Fleeting Epiphanies

Conferences - In this economy?

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:08:09 GMT

Hey, the economy sucks and everybody's scared. What better time to work on your education, up your web skills and earn a little extra job security? There are several upcoming conference opportunities I want to bring to your attention -- as well as reasons you might want to do it at all. If you're smart about it, you can streamline costs and make it an affordable trip. Are conferences really worth it? For my business, conferences have been invaluable -- and I'm referring to the time before I spoke at them. Not only do you have the ability to learn about many different subjects all in one place, but the networking can also be a key reason to attend. I can trace most of the original opportunities I've had in this industry back to the very first conference I attended -- TODCon (which sadly isn't happening this year). I recently ran into some old pictures from that conference and it occurred to me just how much of my web beginnings started there. At TODCon, I met Matt Brown who was then the Community Manager at Macromedia. Matt bugged, errr, I mean encouraged me until I agreed to write an article for the DevNet Center (yes, my first, and I was petrified). I also met Angela Buraligia, ....Read more at Community MX

Font Sizing: em, pixel, point, percent and keywords

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:38:40 GMT

When I write and speak, I often talk about using em units to size layouts giving the user the ability to resize the entire layout if they change their font size. In fact, chapter 5 of the book I co-authored with Greg Rewis is an entire project based on em units. Until all browsers zoom, this is my personal preferred method. My personal site is built using this method. Last year, I wrote a blog post about Scaling fonts using em units and how I saw that affecting different types of users. A comment was made recently, and I wanted to address it in a new post while sharing a couple charts I made for myself. The comment said: "A simple calculation as 1pt equals 1px at 72dpi (MAC) so: 1pt equals 1.33px at 96dpi (PC} 12px (pt) font in MAC is therefore 16px in a 96dpi PC. If you have a parent element with a 11 pt font then to convert px dimensions to em you divide them by 14.63 (11pt x1.33) Dont interchange pt and px on a PC." First I'd like to address using points for the screen on either a Mac or a PC. Simply don't do it. Ever. Points are for print. I regularly use points (as well as inches and serif fonts) when I create a print style sheet. I updated an article recently called ....Read more at Community MX

Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS4 Released!

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:20:23 GMT

Though Greg Rewis and my updated book, Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS4, was listed on most sites with a February 9th release date, it's available now online! Since we were so late with the last one, we thought being early with this one might make up for it. Well, that's not entirely true. I think our publisher thought we'd be just as late this time and put a later date on it. Either way, the release date snuck up on me and since I'd promised to share it I wanted to give you a quick announcement here. Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS4 has been updated for the completely overhauled interface in Dreamweaver CS4 and as such all screen shots and verbiage relating to that is updated. The new workflows in Dreamweaver CS4 are also introduced throughout the updated book. One change in Dreamweaver greatly affected the rewrite. Removing Layout mode took away the tool we showed to collapse tables and convert a table-based site. For that reason, principles taught in chapter 3 were integrated into chapter 4 (and I personally like chapter 4 better now -- the flow was completely rewritten). Throughout each project, we changed a few of the CSS techniques (as well as adding a couple new ones) a....Read more at Community MX

Adobe MAX - Upcoming!

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:51:12 GMT

Yes, I've been meaning to put this up for quite some time but my schedule of late has made it tough to get much blog writing done. Before Adobe MAX starts, while people are deciding on their sessions, I wanted to make a quick post with more info about my sessions and other MAX happenings. Here they are in order of occurrence: Greg Rewis (my co-author) and his fellow CS4 Web Tools evangelists will be doing a full day session on Sunday called, Designing Across Media with Adobe Creative Suite 4. This was an extremely popular session last year. The evangelists show how to use the tools in an integrated manor and really get the most out of then to benefit your web projects. Believe me, after writing a book with one of them, I can testify that they know stuff about these tools we never even thought of. ;) You must sign up for this in advance, so act quickly. Monday, Greg Rewis and I will be doing a book signing at noon. Yes, the CS4 version of our book won't be out till December, but you can pre-order both the book and the upcoming videos. (I've done one for Pearson/Peachpit about Structure and Presentation -- along with CSS tips and tricks. Greg's upcoming video is about Behavior -- ....Read more at Community MX

<head> Conference, MAX and a New Book!

