31 October, 1999
Spent the day designing logos. Spent the night eating bad food with good friends at one of those outdoor restaurants where there's no extra charge for the bus fumes. Halloween is tomorrow but the parties started tonight. Girls dressed like 'hos, boys dressed like girls. Just another night in NYC.
        As the month ends, we're delighted to note that zeldman.com has made POV Magazine's Top 100 Web Sites, right behind the Internet Movie Database and Brunching Shuttlecocks.

30 October, 1999
65,000 Web developers received CNET Builder.com guru Dan Shafer's newsletter article about our refusal to "dumb down" standards-compliant pages that crash Netscape Navigator 4. (See 24, 25, 28 and 29 October, and this week's A List Apart).
        Unfortunately, some of those newsletter subscribers cannot visit this site, because it has been blocked by several "Cyber Nanny"-type blacklists since early 1996. And here in the land of the free, most public universities and libraries subscribe to at least one of these blacklists.
        So if you're reading this site - even if you think it stinks - consider yourself fortunate. At least you have the freedom to decide for yourself what you want to read and view on the Web. (We act as if censorship has gone away, when the truth is, it's alive and well, and making millions behind a bland mask.)
        On a less contentious note, we've updated the Guest Book, the Awards page, the Help department, Review of Reviews, and loveable old Mr Jenkins's Last Martini.

29 October, 1999
In this week's issue of A List Apart Magazine, for people who make websites:
       THE DAY THE BROWSER DIED: Shoddy display is one thing. But when a once-great browser can't even look at a Style Sheet without crashing, Zeldman wonders if it isn't time to end the silence, kill the workarounds, and try something radical. Now online for your reading pleasure at alistapart.com.

28 October, 1999
We're delivering a speech at the Photo+ Expo technology conference. We hope it's going okay. The speech is a "keynote address." That means nobody has to take notes. We got into this industry so we could work at night, avoiding the harsh glare of publicity, and the confusing vortex of human expectations. Somehow it hasn't worked out that way.
        Refreshed the martini of Mr Jenkins and updated the Guestbook. Navigator 4.x/Windows NT/98 users, we're still getting reports that the Guestbook could crash your browser. We hate this, but so far we've been unable to do a damn thing about it. A higher-up at Netscape recommends that you update to the very latest version of Navigator (which would be 4.7). Netscape hopes that this will solve the problem. Let us know either way.

27 October, 1999
Tomorrow morning, we'll be delivering the keynote address at Photo+ Expo in the Jacob Javits Convention Center, NYC. Oh, what fun we'll have.
        Our Ad Graveyard was featured on MTV's "Bytesize" in the UK and Ireland. We're getting interesting responses to the split Netscape/Explorer treatment on Steal These Graphics (including interesting, somewhat positive responses from Mozilla) and will probably write about it in this week's ALA Magazine.
        Released A List Apart Digest No. 205, and updated the usual pages.

25 October, 1999
Yesterday we broke the cardinal rule of Web design: Never make the reader aware of all the technological problems behind the scenes. All these years, we've been coding around the bugs in various browsers, to bring you seamless Web entertainment. But the problem we've been documenting over the past few days was the last straw. Enough is enough. Either this medium has standards or it doesn't. Stuff works or it's broken. And Netscape 4 is broken.
        Much as we love Netscape, and much as we look forward to their getting it right when they eventually release Navigator 5.0, we're going to code more and more of this site to W3 standards, and recommend that you use a browser that can handle those standards without crashing. For most folks, that will mean Internet Explorer. We're not in bed with Microsoft, and we're ambivalent about recommending any one company's browser. We'll keep making pages that work in any browser, but they will only look good in a browser that comes close to supporting W3 standards. Eventually, all browsers will support these standards. Today, on most platforms, Explorer does a better job. As always, use what you like.
        We apologize for getting technical and for interrupting the seamless flow of content here. We just want the Web to work. We want to stop faking the display with silly tricks that add fat to every page, and we want you to have the best Web experience you can. Love ya. Mean it. Tune in tomorrow.

24 October, 1999
We done a bad t'ing. Unable to fix what wasn't broken, we altered Steal These Graphics with a message for Netscape users. View the page in Netscape, then view it in Explorer. The page looks bad in Netscape, but you will no longer crash. Explorer users will see the page as intended. This is not about Netscape versus Microsoft, it's about standards versus a bone-stupid, fragmented Web riddled with incompatibilities and cobbled together with paper clips, duct tape, and lasagna.
        If this technique works, we'll apply it to the other problem pages. We refuse to go back to deeply nested tables and the other dumb workarounds with which we and thousands of other designers have been building the Web.

23 October, 1999
Some funky new stuff in the Ad Graveyard. Have a laugh.
        We're still tracking down the mysterious bug that causes some Netscape users to crash at Steal These Graphics and Ask Dr Web. We've put in hours of work without managing to crack this nut. Netscape's engineers are unable to reproduce the crash. If only our readers were so blessed. (See Stone Age Web in last week's A List Apart for more about validation, workarounds, and crashes.)

22 October, 1999
In this week's issue of A List Apart Magazine, for people who make websites:
        EMPIRE OF THE DISCONNECTED. The Web can be a frightening and disorienting place, and for once we're not talking about browser incompatibilities. D. Keith Robinson reminds us that most Web users are easily confused – and offers 14 tips to help designers build user-friendly sites. Now awaiting your pleasure in ALA Issue 1.38.

21 October, 1999
It's called a night off.