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Slim - A Fast, Lightweight Template Engine for Ruby
Very cool-looking lightweight way to write HTML. Along the lines of Haml, but perhaps even simpler and cleaner. I dig it.
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What it means to be “responsive”
Over the past couple of years, I’ve been tagged with a reputation of being somehow an opponent to the technique Ethan Marcotte coined “Responsive Web Design” in his seminal A List Apart article of the same name. Ethan defines Responsive Web Design as a technique that incorporates fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries to deliver experiences that accommodate today’s multi-device world, and he has vigorously defended his brand name against any suggestions that there are other ways (besides fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries) to achieve the same effective result.
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TIME: 50 Best Websites 2007
Newsvine, Last.fm, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tumblr all make TIME magazine’s top 50 websites of the year.
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Hear me speak: Refresh Seattle, October 30
If you read this blog regularly, you’ll remember that I had some thoughts on The New Layers of Web Development in a recent entry. Basically, I talked about how the full stack (from web server to server-side programming to client-side rendering) of a modern web apps works together, and how it may disrupt the traditional Web Standards advocate’s Structure/Presentation/Behavior view of things.
What followed was a very hearty and useful discussion. After reading the comments, I’ve re-framed some of my opinions, changed a few others, and found better ways to talk about yet others. And I’m putting it all together in a presentation for Refresh Seattle that I call The Full Stack: Reevaluating the “Layers” of Web Development.
My Refresh Seattle event is on October 30th at 6:00pm at the Ballard branch of the Seattle Public Library. I will be keeping the presentation fairly short — maybe 40 minutes or so, and leaving plenty of time for Q&A.; Like all Refresh Seattle events, there will be drinks, appetizers, and conversation afterwards at The Bar-Mar (probably my favorite lounge I’ve been to in my short time in Seattle).
I really hope to see you all there! Even if you can’t come to the event, at least come to the Bal-Mar for drinks and such!
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On Webmaster Jam Session 2007
I spent the weekend in The Big D, attending and participating in Webmaster Jam Session 2007, the second annual conference put on by the great guy at CoffeeCup Software. How was it? Really, really great. Possibly the best web conference I’ve been to (Future of Web Design London 2007 is the only one that compares). The sessions were all very high quality, the venue was good, and the parties went well beyond “off the hook: status. Speakers were treated like royalty and attendees seemed to really enjoy the whole shindig.
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Tall Tom: A Case for the Crusty Old Website
Flavorite Tom Watson waxes nostalgic about the heyday of the personal website. I couldn’t agree more. Much of that nostalgia, along with a healthy enjoyment for so-called Web 2.0 apps of today (Flickr, etc.) is what inspired me to aggregate all my online data here at jeffcroft.com. He also mentions ChrisGlass.com, which is definitely amongst the best personal websites I’ve ever seen.
Personal websites are what got me excited about the Internet back in 1994. I hope the MySpaces, Facebooks, and Virbs of the world don’t supplant them.
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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.
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A question for those who think made-for-iPhone apps are a bad idea
The official, touted-by-Apple SDK for creating iPhone apps uses web-oriented languages like (X)HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Since Apple made this SDK public, some developers (including my employer) have jumped on board, creating iPhone apps that live at public URLs. Other have denounced this practice, suggesting that apps should not be targeted at one device, but rather be equally accessible from any phone, PDA, computer, or other web-browsing tool.
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@media 2007 Europe podcasts
Audio and slides are now available for the talks at this year’s @media Europe. Lots of good speakers on the bill — check ‘em out.
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Smashing Magazine: 50 Beautiful CSS-Based Web-Designs in 2006
JeffCroft.com included. Thanks so much, guys — a lot of great inspiration here.
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Caterina Fake interview in .net magazine
Gruber’s right: Caterina should totally be the CEO of Yahoo.
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Why Yahoo is Backing Away from RSS
First, I”m not sure Yahoo really is backing away from RSS. But if they are, there’s a perfectly good reason for it: RSS, as popular as it is with us geeks, is still not on the radar of most average Internet users. Most people simply don’t use it, or even sound very interested when you explain it to them. If, like Yahoo, you’re launching sites targeted at non-geeks, they may not be worth the hassle (or the lost pageviews).
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10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Website
A pretty good list, overall. I especially like number 10.
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What does it mean to be a “professional” web designer?
There was a time, not all that long ago, when making a professional website was not an especially complicated thing to do. The web consisted basically of images and HTML, and the differences between what could be produced by professional and amateurs weren’t all that great. There was little to no programming involved, and the web’s limitations meant that graphic designers weren’t able to create something much more aesthetically pleasing than anyone else with a copy of Dreamweaver.
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Accessibility follow-up
Four days later, my previous post on accessibility continues to generate a lot of discussion. That’s a good thing. Unfortunately (and really, unsurprisingly), some of the more zealous members of the accessibility community found a way to manipulate my comments into things I didn’t actually say. Thankfully, some of the more level-headed accessibility mavens understood what I was getting at.
