“2008” Archive

My Year in Cities, 2008

Following Anne; I couldn’t resist.

#51 · Dec 31, 2008 adventure

Document types are cool, and there are plenty of them. There are plenty, countless discussions about the “right” document type, too. Alas, these discussions may deal with irrelevant details or miss the point.

#50 · Dec 19, 2008 development

5 Tips To Deal With Right-to-Left Projects

Know what goes into your markup and what goes into your style sheets. It’s actually simple: When available, you should always use dedicated bidi markup to describe your content. CSS may not be available, and the specs actually say that…

#49 · Dec 11, 2008 development

The Greatest Secret in Web Design

Alright I cheated, this isn’t a secret. Or an open secret. Or whatever. It’s that web design is a process. Good web design is an ongoing endeavor.

#48 · Dec 1, 2008 · design, development

WDR #2: Web Developers Needed for a Website

The Web Dev Report, issue #2, this time featuring a classic situation.

#47 · Nov 25, 2008 development

How to Uncover Pseudo-Standardistas

There’s a growing group of developers that doesn’t help our attempts for faster, more accessible, more maintainable, and generally quality-oriented web development: pseudo-standardistas.

#46 · Nov 20, 2008 development

WDR #1: Versioned Style Sheets

Ladies and gents, all I present’s… the Web Dev Report, issue #1.

#45 · Nov 15, 2008 development

5 CSS Tips Every Web Developer Should Know About

Of all the tips this site shares, the following ones may be special. Let’s quickly run through what might be essential for every web developer to know about CSS. Main focus: maintainability, though differently.

#44 · Nov 11, 2008 development

Website Optimization Measures, Part V

Almost half a year since the last article it’s about time to present version 5 of random website optimization measures, hopefully of use for your site as well. Short and crispy, to use a random German expression.

#43 · Nov 3, 2008 development

Thoughts on Disclaimers

Disclaimers are popular in Germany, both for websites and emails. Recently I came across the German Wikipedia article on disclaimers which talks about the topic in detail, and I could not but go for another “thoughts” post…

#42 · Oct 28, 2008 misc

An Exercise for Emerging CSS Experts: Avoid IDs and Classes

To gain more expertise with CSS, there’s a great bonus level: Try to avoid IDs and classes altogether. That’s right: Write your markup without any IDs and classes.

#41 · Oct 21, 2008 development

The Most Annoying Yet Most Important Task in Website Management

…is link checking. There are tools out there, en masse, but we still have to run after professionals who neglect online fundamentals or don’t set up redirects—and with that waste other people’s time.

#40 · Oct 16, 2008 development

meiert.com Survey Results

It’s one and a half months since I asked for your feedback about meiert.com, and I’ve finally decided to publish some of the results.

#39 · Oct 13, 2008 misc

Code Responsibly

Exactly.

#38 · Oct 9, 2008 development

Accessibility Heuristics

You can bolster your accessibility knowledge by internalizing heuristics and ground rules. Review the guidelines and rules provided by the W3C and IBM.

#37 · Oct 7, 2008 development

Web Standards at Google

As an exception, I’m writing as a Googler here: At Google, we care about web standards. Officially, that’s no news, but given repeated criticism for the code of our pages, maybe it is.

#36 · Oct 2, 2008 development

The Most Important Thing Is to Get the HTML Right

Why? Because it’s the markup that makes for most of the code of a site and is hence key to cost efficiency and maintainability; because it carries meaning and is important for accessibility; because it often has an impact on performance; and because it is the prerequisite for online success.

#35 · Sep 26, 2008 development

When Guidelines Should Be Descriptive or Prescriptive

Every time I’m putting up guidelines or conventions one of the decisions I need to make is whether the guidelines, or which parts of them, should be descriptive or prescriptive. For coding guidelines this could mean the difference between, say, “the markup should be valid” and “the markup must be valid”…

#34 · Sep 13, 2008 development

How to Share Code With Users

If you share HTML/CSS code with users: Make sure that the code is valid and that ideally, it works with both HTML and XHTML. Focusing on valid code—a step towards quality code—should be obvious. “Invalidating” other people’s sites isn’t nice…

#33 · Sep 8, 2008 development

Asking for Your Feedback

I’d like to ask for 15 seconds (meaning exactly 15 seconds) of your precious time for a short survey related to this website, to learn about your perspective.

#32 · Aug 28, 2008 misc

To Be Clear (on Conditional Comments and Resets)

My articles on Conditional Comments and “reset” style sheets belong to the most popular articles on the respective topics not just on this site, but apparently on the Web. Now, it looks like I could still clarify my standpoint.

