Archive of: 2006

• Web development books for 2007

  22 December 2006 by Clive Walker

  Books that I'm looking forward to reading in 2007: Bulletproof Ajax by Jeremy Keith. As a follow-up to DOM Scripting, this should be a clear and insightful read

• Strange website behavior from a large company

  17 December 2006 by Clive Walker

  Sometimes, the largest companies make mistakes with their websites. I used to assume that big corporate enterprises have large budgets and teams of website developers that are fully aware of cross-browser problems and the latest techniques. Perhaps not if my recent experience is anything to go by.

  1 Comments

• CSS books for your bookshelf

  08 December 2006 by Clive Walker

  I am reading two excellent CSS books at the moment. Both books are clearly written and I have found them easy to follow.

• Using Aardvark Firefox extension

  28 November 2006 by Clive Walker

  Following on from a previous post, another tool I have been using recently is the Aardvark Firefox extension or add-on.

  1 Comments

• Jay talks jQuery

  22 November 2006 by Clive Walker

  Last night I attended the seventh Sussex Geek Dinner (ably organised by Simon Harriyott once again) where Jay Gooby from Snipperoo gave a presentation about jQuery, which is a newish JavaScript library.

  1 Comments

• Use more than one CSS class

  21 November 2006 by Clive Walker

  With CSS, it’s possible to use more than one class on any (X)HTML element. This is a useful technique that can help avoid CSS style sheet bloat. Here’s an example that I used recently.

  16 Comments

• How to X-ray your webpage

  13 November 2006 by Clive Walker

  Here's a nice extension (sorry, add-on) to Firefox that I find really useful. It's called X-Ray by Stuart Robertson

• ReviewMe reviewed - get paid for writing reviews

  10 November 2006 by Clive Walker

  ReviewMe is an interesting new service that promises to connect bloggers with advertisers. Nothing new with that, you may say.

  2 Comments

• Google loses it?

  06 November 2006 by Clive Walker

  Is it me or has Google 'lost it' recently? Google always prides itself on the relevance and accuracy of its search results. However, these days, Google's search results for specific keywords sometimes make no sense at all.

• CSS attribute selectors - clever styling

  06 November 2006 by Clive Walker

  I am reading CSS Mastery [the book] [the website] by Andy Budd at the moment. After reading the first chapters and a few other pages, I have already come across an interesting CSS usage that I should have been more aware of.

• Website needed for family or friends?

  31 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  A diet of freebie websites doesn’t pay the bills

  I sometimes get asked to create websites for family and friends. This can be a difficult area for any web developer/designer because, whilst you would often like to help, it’s sometimes not practical because of other work commitments. At the same time, these projects are often unpaid and a diet of freebie websites may be great for a portfolio page – but it doesn’t pay the bills!

  2 Comments

• CSS Tip - use a separate stylesheet for testing

  27 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  If you are using cascading style sheets (CSS) on a new website design, it’s probable that you will be testing new style sheet rules. For example, you may be creating a series of rules for a portfolio page perhaps in order to test different layouts. Or, you may be creating a new navigation menu that you want to test on specific pages.

• CSS example layouts

  24 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  Dynamic Drive has usually published JavaScript and 'dynamic HTML' script examples. In particular, it has some well-tested cross-browser examples of image slideshow effects.

• Microformats everywhere

  20 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  Yesterday, I atttended the London WSG Meeting – Microformats. Here’s my quick review.

  2 Comments

• Books for CSS web designers - Part 2

  18 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  This is the second of a series of articles where I review books that are aimed at CSS web designers.I know. DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith is a book about JavaScript and the rather mysterious world of the Document Object Model (DOM). Why is it a book for CSS designers? Hang on, I'll explain.

• Website accessibility - a client asks!

  13 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  I talk to potential clients every month and I usually illustrate specific website aspects by giving a quick ‘guided tour’ of recent websites that CVW Web Design has developed. Nothing new in that.

• Microformats meeting in London

  11 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  After hearing about Microformats in the lunchbreak at d.Construct 2006 last month, I'm looking forward to the Web Standards Group London meeting with a Microformats theme on 19th October

• Sussex geeks and Plone

  05 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  Last night I attended the sixth Sussex Geek Dinner (in fact, more of a buffet this time) in Brighton to meet a few fellow techie/geek types and hear an interesting and knowledgeable presentation.

