Tag: CSS

The language de amour.

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Design development industry Standards

Let me hear your standards body talk

Jeremy Keith’s “Year Zero” beautifully explains why the W3C needs our backs, not our bullets.

The W3C is maddeningly opaque and its lieutenants will sometimes march madly into the sea, but it is all that stands between us and the whirlwind.

Slow the W3C will always be. Slow comes with the territory. If you glimpse even a hint of the level of detail required to craft usable standards, you’ll understand the slowness and maybe even be grateful for it—as you’d be grateful for a surgeon who takes his time while operating on your pancreas.

But the secrecy (which makes us read bad things into the slowness) must and will change. To my knowledge, the W3C has been working on its transparency problems for at least two years and making real change—just very slowly (there’s that word again) and incrementally and hence not at all obviously.

Key decision makers within the W3C intend to do much more, but they need to get their colleagues on board, and consensus-building is a bitch. A slow bitch.

If designers and developers are more aware of the problems than of the fact that the W3C is working to solve them, it’s because the W3C is not great at outreach. If they were great at outreach, we wouldn’t have needed a Web Standards Project to persuade browser makers to implement the specs and designers and developers to use them.

Designers sometimes compare the slow pace of standards with the fast pace of, say, Flash. But it is like comparing the output of the United Nations to the laws passed by a small benevolent dictatorship. When a company owns a technology, it can move fast. When a hundred companies that mistrust each other need to agree to every detail of a technology that only exists insofar as their phones and browsers support it, surprise, surprise, the pace is quite slow.

The W3C is working on its speed issues, too. It’s been forced to work on them by outside groups and by the success of microformats. But detailed interoperability of profound technologies no company owns is never going to happen half as fast as we’d like.

You want instant gratification, buy an iPod. You want standards that work, help. Or at least stop shouting.

[tags]w3c, standards, webstandards[/tags]

Categories
Accessibility Design development HTML mail industry Tools

Give HTML e-mail a chance

Ten years into the web standards revolution, e-mail client support for standards remains sketchy. A new group is doing something about it. Launched today, The Email Standards Project “works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.”

Brainchild of Mathew Patterson of the Campaign Monitor, the newly launched site, like any good advocacy site, explains why web standards matter for e-mail.

But it does much more. Already the project uses a WaSP-style CSS test to judge the standards compliance of major e-mail clients from AOL to Yahoo! Mail and report on how they did. There’s also a blog and a list of things you can do to help promote standards awareness and persuade e-mail software makers to improve their support.

I started out hating HTML e-mail, but now I am a believer. I support The Email Standards Project.

[tags]email, e-mail, standards, webstandards, advocacy[/tags]

Categories
Accessibility client services creativity Design development Publishing Standards

Appreciating web design; setting type

We have what we think is a special issue of A List Apart for people who make websites.

  • Every responsible web designer has theories about how best to serve type on the web. In How to Size Text in CSS, Richard Rutter puts the theories to the test, conducting experiments to determine the best of all best practices for setting type on the web. Richard’s recommendation lets designers reliably control text size and the vertical grid, while leaving readers free to resize text.
  • And in Understanding Web Design, I explain why cultural and business leaders mistake web design for something it’s not; show how these misunderstandings retard critical discourse and prevent projects from reaching their greatest potential; and provide a framework for better design through clearer understanding.

Plus, from October 2001, we resurrect Typography Matters by Erin Kissane, the magazine’s editor, who is currently on sabbatical.

[tags]webdesign, css, textsize, type, typography, sizingtype, sizingtext, understanding, typedesign, architecture, newspaperdesign, posterdesign, bobdylanposter, erinkissane, richardrutter, zeldman, jeffreyzeldman, alistapart[/tags]

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Accessibility An Event Apart Boston Design eric meyer events New Orleans San Francisco Standards Zeldman

Please and thank you

An Event Apart thanks its attendees, speakers, and sponsors for a great 2007, and announces dates and locations for 2008. Please join us next year! New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago.

[tags]aneventapart, aea2008, neworleans, boston, sanfrancisco, chicago[/tags]

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Accessibility An Event Apart Design development eric meyer events San Francisco Standards

Not at our desk

Apologies for the quiet, here. We’ve been enjoying family time in San Francisco, leading up to the final Event Apart show of the year in the beautiful Palace Hotel.

