Archived posts, August 2004
Speed up your web pages
Ten ways to speed up the download time of your web pages.
Competent Classing
Some tips on using classes and IDs efficiently.
Clickable Link Backgrounds
A nice way of making background images in lists clickable.
Document Outline Panel
A Firefox extension that displays an outline of the current document.
Web accessibility in the EU
An assessment of accessibility and standards conformance in four EU countries.
Adapting print design skills for the Web
Some things to consider for print designers moving to the web.
Stop IE flicker
A way of preventing annoying flicker in IE.
The title attribute
A discussion on when to use the title attribute.
IA and CSS
A presentation held at Web Visions 2004.
Seven Deadly Markup Sins
Common markup mistakes, why they can cause problems, and how to fix them.
Serif vs sans serif
Are serif or sans serif fonts best for body copy on the web?
Headings and document structure
Discussions on the use of XHTML heading elements.
ASP.NET Hall of Fame
A directory of standards compliant sites developed in ASP or ASP.NET.
:hover Considered Harmful
Does :hover really belong in CSS?
SimpleQuiz Part XVII: Addresses
A discussion on the best way of marking up an address.
Most Common CSS Problems
A discussion on common problems, frustrations and misunderstandings with CSS-based layout.
Joe Does the Movies
Accessible movie reviews and an example of an advanced, accessible table.
Vertical centering using CSS
Several methods for vertical centering with CSS.
Designing Data
A two-part article on styling tables with CSS.
New XHTML 2 working draft
The next generation markup language.
Defensive Design, Part 1
Designing defensively by using elastic design.
Reading Online Text
A study of how margins and leading affect online reading performance.
Free Menu Designs
Simple and ready-to-use CSS menu designs.
Back online
Before my vacation started, I told myself I needed to take a break from this site as well as from…
Consensus and dissidence
A comparative survey of ten high profile websites.
Writing effective link text
Six guidelines for writing better link text.
Drop the lost Explorer
Reasons to stop using Internet Explorer and switch to Firefox.
Web design details
A list of questions to be considered when building a website.
3 pixels of frustration
An extremely frustrating bug in Internet Explorer for Windows.
Content negotiation
Note: There is a follow-up to this article: Content negotiation, AdSense, and comments. As most of you probably know, XHTML…
Web Standards and money
Examples of how using Web Standards can save money.
Web standards checklist
A list of checkpoints for web standards compliance.
Tag transformations
A bunch of clever ways of using PHP to replace custom tags with HTML tags.
CSS - Auto-height and margin-collapsing
A thorough explanation of vertical margin-collapsing.
HTML, XHTML and semantics
A presentation on XHTML and the transition to Web Standards.
Elements or attributes?
A discussion on metadata and content attributes.
IE whitespace bug
Several solutions to the IE unordered list whitespace bug.
Compression
Using efficient markup will help keep bandwidth usage down, and make pages load faster. If that isn’t enough, and you…
DOCTYPES and MIME types
DOCTYPEs matter. MIME types matter. Both are important.
How to properly format dates
Learn how to format dates so that everybody can understand them.
What is the flow?
A CSS tutorial on positioning, floats and display models.
Virtual Hosts for Dummies
A tutorial on enabling virtual hosts in your local Apache web server.
Developing with web standards, refreshed
Developing with web standards, my (long) article on web standards and accessibility, turned out to be more popular than I…
SEO and Your Web Site
SEO best practices that will help your site rank well in search engine results.
XMLHttpRequest
How to dynamically update a document’s content by using XMLHttpRequest and innerHTML.
URI (IRI) design
Some thoughts on what makes a good URI.
Designing a CSS based template - part V
The fifth part of Veerle Pieters’ CSS tutorial.
The perfect weblog system
A long and very detailed outline of what would make a great weblog system.
CSS optimizer
An online tool for optimising style sheets.
Learning CSS
Recommendations on articles, tutorials and books for learning about CSS and Web standards.
A Matter of Styles
How to produce and maintain quality CSS when working in a team.
How to be creative
Some tips on how to be creative in whatever it is you do.
CSS 101
A CSS tutorial for beginners and intermediates.
XHTML media type test
Check which media types different browsers recognise.
About screen reader users
Three useful things learned from observing screen reader users.
Sizing monospaced fonts
Something that’s been bothering me for a while is how difficult it seems to be to make text set in…
The future of accesskeys
XHTML 2.0 replaces the accesskey attribute with the access attribute.
Search engine spam techniques
A look at recent techniques for spamming search engines.
Punctuation details
Some typographical details that are often overlooked on the web.
A Web Design Horror Story
A site based on Web Standards gets butchered by clueless web designers.
8 Quick Ways to Fix Your Search Engine
Make your site’s search engine more usable.
This Year’s Document Object Model
Use unobtrusive, DOM-based JavaScript to add behaviour to well-structured markup.
Boosting your search ranking: it’s no trick
Make a good website, and your search rankings will improve.
Screenreader visibility
CSS techniques for hiding elements from graphical browsers, but not from screen readers.
Client guide to web standards
A client-friendly explanation of the benefits of web standards.
Web standards makeovers
Accessible, web standards based makeovers of inaccessible sites.
Real world web design
Some thoughts on what characterises quality web design in the real world.
Netscape 7.2
Just released: Netscape 7.2, based on Mozilla 1.7.
Sveriges bästa webbplatser inte så bra
Note: this article is in Swedish. An English translation will be available later. Tidigare i år publicerade svenska Internetworld Sveriges…
Quick guide to XHTML
The HTML or XHTML debate continues.
HTML - not so simple
Note: This is a repost of something I first published in December 2003. Since this site gets a lot more…
Browse Happy
Why many have stopped using Internet Explorer. You should, too.
Web sites agree to be accessible
Online travel services make their sites accessible.
When newer is not better
Redesigns don’t necessarily make a site better or more useful.
Text-only versions
Not the best way of making a website accessible.
This page should be banned
Information that should have been left in the 20th century.
A good about page
Things to consider when making an about page for a website.
Why your client cares about web standards
How to explain web standards to clients in a language they understand.
Web development mistakes
When I visit a website, especially if it’s the site of a competitor or a prospective client, I like viewing…
A bit of transparency
How to use transparent PNG images in modern browsers, and GIFs in others.
SEO the best way
Providing quality content is the key to good search engine rankings.
Microsoft.com towards standards?
Is the new microsoft.com design a move towards web standards or not?
Standards resources for beginners
Dave Shea is looking for resources for people new to web standards.
Anti Standards
A closer look at some of the claims made in comments to my recent post about web development mistakes.
CSS Directory
A collection of links to CSS resources.
Column swapping
A CSS technique for creating two columns with equal height.
Web development mistakes, redux
There have been a lot of comments on my recent post about common web development mistakes, and that’s great. Not…
sIFR - Flash replacement
The latest technique for replacing HTML text with Flash.
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