New Theme

For the past year or so I’ve been wanting to design a non-bloggy theme for this site — a beautiful theme with a magazine-like front page showing the most recent post in a handful of categories. But I’m further from it now than last year, so it’s time to move on.
Which isn’t to say that [...]

Detecting Broken Images in JavaScript

We’ve become accustomed to link rot and broken images in nearly all corners of the web, but is there a way to keep things a bit cleaner?
K.T. Lam of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology came up with this sweet trick using jQuery and readyState to find and replace broken images:

jQuery(’span#gbs_’+info.bib_key).parents(’ul’).find(’img.bookjacket[@readyState*="uninitialized"]‘).replaceWith(’<img src="’+info.thumbnail_url+’" alt="’+strTitle+’" height="140" [...]

Web Design Frameworks?

I’m a fan of the Sandbox WordPress theme because it does so much to separate application logic from design, and a few small changes to the CSS can make huge changes to the look of the site. I think that’s the idea behind Yahoo! Developer Network’s Grids CSS library. That is, well structured HTML allows [...]

How Do I Create A Semantic Web Site?

A member of the Web4lib mail list asked:
How do I create a semantic web site?
I know I have to use either RDF or OWL but do I use either of these to create a mark up language which I then use to create the web site or, with the semantic web do we move away [...]

CSS Transparency Settings for All Browsers

.transparent_class {
opacity: 0.5; /* the standards compliant attribute that all browsers should recognize, but… */
filter:alpha(opacity=50); /* for IE */
-khtml-opacity: 0.5; /* for old Safari (1.x) */
-moz-opacity:0.5; /* for old skool Netscape Navigator */
}

(via)

WordPress vs. Drupal

I’m a WordPress Partisan, so I agree with Mark Ghosh’s criticism of this Wordpress vs Drupal Report. Still, it reminds me that I should point out XXLmag, SLAM Online, and Ford among the very non-bloggy sites built on WordPress.

Color Blind Safe Web Design Check

Etre’s Colour Check.
color, color check, color blindness, color blind, web design, design

People Ask Me Questions: Web Design Software (or is it Website Management Software?)

The question:
What’s a good user-friendly Macintosh web development program? A friend called. She’s thinking of buying Dreamweaver, but is afraid it will be overkill. She found Frontpage to be easy and needs something similar.
My answer:
If the intent is to design individual pages on an unknown number of sites, then I don’t have a recommendation.
If the [...]

Flickr Goes Gamma

Just when we started wondering how much longer flickr would be beta, they announced gamma.
The new design had me scratching my head for a bit, but I’m coming to like the changes. The menu/toolbar in the header has direct links to a lot more stuff, while the stuff in the footer has many fewer links. [...]

Native To Web & The Future Of Web Apps

Yahoo’s Tom Coats was of seven star speakers at Carson WorkshopsFuture of Web Apps Summit last month. As usual, Ryan Eby was pretty quick to point out his slides to me, mostly by way of pointing out Jeremy Zawodny’s translation of them.

Web Pages That Suck

“Web Pages That Suck: learn usability and good Web design by looking at bad Web design.”
web design, web, suck

37signals Tells Google A Thing Or Two

37signals takes on Google and suggests some improvements.

tags: 37signals, consulting firm, design, google, google search, improvements, improving google, search, search improvements, usability consulting, web, web design, web search

KingCosmonaut & WP Themes

I stumbled across the sometimes funny How To Live Your Life and got curious about the theme. Turns out it’s by Sebastian Schmieg, who keeps things real at kingcosmonaut. The theme is Blix, but the kingcosmonaut site is much cooler.

tags: blix, kingcosmonaut, sebastian schmieg, theme, web design, wordpress, wordpress theme