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9 April 2002
[2 pm | 10 am]
ALA’s Discussion Forum Software, Generation III, is now online. (Modifying Dreamweaver: Article | Discussion. Accessibility and Authoring Tools: Article | Discussion.) Thanks to Waferbaby for building the newest generation of ALA Discussion Forum software and for joining ALA as Community Director/Admin.
        Note: So far, the new forum software has been implemented only for the two articles above. Previous discussions have not yet been ported to the new forum software, but we hope to be able to do so soon, and are working with Waferbaby and Webcore Labs to make it happen.

Tomorrow morning, we’ll once again be lecturing at Columbia University, this time on best practices in web architecture and navigation. Not that we always follow those practices on this ancient wreck of a site, but on client work and indie projects we try our best. Most folks reading this page will not be at Columbia tomorrow, but Chapter 3 of Taking Your Talent to the Web covers similar ground, and is available for your downloading pleasure. (Zipped PDF file, 1.1 MB.) Heck, you might even want to buy the book.

New at Favelets.com: the Multivalidator is a clickable Favorites bar bookmarklet that simultaneously submits any web page to W3C’s HTML, CSS, and HREF validators. Check your work with just one click. Favelets is a production of Tantek Çelik, who also brought us the Box Model Hack, the High Pass Filter, and the Tasman Rendering engine in IE5/Mac. :::

8 April 2002
[5 pm | 4 pm]
Eric Meyer’s CSS References provides handy alphabetical access to all the properties of CSS1 and CSS2, helping you find answers fast instead of clicking endlessly through vast stretches of W3C text. (To be fair, w3.org is not intended as a tutorial space; it’s a collection of drafts and recommendations.) In a similar vein ...

A Good DOCTYPE is Hard to Find
Good girls and boys create forward–compatible sites using XHTML and CSS, but current browsers display these sites incorrectly if an incomplete or outdated DOCTYPE is used. Alas, for some time W3C has listed incomplete DOCTYPEs, unintentionally misleading any web designer who wanted to do the right thing.
        Copied verbatim from W3C’s site, these incomplete DOCTYPEs found their way into much web editing software, causing carefully designed sites to fall apart in modern browsers, and prompting even the unartistic to consider doing all their work in Flash.
        Fortunately, W3C has posted the complete HTML 4 and XHTML DOCTYPEs we’re supposed to use, though not in a single location, nor in any obvious or easy–to–find place. Bookmark these DOCTYPE links and let the makers of your favorite authoring tools know about them. (Why? So they can fix errors in their software.) Kudos to Steven Champeon for tracking down the updated DOCTYPEs. :::

6 April 2002
[11 am]
Now playing in the Wallpaper department: more desktop pictures for your pleasure. Today’s themes are blood and metal (prettier than it sounds). Instructions for Cinema Screen users are now included.

The A List Apart discussion forums are nearly ready for prime time, thanks to a programming assist from Waferbaby. Watch this space.

Earlier this week, we added a legibility widget to the interim version of Happy Cog, our corporate site. Clicking the little boxes at the top right of the content panel allows you to choose a preferred reading style; a cookie remembers your preference. Content to follow. :::

5 April 2002
[1 pm | 11 am]
The web is a little poorer today. Fathom 5 has closed. Fathom rose from the ashes of Astounding Websites, a community dedicated to finding and discussing interesting websites. Lovingly designed and shepherded by Dave Bastian, Fathom attracted a sweet, articulate group of regulars. It was a fine site that met a genuine need yet failed to grow. Rest in peace.

The great thing about Stereotypography.com is that it provides a single location from which you can watch a dozen different design portals all link to the same few sites. Gone are the days when you had to manually enter one URL after another to be certain the web’s leading creative mavericks were toeing the party line. Coming next: the universal “Respect” box.

Wooden Fish has put out a call for submissions. The upcoming literary journal will publish fiction, poetry, and critical or personal essays, and is slated for a September launch.

Photoshop Tennis is back. Live today, Sydney’s Karen Ingram (warning: big download) faces Philly’s Kevin Cornell (warning: resizes browser window), with kibbitzing by Brooklyn’s Rosecrans Baldwin (warning: written content). The match kicks off at 3 pm Chicago time, 4 pm NYC, 10 pm London, 7 am (Saturday), Sydney.

In response to reader mail: We don’t think New Yorkers’ lives are more important than Palestinian or Israeli lives. Every life is a sacred gift. We’d love to see peace, justice, security, and self–determination for all people, and this prayer is not original to us; it dates back to the first caveman who laid down his club. We don’t discuss politics on this site because it’s not our field (we’re still trying to figure out web design). We wish everyone reading this a long, good life. :::

4 April 2002
[6 pm]
We’ve just returned from the first of two speaking engagements at Columbia University. The school’s campus is lovely and tranquil, as is the stretch of upper Broadway that enfolds it—a far cry from the injured city of months past.

Flow is a fascinating interactive music video, designed and animated by Hoogerbrugge to a soundtrack by Wiggle. More Hoogerbrugge is available elsewhere.

Mark Goldstein’s lean, clean personal site sports boffo travel pix and wallpapers.

Gridmeister Meyer’s latest shows how current browsers respond to various DOCTYPEs. Some DOCTYPEs trigger standards–compliant (“Strict”) rendering rendering; others trigger “Quirks” mode to avoid breaking old sites. The logic behind some choices is hard to fathom, but at least now we know. (If this paragraph means nothing to you, read Better Living Through XHTML, which explains, among other things, why bad things happen to good web pages.)

Ecoculture has penned a tutorial touting the pleasures of CSS rollovers. For more fun with CSS rollovers, see (1), (2), and (3), previously cited in these pages.

Eisenberg’s CSS: Mix and Match Classes explains how specifying multiple classes in CSS2 saves time and bandwidth.

Correction to yesterday’s Report: Jacob Arnold claims Apple’s CarbonLib 1.5 disk image is just fine, thank you very much; it’s Stuffit Expander that’s broken. “Unchecking ‘Mount Disk Images’ in Stuffit Expander’s preferences ought to do the trick.” It did. :::

3 April 2002
[5 pm | 4 pm]
Stereotypography bills itself as “the ultimate link pimp” but is in fact a series of news feeds from a number of popular design mags and portals. Hat tip: Ralph.

Dubya Goes to War! will offend some viewers, but it’s a brilliant Flash application and as amusing as anything in this tragic world.

Singlefile, from our friends at 37signals, is a web app that helps the compulsive organize their books.

Bluerobot’s Centering: Auto-width Margins offers a workaround for MSIE5/Win’s inability to center block level elements when left and right margins are set to “auto.” We forgot about this IE defect when designing the interim version of Happy Cog, and the results were dire indeed. The display has now been corrected by a retarded, but valid, CSS tweak. No wonder the kids prefer Flash.

While IE5/Win has trouble centering elements, IE6 centers things it should not. Microsoft’s latest browser centers table cell content by default instead of left–aligning it, breaking norms dating back to the introduction of the graphical browser. Kids. Flash. No. Wonder.

An upgrade to our favorite HTML editor is free for registered users of the previous version. PageSpinner 4.0 requires CarbonLib 1.5, an Apple system component. The component is free, but don’t bother downloading it. Apple’s disk image is damaged; the damage can’t be repaired because the disk image is locked. (See update, 4 April, above.) :::