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:29:40 GMT

There are several exciting, upcoming events I've been meaning to blog about but... life's been wild. This is my first blog post since making the move to Phoenix, Arizona, rewriting Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS4, and shooting a video for Pearson on CSS and Dreamweaver. I'll blog again when those two items have release dates. It's safe to say I've been scarce everywhere--except twitter (where I'm stefsull). Before I miss the opportunity, I'd like to mention that the first, virtual, world-wide conference is this weekend! The <head> conference, created by my friend Aral Balkan boasts an amazing line up of speakers. It would be hard to get this many people from this many places into, well, one place. Some speakers will be speaking live from hubs (like London) and the rest of us will be coming to you live from our own offices or, since it's the weekend, our homes. :) There are three virtual conference rooms using Adobe Connect Pro (viewed directly in your browser), chat for participants to get to know each other, a room (and events) in Second Life and other creative ways to allow attendees to interact virtually. Since you can't be in all three rooms at once (just like a regu....Read more at Community MX

When the Legend Won't Wrap - Revisited for Firefox 3

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:59:17 GMT

Back in November, I wrote a blog post explaining a fix for the poor and varied rendering you will get with a wordy legend that forces its containing fieldset to be wider than you've specified. You can read more details in the previous post. In a nutshell, it involves placing a span within the legend. Since a span (and a legend) are inline, the span won't render the width until you change its display to block. The styling is then applied using a descendent selector - legend span. (The span within the legend technique is demonstrated here.) And all was well in the world of cross browser fixes -- until the birth of Firefox 3. The changes made to FFOX 3 mean the span technique now fails in that browser. (Thanks to Atus for the heads up.) The behavior of FFOX 3 continues to be a legend that doesn't wrap. However, instead of making the fieldset wider, the legend now protrudes out the right side of the fieldset. (If you view the file linked above with FFOX3, you'll see that the span does render at the width specified in the selector - but the content within continues and protrudes to the right, until it ends. Unsightly to say the least.) Just one more declaration After filing a bug at ....Read more at Community MX

Designers AND Developers...

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:26:26 GMT

So there's been a pretty decent sized debate going on through the webosphere. Designers should know how to code. Developers should know how to design (or shouldn't need to design). I considered weighing in on the 37 Signals blog -- but the comments were already closed. Call me slow (yes, I've been on the road, had a birthday, and had my mom visiting with her birthday. ;). You'd be right. Oh well. I do have one thing to say. Well, I probably have more than one, but I'll start with that. I recently did a couple sessions at the HOW design conference. One was on "Mistakes Print Designers Make on the Web." Yes, I definitely agree there are common mistakes from the print paradigm. Many times I can tell how people's brains work when they ask for help on lists. I can tell they don't understand the web or come from a print background. However, that does NOT mean I think they are useless. Do I think they should know how the web works? That the web is a fluid, not static medium? Am I willing to help them learn (if they're going to be in my "designer stable")? He77s yea. I am willing. Because I think they are very important to our industry. Do I think that coders should not use a graphic med....Read more at Community MX

The New, Confusing, Online Social World

Tue, 13 May 2008 03:36:14 GMT

I'm not one to put a lot of personal information on my blog. I don't have problem with people that do it, it's just not my personal style. When I was first on the web, it took about 3 or 4 years before you could find a picture of me anywhere (as a woman, I needed brain respect first). I was one of the last people I know to join Facebook (never have had a Myspace page). Don't get me wrong, I love the web, but I've just never found the need to expose a lot of personal information there. Enter our new, confusing age I've posted here about Twitter. And I do love it for a variety of reasons. I post more information there than I do in other places. Oddly, it feels like I'm talking to my friends--in some giant, controlled IM. Of course, I know that since I don't protect my tweets, anyone that follows me, google, and the world can read them. Still... Facebook however, has turned out to be another animal entirely. After joining for an orchestrated birthday prank on a friend, I stayed and connected with a lot of folks--from real life friends to web friends I've not yet met in real life (IRL). In the past few months in fact, I've connected with several old friends, from grade school to co....Read more at Community MX