So, as a follow-up, I just want to reiterate my original points, remove the extraneous ranting, and see if I can’t make myself perfectly clear. Please do read on…
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Has accessibility been taken too far?
There’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while but have a been hesitant to post, for fear of it being taken the wrong way, and fear of me being labeled as insensitive. But I’ve finally decided to just put it out there. I’ll be careful with my wording and try my best not to offend, but I can’t promise anything.
I’m concerned about the state of accessibility in our industry. I’m concerned that the web is being limited creatively by a growing crop of accessibility and usability zealots that, in my personal opinion, over-complicate the matter.
Has accessibility been taken too far?
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Steve Smith: Web Development and Information Technology
I have these exact same feelings, and they were especially obvious when I was working in the University setting (as Steve does). Web design/development has a lot more to do with marketing than it does IT.
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A helping hand for Dvorak
A few weeks ago, professional troll John C. Dvorak of PC magazine made some waves in the CSS and web standards world with this article, in which he calls CSS “another fine mess from the standards bodies,” that is “worsening over time as ‘improvements’ are made.” He then displays a complete ignorance of how CSS works when he notes that,”if your Internet connection happens to lose a bit of CSS data, you get a mess on your screen.”
Dvorak isn’t completely off base. CSS isn’t simple to learn. It’s not supposed to be. Professional web developers have professional tools (like CSS) that take time and commitment to learn. Non-professionals have simpler tools for web publishing that are quite easy to learn — they go by names like MySpace, Blogger, Moveable Type, WordPress, and Dreamweaver. There are browser quirks with CSS and if you don’t understand them CSS will drive you batty.
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Firefox 2.0 “Beta Candidate” released
Now featuring close buttons on individual tabs and an integrated spell checker for web forms…which is really exciting, unless you’re a Safari user and have had these features for the past two years. :)
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A few thoughts on journalism
I am not a journalist. Then again, I’m not a programmer and that didn’t stop me from writing about Django, so what the hell, right? Despite not being a journalist, I have always been interested in journalism. I even won some silly award in junior high for writing the best sports story of the year in a student publication. I intended to be a journalism major in college, until a God-awful teacher got in my way and made me hate writing.
But for the past several months, I’ve been working for a news organization that’s widely considered to be one of the most innovative in the country. I’m still not a journalist, but I get to hang around journalists and occasionally play one on the Internet. So I’ve been thinking a lot about the industry, and I thought I’d share a few things this non-journalist has learned…
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LOST-theories.com — with source code!
Over the past couple of weekends, I put together a totally-for-fun site related to ABC’s hit TV show, LOST. It’s called LOST-theories.com, and it came about because of my frustration with trying to read theories about my favorite show on blogs, forums, and wikis — which account for most of the LOST sites out there (and trust me, there are a lot of them). I have no idea if it’ll take off or not — and it doesn’t really matter. If it does, awesome. If not, I wasted eight bucks on a domain and eight or ten hours of my life — and I can live with that.
As you might expect, the site is powered by Django, and I’ve decided to post its entire source code here. A lot of people have asked me for some real-world example code, and now you have it. LOST-theories.com even includes a very simple blog app, so you get that code, too.
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John C. Dvorak: The Great Microsoft Blunder
As per usual, it’s hard to completely agree with Dvorak, but he definitely makes some interesting observations about how much the choice to build and bundle IE has backfired on Microsoft.
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Five Most Important Considerations (for planning a website)
Simple, but great post by Drew McLellan
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Vitamin
A new web design magazine by Ryan Carson and friends. Looks like it should have great content — it launches with nice articles from the likes of Eric Meyer, Jason Fried, and Mike Rundle, to name a few.
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Anil Dash: Your April Fool’s Joke Sucks.
So true. The Internet has pretty much ruined the fun that used to be April Fool’s Day.
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Alexaholic: Website Statistics and Traffic Graphs
Fun mashup site lets you compare traffic of multiple sites. Compete aganist your friends, or pit rivals against one another. This particular link suggests that Django is taking over the Rails kingdom! Hehe
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K-State is looking for Web folks
Kansas State University, where I worked until a couple months ago, has two openings for “web specialists.” One of these spots is a replcement for me, so I have a personal interest in seeing that a great person gets the gig!
Don’t be put off by the long and varied list of “required” skills. The job description says “four or more of the following…” I believe the goal is to hire one frontend/design person and one backend/programming person, but they’re using the same job description for both positions. If you’re a XHTML/CSS monkey with some design skills, you’ll be perfect for replacing me.
K-State is a great place to work, with awesome benefits, great people, and a very laid back atmosphere. The Web Technologies team really “gets it,” with regards to web standards (even if not all of the sites have yet been transitioned to modern techniques). Neil, the Manager to which these positions report, is a really great boss to work for. He’s definitely the type who is not afraid of big ideas and change — which is a bit unusual in the education sector.
K-State is in Manhattan, KS, which is a small-but-growing University town. If you like the pagentry of college football, having a five minute commute to work, Midwestern cost-of-living, and good bars, you’ll love Manhattan. It wasn’t easy for me to leave K-State, because it really was about as comfortable a situation as you could ask for.
