jcksn

It’s good to see I’m not the only one feeling that most CSS frameworks are missing the point. SenCSS really is a nice starting point for getting a site’s CSS going - especially for those starting out with CSS, SenCSS would be a dream.

SenCSS was developed mostly for myself. I noticed that the stuff common to most of my designs and projects wasn’t the layout, and thus all layout CSS frameworks had very little use for me (I’d be writing exceptions all day, no thanks!). However, There was a lot to gain from a smarter CSS Reset, vertical rhythm and a set of often used styles. Basically I wanted something that i could drop it, start working on my layout and fine tune when the layout was finished.

Introducing SenCSS | KilianValkhof.com

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 was just released. I’m still hoping Firebug for Safari will someday be built (though I think that’s just a pipe-dream). The Web Inspector in Safari just isn’t cutting it these days.

It’s been a long time since I remember someone talking about the cite element. It’s my favorite HTML element…

So, lets revisit:

Valid examples of the element:

<blockquote cite="http://yourreferencesite.com" title="Article, title, author, date">
<p>This is one paragraph</p>
<p>Yet another paragraph</p>
<p>Says: Your Source<a href=”http://yourreference.com”><cite>Your source:</cite>
</blockquote>

Aside: technically shouldn’t forum software use something like:

<dt id="n33"><cite><a href="/profile/">Author Name</a></cite><br /><strong>12.12.12 00-00-00</strong><br /><em>Title</em></dt>
<dd>
<blockquote cite=”#n33″>
<p>comment goes here</p>
</blockquote>
<p><small>Forum signature</small></p>
</dd>

There IS an ECHELON!

Having trouble getting your CSS rollovers un-glitchy? Pre-load them, easily… If HUGE can learn from me, so can you! ;) (I’m saying this jokingly.)

Yes, this a real email I sent HUGE. They fixed the problem by doing exactly as I said. And they didn’t even say THANK YOU!

I’ve sent this same sort of email to lots of people - including some pretty great designers and developers. All not preloading their rollovers. So, for the sake of helping to spread the gospel of the css preload, I’m just going to email everyone the link to this article from now on…

Some of you asked for a video (okay, one person). I love clusterflock, and they don’t have non-semantic HTML (despite putting H2s before H1s), but they’ve got the same problem with CSS rollovers: clusterflock rollover (144KB) (Did you catch the glitch?)

From: noel@eight6.com
Subject: Attention, you have a website bug…
Date: February 20, 2008 12:27:29 AM GMT-05:00
To: nameremoved@hugeinc.com
Hi HUGE!

-
noel jackson
founder eight6 | http://eight6.com
noel@eight6.com
+1.734.642.9187

I just updated to the WP trunk. Which is just fantastic.

I need a new design to go along with the upgrade, so until then, I’m sticking with Kubrick.

Garrett Dimon recently wrote about ambient indicators. (His blog is great, by the way.) More specifically, he talks about how OS X deals with notifying the user of document changes on the close button (ambiently). But he also touches on how this applies to Web Design/Interaction Design:

Changing the color, typographic characteristics, or similar visual options does not reliably convey that information to all users.

This sentence lit up like a lightbulb; all these years I’d been spouting the words myself, yet somehow I managed to overlook how I apply this principle to my own work.

I recently used something like this in a menu <a class="selected" href="/">home</a>, when in reality I should have been using something like the following: <a href="/"><strong>home</strong></a>

The menu was showing changes with the selected class, but not in lynx, or on a screen reader. Using <strong> is just as easy to style, yet conveys ambient information, whereas a class does not, without a stylesheet.

This brings up a good thought. Why don’t screenreaders take in to account simple typographical information conveyed in CSS stylesheets? Do they? I don’t know; but they could and perhaps should. Especially when applied to the instance I’ve stated here. Just because I used a class instead of a <strong> element doesn’t mean I or the user should be struck on the wrist.

It just goes to show, that even the littlest nugget of information you’ve heard over and over again, can pass you by, or allude you.

If you are a web designer, or anyone that works on websites, the most important article you can read this year (and maybe even next) is “Avoid Edge Cases by Designing Up Front” by Ben Henick

logadm -w apache2 '/home/noel/domains/*/logs/{access,error}_log' -C 30 -a '/opt/csw/apache2/sbin/apachectl graceful' -p 1w -t '$dirname/$basename-%d.%m.%Y.log'

If you get cannot connect to Courier authdaemond in /var/log/syslog just do the following:

sudo chmod +x /opt/csw/var/spool/authdaemon