Web Design World

Mon, 05 May 2008 07:55:12 GMT

Tomorrow, I get on a plane to Web Design World Chicago. It looks like it's going to be a great conference. If you're in the area, come on over and join in the geek fun. Jeff Veen, Jared Spool, Dan Rubin, Joe Marini, Greg Rewis and more! Then it's on to HOW Design in Boston followed by Multi-Mania in Brussels, Belgium, TODCon in Orlando and finally Web Down Under in Sydney. The organizers have worked hard, and done a great job on all these conferences so be sure to come to the one closest to you. You will not regret it. Promise! Grab me in the hall if you're there. I love to meet people. :)....Read more at Community MX

Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:10:57 GMT

Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3, the book I co-wrote with Greg Rewis, is finally out. Yes, I know, it was long overdue. I took a picture of it when I finally got to see it at Greg's house (no, my copies haven't arrived yet), so if you'll excuse the exhausted, traipsing around Phoenix all day look on my face, you can see me with the book on Flickr. Greg and I didn't want to create the same CSS or Dreamweaver book that others have written. Those books are published, are very useful, and if that's what you need buy the appropriate book. Our goal instead was to show how to create standards-based, accessible web layouts using Dreamweaver. It's a myth that you have to hand code to be a real web developer. Is it best to know how to semantically mark up your page? Yes, absolutely. This is a craft and you should know as much as you can about it. Can you hand code within the Dreamweaver environment? Of course you can -- I do it all the time. Do you have to? Absolutely not. There are tools within Dreamweaver that make your work faster, and more effective whether you're working in code or design view. If you haven't looked at Dreamweaver since about MX or so, it's come a long way baby! Ch....Read more at Community MX

An Event Apart, SXSWi, NAB, Web Design World, HOW Design, and more...

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:28:28 GMT

Coming up in the next couple months, I'll be at several conferences where I'd love to meet you! This week, Austin beckons! At South by Southwest Interactive, I'll be doing three panels. On Saturday, What Women Need to Succeed will explore women in technology--what it takes to make your mark and succeed in the tech world we love. Are women really different? On Sunday, I'll do a panel with Greg Rewis of Adobe on Responsible Web Design. And finally, on Monday afternoon, we'll discuss where WaSP has been and where it's going in Don't Break the Web. On April 14th, I'll be presenting a three hour session at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) in Las Vegas, In-Depth: Using New Media with Adobe Dreamweaver. On April 25th, In the great city of New Orleans (right before the first weekend of the Jazz Fest!), An Event Apart will take place. Jeffery Zeldman and Eric Meyer invite you to come join us. I'll be presenting Design Challenges, Standards Solutions. Practical, real-world solutions to common problems. If you mention my code -AEASULL- you'll get a $50 discount. Go for it, it will be a great conference! And plan to stay for JazzFest on the weekend. On May 5-7, Web Design World....Read more at Community MX

Twitter - A New User's Guide

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:59:23 GMT

So maybe you've never heard of twitter, or maybe it's old news but you thought it seemed silly. That's what happened to me at first as well. A friend told me to check it out (with no instructions), I took a look at the home page, wondered why I cared what all those people I didn't know were doing right now, and closed it. For those that haven't heard of it, twitter is a social networking tool that requires you to answer one simple question - "What are you doing?" - in 140 characters or less. And I agree, it does sound rather silly every time I try to explain it. However, I've found Twitter to be my favorite social tool. I've basically turned off IM (which can be an extreme time sink for me when friends need CSS help!), but I can still keep up with people I care about. In light of the confusion of new people looking at the app, I thought I'd write a few tips I've found along the way that make it work for me. A Quick Twitter Primer Your initial job is to find people you want to follow. You follow them by viewing their profile page and clicking "Follow" under their main icon. These are your friends. (They're called "Following" in your Stats sidebar and their icon will now appear ....Read more at Community MX

Scaling Fonts using em units

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:05:33 GMT

As I train all over the world, one of the issues I try to spend a good deal of time on is helping people to understand the malleable em unit. And how to utilize it for good and not evil. :) Anyone who knows me knows my burden for accessibility and the em unit is one of the most accessible ways to design. In fact, Greg and I spend a chapter on it in our upcoming book, so I won't go into a lot of detail here. But today, I stumbled upon a really great font-size calculator created by James Whittaker. If you'd rather keep it handy on your desktop, he also created it as an Adobe AIR application. In reading the comments of his blog post, I saw a couple people questioning the reasoning behind decreasing the default text size of a user at all. And I began to answer those questions with my own opinions. About three paragraphs into my reply, it occurred to me that I was monopolizing James' comments and it was best done as a blog post of my own (please read James' post for the full story). For the quick back story - the default text size of modern browsers is 16px (that would equal 1em). It's quite common to choose a 12px font-size which is 75% of the default sizing (.75em), as the ....Read more at Community MX

