Month: August 2004

Declare Your Background Colour

If there is one thing you should do first when implementing a new website design, it should be declaring your background colour. If you do anything else first, stop it. Declare your background colour first.

Bold, italics, and overemphasis

A co-worker asked me to make some changes to a section of the website today. Part of the changes included some paragraphs with sentences that were in bold and italics. Why do people do this? Why is it when someone wants to emphasise something, they over-emphasise it?

Paving Paths and Website Accessibility

I have been working my legs too hard over the last couple of weeks with my non-stop cycling. Last weekend certainly was not enough time to let me legs recuperate. I decided to drive to work this morning in hopes that a third day will be enough to get my legs back to normal.

Anyhow, while walking from my truck to the University of Lethbridge on one of the new paths, I was reflecting on how the path has a lot to do with web design.

Internet Explorer 6.5?

Microsoft released Windows XP Service Pack 2 yesterday. Part of the service pack includes updates to Internet Explorer.

On the plus side, IE now comes with a native pop-up blocker. It also requires user authentication for drive-by downloads. Another cool feature is the “Add-On Manger”, which is similar to Firefox’s extensions manager.

Published
Categorised as Browsers

Web Standards Solutions

My boss came into my office yesterday with a special gift. It was something I’ve been wanting for a very long time (okay only since this past March).

It was Web Standards Solutions by Dan Cedarholm. I’ve been following Dan’s blog ever since I came across a few of his articles on ALA (Mountaintop Corners and Faux Columns). He always has some quick and slick CSS tricks that I enjoy testing and even implementing.

Firefox is the Coolest Browser

I ditched Internet Explorer at home a few moths ago for Netscape. Every time I opened IE for the first time, it would take nearly a minute to load the first page. That was simply unacceptable and since I could not find the problem, I simply switched to another browser.

While I was using Netscape, I became addicted to tabbed browsing. It has come to the point where I detest using IE at work because I always have to open new windows instead of new tabs. There were some other cool features as well.

I heard a lot about Firefox and decided to try it. It was a nice download; less than a minute on DSL. It automatically imported my Netscape bookmarks, favourites, links and passwords. Very cool.

Published
Categorised as Browsers

Television, Remotes and Accessibility

My remote control was not designed to include a battery indicator. My cell phone was designed with one. My PocketPC was designed with one. My digital camera was designed with one. Nearly every electronic device I own that runs on batteries was designed to include a battery indicator to let me know when the batteries are low. The remote control was not. Why is this a problem?