On Friday Jeff Croft posted a piece titled Web Standards Killed the HTML Star where he makes the argument that just knowing HTML and CSS is no longer enough to get a job. He states that the web standards movement has effectively rendered the need for specialized knowledge of browser…
I’m a bit behind on my reading. There is always some new wiz article on web technologies and it’s hard to keep up. Since any chummer can write one, sometimes you have to approach them with caution even if they’ve survived the meat grinder of public review for as long…
If you’ve been following the latest chaos in the responsive image debate, you may know that there is a battle afoot between supporters of src-n, srcset and picture. If you don’t believe me, I refer you to this WHATWG post, a polite round-up of today’s bar fight. Key is that…
I don’t care for infographics. Their original purpose of visually conveying otherwise complex information has been superseded by their current use as marketing drek with “quirky” illustrations, blocks of prose, and the occasional useful factoid. The love affair with inforgraphics is confounding to me as a web developer. They are…
I started this post way back in March after reading Brad Frosts’ bit on carousels. Then I let it sit unfinished. With the buzz around ShouldIUseACarousel.com this week, I figured I’d finish it up. The data is old, although I offer updated numbers at the bottom. The Process I looked…
Social media outlets are practically a dime a dozen. Excluding ones that are pretty stable right now (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), most of them will either fail or get bought. The problem is that your data, your content, typically dies when they do. As an individual you might not care too…
Yesterday Matt Cutts from Google tweeted that Google search results for users on smartphones may be adjusted based on the kinds of errors a web site produces (of course I was excited): Important: if your website has smartphone errors, we may change rankings for smartphone users: goo.gl/x8R4A #smx— Matt Cutts…
This post isn’t proposing any solutions (although I do toss out a hack). This post is a rant that I hope helps influence browser makers. Background Much of my web work isn’t for public facing web sites. Often it’s for enterprise-level software that is deployed via the web and used…
When I say “global,” I don’t necessarily mean the whole world, but really any aggregate pile of numbers for browsers that aren’t culled from your own site or project. With IE6 finally fading (which many developers will claim is a result of their IE6-blocking sites), the ire of developers has…
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815—1852), considered by many to be the first computer programmer (of any gender). Portrait by Alfred Edward Chalon. Lately you’ve probably heard plenty about education in the US and the renewed push for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math). As STEM education gets attention, it…
Web developers have been looking to call everything the new Internet Explorer for a while now. With Opera’s recent move to WebKit as its rendering engine (replacing Presto), even more developers are suggesting that WebKit is becoming the new IE. I think they are right, but for the wrong reasons.…
I have no illusions that accessibility on the web can be tricky. It’s primarily tricky because of the way developers choose to implement it. Web Axe nicely sums it up: Most people don’t realize that the web IS accessible. The problem is that designers and developers break it.— Web Axe…