Archive for the 'Web Design' Category

I’m in the process of tweaking the theme at this site. Specifically, I’ve made a number of changes to the comments portion of each page; it seemed a little too cluttered to me. I have also removed the post navigation portion on each individual post page. Does anyone use that? If so, I’ll put it back.

A List Apart fails to disappoint. While I don’t read every article in each issue (not all of them apply to my web development efforts), I have yet to find one that hasn’t taught me something new. The latest issue is a prime example. Two new articles tackle the problem of weak writing on the web:

1. Better Writing Through Design — by Bronwyn Jones
2. Reviving Anorexic Web Writing — by Amber Simmons

Both articles are excellent reads, but the latter is my personal favorite. Mrs. Simmons points out a number of interesting thoughts on where writing for the web becomes anemic. One specific example that hits close to home for me is alt text. Improving my alt text writing is a subtle, yet important improvement that would benefit my websites in a number of ways.

Over the past week I have been making a number of style changes to this site. Several Internet Explorer-specific bugs have been fixed, which should benefit those users who still haven’t switched to a better browser. Eagle-eyed readers might also note a few element styles that have changed (page headings, for example). Any comments or complaints about the site style in general are welcome.

The about page at this site has also been rewritten, including a semi-decent (and recent) picture of me.

I just ran across an excellent article entitled Why “left: -9999px;” is Better For Accessibility Than “display: none;”. It discusses the two primary means by which web developers try to hide text (usually to allow for accessible logos or titles), and why using an offset is (often) better than just simply making it invisible. The author also explains why this is better, using some documentation from Microsoft on Internet Explorer accessibility. Looks like I need to fix my websites!

I’ve been out of town, so I know that this story is a few days old, but I really dig the new look at CNN.com. It’s clean, sleek, and takes up much more screen real estate. The HTML doesn’t validate, nor does the CSS, but I still think this is a step in the right direction.

I have finally gotten around to deploying a random image rotator here at this website. The one I chose is surprisingly simple, and comes from an article over at A List Apart. No longer will the “Little Pinnacle Overlook Trail” be the only image to grace the header of each page.

The pool of images consists of choice selections from the photography section of this site. At the moment, the pool is pitifully small (only 4 images). Over time, I will introduce new photographs to the set, to help keep things fresh.

You may have also noticed that I have tweaked the site style sheet (again). RSS feed links have been demoted to the side bar, and the header area has been tightened up a bit.

Born Geek has been redesigned from the ground up. The site is now powered by Movable Type, which makes my life way easier. Be sure to check it out and please let me know if you run into any problems. Lots more goodies are coming soon: Googlebar Lite 4.6, Paper Plus 10.0, a new C++ article, and more.