Although I design and develop on a Mac Powerbook, I mostly ignore Safari for two reasons: Safari is about as standards compliant as browsers get, so it rarely needs any special attention. Safari is used on fewer than 4% of all computers (and it seems to have peaked). I use Firefox almost exclusively (although I’m
Recently, I had a need for two background images on a page I was asked to create to display a client’s online Christmas card. The background required a blend, easily made with a vertical gradient image. On top of that, another background image was to appear partially hidden behind a horizontally centered div that held
The terms "web designer" and "web developer" can mean just about anything, depending on who’s using them and why. I’m going to make a case for definitions that indicate two different skill sets, with each offering different services (perhaps with some minor overlap on occasion). Hopefully, there will eventually be widespread agreement about the differences
The other day I pointed out some of the differences between web design and print design. It started me thinking about some of the things I learned as a print designer that are also applicable to web design. One of the most useful is the Principle of Optimal Line Length. It states that, for any
A couple of days ago, we made some 4-column grid Photoshop templates available. By popular demand (OK, 2 people asked; but we’ve had hundreds of downloads) we’re furnishing a basic, barebones XHTML/CSS template to be used with the Photoshop grids. The template and style sheet match up with the Photoshop file “1024browserbase_960.psd.” To use this
I’m not an accessibility “expert,” though I care about the issue and do my best to create accessible websites. However, I read a lot of web design/development information, and sometimes in my reading I pick up a trick without thinking through all of the accessibility angles. A classic example is how I’ve routinely (until now)
Web accessibility has to do with making websites accessible and usable for everyone, regardless of abilities or disabilities. Most of the techniques for making websites accessible are easy to do and don’t take much time, but many websites are minimally or not at all accessible. There are laws in place to ensure that public and
