Articles By: Louis Lazaris

25 Classic Web Design Articles That Significantly Impacted the Way We Code

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25 Classic Web Design ArticlesOver the years there have been hundreds, if not thousands of articles published online that have each had a tremendous impact on the world of web development and design. Some have been truly memorable, and have remained quite relevant for years, and remain so today. Others have outlived their usefulness, but we remember them because of the impact they had on our code and on the way we think about web design.

Occassionally, while reading or doing research, I still stumble upon “classic” web design articles. So I thought it would be a great idea to list what I feel are some of the most important articles that have been published in the relatively short history of the web development industry.

Originally, I had started with the idea of listing 10 articles — but when I began the research, I slowly started to realize that was not going to do justice to this list. So I settled on 25. I think this is a good collection of some of the more significant articles that have been produced over the past 13 years or so.

10 WordPress Tips to Make Your Blog Look Like a Website (for Beginners)

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WordPress Tips - Make Your Blog Look Like a WebsiteWhatever industry you happen to be in, you want to stand out from the crowd and be unique, and not give the impression that your online presence is just a slightly modified cut and paste job. Of course, if you’re depending on a pre-built content management framework like WordPress for the core of your blog or website, then that could prevent your online presence from truly standing out.

So, in this article I’ll run through 10 fairly straightforward ways that a beginning developer or blogger can customize their WordPress theme to ensure it doesn’t “look like a blog” — at least to a certain degree. Keep in mind that the goal here is not to hide the fact that a website is using WordPress — that’s quite difficult, if not impossible. The ultimate goal here is to help your website have a seamless, consistent, look and feel that does not necessarily scream “WordPress-driven” from the instant the home page loads up.

10 Essential DOM Methods & Techniques for Practical JavaScript

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DOM MethodsWhether you use a JavaScript framework, or you are a purist and always resort to coding your client-side scripts from scratch, there are certain DOM syntaxes with which you should be at least a little bit familiar.

It’s true that a library like jQuery or MooTools will perform these methods for you, behind the scenes. In fact, if you rely on JS libraries for virtually all your JavaScript code, you’ll rarely have to use any of these methods directly.

But the reality is that, whether we develop as freelancers or work for a development firm, we may not always have the luxury of working on fresh projects where we can pretty much do what we want; we may have to maintain sites that rely on “obtrusive” scripting methods, or, for one reason or another, we may not be permitted to use certain libraries.

Whatever your situation, the following review of various practical DOM methods will hopefully serve to bolster your JavaScript knowledge and possibly help you more readily see practical solutions to various client-side issues.

10 Useful CSS Properties Not Supported By Internet Explorer

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Not Supported by Internet ExplorerIn a previous article I described 10 useful, cross-browser, CSS properties that might often be forgotten, but can really come in handy in specific situations where a solution is needed.

But not all CSS property names are that friendly. In this post, I’ll describe 10 properties that can be quite useful but have little or no support in Internet Explorer.

(NOTE: This list does not take into consideration IE8, which I have not yet used or studied for its capabilities.)

JavaScript Folder Collapser for Dynamic Content (Tutorial)

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In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a group of collapsible folders using pure JavaScript and some jQuery added to the final product to give it a little bit of flare. The code will be structured in such a way that allows for implementation into a dynamic page — wherein the number of folders may be unknown.

10 Cross-Browser CSS Properties You’ve Probably Forgotten

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Humans are creatures of habit, and web developers are naturally no different. We develop certain techniques that work, and we stick with them — because, well, they work. But once in a while it’s good to refresh our minds and recall some aspects of development that we’ve probably forgotten. In this article I’ll go through 10 CSS properties that accomplish very specific, practical tasks, that are often overlooked.

7 JavaScript Differences Between Firefox & IE

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Although the days of long and tedious code branches to target specific browsers in JavaScript are over, once in a while it’s still necessary to do some simple code branching and object detection to ensure that a certain piece of code is working properly on a user’s machine.

In this article, I’ll outine 7 areas where Internet Explorer and Firefox differ in JavaScript syntax.

How to Style a “Call to Action” Area with Minimal Code

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Doing front-end development for a full service web design company means I’m often involved in very high-end, corporate websites that require styling “call to action” (CTA) or “promo” areas on the home page. These areas usually consist of 3 or 4 boxes that are most likely going to change at some point, and the client might even ask for one or more of the CTA boxes to include dynamic content. What is often troublesome about these boxes is that, more often than not, they don’t contain consistent content. They might have different colored titles, different background images, variations in text size, and so on.

If we’re not careful, our CTAs can suffer from divitis, too many attributes, and CSS-overload. In this tutorial, which is mainly aimed at CSS beginners, I’ll teach you how to create a nice clean CTA that is easy to modify and contains minimal styles and markup.

Equal Height Columns with JavaScript (Full Version)

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As an alternative to “faux columns” and other not-so-clean methods for attaining equal column height in CSS layouts, this tutorial will explain how to accomplish equal columns with pure, unobtrusive JavaScript. This method takes into account top and bottom border thickness as well as interior padding so that the two columns are exactly the same height in virtually every circumstance. And the script is written to ensure that the columns will equalize regardless of which one is taller, so it’s very practical for dynamic content with complex background styles.

This is a full tutorial that expands on a previous post where I outlined a very rudimentary method to achieve equal columns using JavaScript. In the previous article, I discussed the various benefits and drawbacks to using JavaScript for this issue, so I won’t repeat those here.

JavaScript-Powered HTML Table Code Generator

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Recently I searched Google to try to find an HTML table code generator that would let me easily create an HTML table quickly and efficiently, similar to how Dreamweaver does it — but with more customization options that are in line with the the latest in web standards and best practices. I also wanted to be able to enter my data right inside the code generator itself, and not have to copy the code with empty cells, then tediously cut and paste all the data into the individual cells. I found a few options that were reasonably good, but I decided instead to build my own HTML table code generator using pure, (sort of) unobtrusive JavaScript. The entire table and data insertion would take place on the client side and be fully customizable and easy to use.

Well, after about 5 or 6 hours of blood sweat and tears (not really, it was fun), I’ve completed what I feel is one of the most efficient and useful table code generators available on the web. I know what you’re thinking: tables aren’t used very often these days by top web developers, and all HTML editors provide good support for table code generation. But the customization I’ve added and the ease with which the data can be inserted I think is worth giving it a try.

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