4 May, 2000
[3:15 pm]
Reader Rory Ewins wasn't about to take our "What life?" comments of yesterday lying down, so he wrote this lovely parody of the Daily Report. ::: It looks like we'll be doing a live interview on BBC Radio 4's "The Message" program tomorrow. No, this one is not about the browser wars and web standards. It's about our Ad Graveyard. We suspect Cool Site of the Year brought us to the BBC's attention.
        ::: The ever-contentious Eric Brooks, trolling for trouble, has penned Take That, You Bloggers! for your spiteful tittering pleasure. We didn't really intend to link to it, but Eric seemed depressed, and we were afraid he might go on some kind of vengeful spree if we didn't give him what he wanted.
        ::: Raven Lunatique is the latest soul to write to us for web advice from a non-usable email address. Raven, dear, we tried to reply. Mail delivery failed.
        ::: And speaking of mail trouble, viral packets descended on our in-box this morning courtesy of a former client, and soon showed up in the feed of A List Apart Digest, where they were promptly and safely deleted. To the kid in Manilla, Phillipines, who reportedly created the I LOVE YOU virus because he didn't feel like going to school today – okay son, write on the blackboard 100 times: I must not create a worldwide computer virus. I must not create a worldwide computer virus ....
        ::: And speaking of schoolrooms (lame segues our specialty), teaching Cheryl's design class last night was a lovely experience. See, we really do have a life. Kind of.

[3 am]
Just for you: the spanking new About the Daily Report page. (While we were at it, we updated About Zeldman.com, too.)
 
3 May, 2000
[12:30 pm]
Sometimes readers ask why we don't tell more about our life. What life? Today we are writing the CSS section of the web design curriculum for Populi, updating some logos for one client, revising a site design comp for another, and speaking as briefly as we can to a French journalist from 01.informatiq. Tonight we are guest-teaching a web design class at Pratt Institute.
        It's all good, and we're as grateful as old men when they fall in love, but it doesn't leave much room for personal anecdotes. "Walking to get more coffee, we noticed the carpeting" just doesn't cut it. By August, we should be somewhat less busy.

::: New Browsers - New Problems debuts in the May issue of Joe Gillespie's Web Page Design for Designers. (Hat tip: Splorp.) Joe beefs that, as browsers improve and become more standards-compliant, there will temporarily be even more problems for designers who insist on controlling font sizes. (Actually, Joe's wrong about that. If you must control font sizes, use pixels in your style sheet. This will work on any platform, in any CSS-capable browser, old or new. Even the really, really lousy ones.) The rest of the article serves as a gentle introduction to the wonderful world of web standards.
        Historical Note: Joe G. and Tomas Caspars collaborated on the "Browser Brothers" protest in 1997, when Netscape temporarily abandoned the web-safe color palette in the earliest versions of Navigator 3. This short-lived protest predated The Web Standards Project. Plus, Browser Brothers' Tomas helped us launch the WaSP, and contributed some cool bannerage to the project. We could write a book about those glory days. Uh, but then we'd have even less time for a life.

[3:10 am]
Designer Scott Lindsey abuses our icons in a whacked-out but well-designed site for his band, the Cult Ceavers. Click on the icons at left for a special pop-up Flash surprise. (Well, we guess it won't be as much of a surprise, now.) Our favorite is the green bio icon movie.

::: Creativesight.com, which just published our Content vs. Execution piece, is also running Steven Heller's Attack of the Designer Authorpreneur – an article which reads like a more intellectual version of our 1999 Slouching Toward Authorship series at A List Apart. Weird.
        Steven's article originally ran in AIGA, and for all we know it predates our ALA series. We're not trying to pull a Nike-style credit battle here. Good ideas are probably just in the air. (Hat tip: Chris Ford.)

2 May, 2000
[3 pm]
A List Apart is changing servers (again!) and we expect some temporary outages. We've removed the frames from most of the recent content, and at least one Apartnik is happy about it. Erika Meyer sent us this ALA frames-killing haiku:

        The beautiful woman
        removes her corset.
       
        ah!
        She can breathe.

::: Baby Kissing and Other Live Events: Tomorrow night, we'll be guest teaching at Pratt Institute. Pratt is one of the world's finest schools for art and design. Somebody has made a horrible mistake. ::: Seattle-ites, we'll be leading two conferences at Web Design World in July. The other conference speakers are pretty amazing. We won't list our favorites, because we'd leave somebody out by mistake, and inadvertently start some huge feud. But you can scroll down and see for yourself. (No Veen, though. We'll miss that big galoot.)

::: Softwired: The web is all about connectivity, which makes connectivity problems, er, problemmatic – maybe even ironic, in Alanis's sense of the word. Our DSL woes continue unabated – on again, off again, on again, off again – but we now know the cause of the problem, and one more wasted day of visits from tech folks should fix it, as soon as we get around to scheduling it. (We won't bore you with the technical cause of the problem.)

[1:30 am]
Namespace Wars III: The Digital Divas are mad as hell. A well-known network of female web designers, writers, and business owners, they founded their group in 1997, established their trademark, and launched digitaldivas.com in June 1998. Now the Divas find themselves in a legal battle with a much larger company: Microsoft. The software giant, perhaps unaware of the prior website and trademark, launched its own digitaldiva.com last month. Microsoft has not yet responded to the Divas' cease and desist notice. The Divas ask your support.
        ::: Visual Pleasure: Hundreds of super-talented web designers don't get enough exposure or credit. Suzanne Terhorst is one of the best. We just posted two of her fine sites to the news page at k10k.net, where you can always find links to amazing work, whether the designers are "known" – or simply should be.

May Day, 2000
[5:45 pm]
Is meaning being abandoned in favor of technique? We explore this question in "Concept Versus Execution," now playing in the Creative Process section at creativesight.com. ::: We've made a few quick nips and tucks in our little memoir of the Cool Site of the Day Awards, and spent the rest of our time on preliminary design work for JazzRadio.net. ::: Today's goodexperience.com, a daily journal with an emphasis on user experience, links to this week's lead story in A List Apart.

[2:30 am]
Voila! We have finished Web-ster's Haul: Notes on the Fifth Annual Cool Site of the Day Awards, our opinionated memoir of a night when old and new media converged. Enjoy it, won't you? Thank you. ::: Even the best of friends must part. We got sick of our year-old front page, we've so gutted it. What's left takes you right back here. Sentimentalists, we've archived the old core page just for you. ::: It's May Day! Phone in sick, won't you? Thank you.