• Books for CSS web designers

  01 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  Over the last few weeks I have been reading two books, Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm and DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith. At first glance, they are completely different subjects but if you are someone who regularly works with cascading style sheets (CSS), I think you will find both very useful (perhaps for different reasons). In the first article of a series, I review the Bulletproof approach…

• Review of Windows Live Writer and Textpattern

  24 September 2006 by Clive Walker

  Windows Live Writer is a blogging tool (in beta) that lets you post to a blog from your desktop without using your blog admin. For a few reasons, I was interested in trying it out with Textpattern.

  4 Comments

• A to Z of Cascading Style Sheets

  21 September 2006 by Clive Walker

  Partly inspired by a recent article on A List Apart, here’s my unofficial A to Z of CSS.

  2 Comments

• Using microformats and hCard

  15 September 2006 by Clive Walker

  After seeing microformats described with some passion by Jeremy Keith during the lunchbreak at d.Construct 2006 last week, I decided to add a simple hCard microformat to a couple of websites

• Using Zoundry with Textpattern

  12 September 2006 by Clive Walker

  Following on from the previous post, I am also trying out Zoundry as a blog editor.

• Windows Live Writer with Textpattern

  11 September 2006 by Clive Walker

  I like Textpattern as a blogging tool myself but it's not so great for clients who want to use it to update their own websites.

  2 Comments

• Deconstructed - d.Construct 2006 review

  10 September 2006 by Clive Walker

  I attended the web development conference d.Construct 2006 last week. Overall, it was a very good meeting with some interesting and entertaining presentations. Here’s my take on it.

  2 Comments

• Get your own Web 2.0 logo

  03 September 2006 by Clive Walker

  There are many websites that are associated with 'Web 2.0' – and quite a few of them¹ use a reflective text logo. Well, now you can get your own with the Web 2.0 Logo Creator.

  2 Comments

• Beginning CSS Web Development

  23 August 2006 by Clive Walker

  There’s a new CSS book published in a few weeks. Beginning CSS Web Development is written by Simon Collison.

• Create a web design inspiration portfolio

  21 August 2006 by Clive Walker

  I keep a lot of websites in my mind as sources of ideas and inspiration but I thought it would be useful to have a visual representation of these. So, I have created a photoset on Flickr containing screenshots of some of my favourite websites.

• CSS optimization tools

  19 August 2006 by Clive Walker

  A useful comparison of four CSS optimization tools and testing them on stylesheets from six popular websites.

• Banner ads - who needs 'em!

  17 August 2006 by Clive Walker

  I have a few websites of my own that I operate on a minimal income basis. Over the years, I have tried various forms of advertising in an attempt to garner some income. The main aim being to cover costs. Well, after several years, I think I’ve finally given up on banner ads.

  1 Comments

• jQuery has the answer

  14 August 2006 by Clive Walker

  Recently, we wanted to add a show/hide paragraph effect for older pub reviews on the Horsham Pub Guide. A show/hide effect means that the older reviews are intially hidden when the page loads but they can be revealed by clicking a simple link.

• Five favourite web developer blogs

  08 August 2006 by Clive Walker

  I realised recently that I follow a lot of web developer blogs. Here’s a few of my personal faves (in no particular order).

• Valid (X)HTML, Dreamweaver and unencoded ampersands

  04 August 2006 by Clive Walker

  One of the reasons why a webpage might not pass the W3C markup validation test is unencoded ampersands in the link URLs. This can often happen with links provided by affiliate schemes. You copy and paste the link code into your valid (X)HTML page and, lo and behold, the page no longer validates. Well, Dreamweaver can help.

• Podcasts for d.Construct 2006

  31 July 2006 by Clive Walker

  In preparation for the web development conference d.Construct 2006, I have been listening to the pre-conference podcasts provided by the organisers Clearleft.

• CSS layouts for forms

  25 July 2006 by Clive Walker

  We have been looking to replace a tables-based form layout with its CSS equivalent for some time. At last, we had a few spare hours and it was time to get rid of those pesky tables once and for all from a couple of websites. In the end, we found a solution but it’s not perfect and several other methods required more time to test than we had available. Here’s the story so far.

• Organise your CSS

  21 July 2006 by Clive Walker

  When you are working with style sheets, it’s all too easy to end up with a long list of rules – and it starts to become more and more difficult to find your way around when editing your CSS file. I’ve made a decision to become a bit better organised in future.

• Web Standards Group meeting report

  17 July 2006 by Clive Walker

  I attended the WSG London meeting a few days ago. There were two entertaining presentations by Andy Budd and Christian Heilmann.

