August 17th, 2010
With IE9 in development and Opera 10.5 released, CSS3 is a few steps away from being supported by all modern browsers. But users may take a while to upgrade, and responsible developers will support legacy browsers for years to come.
For some, cross-browser development means making websites that look exactly the same in all browsers. But if developers continue to cater websites to inadequate browsers such as IE6, then they’re just holding back modern browsers from performing to their potential.
Graceful degradation is not about allowing websites to look bad in older browsers, but about making them look great in modern ones. It means taking advantage of CSS3′s useful features to progressively enhance web pages for the vast majority of users.
Tags: browser hacks, cross-browser, CSS, css3, front-end, graceful degradation, IE, jQuery, web design, webdev
Posted in CSS | No comments
July 29th, 2010
Yesterday’s CSS Summit featured some the best CSS minds presenting on cutting edge CSS issues. There was a ton of great information presented across the 8 sessions, but here’s a wrap up of the single best piece of information from each presenter:
Denise Jacobs – Advanced CSS Troubleshooting
The highlight of Denise’s talk was some specific coding tips about clearing floated content.
She started with the standard overflow: hidden method, which falls short with support for borders & margins and also doesn’t allow scrollbars if they’re needed. Denise suggested instead using overflow: auto; width: 100%; which avoids these issues. You don’t have to use the exact values above, you just have to set some type of overflow and width / height value.
Denise went on to discuss a .clearfix:after method, see the gist.
Denise likes this clearing method since it doesn’t include any extra, non-semantic markup (as … Read more…
Tags: best practices, conferences, cross-browser, CSS, css3, front-end, html5, web design, webdev
Posted in CSS | No comments
May 11th, 2010
When it comes to front-end performance, good asset management is just as important as good code. Simply put: downloading assets takes time.
Computers and browsers now render pages and execute Javascript faster than ever. Although user bandwidth is increasing, the filesize of assets has been growing in turn.
These factors, combined with the rise of the mobile web, have made bandwidth the primary bottleneck in website performance.
Here are 5 simple steps to reduce download times with better asset management on your sites. Read more…
Tags: apache, assets, bandwidth, CSS, downloads, front-end, HTTP header, images, javascript, load-time, server
Posted in performance | 2 Comments
March 30th, 2010
I’ve always been a fan of drawing page components with pure CSS rather than using image support. Although rendering the page with CSS can sometimes be a pain, the rewards of fewer HTTP requests & less download time make it well worthwhile.
Until recently, most web designers and developers couldn’t design using CSS alone, because there simply wasn’t enough cross-browser support for all the wonderful CSS3 attributes.
However, with IE9 just around the corner and Opera 10.5 already released, we are extremely close to the point where we can render web pages in CSS3 across all modern browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera). Legacy browsers won’t get left out, since our CSS3 pages can degrade gracefully to square corners, flat-color backgrounds, etc. Additionally, we can use browser-specific stylesheets that include plain old image support for key design elements that shouldn’t degrade.
CSS3 makes drawing elements with CSS a … Read more…
Tags: best practices, cross-browser, CSS, css3, rendering, UI, web design, webdev
Posted in CSS | 3 Comments
March 25th, 2010
Adobe CS5 is coming out on April 12, and I can’t wait.
This new release comes packed with a ton of awesome new features, such as content-aware fill, painting, better edge detection and time-saving shortcuts.
But this post isn’t about all of CS5′s awesome features, it’s about why you should actually buy it this time around.
In a few weeks, just about anyone will be able to find a torrent, download link or burned copy of CS5. It seems to me that Adobe unofficially condones this, similar to record labels unofficially allowing “leaked” videos on YouTube.
Let’s face it: readily available pirated copies of the Creative Suite allow Adobe to retain what is basically a monopoly on this software. Amateur users, who would never actually purchase the software, find illegal copies and not only learn the Creative Suite, but more importantly don’t learn … Read more…
Tags: adobe, CS5, design, graphic design, licensing, photoshop, web design
Posted in web design | 10 Comments
February 25th, 2010
I just released a new WordPress plugin to leverage the TranslateThis Button, a Javascript translation widget that uses the Google Language API. This plugin provides an easy interface for customizing the options in the TranslateThis Button. The widget can be either be displayed anywhere in your theme with a template tag, or be included as part of the widgetized sidebar.