Zooming Backgrounds in Internet Explorer 7

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:47:24 GMT

Recently, I did a presentation at Webmaster Jam Session in Dallas. In my session, one of the things I showed were some faux column techniques. During the QA at the end, a problem was brought up that I hadn't run into. The statement/question was that, evidently, there's a reported bug in Internet Explorer 7 (OMG, imagine!) where background images are not zoomed with the rest of the page when the Page > zoom accessibility feature is used. So when you use a faux column technique on your web page to create the illusion of equal columns, your text can end up not being on top of the column color you want. In some cases, this can lead to some pretty major legibility problems. The attendee stated they had given up faux columns due to this issue. Talk about depressing! I use faux columns so regularly -- I just couldn't imagine I had to give them up! I talked to a couple Microsoft people and yes, they said it was a known bug, but I couldn't get any information about a possible fix time frame. Now that I have IE7 on my computer (yay, VMWare!), I had some time to have a look (well, I didn't really have time, but due to something I was working on and with my curiosity piqued, I did some....Read more at Community MX

Blue Beanie Day - A Day for Web Standards

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 02:56:05 GMT

Yes, it's rather embarrassing, but I admit it. I have a Facebook account. Though I resisted for a long time, I was recently convinced to join Facebook to participate in a birthday prank for a friend. Oh well, another social time sink. On Facebook today, I was invited to join a group called "Blue Beanie Day." November 26th has been named Blue Beanie Day, in honor of Jeffrey Zeldman's photo, donned in a blue beanie, on the cover of his book, "Designing with Web Standards." It's a day to stand up and show our solidarity around accessible web development using Web Standards. And besides that, it'll just be plain fun! Here's how it works: Buy, beg, or borrow a Blue Beanie and take a photo in it. Heck, you can even take a picture with your camera phone at the mall trying one on if you don't want to buy it. Maybe you'll put a beanie on your head or change a black beanie to blue with Photoshop. Be imaginative. Take a cool group photo of you and your friends wearing Blue Beanies. The possibilities are limitless. Show your beanie creativity. Post your photo, or photos to Facebook, the Flickr pool, and other social networks on November 26th, 2007. Remember to switch your....Read more at Community MX

When the Legend Won't Wrap - One Solution

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:28:37 GMT

I've just returned from over six weeks on the road (12 locations all over the globe). Needless to say, I've been scarce around these parts of late. I'm hoping to start remedying that. While attending one of the conferences, I was discussing creative, problem-solving techniques with an attendee, and mentioned a method I'd recently employed for legends that won't wrap in some browsers. They mentioned that these types of creative tips should be blogged and, well, I'd truly intended to blog it here for others who run into the same problem. I found precious little written on it when I was searching for a solution. I figure it's better late than never. :) Many of you understand the accessibility and organizational reasons for using the fieldset and legend elements. I was recently coding a site that had a large number of forms. I was using fieldset and legend to organize and group the information. The copy written was very off-the-cuff, conversational and fresh. I liked it. But occasionally, the amount written (and used as the legend) needed to wrap to a second line. Enter the problem. I found that the wrapping behavior varies from browser to browser. On a Mac, legends wrap au....Read more at Community MX

Meet Me in the Wild--Upcoming Conferences

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 02:28:30 GMT

Come out and meet me! There are some upcoming events in September and October where I'll be speaking and I'd love for you to come say hi. On September 21 and 22, I'll be at Web Master Jam Session in Dallas, TX. I'm speaking on semantic HTML and CSS--the building blocks of a site. Jonathon Snook will follow my session with a "creative positioning" session. There are some great sessions including the keynote by Jared Spool. Check it out! On September 30 - October 3, I'll be at Adobe MAX in Chicago doing a hands-on session on the new CSS layouts I created for Dreamweaver CS3. There's at least a session a day, so you should be able to get in before they fill up. Also, October 15-18, I'll be doing the same session at Adobe MAX in Barcelona, Spain. October 22-25 takes me to San Fransico, California. There I'll be speaking at Pearson's first Voices that Matter conference on Mastering Perfect CSS Layouts. When registering, if you enter Priority code: WD-SULL -- you'll receive $100.00 off your registration fee. So find an event near you and let's meet face to face! ....Read more at Community MX

New Guillotine case in Internet Explorer (IE7)... Or not!

