Web design

Great-Looking SEO-Friendly Headlines with Cufon

Posted February 1, 2022 by Michael Slater

Thanks to the small set of fonts that you can depend on being available on most computers, typography on the web tends to be, well, boring.

There's lots of ways around this limitation. For the Webvanta.com site, we chose to use Cufon, an excellent all-JavaScript solution.

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Recommended Upgrades: Firefox 3.6 and Firebug 1.5

Posted January 25, 2022 by Michael Slater

Last week, Mozilla released Firefox 3.6, the lastest version of most web designers' favorite browser. We highly recommend the upgrade. Unlike the more minor releases, it appears that users are not automatically prompted for the upgrade, so you may need to download it manually.

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Should Designers Write Code?

Posted August 2, 2022 by Michael Slater

In the past few months, I've met with dozens of designers to better understand their workflow and their pain points. One of the interesting issues that has come up is the question of just what a web designer does, and what skils they need to have. At one extreme is the graphic designer who works in Photoshop and Illustrator to create web page mock-ups. They then hand these off to someone else who builds the web site. At the other extreme is the coder who works in HTML and JavaScript from the start, and the design evolves in code.

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The Future of (X)HTML

Posted July 13, 2022 by Michael Slater

Last week, the W3C officially threw in the towel on XHTML 2. This was a Good Thing, as the bulk of the web community has been behind HTML 5 and there was little apparent future for XHTML 2. Eliminating it just cuts out some confusion and largely fruitless effort.

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Below the Fold: "Penny Watching" Clients

Posted March 29, 2022 by Dave Marsden

Everyone has experienced this type of client. The first question in the first meeting is "how much will it cost me?" Of course it doesn't stop there. They don't really count the "minor revisions" they requested as a "round of changes." They don't want to pay the FedEx charges for what they needed to have immediately and let's not mention the painful price negotiation. From the beginning, you wonder why you took this job.

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