Code Academy recently asked me to come in give a workshop on the basics of HTML and CSS to their students. The workshop started with a presentation outlining the different structures of HTML and CSS, along with some common terms to be familiar with. After a collective understanding of HTML and CSS a deeper dive was taken into the box model and how to work with floats.
Continue Reading »Over the summer I have had the opportunity to speak at some terrific conferences, the last two being ChicagoWebConf and Omni Technical Conference. At these two conferences I spoke specifically about HTML5 and CSS3 and it's roll within quality front-end design and development. Please feel free to check out my slides from these talks below and let me know if you have any questions.
September 2011
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Building a website is an exciting time! Everyone is firing on all cylinders and eager to get started. The mood is high and the room is full of great ideas. Putting the correct process in place will help grow the excitement and craft ideas into executable goals.
TechWeek, July 2011
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CSS3 is a hot topic these days. Designers and developers are starting to widely utilize CSS3 and new tutorials are popping up nearly everyday. As a designer it is an exciting time to be at the forefront of it’s development. There are, however, many designers and developers that see browser support for CSS3 as insufficient. In their defense, not all clients are open to letting their websites look moderately different from browser to browser.
Thankfully Faruk Ateş, Paul Irish and Alex Sexton have developed a script, Modernizr, that detects CSS3, as well as HTML5, browser support and allows us to take advantage of CSS3 in compatible browsers while providing alternative fallbacks to incompatible browsers. The script adds a unique class to the html element of a page specific to each CSS3 property supported. As an example, in browsers that support CSS3 border radius a class of borderradius will be added to the html element, while in browsers without support for CSS3 border radius a class of no-borderradius will be added to the html element. This opens up a world of opportunities, giving us just what we need to fully implement CSS3 without worrying about incompatible browsers.
Best viewed in Safari or Chrome.
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Recently I had the chance to ask Chris Coyier some quick questions, get his take on a few things within the web design industry, and see what he has been up to lately. Chris, as you may already know, is an extremely talented man who wears a number of different hats and has his hands in many different projects. Perhaps most notably, Chris is the curator behind one of the most well known web design communities CSS-Tricks. It was a pleasure to get to speak with Chris and I thank him for opportunity.
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One of the most popular lines from the 1989 film Field of Dreams is “If you build it, he will come.” A great quote from an excellent movie. Sadly, this quote does not hold true to that of web design. Building a website will not get you visitors and writing in a blog will not get you readers. You must advertise and promote your website accordingly. Today, with the help of social media, gaining publicity has become increasingly easier. There are however many outlets that are often quickly overlooked. One of these outlets being user submitted community news.
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With CSS3 gaining popularity so are CSS attribute selectors. CSS attribute selectors have been around for some time however CSS3 adds more selectors to the mix bringing new light to subject. Increased browser support, with nearly every major browser currently supporting attribute selectors (Internet Explorer 6 still struggles), has also added to the popularity.
So what benefit do CSS attribute selectors have to adding style to document links? CSS attribute selectors allow you to quickly and easily add styles to document links while keeping your code clean and clutter free. Ultimately, the more attractive looking your links are the more clicks they will receive.
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Multivariate testing (MVT), testing multiple elements of a live web page at a time, is becoming more and more popular amongst the web design and development community. Understandably so, multivariate testing allows you to test a large amount of combinations and see exactly how those combinations stack up against one another. You will quickly find out that the smallest changes can produce the biggest results.
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Smashing Magazine is one of the largest web design and development blogs online. They publish high quality content on a regular basis and are often seen as one of the most reliable sources within the industry. When they started kicking around the idea of creating a book the community widely encouraged it. After much talk the idea of creating a book, The Smashing Book, became a reality and Smashing Magazine went to work. To say that it was a difficult process for Smashing Magazine would be an understatement. As with every project they had their fair amount of roadblocks and then some. Regardless of what was put in from of them Smashing Magazine managed to release a book filled with excellent content written by none other than their own community.
Each chapter is written by a different author or authors, of which has appeared on Smashing Magazine before. Perhaps they have written an article for the blog before or maybe they have appeared within the articles themselves. The authors of the book are well established within the community and are experts in their line of work. Each chapter is well crafted to the personal style of the author(s) and is packed with valued content. Let’s start from the beginning, shall we.
Continue Reading »When it comes to designing a website, content is often overlooked, but why? Very rarely do users browse the web looking for a good design or decent experience. Users come for the content. Not giving them what they want with poorly written content will frustrate users. Not only does it waste their time, but your time as well.
Refresh Chicago, January 12th, 2010
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