Impressive Webs

Goodbye, CSS Galleries

By Louis Lazaris / February 22, 2014 / 0 comments

What ever happened to CSS galleries?

I always thought the term “CSS galleries” was a bit of a misnomer. I have no idea who came up with that phrase, but it really makes little sense. Those galleries were not just showing off “CSS”, as the name implies. But I guess because of the CSS boom that was happening around 6-7 years ago, the name seemed to fit and nobody had a problem with it.

Also, I don’t think it’s likely that all the websites that were submitted to such galleries had beautiful CSS. I’m sure many of them were as bloated and hacky as the worst of them. And I’m sure the JavaScript on those sites was mostly awful (in the head, lots of HTTP requests — kind of like WordPress, but without WordPress).

Read Article ➝

w3schools: The Ugly, the Bad, and the Good

By Louis Lazaris / February 12, 2014 / 80 Comments

For the record, I don’t hate w3schools. Apparently, a lot of people find their website useful. And from a human perspective, I’m happy for their success. After all, it’s run by one or more people, just like you and me, who have to feed their families.

But with everything we know about SEO and web development best practices, their ability to remain at the top of search results and also be in the top 200 most-visited websites in the world even after Google has made so many updates to their ranking algorithms, baffles us all.

In this post I’ll attempt to analyze a number of things about the w3schools.com website, both good and bad (mostly bad) and see if we can’t learn a few things and draw some conclusions.

Read Article ➝

Promoting Something? Here’s Some Advice.

By Louis Lazaris / January 31, 2014 / 13 Comments

My blog is not nearly as popular as some other websites in the industry. But I regularly get emails from people through my contact form, asking about various things, including:

Read Article ➝

A Ridiculously Big List of Design Tools and Resources

By Louis Lazaris / January 23, 2014 / 21 Comments

Lately I’ve been working hard on my weekly newsletter Web Tools Weekly, which focuses on tools for front-end developers.

The newsletter was originally supposed to include design-related tools on occasion, then I changed my mind and kept it mostly developer focused. Unfortunately, this left me with a huge list of useful design, color, and typography related tools that I’ve compiled over the last 6 months or so.

So here is everything I’ve compiled, dumped into one big cheesy post for your artificial browsing pleasure. :)

Read Article ➝

Everything is an Ad

By Louis Lazaris / January 20, 2014 / 0 comments

I find it somewhat amusing when people assume that by using an ad blocker, they are actually blocking ads. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the growth and proliferation of ad blocker usage in browsers today is having the opposite effect. It’s creating more ads.

Yeah, technically, it’s true. When you use ad block software, you’re preventing a web page from displaying annoying flash ads, animated banners, pop-ups, audio ads, and similar. But all that means is that companies are finding more cloaked ways to promote their products.

Read Article ➝

A Data-based Analysis of the CSS Standards Approval Process

By Louis Lazaris / January 8, 2014 / 5 Comments

I recently did a complete overhaul of my CSS Values info-app. The design is basically the same, with some minor adjustments. But the website is now using a MySQL database to store all the info (as opposed to throwing everything into plain HTML) and it now includes browser support charts for every CSS property.

Much of the info is probably in need of improvement, but there’s something significant I noticed when transferring the data from the HTML to the database. It turns out, a certain bias exists with the types of properties that the W3C has approved, and I think we can use this information to speed up the standards process in the future.

Read Article ➝

A Revolutionary Blog Post

By Louis Lazaris / December 30, 2013 / 0 comments

Is it just me? Or does it seem as though every new modern hipster-tinged app, device, or innovation is dubbed as “revolutionary”? I like the word, I really do. But it needs to be reserved a little more for times when it really does mean something.

The word is probably in most minds associated with the American Revolution, but it actually was in use as a term to characterize social or political changes long before that. In modern times it has a broader, less significant meaning. But I think it’s now been watered down far too much due to overuse.

Read Article ➝

On Simplicity

By Louis Lazaris / December 9, 2013 / 0 comments

There are two areas we can look at when talking about simplicity: The product itself and the way it’s presented.

Often we hear about concepts like minimalism, reducing clutter, generous use of white space, and so forth. Those are design principles often applied to websites, UIs, and promotional materials. But unless you’re doing something like creating WordPress themes, those aren’t your products; they present your product.

Read Article ➝

input.select() — What’s the Correct Behaviour?

By Louis Lazaris / December 5, 2013 / 12 Comments

Some things in the specs have behaviours that browser makers are required to adhere to. But other areas are a bit gray, where there is no definite guidance on implementation, so sometimes the behaviour is different from browser to browser.

Take a look, for example, at the select() method, which allows you to use JavaScript to select the text inside an input or textarea element.

Read Article ➝

Can We Ditch the Pinterest-Style Grid Trend Yet?

By Louis Lazaris / December 3, 2013 / 0 comments

I’m not really sure who officially started it, but it seems that Pinterest made it famous. I’m talking about the current trendy grid/masonry layout that everyone seems to love.

Well, I’m officially declaring it an anti-usability pattern that has fewer advantages than we think. The websites that quickly come to mind that are using this design pattern include:

Read Article ➝