scrumpyjack

I officially hate Google Ads. Like me, you probably ignore them so easily. They're the bane of a web designer's life... and don't even start talking about the UX! The simple fact is they're hated all round. But quite clearly they work otherwise Google wouldn't be stinking rich (enough to offer a free GPS satellite navigation product). So who the heck is clicking on these stupid ads? Well, I don't care to be honest, because it's getting to the point where I could do with a bit of the money that Google get. So unfortunately I'm bringing ads back to this blog :( I know, it's a sad day. Rather than asking for donations (I'm certainly not doing anything worthy of donations), if you feel the urge to click on an ad, don't quash it with your educated supremism – support a poor blogger and give in to the click. Thanks :)

There have been literally dozens (if not hundreds) of articles on the latest CSS3 styling techniques that you can use right now to "enhance" your web designs. I have a problem with them. (I found this one this morning and this roundup from the other week is also very good.) Some of these articles openly state that there's a good chance that you will find these new features unsupported by a number of browsers - most notably, of course, is Microsoft's latest version of Internet Explorer as well as stable releases of Opera. So my first problem is the lack of universal support for these shiny CSS styles. Why is this a problem? Chances are, in order to use some of the newer styles found in CSS3's draft you will have to use vendor-specific code where those vendors apply the draft. In order to achieve a fully backwards compatible design, your stylesheet(s) will need: one set of instructions as a backup (for non-supporting browsers), the current draft recommendation sta...

By G-Spot I mean the first page of search engine results in Google . A couple of months ago I sent out this email to a friend of mine who asked me to analyse his website ( Damian Brown Photography ). It's quite a specific analysis of his site, but it can be used as a basic framework for most sites out there: First off, page titles (as i call it, the <title> tag): This is pretty key. Most search engines use this as the heading for the search result listing, the link that you click to go to the desired site after performing a search. This is one of the primary places a search engine will look for keywords. However, it shouldn't be too long as it will get clipped/truncated and it should make some sort of sense. I know this may seem obvious, but there should only be one <title></title> tag on the page and it should always be inside the <head></head> section of the page. META tags: Right, to cut through all of the confusion, the only ones you really rea...

I've been doing a lot of reading up on HTML5 and XHTML2. I know neither of these technologies are anywhere near well-supported enough to start using in production. However, we should all be starting to get our heads around the changes - if not only to be ready for the shift, but also the benefits it will bring. There has been a lot of hype in design and developer circles for a good few years surrounding all of this, especially for proponents of the so-called semantic web - the supposed natural evolution of the web. However, Tim Berners-Lee (seen by many as the father of the web as we know it today) has already suggested that this semantic web will only make up part of what we will come to call Web 3.0. How much of it will be the semantic web is yet to be seen (if much at all given it's progress!)... more to the point, how much of an impact these impending technologies will have on the semantic web is a little hard to judge. It strikes me that whenever we reach this next phase ...

Are we still supporting browsers that have had their day? It seems the simple answer is "hell yes!" I ask why... I stumbled across a website today consisting of one page prompting users to upgrade their browser. It offers the hope of a better user experience, but also notes that it would make developers' and designers' lives easier. I know there are many arguments that exist for supporting all possible browsers on all possible platforms. I know there are services around (such as Litmus) that provide cross-browser, cross-platform testing. I know there are still a bevy of users out running older browsers. However, my argument is that there are few enough of those that we as designers/developers can actually start to make them feel outcast. Not that we are trying to bully anyone into upgrading their browser - heck we've been so subservient up till now, our bluff would be called and we'd probably cry and run off. The thing is that most users who are still sportin...