This section of Impressive Webs contains articles on various topics usually covering front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Some of these posts are opinion pieces and others are more research-based discussions of standards and best practices, with occasional roundups.
Being a big baseball fan, I find myself perusing MLB.com pretty much daily. And if you read my site regularly, then you already know that.
Here’s something I hate about the way their navigational structure is architected.
I often go to the home page to scan for the most popular news items, or newsworthy stuff that catches my eye. If I don’t find anything to click on, then I might choose the “Standings” link.
The CSS3 fonts module has a number of interesting CSS3 properties and features. Browser support for many of these is pretty limited right now, but I thought I’d summarize some of these features here.
The first three properties discussed here are CSS3 properties, while the last section will discuss features that have existed for a while but that you may not know about because of their limited potential for use.
Choosing the right element for your markup is not a life-and-death situation. Nonetheless, I think HTML becomes easier to maintain and easier to read when content is marked up in a more meaningful manner, in line with the new developments in HTML5.
HTML5 has, as most of us know, introduced a new <aside> element, which I feel can replace the <blockquote> element in specific places where we would normally think a <blockquote> is more appropriate.
As much as we would like to turn a blind eye to the large number people using Internet Explorer and thus take advantage of CSS3 and HTML5 in all its glory, with certain projects, we really don’t have much of a choice.
If the traffic in a particular niche is IE-heavy, then you have to deal with that accordingly. If you go the Andy Clarke route then you may choose to use those new enhancements to the full, but allow a degraded experience in IE.
If you go the traditional corporate route, then you do everything you can to get IE to look and behave the same as the other browsers. That could mean ignoring a lot of new CSS3 and HTML5 stuff, or else it means filling in the gaps with scripts, hacks, and IE-only filters.
As many in the dev community are aware, earlier this week A Book Apart released their latest title, Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte.
Due to the fact that I’ve been so busy with other stuff of late, I honestly have not experimented much with responsive design techniques and the related CSS3 media queries.
I intend to read Ethan’s book and will eventually get around to incorporating some of these techniques into future projects, and I’m hoping to eventually have a responsive layout for this site. But there are a few things about this whole responsive design trend that concern me a little bit.
The other day I sent out a tweet asking what everyone thought was the best source for browser usage stats.
I wanted to know if there were any sources I’d not yet heard of that offer reliable global statistics for usage stats for various browsers.
Well, I didn’t get too many responses to the tweet, but I decided to put together my own list of sources for reliable browser usage stats.
As many of you may be aware, validating your pages in HTML5 has become a whole new adventure.
Along with changes in what now constitutes “valid” and “invalid” markup, the HTML5 Validator (which, by the way, is the same tool that runs the W3C’s HTML5 validator) will provide some warnings about obsolete features in HTML5.
Feel free to go through that document on the W3C’s site, but here I’ll touch on some things that you may want to be aware of with regards to obsolete elements and attributes.
Over the winter and spring I’ve been pretty busy researching and putting the final touches on four chapters of a new book published by SitePoint.
The book is called HTML5 & CSS3 for the Real World and was officially launched on SitePoint this morning (North American time).
Two other authors took part in this exciting new project: Estelle Weyl — who probably doesn’t need much of an introduction if you’re familiar with many conference speakers in the web standards world — and Alexis Goldstein, a well-rounded programmer from Brooklyn.
If you’re starting to incorporate some HTML5 and CSS3 into your pages, then you’ve probably also looked into the possibility of polyfilling those features for older versions of IE.
Of course, you could instead opt for “progressive enrichment” and leave IE in the lurch while prettying things up for the newer browsers. That’s the method that Andy Clarke recommends, and it’s certainly a valid option.
But if for whatever reason (usually something political or the fact that the client demands it) you have to give IE a similar experience, then you face a very bizarre circumstance.
This is not going to be a long article, but just a quick note about something that all front-end developers should be paying attention to.
If you don’t already know, the W3C has formulated a fairly brief, yet valuable document called HTML Design Principles that outlines exactly what principles have guided and continue to guide the creation and evolution of HTML5 and its related APIs and other technologies.