Post Archive

› June 28, 2003

Designing with MOSe in mind

In the wake of the discussion about the future of webdesign (e.g. here at webgraphics) after the announcement that IE6sp1 will probably be the final standalone version of Microsoft's browser, interesting ideas are taking shape. Over at Mezzoblue, Dave Shea proposes his MOSe approach and similar voices can be heard in other corners of the web.

The idea is that webdesigners should develop pages that look good in IE6, and add extra (extra, not crucial) functionality for Mozilla/Opera/Safari users, by means of advanced CSS2 and CSS3 rules. An excellent idea, I think. The mini-icons on this site, Pixy's hierarchical menus or maybe even last week's sidenotes can be seen as experimental steps in this direction.

In this context, I've been thinking about the ideal designing process for accomplishing this task; even more than before, it sounds like a good idea to 1. design for IE6 and 2. tweak your design and add extra functionality for MOS. Doing it the other way around (designing for MOS, tweaking for IE) might result in endless back and forth checking between several browsers, in my opinion.

Any thoughts, refreshing ideas about MOSe or the ideal designing process?

› June 23, 2003

Starting 3rd Year

Today webgraphics starts it's third year as the weblog you're reading here. I've had the domain since '97, and since then it's has been a web development search engine (thanks to Andy for those years), a page with a logo on it (hi), and finally a collaborative weblog (last 3 years).
Ironically, today has also been somewhat rocky for the site with weird connectivity problems and other strangeness. I'm not sure why a comment made to a post earlier today somehow became the text of the post itself, thankfully I was able to fix things since the rss file somehow retained it's text. At least 50% of the problems are my fault, I'm in the middle of making some rather drastic changes, and so some babies are being thrown out with the bath-water if you will. More detail on the changes later.

Safari 1.0 (v85) Released

It's probably old news by now, but if you have not downloaded the 1.0 final version of Safari, you need to do so now.

It may be my imagination, but 1.0 seems much faster than any of the beta releases (which is saying a lot), though not all of the display issues I've logged (via Apple's Bug Reporting system) have been fixed.

In related Apple news: Who else is drooling over the new PowerMac G5's? I know I'll be in line for a G5 and an iSight later this year...

› June 20, 2003

GIF Patent Expired

Brad Choate points out that today the technology patent for GIF images (No. 4,558,302) expires. Perhaps this means that more companies that make software will be inclined to include GIF output options, or perhaps not.
Perhaps you are a communist PNG user who itches all over with excitement when someone says "alpha channels", and protests at the still significant browser percentage which can not view PNGs.
Perhaps the you really don't care since you ignore the issue for the most part and use Adobe Photoshop produced GIF images willy nilly.
I think I fall closer to the latter, but somewhere in-between those two extremes, depending on the day.
In a cranky and almost unrelated note, I'd like to take the opportunity to express my displeasure with people who pronounce GIF as if it were a popular brand of peanut butter. The acronym is "Graphic Interchange Format" not "Jraphic Interchange Format".

› June 19, 2003

More CSS3 selector stuff

Over at xml.com, Russell Dyer wrote an interesting article about CSS selectors. The first page deals with CSS1/2 selectors, page two focuses on Mozilla's implementation of CSS3 selectors. Worth a read.

Bookmarklet: Get ALT Info

A simple yet ingenious method for checking the alt of all images on a page, grab this bookmarklet from scriptygoddess. I'm especially pleased to see this since I like to use Safari as my default browser, yet I in doing so I can't double check my alts via tooltip like in other browsers.

Reinvigorate

Ironically discovered through the referral page here, Reinvigorate Data Archiving Services is a very slick system for tracking traffic, browsers, platforms, referrers, etc. It even has a link crawling and checking feature. I was surprised by both the quality and depth of the features, as well as the slick interface. I believe this service is well worth checking out, I wish I had found it sooner.
Dramatically simpler in scope, but associated with this is a little open source Flash/Java User Count tool that you can use to show how many folks are currently visiting your site.

› June 18, 2003

Xtati grid design contest

If you hurry, you might have barely enough time to submit an entry into this book cover design contest. The contest is setup quite nicely with an opportunity for the public to leave comments and cast a vote for each entry. The prize for winning is a copy of the book you are designing the cover for "Making and Breaking the Grid" by Timothy Samara. If you're interested, hurry because entries have to be sumitted by the 19th (tomorrow). Thanks goes to Timo for passing along the link, although I should note that Timo actually sent the link a while ago (when it would have been more timely), so it's really my fault that you have less than a day to enter (blame me later).

› June 17, 2003

From footnotes to sidenotes

As I often deal with footnotes in web documents and the classic way of doing it has several drawbacks, I was looking for a solution that is easy to implement, respects semantics and improves the document's usability.

This is what I came up with: From footnotes to sidenotes From footnotes to sidenotes (new URI). It's a solution relying on CSS3 selectors, so you'll need Mozilla or some other Gecko spin-off to get the full effects.

ALA: Accesskeys

New A List Apart article: Unlocking Hidden Navigation: Accesskeys by Stuart Robertson. One of the nice things about ALA articles is that they tend to focus on a small, definable scope and thoroughly investigate it, rather than summarize the details of a larger scope. This seems to make finding valuable and helpful information easy, for instance by browsing the archives.

› June 13, 2003

Change this here

Do you read webgraphics semi-regularly? Ever click through from your RSS reader of choice and actually view the regular HTML version of these pages? If so, I thought I'd open up a little post here purely for the purpose of giving you an opportunity to comment on any improvements to the site you can think of. Don't like how something works? Let me know. See a useful feature missing? Have an improvement idea for function or content structure?

Movable Type Reference

Thanks to LYD's mini-blog, I found this very useful reference for Movable Type tags. I like the concept in general of collapsing a large amount of information into an easily browsable nested tree like this. Previously I had only considered using this technique for expandable navigation lists, but here its used much like a quick reference filling system for lots of bits of info. Of course there are other bits of code one could use for getting the same results (e.g. gazingus expandable menus) and if you're interested in doing such, you may find this taming lists article from a list apart helpful.

› June 6, 2003

"Web Developer" Extension

Chris Pederick has made a nice Web Developer Extension for Mozilla Firebird.
The extension adds a menu and toolbar to the browser with several web development tools. You can describe it as a lighter, maybe more intuitive version of the PNH toolbar with a few interesting additions such as "Outline images without alt tags", etc.

› June 5, 2003

Using iTunes out of the US

Just having gotten myself a real computer, I wanted to try out one most of the renowned applications for it, and lo', it seems that the Music Store is only avalable for people with US billing addresses. Wouldn't it be pretty easy for Apple to connect a user account with a credit card using VISA, MasterCard, EuroCard, American Express, Maestro etc., so that world citizens could use it no matter their location?