just to let you know

Browsers and Marketshare

Good piece on the recently surged discussions on browser share and IE6's potential end of No.1 rule. Despite me being fairly upbeat about Firefoxes success, Eric hits the nail on the head again as usual: We design for a community or an individual target group, not for browsers.

Restyling of Gofromhere.com

When I was contemplating various topics for my first article for DMXZones during September 2004, Simon Jones suggested to me to use his GoFromHere.com Meta-Searchengine site as a work example. After finishing the article by the beginning of October, the actual site now utilises the XHTML and CSS styling that I described in my DMXZones contribution.

Converting table based layout into valid XHTML/CSS

My first article for DMX Zone has been published. Go and have a look!

faulty MS IE rendering leads to crashing & freezing

I am very glad about Eric Meyer's post regarding freezes on MS IE / Win due to a problem with the rendering engine. Strangely enough, I had similar problem, but only very recently. Changing the floating of some divs sorted it. It actually lead me to believe that the problem could be due to SP2 upgrades, but the PC I use at home for website checks under Windows hasn't been patched yet (and by the recent comments I've read about it I might very well leave it at that). This still leaves the theoretical aspect of a virus - ach, we might never find out.

Excellent detective work by the guru himself - as usual.

we are now XHTML 1.0 transitional compliant

I finally found time to make this site fully XHTML 1.0 transitional compliant.

I know, I know. "Mea maxima culpa" and all that.

e-Apartheid at Odeon cinemas

What strange times we live in. There is a hobby web designer who decided to revamp the Odeon Cinema's website through his own webspace by calling the URLs on the original site. He was simply fed up with the inaccessibility and convoluted way the existing site had been developed. At first Odeon didn't seem to mind, but later the designer received a harsh letter from Odeon's awyers telling him to remove the accessible site.

Some companies don't seem to understand and it's quite poignant, I think, that the BBC commentator speaks of e-Apartheid.

Kottke.org redesign

We could all probably tell that he was up to something - well I think the redesign is a success. I like the new compact version, good stuff.

CSS naming conventions mkII

Eric Meyer elaborates a bit more why he thinks a discussion regarding naming convenions is important. I do agree with him in general - it does make life easier for beginners. But I think the discussion is now being diverted into CSS structuring - in additon to naming standards (ie his LVHA example).

Anyhow, if I *would* be an author, web standards evangelist or some sort of web design teaching pro, I'd most definitely set up my own standards - based on remarks and recommendations such as Eric's.

It's probably my "upbringing" as a commercial apps developer that's made me aware of writing readable code - based on departmental or general standards. My final judgement therefore is a thumbs-up for any kind of thinking around general standards - and maybe one day these will be included into basic validation in Dreamweaver or GoLive - or even supported by IE !? Dream on !

CSS naming conventions

Funny that articles on Meyerweb and StuffAndNonsense around CSS naming conventions are making the round at the moment, as I reallised the other day that I seemed to have developed my own weird naming standards (or at least that's what I thought) in some of my work.

I checked some of my latest stuff and was surprised how compliant I would be, IF you want to take Andy Clark's analysis into consideration.

Ach well... maybe I've just been reading the right books and therefore my creativity is not stifled - or is it ?

ieCapture

I know CSS is supposed to work in MS IE 6 .... hang on ! Yep, there are some difficulties and CSS still needs a fair amount of troubleshooting - especially if you opt for the future-proof, non-TABLE layout. But what to do if your design platform is a Mac and no PC can be seen anywhere near (and installing an emulator is a non-starter) ?

Well help is at hand, oh knights of the "holy style sheet" ! It comes in the shape and form of ieCapture , an online viewer developed by Daniel E. Vine.

ieCapture allows you to enter a URL - it then goes away and takes a PC screenshot of the page you entered. On a subsequent screen, you can view or download the screeshot.

The only current drawback is speed - Dan has already admitted that this service requires a speed boost. But checking out the current version number (0.0.4) suggests that dear Dan might have some more improvements in stock !

image preload using CSS

While working away on my latest website for a young and aspiring, Midlands-based photographer ;-), I discovered these 2 easy but very helpful hints to preload images using CSS.

• image preload on Netmechanic.com


• and of course something from the unbeatable Zeldman.com (March 2003)

CSS tips & trouble shooting

As I do spend so much time recently trouble-shooting various CSS, I thought I'd compile a list of useful links that offer some help out of the designers CSS misery. Some of the stuff sounds pretty straightforward but - we've all been there - we've all misspelled rules, classes and ids wrongly and puled our hair out in disbelief why the CSS wasn't displayed properly.

• I'll start with a very helpful link from the Mezzoblue blog. Mainly about common mistakes when applying CSS.
  
• Next are two items from A List Apart (ALA). A first one on custom corners and borders and another one on CSS drop shadows
  
• ever been to the CSS Zen Garden? This website shouldn't be missing in any web designer's "CSS links favourites" folder. CSS Zen Garden is basically a concept that forces you to re-style an existing site by merely changing the CSS and leeaving the HTML untouched. This site is for advanced CSS developers, but taking part will result in a big leap forward in understanding and using CSS.

Dreamweaver MX 2004 7.0.1 update

This is amazing. Every now and then miracles and strange coincidences do actually happen. Didn't I whinge on about DW MX 2004's sluggishness here the other day ? Well, Macromedia seem to have sorted it !

There is an update available for DW MX 2004 that should rectify the following:

• Improved stability and performance across all platforms, especially on Macintosh
• Bug fixes
• Restored Timelines feature

Wehey ! I've installed the update this morning and found the app to be much snappier. However, a final verdict has yet to be made. But all I can say is: if you've been trialling the old version, get the update (it also sets the initial trial days back to 30 days!) and give it a go. On my eMac 700/640/40 it made a big difference so far.