[tags]aneventapart, aeasf07, sanfrancisco[/tags]

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Accessibility An Event Apart business Design Redesigns San Francisco Standards

Say hello to web standards

There’s something new at Apple’s online store: web standards and accessibility.

Apple.com has never lacked for panache. It has always looked more stylish, more elegant, more beautifully designed than most business sites. The site’s combination of utility, seduction, and understated beauty is practically unique—in keeping with the company’s primary point of product differentiation.

But while its beauty and usability have always run ahead of the pack, its underlying source code has not always kept pace. Now the online Apple Store’s inside is as beautiful as its exterior—and as far ahead of the mainstream in web development as a company like Apple needs to be.

One day, all sites will be built like this. View Source for an inspiring glimpse of how semantic and accessible even a grid-based, image-intensive, pixel-perfect site can be.

And next time your boss, client, or IT director annoyingly proclaims that you can’t have great looks and good markup, point them at store.apple.com. Who knows? They might buy you an iPhone or MacBook as a token of thanks.

Opinions are no longer being solicited, but you can read the 101 comments that were shared before we closed the iron door.

[tags]apple, css, markup, accessibility, webstandards, jinabolton, aneventapart, aeasf07[/tags]

Categories
A List Apart Design eric meyer Redesigns work

Just My Type of Site

In i love typography’s carefully curated “15 excellent examples of web typography (part one),” A List Apart, Happy Cog’s twice-monthly magazine for people who make websites, leads the pack at number one. Jason Santa Maria designed this version of A List Apart; Eric Meyer cunningly crafted the CSS; and Kevin Cornell illustrates. Other top-ranking examples of typographic excellence cited include Shaun Inman dot com, FontShop, Jesús Rodríguez Velasco, and Kevin Cornell’s BearskinRug Shop. Congratulations to all 15 extraordinary websites.

[tags]typography, web, design, webdesign, webtypography, webtype, awards, galleries[/tags]

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Accessibility An Event Apart Design development eric meyer San Francisco Standards Zeldman

An Event Apart savings end tomorrow

$100 savings on our final Event Apart conference of the year end Saturday, September 15. If you’re planning to attend An Event Apart San Francisco, reserve your seat before the price goes up.

Zeldman.com readers can save an additional $50 by entering discount code AEAZELD in the appropriate field during checkout, reducing the cost of the two-day event to $745.

What does that get you? Two days of web standards, best practices, and creative inspiration (not to mention parties, meals, snacks, and swag) with these visionary industry leaders:

  • Joe Clark, author of Building Accessible Web Sites (a coup! Joe publicly retired last year; we dragged him back)
  • Douglas Bowman, of Wired News and Blogger design fame and interface design director at Google (a coup! Doug has been missing, and missed, since he joined Google)
  • Aaron Gustafson, contributor to AdvancED DOM Scripting and Web Design in a Nutshell (a treat!)
  • Jina Bolton, co-author of The Art & Science of CSS and UI developer at Apple (a thrill!)
  • Jared Spool, founder of User Interface Engineering (a delight!)
  • Kimberly Blessing, group lead at The Web Standards Project and veteran of enterprise standards adoption (a pleasure!)
  • Erin Kissane, chief editor at A List Apart and Happy Cog (a joy of joys!)
  • Jason Santa Maria, art director for A List Apart and creative director at Happy Cog (just so great!)

And of course your hosts, Eric Meyer, master of CSS, and blogger no. 27, Jeffrey Zeldman (hey, that’s me!).

Seating is extremely limited, first come, first served. Don’t let the sun go down on you.

Comments off.

[tags]aneventapart, sanfrancisco, aeasanfrancisco07[/tags]

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Accessibility An Event Apart Community Design development eric meyer events industry links people Standards

Event Apart Chicago wrap-up

The sights, sounds, and sense of An Event Apart Chicago 2007. Thank you, Chicago. You rocked. (Literally.) An Event Apart San Francisco is our next and final show of the year.

An Event Apart Chicago 2007 Photo Pool
Those who were there share photos in and out of the conference.
Blog reactions to An Event Apart Chicago ’07
Via Technorati.
An Event Apart ’07 Extended Mix
The interstitial playlist from the show.
Middle West
Speaker Dan Cederholm’s recap of the event.

One track continues to rule. It rules because you don’t have to decide where to go and what to miss. But it also rules because the conversations in the hallways and pubs can be centered around the same sessions. There’s no “ah, I missed that one because I saw ______ instead”. There’s a complete shared experience between all attendees, and that’s a very good thing.

