Blog

• CSS layouts for forms - tips and tricks

  24 May 2007 by Clive Walker

  About a year ago, we replaced some webpage forms that used tables for layout with CSS-based layouts. Here's the blog post about it, CSS layouts for forms. To cut a long story short, we had some problems but eventually adapted this method to give this form.

• Here's why microformats are useful

  20 May 2007 by Clive Walker

  Here's a cool use of microformats. Jeremy Keith has posted a video demo that shows how you can transfer microformatted event information from a webpage to a mobile phone with one click.

• Top three newspaper websites

  14 May 2007 by Clive Walker

  Once upon a time, there were rumours that the web would kill off traditional newspaper editions. This has not happened but, over recent years, broadsheet newspaper websites in the UK have started to take the web more and more seriously. This is reflected in their websites which are usually fine examples of how to organise and display a wealth of information and change it on a regular basis. Here's my top three UK newspaper websites.

• What makes a successful web application?

  09 May 2007 by Clive Walker

  I was thinking about the criteria for website success recently. With web applications, it may depend on your objectives. Perhaps you want to establish an active community or even make some money from your lovingly-crafted ‘web app’. However, one possible measure of success is whether the application has been sold to another company. That’s certainly the case with two web applications that were described last night at the second £5 Apps meeting in Brighton.

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• CSS floats made easy (well, almost)

  02 May 2007 by Clive Walker

  After working with cascading style sheets for a while, you soon get to realise that floating elements can achieve many things, but the use of the float property also comes with its own problems.

• Web design survey

  26 April 2007 by Clive Walker

  If you are a web designer, why not take the A List Apart Web Design Survey. It only took me a few minutes and your contribution will help provide a snapshot of the web design industry.

• POSHify your website

  23 April 2007 by Clive Walker

  I came across the term POSH recently and discovered the POSH home page. This seems to be a 'subgroup' of the 'web standards movement' and is the basis from which microformats are built.

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• The future of web design?

  19 April 2007 by Clive Walker

  The Future of Web Design Conference yesterday attempted to answer the question ‘What is the future of web design’? I am not sure that the event produced a definitive answer but it certainly covered a wide range of web design activities that are happening now. In fact, at the end of the day, I was left feeling that ‘web design’ is in itself an inaccurate description these days. That’s mainly because the conference included presentations on such diverse topics as web applications, online branding and identity, Flash, applications for the desktop, XHTML/CSS prototyping, and identifying creative ideas. These all impact on ‘web design’ in one way or another but the terms itself is rather misleading.

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• Bulletproof Ajax

  12 April 2007 by Clive Walker

  Bulletproof Ajax is Jeremy Keith's follow-up book to DOM Scripting and it has a similar style. It is easy to read with clear step-by-step explanations. The book demonstrates a strong commitment to high quality Ajax implementations but it also ask the question whether you should use Ajax in the first place. If you decide 'Yes', the book espouses progressive enhancement with bulletproof methods as the only way to do it. The use of Hijax to intercept a user action, such as an onclick event, is a core technique.

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• CSS3 - the next generation

  10 April 2007 by Clive Walker

  Andy Budd has published slides from what looks like an interesting presentation on the status of CSS3.