The plugin provides a variety of settings that can be accessed in the WordPress admin section:
- Control the languages in the dropdown and the text of the various UI elements.
- Enable Google Analytics tracking for translation events.
- Use new button imagery, or disable images altogether, opting for text-only links.
- Confine the translation to the post/comments, or translate the entire page.
- Disable the cookie, or allow the plugin to translate all the pages on your site automatically.
- And more…
Tags: accessibility, freebies, plugins, translation, wordpress
Posted in wordpress | 1 Comment →
February 16th, 2010
Social media often seems like a load of crap, so I’m releasing these Poopy Social Icons: 36 different icons in 3 crappy sizes: 48×48, 64×64, 128×128.
Feel free to use the Poopy Social Media Icons on any site personal or commercial. No attribution is necessary but please link back to this post or retweet it if you like using these. Thanks!
Download the Poopy Social Media Icons
The Poopy Social Icon set covers 34 different social media outlets with an extra icon option for both Twitter and Digg. If I missed any, please let me know.
Tags: design, freebies, icons, social media, traffic, web design
Posted in web design | 2 Comments
February 15th, 2010
Last week marked the release of Buzz, Google’s new competitor for Facebook and Twitter.
Initially Buzz inherited a lot of the privacy issues of G-Chat by automatically adding everyone in your Google contacts. The problem with Google contacts is that even people you email casually end up in this list. Fortunately, this privacy issue has been mostly addressed, and Buzz now makes you confirm anyone before adding them.
However another privacy issue remains, which is that Google Buzz profile URLs line up with Gmail addresses. So if a Google profile exists at the URL http://www.google.com/profiles/rickymartin, you can bet there is a corresponding email account rickymartin@gmail.com. (Sorry Ricky is still ‘living la vida loca’ and hasn’t set up his Buzz account yet)
And there are additional issues with linking Google profile URLs with Gmail addresses, as this Buzz post from Danny Sullivan explains.
Getting Around … Read more…
Tags: buzz, google, privacy, social media, workarounds
Posted in social media | No comments
February 10th, 2010
Nicholas Zakas is a Javascript guru and principle front-end engineer for the Yahoo! homepage. Zakas just announced his new book High Performance JavaScript, which you should order today.
Zakas is pretty much the man when it comes to Javascript performance, and in June he gave a Google Tech Talk entitled Speed Up Your Javascript.
While Javascript optimization is by no means black-and-white, here’s a list of 10 tips from Nicholas’ talk that will help you write Javascript that really flies.
1. Define local variables
When a variable is referenced, Javascript hunts it down by looping through the different members of the scope chain. This scope chain is the set of variables available within the current scope, and across all major browsers it has at least two items: a set of local variables and a set of global variables.
Simply put, the deeper the engine has to dig into this … Read more…
Tags: 10 tips, best practices, DOM, front-end, javascript, jQuery, loops, optimization, performance, scope, webdev
Posted in 10 Javascript Performance Tips, javascript | 8 Comments
February 4th, 2010
In the past two years, increased browser support has transformed CSS3 from a fringe activity for Safari geeks to a viable option for enterprise level websites.
While cross-browser support is often too weak for CSS3 to hold up a site’s main design, front-end developers commonly look to CSS3 solutions for progressive enhancement in their sites. For instance, a developer might add a drop-shadow in Firefox, Safari and Chrome using -moz-box-shadow and -webkit-box-shadow, and then be comfortable with this design enhancement falling off for IE users.
But wouldn’t it be great if IE users could see the better version of the page? Fortunately there are cross-browser hacks for the more common CSS3 attributes. These hacks not only allow CSS3 attributes to work in all browsers, but in turn allow designers and developers to use CSS3 in the central styling of their sites.
In this article we’ll walk through getting rounded … Read more…
Tags: cross-browser, CSS, CSS hacks, css3, IE, Opera, rounded corners, SVG, vector
Posted in CSS | 77 Comments
