Blog

  • Why Developers Don't Trust Designers.

    Mon, 02/04/2008 - 20:36 — Mark

    Design is an ancient tradition going back centuries, and many designers think this gives their chosen livelihood a special significance. I have recently been a sad little troll on a new typography blog because I felt the designer had sacrificed readability for the look of the site. As far as I'm concerned typography IS readability, and everything beyond that is just art. As it turns out the design is readable on some people's monitors, but unfortunately I didn't live up to the high monitor calibration standards of this blog (even though my monitor was inherited from a designer).

    I believe that every person that publishes on the web should make readability their number one priority. We have enough strain on our eyes staring at a monitor as it is.

  • Beefy Input Boxes Tutorial

    Fri, 12/28/2007 - 00:05 — Mark

    After reading my article about using CSS to style form controls you might get the impression that I never use CSS for this purpose. Allthough I avoid it when not necessary, sometimes modifying a look of a form improves the usability of a site.

    One way that designers show the relative importance of objects on the screen is by increasing the size of one element relative to the other elements on the page. Many sites call attention to input boxes by making them extra beefy. Today I will show you how to create a beefy input box that works in all of the modern browsers.

  • Typography Rules!

    Wed, 12/12/2007 - 15:50 — Mark

    This just in, sites with excellent typography are some of the highest rated on the web. Well at least thats the case on commandshift3.com. For those of you stuck on Windows, command shift 3 is the keyboard shortcut for a screenshot on a Mac. Command shift 3 describes itself as hot or not for websites and basically thats what it is, you are shown two screenshots of websites, and click on the one you like the best.

    The real reason for this post though, is not to promote command shift 3, but to point out that the current top 3 sites focus primarily on typography to create their desired effect.

  • Web Design Inspiration

    Sat, 11/24/2007 - 21:10 — Mark

    Jeffrey Zeldman of "Designing With Web Standards" fame has written what I believe is the single most inspiring piece about web design I have read.

    Check it out and start changing the web one site at a time.

  • The Next Big Thing in CSS

    Mon, 10/29/2007 - 21:31 — Mark

    Contributed by: John Barreiros

    Ah, WebKit, you've done it again.

    Last couple of weeks, you may have come across a post or two discussing downloadable fonts. This came about after Apple WebKit announced support for the CSS @font-face rules.