can increase the size of text set in pixels in IE7. Yes, it’s a full page zoom and not just a text zoom, but it’s still resizing the text set in pixels — right?
The fact that IE7’s implementation doesn’t make resizing the text as convienent as Firefox or Safari’s doesn’t matter. Accessibility and convienence are not the same thing. Don’t confuse them.
Accessibility gurus can no longer claim this as an accesibility problem with IE7. Period.
Me, I’m with Nathan Smith:
VisitAt least IE7 can zoom. As for me, I’m done baby-sitting Microsoft’s sorry attempts to produce a browser. We can only coddle the weakest link for so long, until it’s time to just say - Goodbye, laggards.
-
WTF: CSS Naked Day Wordpress Plug-in
The fact that a plug-in is apparently necessary to strip CSS out of your WordPress templates is enough to make me never, ever go near that blogging platform. Why, in God’s good name, couldn’t I just remove the
linkelements that reference the stylesheets?I had no idea logic was that closely tied to presentation in Wordpress. Wow, that’s disgusting.
Visit -
Colly: Web Standards Creativity has arrived
Web Standards Creativity is now shipping. I’ve still yet to receive my own copy, but Simon got his and took a few pictures for the world to see. This should be an exciting book, so if you haven’t already, go get yours.
Visit
Jeff Croft
I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with Simply Measured, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.
Some of my past clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, Django, The Lawrence Journal-World, and the University of Washington.
I’ve authored two books on web and interactive design and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world.
Filter content
Items tagged css
By content type
Other tags in these items
- webdesign 1072 (100%)
- jeffcroft 1048 (98%)
- design 858 (80%)
- conference 567 (53%)
- webprogramming 533 (50%)
- apple 444 (41%)
- django 437 (41%)
- humor 405 (38%)
- blueflavor 374 (35%)
- worldonline 337 (31%)
- python 321 (30%)
- mac 300 (28%)
- technology 278 (26%)
- sports 238 (22%)
- business 225 (21%)
- journalism 203 (19%)
- video 198 (18%)
- osx 196 (18%)
- typography 193 (18%)
- software 185 (17%)
- iphone 180 (17%)
- webstandards 176 (16%)
- mobile 143 (13%)
- jinabolton 133 (12%)
- blog 129 (12%)