Seven Lies in Chicago
Liz Danzico recaps her presentation and answers questions about information architecture.
Best Practices for Web Form Design
Slides from the powerful and incredibly useful talk by Luke W. “I walked through the importance of web forms and a series of design best practices culled from live site analytics, usability testing, eye-tracking studies, and best practice surveys. Including some new research on primary and secondary actions, and dynamic help examples.”
Design Your Way Out of a Paper Bag
Luke W: “Jason Santa Maria’s Design Your Way Out of a Paper Bag highlighted some of his creative process when working on the redesign of popular Web destinations.”
Search Analytics
Luke W: “Lou Rosenfeld’s Search Analytics talk at An Event Apart outlined ways designers and developers could utilize search query logs to uncover insights about their site’s audience and needs.”
7 Lies about Information Architecture
Luke W: “Liz Danzico’s talk at An Event Apart dissected seven often-cited information architecture rules and highlighted counter examples that exposed why these rules might be better suited as design considerations.”
Selling Design
Luke W: “Zeldman discussed the soft skills that enable designers to get great work out in the world.”
KickApps at An Event Apart
Dwayne Oxford: “It’s difficult to walk away from an event like this without a fresh perspective on CSS and the DOM, a head-full of elegant design techniques, and enough inspiration to catapult our work to the next level.”
On An Event Apart Chicago 2007
Brain Freeze on AEA: “Never a boring moment.”
She car go
Speaker, developer and author Jeremy Keith shares his experience of An Event Apart Chicago.

[tags]aeachicago07, aneventapart, aneventapartchicago, chicago, design, web, webdesign, conference, conferences, ux, userexperience, dancederholm, simplebits, lizdanzico, jimcoudal, derekfeatherstone, lousrosenfeld, jeremykeith, lukewroblewski, jasonsantamaria, ericmeyer, zeldman, jeffreyzeldman[/tags]

Categories
A List Apart Browsers Design development iphone Standards Tools

Web type, iPhone content

In Issue No. 244 of A List Apart, for people who make websites, father of CSS Håkon Wium Lie advocates real TrueType fonts in web design, while Iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry (developer of Twitterific) describes in detail how to optimize websites for iPhone.

Web content is mostly text. Web interfaces are text-based. Design consists chiefly in arranging text to aid communication—guiding readers to the words and experiences they seek. Better typography means better web experiences. Improving typography without resorting to image or Flash replacement and their attendant overhead is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Will browser makers rise to Håkon’s challenge?

Apple’s iPhone is the new frontier in interface design, offering rich computing experiences while dumping established techniques like mouse use and copy-and-paste. Its browser component, by contrast, pretty much provides a normal desktop experience via the standards-compliant Safari browser and small but high-resolution screen. For the most part, then, designing web content for the iPhone simply means designing web content. Ah, but there are tricks that can help your site more smoothy accommodate Apple’s new device. Some can even improve the web experience for all users.

Craig Hockenberry seems to have found them all, and he shares what he knows in a two part series that begins in this issue. I have known Craig since 1996; we collaborated on web-oriented Photoshop filters before Adobe figured out the web. He is a brilliant, funny, and modest man, and now you can get to know him, too.

Both articles are bound to produce thought and argument. Both are at least somewhat controversial. I love them both, and admire both writers. It is a pleasure to share this issue with you.

This issue of A List Apart was produced by Andrew Fernandez, technical-edited by Aaron Gustafson and Ethan Marcotte, art directed by Jason Santa Maria, and illustrated, as always, by the amazing Kevin Cornell. Krista Stevens is acquisitions editor. Erin Kissane edits the magazine.

[tags]design, webdesign, alistapart, håkon, chockenberry, truetype, fonts, typography, webtype, webtypography, apple, iphone[/tags]

Categories
Design development eric meyer Tools

Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor

Danged if Eric Meyer hasn’t launched a product. Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor, created in collaboration with WebAssist, makes it drop-dead easy to create standards-compliant, two- and three-column CSS layouts in Adobe Dreamweaver.

As a close friend of Eric Meyer’s, I found out about the product yesterday.

It’s a template-driven, “choose, then customize” application. CSS Sculptor includes 30 of the most common web page layouts—fixed-width, liquid, elastic, and combinations thereof—coded the way Eric Meyer would code them.

