Articles By: Louis Lazaris

Bold and Italic in HTML5

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Bold and Italic in HTML5If you were to use <strong> and <em> tags in HTML5 the same way that you’re accustomed to, it would be fine. As many have stated, HTML5 is backwards-compatible with old-style trends in SEO, accessibility, and markup, so your pages won’t break or be considered obsolete or deprecated.

But that doesn’t mean that some of these elements aren’t evolving. One good example is the use of tags to make what we normally know as “bold” and “italic” text.

Here I describe some things to take note of when adding HTML elements that are usually associated “bold” or “italic” text.

How to Do Absolutely Everything Ever in jQuery, CSS3, & HTML5

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EverythingI was thinking that you should know how to do some code in the areas of jQuery, CSS3, HTML5 and everything else you can think of.

This post will clarify all those matters. They are all matters of which you should be clarified.

But before I explain all those things in the greatest of all detail, I should warn you of a few things:

Slide-Down Mega Drop-Down Menus with Ajax and jQuery

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Slide-Down Mega Drop-Down Menus with AjaxWhile reading an article on CBC’s website, I noticed they have added what seem to be newly-designed mega drop-down menus that work in an interesting kind of way.

These looked like a cool and simple thing to reproduce, so I gave it a shot and came up with something that I think works pretty nicely.

It wasn’t as simple as I thought, and I don’t think my code is the greatest, so I’m open to suggestions. I think this could form the basis for a jQuery plugin but I’ve never created a jQuery plugin so holding I’m off on that for now.

There’s No Such Thing as a “Standards-Compliant” Browser

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There's No Such Thing as a Standards-Compliant BrowserI think this is a pretty basic point, but I often see people throwing terms around in inappropriate ways (which I’ve also been guilty of), so I thought I would clear this up.

As fallible humans we tend to lean towards making excuses, blaming others, or trying to justify our mistakes or shortcomings. This is why you’ll often read comments from people discussing CSS and web standards, and they’ll say “I don’t use Internet Explorer; I use a standards-compliant browser”. Well, no you don’t. Nobody does.

CSS Terms and Definitions

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CSS Terms and DefinitionsOver the years I’ve continued to refine my understanding of front-end development terms, especially CSS terms and definitions.

I’m constantly reminded that as developers we should be consistent in the use of our terms. This post will attempt to list all common CSS terms, and what they represent in CSS code. Much of this is pretty easy stuff for most experienced developers, but some is not used as often colloquially or in writing, so a refresher could help clear up some inconsistencies.

Things Worth Noting About CSS Attribute Selectors

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Things Worth Noting About CSS Attribute SelectorsThe main reason CSS attribute selectors have been avoided up to this point is their complete lack of support in IE6. But since IE6’s market share is continuing to slowly but steadily decline, it’s becoming safer to use them.

I’m not going to go through the basics of CSS attribute selectors and their syntax. There are some pretty good resources explaining them, which I’ll link to at the bottom of this post. So if you don’t have at least some grasp of what this CSS feature is all about, please check those out first.

This article will go a little further and focus on some interesting facts and bugs surrounding attribute selectors that you may not have known.

You’re Not Stuck in a Cookie Cutter Design!

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Design Blogging Terms We Can Probably Live WithoutYesterday I was looking at the services offered by Squarespace, a “fully hosted, completely managed environment for creating and maintaining your website.” Don’t worry, I’m not going to go off on a rant about how bad this kind of thing is for web developers.

I recognize that not everyone can afford to pay thousands of dollars to hire a designer and/or programmer to create a website for them. Squarespace offers quite a flexible service for website noobs and at a pretty reasonable monthly rate.

But I couldn’t help but laugh when I read the following paragraph on a page describing their services as offering total creative control:

List of Cross-Browser CSS Properties

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Cross-Browser CSS Properties ListAfter I created a couple of handy charts that give details on CSS3 property and selector support in the upcoming IE9, I thought to myself: “This is interesting to read, but isn’t very practical.”

I also know that many visits to my site occur via Google searches for stuff like “cross-browser CSS” and similar phrases. So I decided to put together a comprehensive list of CSS properties that are supported in all browsers.

The list is divided into two sections: (1) Properties that are supported by all in-use browsers, with no bugs; and (2) properties that are supported by all in-use browsers, with some bugs in certain browsers.

Design Blogging Terms We Can Probably Live Without

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Design Blogging Terms We Can Probably Live WithoutI don’t mean to pick on anyone in particular here, because a lot of people I highly respect use some of these terms.

But generally, in the web design/dev blogging niche we tend to fall into the trap of following trends even in our use of words (especially in headlines and book titles). This even occurs on the better sites, not only on the “list-based” ones.

Here are some terms that I think have been overused and that we could probably eventually do without:

Don’t Use Conditional Comments to Create Classes for IE7+

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Don't Use Conditional Comments to Create Classes for IEIn a previous article I pointed out an interesting little trick that was made popular by Paul Irish, and has been added as part of his recently-launched HTML5 Boilerplate.

I love that boilerplate, and I wish I could say I understand everything in it. Paul’s a front-end genius and all developers should pay close attention to what he’s been doing lately.

But I have to say that I strongly disagree with Paul’s inclusion of that conditional comments tip in the Boilerplate, because it does not encourage cross-browser, maintainable CSS, but instead encourages CSS developers to consider Internet Explorer development as an afterthought.

Before I explain my specific reasons for wanting that technique removed from the Boilerplate, I’ll first discuss what exactly I’m talking about.

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