Articles

Using JavaScript to populate select lists through the ages

When two different clients had the same problem, I knew a bit of portable code would solve both. But would it work next year?

November 27, 2011

10 minutes to read.

CSS button recipe

Making clickable text stand out from non-clickable text has been a staple of the web since the web was called the mesh. How do you make a button look tappable — without graphics? By using CSS3.

November 8, 2011

2 minutes to read.

Assistive text vs. IE7

What happens when Internet Explorer 7 encounters “hidden” text? The affect is different in most other browsers, but requires a less obvious design solution.

2 minutes to read.

Notes on the rel attribute

HTML’s rel attribute describes what kind of hyperlink we’re looking at, or how the linked material relates to the content at hand. But using it isn’t as simple as it first appears. Learn how it works and read on for more references.

September 22, 2011

5 minutes to read.

Selectively changing paragraph margins

How do you apply HTML padding everywhere except where it’s in the way? With one of four CSS.

September 1, 2011

5 minutes to read.

The 1140px CSS grid

This no-frills CSS framework focuses on responsive design.

December 1, 2010

5 minutes to read.

My site is crawling with bots

“Robots” or “spiders” are programs that index online content for search engines. Several have tried to download my free color files many times. Bot or not, every browser that hits my site leaves its tech-ish signature, which makes my site log like a guest book. Last week I found my log full of bot visits.

June 14, 2010

minutes to read.

Fight Div-itis and Class-itis With the 960 Grid System

The 960 Grid System encourages the addition of div elements and class attributes, especially on complicated pages. Is this really an improvement over nested tables? Creating cleaner code means going beyond the framework and thinking about what it really represents.

March 31, 2010

minutes to read.

How to clean messy underlines in linked text

Underlined text is universal for “this is clickable” in web content. But clogged descenders detract from legibility. How do you fix that? Here are four design solutions.

January 1, 2010

minutes to read.

Does “click here” count against link text?

Conventional wisdom says that keyword-rich links are more productive than “click here.” But are they? I performed an experiment to find out if “click here” affects links in web content.

December 26, 2009

minutes to read.