Thoughts on Design

The nice people at WebAssist.com are letting me try out their new CSS Menu Writer extension for Dreamweaver. I got a demonstration of it yesterday, and I’ve been putting it though it’s paces this morning.

It is exactly what the title would suggest, a CSS menu writer. Working through four tabbed menus, you can easily create fairly complex, and valid CSS menus. I’m very impressed with it so far. The extension works well, and is quite intuitive. The two most significant aspects I see, are that it uses no proprietary coding as far as I can see, and that I can create my own preset templates. This means that any menu I create using this should be editable by anyone with a knowledge of CSS, and that I can adapt the software to my own design style. This has the potential to be a very significant time saver for me. I’ll go into greater detail when I’ve had a few days to try it out.

Despite early announcements that IE8 would default to displaying pages as if it were IE7, Microsoft is now announcing that it will default to Standards mode. This will alleviate the need for designers to opt out, by opting in as I’ve written about before.

Microsoft Expands Support for Web Standards

Consistent with its efforts to promote further interoperability across the Web, Microsoft Corp. is now configuring the settings in Internet Explorer 8, the upcoming version of its browser, to render content - by default - using methods that give top priority to Web standards interoperability.

This is the best news I’ve heard from Microsoft in quite some time. I was really hoping this issue would be resolved before IE8 came onto the market, but I was holding little hope. They have in the past seemed more inclined to use their own proprietary standards than to “give top priority to Web standards interoperability”. I’m happy top see that that wasn’t the case here.

A List Apart: Articles: They Shoot Browsers, Don’t They?

This is gobsmackingly audacious. Imagine a new version of Word that behaves exactly like the old version of Word unless the document it is processing contains a hidden instruction to unlock any new features. That’s what Microsoft is demanding that web developers implement. Unless you explicitly say otherwise, IE8 (and IE9 and IE10, ad infinitum) will behave exactly like IE7.

I’ve been following rumors about this feature for awhile. I thought they were going to turn out to be incorrect. It seems too audacious even for Microsoft. Forcing designers to use proprietary code in order or IE to work correctly? I can’t see how this won’t blow up in their faces in some way. It’s sure not going to earn them any good will.

456 Berea Street is linking to a great discussion on accessibility.

But I am going to take this opportunity to re-inforce what I believe is the nature of our professionalism. We should make an effort to create accessible content, because it’s part of our job. And frankly, it doesn’t take much effort; it’s not difficult. - John “brothercake” Edwards

Nicely written, and to the point. Accessibility is the job. A lot of our clients and employers can miss the point. We aren’t making these sites for them. They know the content, they don’t need the site for that. We’re making the site for their clients, for whom accessibility may be an issue. When we worry about accessibility, we aren’t being picky, we’re doing our job.

The restructuring of the VTTI website is complete. They didn’t want a redesign in the traditional sense, they wanted to update and improve what they had. I’ve updated the colors and textures, as well as improving the quality of HTML and CSS. The end result is a site with a simpler color palette, and improved overall functionality. The load time is down, and the design is now consistent across browsers and platforms. As a side benefit, it’s also much easier to maintain and expand.

More screen-shots are available if you’re interested. As you can see, it ended up looking a somewhat like the Alumni Association site, but that’s not a big surprise. The goal with VTTI, like the Alumni Association, was to put together a site that met the University’s requirements, without using their templates. They both wanted a site that was identifiably Virginia Tech, but was a little unique as well. Variations on a theme, rather than an exact match.

Someone has posted an image of what HTML code should look like. Well done.

h/t PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Web Design Resources.

POSH - Plain Old Semantic HTML

POSH, in case you haven’t heard of it already, is short for “Plain Old Semantic HTML”, and is obviously much quicker and easier to say than “valid, semantic, accessible, well-structured HTML”. Unfortunately POSH -semantic markup - is also something most people building websites or creating content for the Web have yet to discover.

It’s nice to hear that I’m not the only one that sees quality semantic HTML as a viable web design solution. There are flashier solutions, but well written HTML with good CSS is hard to beat from a reliability point of view. When it comes to web solutions that are 508 compliant, there’s nothing better.

I love trying new things, using new technology, but there are places for that. For instance, newer technology can be incorporated into an otherwise POSH site. It’s not necessary to completely throw your site into the every new technology that comes along.

One trend in recent years has been to make all Flash sites. Nothing wrong with Flash, it has some impressive potential, but a lot of the flash sites I see have very low usability. They’re pretty, they’re creative, some of them I’d consider works of art. They’re not however, a viable alternative to most of the work I do.

Usability and 508 compliance may not be exciting, but when a client or employer wants it, the best course of action is to make it POSH.

Have you noticed the attribute “ilo-full-src” appearing in your code when when working in WordPress with Firefox? You likely have the ImgLikeOpera extension installed. Disable it and everything should work fine. I don’t know why it’s causing the addition of this odd bit of code, but it seems to be doing just that.

I just thought this was interesting, and yes, I didn’t know a browser could render some of those.

7 Character Sets You Didn’t Know Your Browser Could Render

Modifo, in his recent 5 Wishes for Opera post, tagged me with “5 wishes on how Opera could improve”. An interesting question.

1. I wish I used Opera more. I’ll work on that.
2. I wish it was better utilized, I’m sick of designing for IE. I’ll likely always be designing for IE (the lowest common denominator) but it’s a wish list after all.
   
3. More developer widgets. I use Firefox at work, so I use it home. The developers tools and plugins are very helpful.

I realize that’s only three, but it really is quite good. Here’s three reasons I do like it.

1. The tabbed browsing is very good.
2. Integral mouse gestures. I realized yesterday that I’d been using mouse gestures in Opera and they were working. I had to install a plugin in Firefox for that.
3. I love the way the themes and color schemes work. I use a computer all day, a slick user interface makes using it more enjoyable.
   

Go check out the wish lists at Modifoo and Douglas Karr, they’re both quite excellent.