â2009â Archive
My Year in Cities, 2009
From Amsterdam to Berlin to Cardiff⌠all the way to Zurich. The same procedure as at least last year.
#34 ¡ adventure
SUS: How to Easily Grade Your Siteâs Usability
The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a Likert scale-based questionnaire to grade the usability of systems, which John Brooke created back in the 80s. SUS results yield a score between 0 and 100, with 100 indicating âbestâ usabilityâŚ
#33 ¡ design
HTML/CSS Frameworks: Useful, Universal, Usable, Unobtrusive
A high quality HTML/CSS framework needs to have four attributes: useful, universal, usable, and unobtrusive. The four Uâs.
#32 ¡ development
The 3 Ground Rules for Writing HTML
The fundamentals every web developer should know: on respecting syntax and semantics, avoiding presentational and behavioral markup, and leaving out everything that is not absolutely necessary.
#31 ¡ development
Product of the Environment
Philosophy, live from Zurich airport.
#30 ¡ philosophy
HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future
Articles with a title consisting of more than 15,000 characters donât need an introduction.
#29 ¡ development
Website Optimization Measures, Part VII
In this episode: Unquoted attribute value syntax, q elements, Google Friend Connect, feed styling, work/life balance. Served in no time.
#28 ¡ development
âHTML 5â or âHTML5â?
Itâs âHTML5,â not âHTML 5,â declares the most recent post on the WHATWG blog. A seemingly trivial matter, yet itâs inconsistent.
#27 ¡ development
The True Advantage of CSS
Despite CSS being around for a long, long time, there are still some myths around it. Reading Mikeâs post on CSS evangelism again I couldnât only relate to Mikeâs concerns, I also felt reminded ofâŚ
#26 ¡ development
My Top 15 Android Apps
This is a serious post, not one of those âthe 1,000 best blahâ ones. I think. Iâm an Android user for a bit longer than December 2008, and I love my HTC Magic as much as the HTC Dream (aka G1)âŚ
#25 ¡ misc
Diagnostic Styling Reloaded
Eric cultivated the concept of âdiagnostic styling,â meaning using CSS to track down problems within HTML documents. Iâve been working with diagnostic style sheets for general quality assuranceâŚ
#24 ¡ development
WDR #3: Optional Tags, Unquoted Attribute Value Syntax
The Web Dev Report, issue #3.
#23 ¡ development
Microformats, Key Flaws
I like the idea behind microformats, but Iâm not convinced of the way that idea is brought to life. I see three major flaws that appear to make microformats stand in their own way.
#22 ¡ development
XHTML, RIP
Letâs end this week of morbid posts: The XHTML 2 Working Group is expected to stop their work end of 2009. âToday the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009âŚâ
#21 ¡ development
âhandheldâ Media Type, RIP?
Website authors donât use handheld
as itâs barely supported; mobile device manufacturers donât support handheld
because itâs barely used. This is kind of the situation I think weâre facing, and itâs a problem.
#20 ¡ development
Letâs Make The Web Faster
Two weeks after my last outcry regarding slowness on the Web thereâs a more proactive response: Google launched code.google.com/speed, subtitled âletâs make the Web faster.â
#19 ¡ development
Maintainability Guide
Maintainability is important in order to deal with change. Good maintainability means making change easier and more affordable, and avoiding change that is not necessaryâŚ
#18 ¡ development
Punctuation Cheat Sheet
Developing and working with international sites is an interesting challenge, not just because of right-to-left contents. Typographically, there are differences between many locales. To improve punctuation in Google translations Iâm using a localization aidâŚ
#17 ¡ ¡ design, development
CSS: The Maintenance Issue #1 and How You Can Avoid It
The biggestâas most unnecessaryâmaintenance issue in web development is, as my recent research shows, style sheet naming and integration. Web developers use inadvisable style sheet names and inadvisable ways to integrate style sheets that force themâŚ
#16 ¡ development
The Result of Maturity Is Simplicity
âFinally, it doesnât lack some irony considering that web design gets often enough protected by the credo âthe end justifies the meansâ and pragmatismâs paid homage to. The question is whether youâre talking about unhealthy, sanctimonious pragmatism orââ
#15 ¡ misc
Notes on XML, Elements, and Attributes
Knowledge of the design of markup languages is something I consider beneficial for my job as a web professional. A few notes on XML design, inspired by internal and external documentation.
#14 ¡ development
Why CSS Needs No Variables
CSS variables and constants are one of the top features web developers are asking for in web development fora, magazines, blogs, and on W3Câs www-style. Following a concept written by Daniel Glazman and Appleâs Dave Hyatt, the WebKit rendering engineâŚ
#13 ¡ development
The Stupidest Style Sheet Name Ever
The last name you want to pick for your style sheet is âstyle.cssâ. Why is âstyle.cssâ such a poor CSS file name? The main reason is maintenanceâŚ
#12 ¡ development
CSS: Style the Non-Obvious
One of the qualities you have to acquire as a web developer is to see the non-obvious, and to use that skill to your codeâs advantage. Let me explain by two simple examples.
#11 ¡ development
Presenting⌠the Google Shoe
They finally arrived, long longed for Google shoes, in this case the âGoogle j9tâ model based on the Adidas ZX700. Theyâre not for sale but I might share the configuration I used to design them. The âGoogle j9tâ may only be worn for dynamite fishing and important launches.
#10 ¡ misc
Performance of CSS Selectors Is Irrelevant
âŚif you like to have a strict read of Steve Soudersâ recent research. Weâve still got few but now a few more numbers backing up what we always suspected, that merely optimizing selectors is micro-optimization.
#9 ¡ development
Website Optimization Measures, Part VI
In this episode: On the utilization of Google Friend Connect, maintenance of Google Analytics, sanity checks, type attributes, charset rules, cite elements, and ICRA labels. Fresh and sexy.
#8 ¡ development
When to Split Style Sheets
Three factors influence whether it makes sense to split style sheets: probability, meaning (aka semantics), and granularity.
#7 ¡ development
Another Survey (Including Website Usability Scale Template)
Iâm doing it again: Do you have another 15 seconds to answer a couple of questions? The survey is based on the System Usability Scale (SUS) John Brooke presented in the 80s. Which means nothing less than that thereâs another experiment taking place with me testing SUS.
#6 ¡ design
Performance and RFCÂ 2396
RFC 2396 specifies that relative URIs like //foo
get resolved as http://foo
. This means, if you link a resource like https://example.com/
, @href
may as well just point to //example.com/
.
#5 ¡ development
Arial, Helvetica
An extension of my post on Arial and Helvetica: For those who want or have to use Arial as their standard font, there is no point in mentioning Helvetica anywhere in the code, as in arial, helvetica, sans-serif
.
#4 ¡ development
The Two Great Things About Validation (and Conformance)
There are two great things about validation: Validating helps technical understanding and thus contributes to awareness of respective specifications, and writing valid code is a sign of professionalism.
#3 ¡ development
Browser Support: The Two Metrics That Count
There are two things that matter to determine what user agentsâbrowsersâto support on a given site: First, what popularity (percentage of market) makes a browser important to support? Second, what browsers pass that threshold?
#2 ¡ development
5 Cool Ways to Support the W3C
I recently got a mail by someone interested in supporting the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) similar to how I do it. While replying I noticed that the information I was about to share might not be obvious to everyone, but still importantâŚ
#1 ¡ development