Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

5 March 2004 10 am est

A List Apart No. 173

In supafresh new issue of A List Apart, for people who make websites:

CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death

by Dave Shea

Say goodbye to old-school slicing and dicing when creating image maps, buttons, and navigation menus. Instead, say hello to a deceptively simple yet powerful sprite-based CSS solution.

This article combines several of the freshest CSS and markup methods the web design community has devised over the past two years, blending them into something shiny, smart, useful, and new.

Zebra Tables

by David F. Miller

While misused tables are becoming increasingly rare, the table retains a legitimate role in data formatting. A little CSS and JavaScript magic can make tables better at what they do best: displaying tabular data.

This one is for all designers who have ever wanted to differentiate table rows by color without hacking up their markup. Until all browsers correctly support all of CSS3, Zebra Tables are the answer.

Up and Atomz!

ALA adds a search function, powered by Atomz. Soon we will tell you all about our experiences integrating our favorite search engine.

What’s the frequency?

A wag wrote to suggest that we rechristen this publication “The Weekly Report,” owing to the recent scarcity of postings. As most of you will have deduced, we are rather busy. The next few days will take us to foreign lands, where we will have no chance of updating this site. On our return we will flood you with the text you crave. ’Til then, love one another.

27 February 2004 9 am | 12 noon est

A List Apart No. 172

In Issue No. 172 of A List Apart, for people who make websites:

CSS Drop Shadows

by Sergio Villarreal

Much used, oft maligned but always popular, drop shadows are a staple of graphic design. Although easy to accomplish with image-editing software, they’re not of much use in the fast-changing world of web design … until now.

CSS Design: Creating Custom Corners and Borders, Part II

by Søren Madsen

Part I showed how to create fluid, dynamic CSS layouts with customized borders and corners. Part II advances to the next level, extending the technique to work with more complicated backgrounds such as gradients and patterns.

Highlights from recent Daily Reports

Waterbox redux
The music of Waterbox, part of this site’s “Classics” department, is back online for your listening pleasure.
A List Apart No. 171
In Issue No. 171 of A List Apart, for people who make websites … Designing for Context with CSS, by Joshua Porter. Helping Your Visitors: a State of Mind, by Nick Usborne.
The Drop Shadow League
Bevels and drop shadows are no longer the provinces of talentless design hacks. A brief history of the birth and resurrection of these two techniques which have recently exploded into full-blown style trends.
Amazon tax gaffe: from hero to zero
Amazon is a super-savvy Internet company, except when they screw up.
Safari 1.2 CSS bug found and fixed
A layout element in The Daily Report of 12 February revealed a CSS bug in Apple’s Safari 1.2 browser for OS X 10.3. The day we reported it, Apple’s Dave Hyatt fixed it.
By Popular Request
Links archived on new page; site interface slightly modified; a tip on forcing browsers to recognize when a style sheet has changed.
W3C Fixes CSS Validator
Within days of reading our gripe, the W3C fixed its CSS validation service.
Museums and the Web 2004
We will deliver a keynote address at this prestigious international conference.

There is more

More highlights and back orders may be found in our Essentials Department.