Once you choose a layout, you can change any aspect of it, including page width and browser window position. Add background images to any component. Rename elements and restyle at will. Additional columns can be added to the left or right of the main content area; headers and footers can be included or omitted with a click.

A nifty tree view visualizes how your style sheet is working, and lets you quickly select and edit any component of your layout. CSS Sculptor even creates a fully customizable print style sheet for every design—automatically. That’s cool.

I test-drove CSS Sculptor yesterday. It’s powerful and fun to use. I can see this application appealing to three audiences:

  1. The power coder who knows CSS inside, outside, and backward, and will never cease hand coding—but wouldn’t mind working faster by off-loading some of the more tedious tasks of CSS layout development.
  2. The professional designer who wants to use CSS, but is daunted (and sometimes frustrated) by the complexities of advanced CSS layout.
  3. The non-full-time web person, responsible for maintaining their organization’s website in addition to other responsibilities, who believes in web standards and accessibility but will never be a CSS Jedi. Now you don’t have to be.

CSS Sculptor is compatible with Dreamweaver CS3 and Dreamweaver 8 on Windows and Macintosh. It will retail for $149.99 but is can be had for $99.99 through 6 September 2007. I don’t get anything for telling you about it except the warm glow of sharing.

Comments are now closed.

[tags]css, csslayout, csssculptor, ericmeyer, adobe, dreamweaver, webassist, software[/tags]

Categories
Accessibility An Event Apart Design events industry Standards

A Sale of Two Cities

As the last tickets for An Event Apart Chicago get gobbled up, we announce our final Event Apart show of 2007: An Event Apart San Francisco, October 4–5, Sheraton Palace Hotel. You won’t want to miss this line-up:

Joe Clark

Joe Clark served on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group and now volunteers with the PDF/Universal Access Committee. He emerges from self-imposed retirement to share his wisdom on the subject of Building Accessible Websites.

Jared Spool

Jared Spool has led the usability agenda since 1978, before the term “usability” was even associated with computers. He is one of the world’s most effective and knowledgeable communicators on the subject.

Aaron Gustafson

Between coding usable forms and accessible Ajax, Aaron Gustafson tech-edits A List Apart and writes for Digital Web , ALA, and MSDN. Print credits include AdvancED DOM Scripting and Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Ed..

Kimberly Blessing

Developer, standards evangelist, and technical strategist Kimberly Blessing co-leads The Web Standards Project and directs PayPal’s Web Development Platform Team, driving the creation and adoption of standards.

Jina Bolton

Interactive designer and artist Jina Bolton is an web interface developer at Apple and co-author of The Art & Science of CSS. She has consulted for the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, Mass.gov, and others.

Doug Bowman

An influential designer at the forefront of forward-thinking web design, Doug Bowman is Visual Design Lead at Google, where he tries to change the world, a few million users at a time.

Erin Kissane

Erin Kissane edits A List Apart and is editorial director for Happy Cog. She has written copy, advised on brand and content strategy, and provided editorial oversight for clients from startups to Global 1000 companies.

Jason Santa Maria

Jason Santa Maria has been recognized for designing stylish web interfaces that balance usability with effective content presentation. His work has won dozens of awards.

And, of course, your hosts:

Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer is the world’s best-recognized and most-read CSS expert, author of CSS: The Definitive Guide, Eric Meyer on CSS and a half-dozen other best-sellers. He has consulted for Apple, Wells Fargo, and America On-Line, among others, and co-founded An Event Apart with your humble narrator in November 2005.

Jeffrey Zeldman

You can read about me here.

Topics at An Event Apart San Francisco will include standards in the enterprise, creating designs that adapt to multiple display types and languages, the art and science of web forms, how to handle design and redesign, the importance of copy and editing, usability, and more.

The two-day event, including meals, swag, and parties, costs $795 (regularly $895) while earlybird savings are in effect through September 7th, 2007. Seating is limited: first come, first served. Hope to see some of you there!

[tags]aneventapart, sanfrancisco, design, development, standards, bestpractices, webstandards, webdesign, webdevelopment, aeasf07[/tags]

Categories
business businessweek csszengarden Design development family Happy Cog™ industry links Microsoft reportage Standards work Zeldman

The King of Web Standards

In BusinessWeek, senior writer for Innovation & Design Jessie Scanlon has just published “Jeffrey Zeldman: King of Web Standards.” By any standards (heh heh), it is an accurate and well researched article. By the standards of technology journalism, it is exceptional. It might even help designers who aren’t named Jeffrey Zeldman as they struggle to explain the benefits of web standards to their bosses or clients. At the least, its publication in Business Week will command some business people’s attention, and perhaps their respect.