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 01:03:38 GMT

Yes, it's a fact that Internet Explorer 7 is better than Internet Explorer 6. But not all squashed bugs were completely killed. Like the little gopher game you play at the fair, sometimes when you bang one on the head and it goes underground, it simply pops back out in a different place. Enter the Guillotine Bug. Yes, we all hoped it was dead and gone. But by finally supporting some of the previously unsupported properties, new cases have evolved. I had one on my own, freshly launched site recently. Today, I took the time to figure out what was going on. Since it was a bit odd, I thought I'd share it here in hopes of helping someone else since I found nothing in Google exactly the same. Since IE7 now supports the :hover pseudo class on non-anchor elements, I decided it would be nice if the whole list item in my sidebar changed background color on hover. I placed a different background color and a completely different border effect on the li:hover selector. Within this list element was a left-floated icon and static h3 and h4 elements (which are links). It worked perfectly in IE6 and earlier, Firefox, Safari, etc. But IE7 decided to hack a hairball. When you hovered over either ....Read more at Community MX

reCAPTCHA - Simple and Accessible

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 15:50:13 GMT

For anyone who knows me well, the most shocking part of this post is that I actually, finally, put my own web site up. Yes, after 2 years of "Coming Soon," I've actually launched my site focued on training, speaking and coding. One of the things I learned (which I knew, taught, but obviously wasn't practicing) is--let the content dictate the design. Oh my word--I had three designers work on the site over the past two years before I realized I should practice what I preach and let the content, semantically marked up, determine the design. So much better than trying to force the content into your preconceived design notion--at least when you'd like to accomplish something. Special thanks to Carolyn Wood (editor-in-chief of Digital Web and owner of Pixelingo) for all her hard work with me on this (and for continually kicking my butt)! Meanwhile, something I found in the process of creating this site, I wanted to share with you guys. Due to the spam I receive on my blog and the form on my old site, I really wanted to make it more difficult for the bots. However, I'm also very concerned about accessibility with the current CAPTCHA products I'm aware of. Enter reCAPTCHA. This one act....Read more at Community MX

TODCon Schedule Online!

Tue, 08 May 2007 08:33:50 GMT

We've finally got the TODCon Vegas 2007 schedule and speaker list up. Check it out. Lots of excellent sessions about the new Adobe products, running your web business, usability, CSS and more. There's still time to register for the best little conference in Vegas! Come play on the strip with the rest of us geeks. You know you wanna... :)....Read more at Community MX

Custom CS3 Icons - Free!

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 17:52:46 GMT

There's been a wide range of reaction to Adobe's new CS3 icons. Admittedly, when I first saw the single Dreamweaver icon, I was taken aback -- "Is this thing finished?" But after seeing the whole suite, especially on the color wheel, I thought they were nicely done and easy to differentiate as I got a few in my dock. There were many who thought differently though. It was a love it or hate it kind of thing. For those of you in the hate camp, there's an option. Adam Betts, a very talented designer, has created his own set of CS3 icons -- and released them, free, to the public. He based them on the box design and they look quite lovely. He's even made a new set of document icons if the plain ones don't quite do it for you. What they'll look like at the smaller sizes, I can't say. There are no instructions included for where to install them, and at this point I haven't a clue. (Feel free to point me in the right direction if you know. :)) There are a few other sets I've run into if Adam's aren't your favorite. Mac Themes is similar to Adam's, Louie Mantia has a set that blend the old icons with the new box look, and if you like the new ones from Adobe but would rather have them a li....Read more at Community MX

