A LIST APART strongly opposes USHR 3261 AKA the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an ill-conceived lobbyist-driven piece of legislation that is technically impossible to enforce, cripplingly burdensome to support, and would, without hyperbole, destroy the internet as we know it.

SOPA approaches the problem of content piracy with a broad brush, lights that brush on fire, and soaks the whole web in gasoline. Learn why SOPA must not pass, and find out what you can do to help stop it.

A List Apart: Articles: Say No to SOPA.

Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart Magazine.

Filed under: Design, industry, Platforms, Responsibility, Standards, State of the Web, The Essentials

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CSS’ simplicity has always been one of its most welcome features. But as our sites and apps get bigger and become more complex, and target a wider range of devices and screen sizes, this simplicity—so welcome as we first started to move away from font tags and table-based layouts—has become a liability.

Fortunately, a few years ago developers Hampton Catlin and Nathan Weizenbaum created a new style sheet syntax with features to help make our increasingly complex CSS easier to write and manage—and then used a preprocessor to translate the new smart syntax into the old, dumb CSS that browsers understand.

Learn how Sass (“syntactically awesome style sheets”) can help simplify the creation, updating, and maintenance of powerful sites and apps.

A List Apart: Articles: Getting Started with Sass.

Illustration: Kevin Cornell

Filed under: A List Apart, Browsers, Code, CSS, Design

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THE FIRST SIX essential new classics from A Book Apart — brilliant, brief books by Jeremy Keith, Dan Cederholm, Erin Kissane, Ethan Marcotte, Aarron Walter, and Luke Wroblewski — make the perfect gift for the web geek in your life. During our holiday sale, buy all six books and save 30%!

A Book Apart Holiday Bundle

Filed under: A Book Apart

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GET YOUR BEANIE ON! The Fifth International Blue Beanie Day in support of web standards takes place around the globe on 30 November 2011. How can you participate? Glad you asked! Details are now available on the spankin’ new official Blue Beanie Day web page.

Filed under: Blue Beanie Day, Design, Web Design, Web Standards

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TYPEKIT FOUNDER JEFFREY VEEN has always shared knowledge freely, whether writing great books about web design and user experience, or (in this case) happily sharing a key secret of his business’ success: raising money isn’t about raising money – it’s about people.

Building Typekit on relationships by Jeffrey Veen.

Filed under: Advocacy, Best practices, business, Career, creativity, Design

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IT IS NOT “IRONIC” when an article about web standards is published in an online magazine formatted in Flash, or PDF, or some other non-HTML format. It is not “ironic” when an article on responsive design appears on a website that is not responsively designed. It is not “ironic” when an article on three essential principles of usability appears on a website that violates all three principles. It is not “ironic” when an article bemoaning the overuse of “Share” buttons appears on a website that overuses “Share” buttons. It is not “ironic” when an article advocating long form reading on the web gets chopped into multiple pages that discourage reading for the sake of a few ad views. It is not “ironic” when an article about microformats appears on a site that does not use microformats. It is not “ironic” when an article advocating HTML5 appears on a website formatted in XHTML. It is not “ironic” when an article about web accessibility appears on a website that suffers from serious accessibility problems. It is not “ironic” when an article about the importance of proper semantic markup appears in a magazine whose markup would make a goat cry. It is not “ironic” when an article about progressive enhancement and unobtrusive scripting appears on a website that fails if the user disables JavaScript.

It is publishing. It is humanity. It is the vanguard of ideas clashing against the rearguard of commerce. This is not new. This is all to be expected. We must stop raising our eyebrows and chuckling at it. We must decide to accept the world as it is, or to roll up our sleeves and help.

Filed under: State of the Web, Web Design, Web Standards

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THIS WEEK some friends launched Contents Magazine. Last night other friends threw a party to announce the new (free) Readability. Every day, around the world, hundreds of thousands of web people make magic, working in a digital medium that sometimes perplexes my brilliant engineer father and would have seemed like witchcraft to my grandmother, may she rest in peace.

The web is the most disruptive, empowering invention since, well, I don’t know. It helps ordinary people topple dictators or just comparison shop. We, the people who make websites, are responsible for this shamanistic creation, and we’ve been doing this work for two decades. Yet in all this time, nobody in the mainstream world seems to have noticed. Oh, they notice when Google challenges Facebook for world supremacy. And they noticed when Twitter helped bring about the glorious Arab Spring. But they don’t know jack about us, the people who do this work, and they don’t care.

If anyone is going to compile data about us and sift meaningful analysis from that data, it’s going to be we ourselves. The boot-strappers, the self-taught HTML wonder kids. You and me.

And that is why, as I have every year since 2007, I once more ask you to take ten minutes and complete the survey for people who make websites. Do it now.

I thank you, and you’ll thank yourself later.

For the curious, here are the ALA survey findings from 2007–2010:

• A List Apart Survey Findings 2007
• A List Apart Survey Findings 2008
• A List Apart Survey Findings 2009
• A List Apart Survey Findings 2010

Filed under: A List Apart, Survey

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SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST Interactive (“SXSWi” or simply “South by” to its friends) has somewhat brazenly announced that I will be the first inductee in its new Hall of Fame. The induction will take place during the 2012 Interactive Awards presentation in March of next year. There will be flowers and virgins. Well, flowers.

SXSW Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology. Founded in 1995—the same year I started this website—the Austin, TX-based interactive festival attracts tens of thousands annually.

I hope this announcement will not negatively affect attendance.

Filed under: Acclaim, SXSW, Zeldman

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“LONDON, ONTARIO Digital Interactive Game and Web Conference Day 1. Jeffrey Zeldman delivered the keynote in the Web stream downstairs at London Convention Centre. Later that day, SxSW announced his upcoming Hall of Fame Induction March 13, 2012!”

Jeffrey Zeldman at DIG 2011 Photo Gallery.

Filed under: Appearances, Design

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My thrice-delayed, once-cancelled flight home has been resurrected and is boarding. No one was ever so happy to be flying coach to Newark.

Filed under: cities, glamorous

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