If you are interested in the positions and would like to know more about K-State or Manhattan, feel free to e-mail me.
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See you in Austin!
I dunno about you all, but I’m definitely getting excited about South by Southwest Interactive! I’ll be arriving in Austin mid-day on Friday the 10th and will be leaving early Wednesday morning to return home.
I’m definitely hoping to meet a lot of you that have been reading this blog and posting comments over the years, so don’t be shy! I fully intend to inundate my Flickr account with images of freinds, online pals, smart people, and crazy parties.
Anyway, here are the panels and events I’m tenativley planning to be at — look for me!
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I won on Blingo!
After hearing of lots of people winning, I switched to Blingo for my searches about three weeks ago. Today, I won. Just a $10 gift certificate to iTunes — nothing terribly exciting. but still — not bad for doing nothing more than searching the Internets. :)
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Freebie: SXSWi 2006 iCalendar File
Starting preparations for for next month’s South by Southwest Interactive festival, I threw all of the panels, keynotes, and evening events listed on the SXSWi site into iCal (including descriptions and locations when they were available). I’ve exported the file to iCalendar format (.ics) and made it available for download. I don’t promise anything with regards to accuracy, but perhaps it will be beneficial to some of you.
Enjoy.
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49 News weather homepage
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49 News weather homepage
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49abcnews.com movie page
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Site launch: 49ABCNews.com
This post is for those of you who have noticed the lack of entries here and have been wondering what’s kept me so busy in the past couple of weeks…
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Last night after the big game, we launched the first site I was involved in at my new gig with World Online. The site, 49abcnews.com, is for KTKA channel 49, the ABC affiliate in Topeka, KS. KTKA was recently purchased by Free State Communications, a subsidiary of The World Company (who also runs World Online). Prior to the Free State acquisition, KTKA did not have a news broadcast. As of last night, they do — and they also have a website to go along with it. -
Simple “you are here” effects with the DOM
Perhaps my most useful Christmas gift this year is a copy of Jeremy Keith’s book, DOM Scripting. The book is written for the XHTML/CSS designer, rather than for programmers. It’s already paid for itself. Go get yourself a copy. Thus endeth the mini-book review.
One of the first things I did with my new DOM knowledge was build a simple script for handling “you are here” effects in navigation menus. Navigation menus are typically marked up as lists. Many people achieve the “you are here” effect giving the current page’s list item a particular class — and then styling that class differently using CSS. This is a great method, but it has one major drawback: it doesn’t allow you to use a static included file with your list elements, as every page’s list needs to be slightly different. When dealing with large sites, being able to “include” your navigation is a major timesaver.
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Modern Web Design in Higher Ed
In the past couple of days, there has been a good bit of discussion in the web standards community about education and why there are still so many web professionals that haven’t a clue about the modern web and are still building the web the way they were in 1998.
I assert that a major part of the problem is the lack of quality front-end design/development instruction in higher education. I’ve spent the last four years working at universities, and my experience supports this assertion. There are several reasons for this, but to me the core issue is that good, solid front-end web design and development on today’s internet is so incredibly multi-disciplinary.
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Question: who recommends browser default stylings?
Just a question to anyone who knows the answer: does the W3C, or any other organization, put forth a recommendation on how browsers should style (x)HTML elements by default (i.e. if there is no stylesheet)? While working today, I noted several differences from browser to browser on the defaults. I’m just curious if these styles are up to each individual browser maker, or if there is some kind of a sanctioned recommendation somewhere.
If there is not a recommendation I can read, does anyone know of a reference guide to how different browsers style each element?
Anyone?
Note: I know browser default styling is not usually a real-world problem, since most of us simply “mass reset” or “neutralize” it at the beginning of our stylesheets anyway. I’m just curious about it, that’s all.
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SXSW 2006 Planning: Help me out!
I just got confirmation that the University I work for is in fact going to send me to South by Southwest this year. It’ll be my first SXSW, and I’m stoked!
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be planning the trip. I’d love some advice from you South By veterans. When should I arrive and leave? Which hotel should I stay at (and where are you staying?)? Anything else I should know?
In general, any SXSW advice will be very helpful. See you all in March!
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Despair in design, by guest author Dave Gregory
How many times have you looked at the current project you have and just said to yourself… “If I could just trash this project and start over!”
Scenarios: Clients change their mind mid-project and the impact actually changes the way you would have done the project from the beginning. Time constraints have reached their all time high so decisions are made to use existing, buggy code to make the due date rather than taking a bit more time and doing it “right.”
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Which GUI OS X text editor do you prefer for HTML/CSS/JS development?
Yes, I know the venerable Mr. Hicks did the same survey, but that was over a year ago, and I’d like to see where we stand today. Over the past few months, I have bounced back and forth between a handful of editors that are all good in their own right, but also all have issues that make them not 100% satisfying. So, what are you currently using for front-end web development on OS X? Before you speak on behalf of your favorite, allow me to define my personal requirements for a great text-editor and my experiences with some existing ones.
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Jeff Croft
I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with nGen Works, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.
Some of my clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, 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.
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