Adobe MAX 2007 Announced - Chicago Baby

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:58:40 GMT

In case you missed it -- the announcement has been made and the blogosphere is abuzz - Adobe MAX 2007 will be in Chicago from September 30 to Oct 3 2007. Mark your calendars and corner the boss - it's time to make plans!Ben Forta has worldwide MAX dates/events in today's blog post. ....Read more at Community MX

CSS and Design Resources

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:20:40 GMT

Sometimes I get a bit behind on my Community MX reading and have to catch up in one fell swoop. This morning, I was having a look at the past few articles and found a most awesome resource that Sheri German put together. Though we're in the midst of a site redesign (yes, we know it's sometimes tough to find the exact article you want as CMX approaches 1950 articles!) it's not done yet. In the interim, Sheri has compiled the CSS section of the site into a great learning guide that you'll want to keep nearby. It's free, for those that aren't members, and groups articles by subject and gives you an idea of their levels and what to tackle first. I had to share this one! Design Your Own Custom CMX CSS Course -- a learning resource guide. Also, in case you missed it, over the holidays Adobe launched a CSS-related beta of their own - CSS Advisor. CSS Advisor is a resource where information on CSS bugs will be compiled by the community with links to their originators and other resources where possible. A kind of all-in-one-place starting point to pinpoint what your bugs might be and find solutions. Design Resources Finally, more related to design than CSS, Adobe has another beta you ma....Read more at Community MX

CSS, AJAX, Mashups, Microformats, Standards and Broken Bones

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:44:19 GMT

If you get the CMX newsletter, you may have read the blurb about the upcoming Web Directions North conference. This is the sister conference to the awesome Web Essentials/Web Directions conference that has happened down under for the past few years -- the one that I've been so jealous not to be able to attend. If you felt the same way, now's your chance! Canada is a lot closer than Australia for many of us. :) Here's the coolest part to me. Not only are the speakers world-class and the topics current to today's web, but you can ski! That's right -- if you're a geek that loves the cold, white, powdery stuff, there are two days of speakers, and then, two optional days of skiing (or snow boarding, of course) at Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia. How close to heaven is that? Even if you've never skiied before, there are plenty of easy runs -- and lessons. Don't be shy -- we're geeks -- we're supposed to make fools of ourselves. And anyway, no one will laugh -- for long (except, perhaps, at my 15 year old ski outfit... heh). I've got several conferences to go to this year, and South by Southwest (one I'm already registered for) is very close to these dates. Conference money can c....Read more at Community MX

Usability: Designing and Sorting Information

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 03:37:59 GMT

Usability has become quite the hot topic. Seems it's on everyone's lips of late. If it interests you, I'd like to bring a couple things to your attention. First, Tuesday, November 14th is Worldwide Usability Day. There are 206 events in 39 countries this year. That's pretty impressive. Find a usability event near you. One of the interesting activities you can participate in no matter where you live is card sorting. From their site: "Card sorting is a technique used to help identify how users organize, and expect to find, information on a website. The way the cards are sorted, and the labels the users give the cards are often used (along with other methods) to create the global and local navigation on a website." Participants will take about 20 minutes to go through the card sorting exercise and demographic survey. The information will then be analyzed to look at regional, cultural, and other demographic differences, and shared with the usability community. You need to RSVP by Monday, November 13th to have the information emailed to you about participating. The second bit of usability info that you may find interesting is related to a new, excellent book. It's written by Robert....Read more at Community MX

In the Aftermath of Adobe MAX

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 16:52:55 GMT

It's been a full week since returning from Adobe's MAX conference and I think I've finally recovered. Adobe did a nice job taking it over and things were pretty similar to previous years. The venue was beautiful and the evening events were well done. I got to see lots of old friends and made a great deal of new ones. My only real complaint was doing all of my speaking on the final day. I hurriedly talked to a few of you while running from floor to floor, and I have your business cards. But usually I quickly write something on the cards to remember who's who. I didn't have time to do that -- apologies if you asked me to contact you. Please email me a reminder. I couldn't keep up. :) In my sessions, I promised to put my final MAX sessions up on my site (if you downloaded them from the Adobe attendee resource site, they're markedly different from what I presented). I finally got them online a couple days ago. Download my CSS Session files (as soon as I get my own site completed and changed, the additional demos will be available). Also, if anyone has any pictures from MiniMAX, will you please email me? I haven't been able to locate any from that night yet. Next year, if you get the....Read more at Community MX

