Dave Walker…

Mon Nov 21

A consider it an honour and a privelege to be a friend of Dave Walker. For several Years, Dave Walker, the cartoonist and blogger, has graciously allowed me to mess about with his websites for several years, and I consider him a true friend. So I’m linking to him.

Because, of course, I want Dave to be Top of Google.

Old skool web development hacks…

Mon Nov 21

Roger Johansson is taking a step back in time with this article about old-skool hacks. I’m ashamed to say I used all of the ones he mentioned, plus a few more.

Ah, the bad old days.

Web Developer magazine…

Sun Nov 20

Browsing the geek shelf of a newsagents the other day, I noticed that there was a new magazine in addition to the old favourite of .net magazine, called Web Developer. I didn’t buy it, so this isn’t an in-depth review (I can’t even find a link to it, ironic, eh?), just a remark that this is a sign of the times. A sign that more advanced web techniques (called “development” rather than “design”) are filtering down to the masses.

Don’t get me wrong, development and design are two sides of the same coin. Both are as vital and worthy of study as the other. But whereas a few years ago I had to describe my job to the uninitiated as ‘web designer’, now I find I can proudly call myself a ‘web developer’ (or, to be even more posh, a writer of software for the web) without getting blank looks.

So, with a magazine that anyone can pick up to get into the web development way - not to mention to oodles of articles about AJAX, SQL and XML in other magazines - let’s hope that’s a sign of a new generation of web geeks proud to wear the developer badge.

Real World Semantics…

Thu Nov 17

John Allsop, creator of the Style Master CSS editor, has been exploring. He has just published the results of his real world semantics - a study of class and ID names in the wild.

It makes interesting reading, showing up us lazy web developers using non-semantic names (”white”, “sidebar”) more often than perhaps we should. However, it also raises a very interesting idea - look at the first few comments - namely that if a standardised naming convention were adopted, stylesheets would be interchangeable between websites. A lot like the CSS Zen Garden has done in a small way.

This is an idea I explored a little while ago, but I was looking just at RSS feeds and feed readers. The possibilities of not just having interoperable data through web services and XML, but having interoperable layout styles through CSS, is a very exciting one. Just imagine making your own Amazon or Ebay online shop; pick the categories you want to show, choose a stylesheet from the list, click “Publish” and there’s your completed website. Fantastic.

The One True Layout…

Thu Nov 17

There are some things that really frustrate a CSS designer. Not having enough coffee, the fact that there are people much better than me at CSS, having columns in any order independent of source code order, and making columns equal height no matter how much content they have in them.

However, there is now an answer to some of those frustrations. The nice people called Holly and John at Position is Everything have worked long and hard, scaling the giddy heights and plumbing the murky depths of browser incompatibilities to bring us the One True Layout.

Now there is one Layout to rule them all. And not an orc in sight!

Ooh, before I go, I really must draw your attention to this fantastic CSS Zen Garden submission by Andrew Brundle. Just scroll the page slowly downwards and be amazed.