13 December 2001
[1 pm | 10 am]
A beautiful woman has given us her love, her tenderness, and her head cold. We march on.

At this time, The Web Standards Project has an announcement to make.

At Blue Robot: Flash of Unstyled Content discusses an IE/Windows quirk, in which sites designed with CSS momentarily appear as plain, unstyled (X)HTML pages. The same thing sometimes happens in IE5/Mac, as seen on this page. (Your results may vary.)
        We try not to think of this two–stage rendering process as a browser bug. We try to think of it as a Flash–like special effect. In any case, the Blue Robot article proposes a standards–compliant workaround based on certain elements used to design A List Apart.
        Note that in many cases, sluggish network conditions together with (smart) browser engineering may cause text to load before Style Sheets parse, just as text loads before, say, GIF images or SWFs. :::

 
12 December 2001
[5 pm | 2 pm | noon]
We were bound to be caught sooner or later. It’s all true—we stole everything from Walt Whitman. (For those who demand that the obvious be made more so, it’s a third–party parody site.)

Despite the unfortunate title (or lack thereof), Owen Briggs’s Design Rant is a must–read for anyone who wants to understand where web design is going, how W3C specs enable one “design” to work across multiple media, and the priceless opportunity we’ve been given to think about design in a profoundly new way. (Hat tip: Dylan Foley.)

“A very solid overview of what’s involved, [written] in a clear and entertaining style.” Sitepoint reviews Taking Your Talent to the Web. More news in Book News. :::

 
11 December 2001
[10 am]
FORWARD COMPATIBILITY: DESIGNING AND BUILDING WITH WEB STANDARDS—our upcoming book for New Riders—will make the business case for preparing for the web’s future instead of constantly building only to the needs of its past.
        Your clients will love it because it will speak their language: the practical language of return on investment.
        You’ll love it because it will enable you to stop arguing with your clients about implementation—and get back to the important arguments about design, content, and budget.

Mister Hillman Curtis has joined the Seybold panel we’ll be doing with Lynda Weinman and Matt Owens in February. How cool is that. :::

 
[9 am | 1 am]
At A List Apart: the dope on CSS bugs in IE6 and Netscape 6.2. Thanks to the informal Quality Assurance testing of ALA readers, the browser manufacturers have been informed about these bugs, and we can look forward to their fixing them sooner than later.

On a related note, our gratitude goes out to the kind souls who’ve offered their services as ALA co–producers in the wake of Nick Finck’s departure. But with the site’s CSS template and streamlined XHTML markup, a steady co–producer is no longer needed. These days, most of the work involved in producing ALA is editorial. :::

 
8 December 2001
[noon]
The Future of Builder will apparently have nothing to do with information architecture, user interface design, front–end interactive programming, content development, or any other area of traditional “web design.” This was probably to be expected, but it is still sad on several levels.
        A List Apart, on the other hand, will continue to explore present and future methods of front–end web design and the perennial problems of content development. Because, whether there’s a fortune to be made in it or not, we think that stuff’s what matters most to tens of thousands of web designers and developers, and hundreds of millions of web users. :::

 
7 December 2001
[1pm | 3 am | midnight]
In this week’s double issue of A List Apart, For People Who Make Websites:
        “WHY DON’T YOU CODE FOR NETSCAPE?”—Long considered the Holy Grail of web design, “backward compatibility” has its place; but at this point in web development history, shouldn’t we be more concerned about forward compatibility? ALA makes the case for developing to web standards instead of browser quirks. (Article updated 1pm EST.) Plus:
        THE BATHING APE HAS NO CLOTHES by Adam Greenfield—Why has the level of discussion in “design forums” degenerated so quickly? Maybe because they’re not populated by designers. V-2’s Adam Greenfield draws the distinction between Stylists and Designers, and explains why that difference matters so much.

After a year of vital contributions, Nick Finck has stepped down as A List Apart co–producer. With a great monthly magazine of his own to run, a calendar full of speaking engagements, a full–time job, and—get this—a personal life, Nick’s plate is full. We love him and wish him the best.

It’s wonderful when you find a site filled with small, subtle visual touches. It’s even better when those engaging little niceties actually make the site easier to use. One.point.zero pulls it off. The longer you look, the more you’ll see. (It even validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.)

Writer Meryl K. Evans, whom we finally had the pleasure of meeting at last week’s conference in New Orleans, does a fine job of blogging same in her Web Builder 2001 report. Among the presenters at that conference was our pal Kelly Goto, co–author (with Emily Cotler) of the excellent Web Redesign: Workflow That Works. (Buy it or visit the Book Site.) Related: ‘Tippi’ Hedren’s Alt Text at Nublog. :::

 
6 December 2001
[noon]
We’ll be joining Lynda Weinman, Matt Owens, and others for a special panel at Seybold in February 2002. More news in World Tour.

Another Friday looms with the sweet promise of more Photoshop Tennis action at coudal.com. This one pits Oz Dean of forcefeed:swede against Jonas Strandberg–Ringh of cubadust. Live action kicks off tomorrow at 3pm EST. :::