#31 · Aug 24, 2008 development

Best Practices for ID and Class Names

I’m working on another article for German Dr. Web mag, this time covering recommendations for IDs and classes, an issue likely as old as the Web itself. Taking a different approach than usual I’m feeling free to publish a “guerrilla sneak preview” in this place.

#30 · Aug 12, 2008 development

A Few Words on HTML/CSS Frameworks

Public, or open, or external, HTML/CSS frameworks are rarely a good idea. Why? Because framework developers are outside of your organization and cannot know your needs. This simple fact, the inevitable ignorance of a third party, means that—

#29 · Aug 5, 2008 development

Updating a Definition of Art

When I tried to define art, design, and decoration, I described art as: “Art hides. Art has a meaning, and it hides it, on purpose. Art delivers a message, and that message is hidden, on purpose. It is an art to create art. Art is unusable, by definition.” Continued.

#28 · Jul 29, 2008 design

Expertise and the Inverted Parabola

I’m not a mathematician!—but it looks like applying one’s experience and expertise results in an inverted parabola when it comes to the amount of work invested. That is, knowledge or its use, respectively, seem to mean that beginners don’t know what to do and thus don’t do much, while experts…

#27 · Jul 18, 2008 misc

Yes, You Can Use HTML 5

You can already use HTML 5: Just use as your HTML documents’ document type. This works even though you will not yet benefit from new elements and attributes.

#26 · Jul 8, 2008 development

Compared to What?

…is probably one of the most important questions there is. “Compared to what?” is the question that should be answered every time it is about data, be it through charts, in newspapers, on websites, or in conversations. Yet it is rarely asked, rarely answered, and people end up with less or even false information.

#25 · Jul 3, 2008 design

10 Measures for Continuous Website Maintenance

Website maintenance and quality assurance constitute the backbone of high-quality offers of information, and they make the difference between amateur and professional web design.

#24 · Jun 24, 2008 development

When Validation Becomes Unimportant

Validation becomes unimportant only once you’re ahead of the game. Even then, truly mastering HTML and CSS, it’s best to stick with valid markup and styling. Improving latency might constitute the only exception—if at all.

#23 · Jun 16, 2008 development

Thoughts on Email

Email was, is, and will remain the Web’s true killer application, but spam, top-posting, incompetent use of newsletters, and the HTML email problem mean serious challenges.

#22 · Jun 10, 2008 misc

Web Design: 10 Additional Research Findings You Should Know

Following up on last year’s post on web design research, here’s another collection of research findings, this time featuring further reading.

#21 · Jun 5, 2008 design

Optional Tags in HTML 4

For your convenience, here’s a list of all optional tags according to the HTML 4.01 Strict DTD. Omitting these tags allows to save markup and thus file size—if you choose to. I created this list because even nine years after release of the HTML 4 specification…

#20 · Jun 1, 2008 development

Über-Semantics

Premasagar recently published a great demonstration of what can be considered “über-semantic” code. I guess we can thank the microformats community here, which carefully avoids to rely on the semantics of HTML elements but…

#19 · May 27, 2008 development

Tip: vi Configuration

Long story short: It’s easy to modify the vi editor’s standard configuration. The most useful changes probably relate to encoding (UTF-8) and display of line numbers…

#18 · May 25, 2008 development

Less Is Still More

Time and money spent on making things worse is something I find absolutely fascinating. Let me elaborate, beginning with HTML newsletters: Hours are spent writing supposed content, creating and decorating mockups, working around email client limitations…

#17 · May 21, 2008 development

CSS: Simple Rules for Better Organization and More Efficiency

“Organization is not everything, but without organization, everything is nothing,” one of my teachers used to say. Almost everything benefits from organization, and so does work with CSS—especially when working with many people.

#16 · May 15, 2008 development

Website Optimization Measures, Part IV

Once again, though already covering a few weeks of various improvements, some of which have been implemented in Bremen, others in Zurich, all on some of my sites. Enjoy additional optimization tips, this time touching typography, usability, SEO, and performance.

#15 · May 5, 2008 · development, design

The World’s Best HTML Template

…again, exclusively, and as long as HTML 5 is in progress.

#14 · Apr 29, 2008 development

Why “Reset” Style Sheets Are Bad

Jonathan set the pace, Eric countered, a few people chimed in, and I, having criticized reset and undo style sheet criticism back in January, feel obligated to repeat that reset style sheets are bad: A novice should not use them, an expert would not use them…

#13 · Apr 19, 2008 development

CSS: All Properties From CSS 1 to CSS 3

What would HTML be without CSS? And what is an index of all HTML elements without an index of all CSS properties? To address the latter I present a continuously updated index of all properties specified in CSS 1, CSS 2, CSS 2.1, and CSS 3, including their initial values.

#12 · Mar 27, 2008 development