Avoiding the twin dangers of oversimplification that misleads, and pedantry that bores or confuses, Scanlon informs business readers about the markup and code that underlies websites; what went wrong with it in the early days of the web; and how web standards help ensure “that a Web site can be used by someone using any browser and any Web-enabled device.”

Scanlon communicates this information quickly, so as not to waste a business reader’s time, and clearly, without talking down to the reader. This makes her article, not merely a dandy clipping for my scrapbook, but a useful tool of web standards evangelism.

Contributing to the article with their comments are Jeff Veen, manager of user experience for Google’s web applications and former director of Hotwired.com; NYTimes.com design director, subtraction.com author, and grid-meister Khoi Vinh; and Dan Cederholm, founder of SimpleBits and author of Bulletproof Web Design. Dave Shea’s CSS Zen Garden features prominently as well, and rightfully so.

A right sexy slide show accompanies the article.

And lest a BusinessWeek article lull us into complacency, let us here note that the top 20 blogs as measured by Technorati.com fail validation—including one blog Happy Cog designed. (It was valid when we handed it off to the client.)

[tags]design, webdesign, standards, webstandards, webstandardsproject, WaSP, zeldman, jeffreyzeldman, veen, jeffveen, simplebits, dancederholm, bulletproof, khoivinh, subtraction, wired, hotwired, nytimes, happycog, zengarden, css, csszengarden[/tags]

Categories
Design development iphone links Standards Tools

For web developers and iPhone users

XRAY web developer’s suite
Fab, free bookmarklet for web designers and developers analyzes any element on a web page with a click. Must be used to be appreciated. Part of a forthcoming suite of free, cross-browser web development tools from Westciv. Suggested improvements and bug reports welcome. Currently works in Webkit (Safari) and Mozilla (Firefox, Camino, etc.) browsers; an IE version is coming. Don’t miss the “Acknowledgements, Thanks, and Inspiration” credits, which link to great JavaScript and visual resources.
How to Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod Using Free Software
Great, straightforward how-to by brilliant author/developer Mark Pilgrim walks you through the process of setting up HandBrake, a free, open source app, to rip DVDs to your iPod. Last updated in 2005, several versions of HandBrake (not to mention several generations of iPod) ago, so screen shots will not always match current versions. But the settings advice is still accurate, and even applies to the iPhone, with its giant wide screen.
Ripping even a short movie you own takes a long, long time. I tested Pilgrim’s advice on a flick our toddler loves, so my iPhone could double as a parental aid during family trips. It took over five hours to burn an 86 minute film, but the results were beautiful.
For more video conversion advice, see the 12 December 2005 Macworld Secrets column, Convert video for the iPod. Summary: Upgrade to QuickTime Pro and export for iPod. Works great and works fast. One’s iPhone now sports Charlie the Unicorn and will soon host short home movies shot on a point and shoot digital camera and formatted by that camera as AVIs.

[tags]web development, bookmarklets, developer tools, rip, DVDs, iPod, iPhone, Apple[/tags]

Categories
A List Apart Design

ALA 241: better UI, scriptless trick ponies, and the deathly hallows

In Issue No. 241 of A List Apart, for people who make websites:

Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo

by Aza Raskin

Are our web apps as smart as they should be? By failing to account for habituation (the tendency, when presented with a string of repetitive tasks, to keep clicking OK), do our designs cause people to lose their work? Raskin’s simple, foolproof rule solves the problem.

Conflicting Absolute Positions

by Rob Swan

All right, class. Using CSS, produce a liquid layout that contains a fixed-width, scrolling side panel and a flexible, scrolling main panel. Okay, now do it without JavaScript. By chucking an assumption about how CSS works in browsers, Rob Swan provides the way and means.

Plus, in Editor’s Choice, from 23 November 2001:

Reading Design

by Dean Allen

With so many specialists working so hard at their craft, why are so many pages so hard to read? Unabashed text enthusiast Dean Allen thinks designers would benefit from approaching their work as being written rather than assembled.

A List Apart explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices. Explore our articles or find out more about us.

[tags]alistapart, aza raskin, rob swan, dean allen, UIdesign, undo, CSS, absoluteposition, liquid layout[/tags]