It's He-ere - Internet Explorer 7 - Final Release Version

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 02:13:46 GMT

I will reserve final judgement until I can properly view all my sites (I'm on a Mac and BrowserCam does not yet have the final version available), but for those waiting in anticipation, Internet Explorer 7 has arrived. An 8 pound-10 ounce bouncing bundle of joy -- or so we hope. Call me naive, but for the most part, I'm actually looking forward to it. Many of the rendering bugs in IE6 are reported fixed. Most of my sites have held together pretty well through the beta versions I could test on. I don't code using a lot of hacks for older versions of Internet Explorer, and many of the bugs I was squashing with the "* html #selectorName" trick have been fixed. So even though IE7 won't see those separate IE-specific values, it shouldn't need them too often either. I have been looking at Internet Explorer 7 a great deal over the past two days. Partly because I'm preparing to present two of the more advanced CSS sessions at Adobe MAX and wanted to be sure I had the latest available info to share, and partly because some of our subscribers have started to ask questions about IE7 in our Community MX forums. In light of that, today I ran all our JumpStarts through the IE7 beta3 ....Read more at Community MX

Safari Bug - Red Links Galore!

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:03:38 GMT

In light of sharing this information quickly, I'm going to tell you the story of a little bug without a demo. (The site I'm working on is still NDA, so I can't illustrate it with that either.) I'll try to get one up soon. The Backstory This site is using the new version of Nifty Corners (Nifty Corners Cube). It's a simple little javascript solution to rounded corners. You write the CSS selectors for the various elements, add a bit of javascript in the head of the document, and you have rounded corners. If javascript is disabled, you have square corners. Graceful degradation. I had worked most bugs out of the site and started testing outside Firefox (which I develop in) and IE PC (which typically has the most bugs). When I opened one of the pages in Safari, I was met with quite a surprise. Nearly all the links on the page were glowing a bright red. Perhaps it didn't actually glow, but when you're expecting a deep blue, it seems so. Well, what the heck!? The Search Obviously, my first thought was that I had something funky going on in the cascade. (There are some admin-only links in this site that are red.) In Dreamweaver, I clicked into one of the link headings. Using the Ru....Read more at Community MX

Zabasearch - Great new tool or invasion of privacy?

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:37:48 GMT

I usually keep the personal stuff out of here. But since this rant relates to Zabasearch, a web site, I'm going to spout off for a minute. Please bear with me. Zabasearch is touted as "The #1 Free People Search and Public Information Search Engine." And whether it's number one or not, I can't say, but without a doubt, it is thorough. In fact, I'd say it could very well turn into the number one tool for stalkers and identity theives. It takes a small amount of initial information on a person to pull a whole myriad of info. They've obviously pulled together a large number of databases -- yes, some would argue that those are available other places already -- but I greatly dislike the fact that they've made it so easy for people to find it all in one place. I can't really think of a good, upstanding use for this tool. (Don't say to find long-lost classmates 'cause there's already a site for that!) Go ahead -- enter your name (you may or may not need the state). You'll find your birthdate (month/year), phone number and street address (with the date that particular address was recorded which makes it simple to tell which is your current address), county and zip all in the in....Read more at Community MX

Paid Advertising in the Yahoo! Search Returns?

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 02:57:33 GMT

I have a problem with Yahoo!. Had I not been verbally attacked by a man in a neighboring city, I wouldn't even realize this interesting issue existed. And though it benefits my clients, it really bugs me personally. The back story in a nutshell is -- I have a client in the moving industry. A man in the same industry an hour away was having a fit that our search returns on Yahoo! were coming up at #2. (Nice for my client of course.) This competitor was sure I was cloaking or doing something illegal to get my client to that level (well actually, he accused me of putting text into the meta tags. But anyone that knows anything about SEO knows how far that would get me. And if he could read code he'd know that there are no meta tags on this site. There never have been.) When I looked at the search return he was complaining about, it read more like an ad than text on my client's website. Odd. So I looked at the page. Then I looked at various pages on the site. I also looked all through the way back machine archives. That text has never been on the page Yahoo! is linking to (or the site). Hmmmmm... A mystery. It took, me a couple days to figure out (and some sleuthing from some brillian....Read more at Community MX