• How important is valid HTML for search engine rankings?

  05 July 2006 by Clive Walker

  There’s a lot of discussion in web designer/developer circles about valid HTML and search engine rankings. If your site has valid HTML or XHTML, will it have better search engine rankings than a website with HTML errors and warnings? My answer would be ‘Yes’.

  3 Comments

• Text align property causes CSS problems

  03 July 2006 by Clive Walker

  We were working on a fairly complex stylesheet recently where the text-align property caused some problems with Internet Explorer.

  2 Comments

• Income for website owners

  26 June 2006 by Clive Walker

  If you are the proud owner of a new website, you may be considering various income streams from advertising. Text links and other textual advertising, for example Google AdSense, are often better income sources than banner ads. Text Link Ads are one way of generating income using textual advertising.

  2 Comments

• Google spreadsheets

  06 June 2006 by Clive Walker

  Google has announced an online spreadsheet application on a limited trial basis.It's interesting to see more and more online applications like this.

• How to improve your AdSense income

  03 June 2006 by Clive Walker

  You may be making a few dollars/pounds/euros from Google AdSense on your website but wouldn’t it be nice to improve your income? Our experience is that giving your website a design makeover will often increase income AdSense levels…

• Comparing Apple Mac and Windows

  27 May 2006 by Clive Walker

  I worked at a client’s office last week and had the opportunity to compare Windows XP with Apple Mac and, in particular, Dreamweaver on both platforms.

• Check your colour contrast

  15 May 2006 by Clive Walker

  You’ve come up with a nice color scheme for your new website but does it have enough contrast? Does it satisfy W3C guidelines for colour contrast?

• CSS outline property

  11 May 2006 by Clive Walker

  I was reading through a CSS Cheat Sheet (as you do) and I came across the CSS2 outline property. I must admit, this was new to me and at first it seemed quite interesting.

  1 Comments

• Google search tips

  08 May 2006 by Clive Walker

  Google Guide has published a useful crib sheet with Google searching tips and advanced search operators. Some of these come from the Google Cheat Sheet but it’s still a useful reminder of all the different searches that Google supports.

• Horsham Pub Guide 2006

  04 May 2006 by Clive Walker

  Over the last few days, we’ve been working on a new design for Horsham Pub Guide. For this project we decided to use a three column CSS stylesheet/layout.

• Google AdSense case studies

  19 April 2006 by Clive Walker

  It’s always interesting to read website case studies that describe how AdSense optimisation has increased advertising revenues. The Google AdSense blog has published three recent examples.

• New web standards website

  17 April 2006 by Clive Walker

  Bite Size Standards is a new website offering “concise web development tutorials, tips and tricks".

• CSS web templates for inspiration?

  14 April 2006 by Clive Walker

  There are many websites that provide CSS web templates and they can offer some advantages when creating a website for a client.

  2 Comments

• Web standards in a nutshell

  08 April 2006 by Clive Walker

  Natalie Jost has published a neat diagram showing web standards in a nutshell. I'd never really thought about the separation of content from presentation from behaviour in a pictorial or diagrammatic form before – but this is a neat way of showing it!

• How to explain CSS

  27 March 2006 by Clive Walker

  I was contacted recently by someone who wanted to learn Dreamweaver by editing some simple layouts. Nothing wrong with that. I was asked to provide a simple ‘dummy’ layout as a practice aid but then we encountered a few problems.

• Rounded corners with CSS - more Nifty Corners

  22 March 2006 by Clive Walker

  Rounded corners with CSS is a web design method that has received lots of attention and many different solutions have been suggested. The Nifty Corners method (now in its third generation) uses no images and some clever JavaScript to achieve the effect….

• Running Windows and Mac on the same PC

  20 March 2006 by Clive Walker

  The BBC reports that getting an Apple Mac to run Windows XP has been achieved. How long before this becomes a commercial product? This sounds like a sure-fire winner to me. I would buy one.

• CSS tools and tips

  13 March 2006 by Clive Walker

  The Soxiam website has a very useful collection of CSS tools, How To articles and more advanced CSS/JavaScript code examples.

• CSS layouts help

  10 March 2006 by Clive Walker

  There is a learning curve associated with moving from tables-based layouts to entirely CSS-based websites. Speaking from personal experience, the most difficult aspect was getting the layout to work. CSS layout example websites can help.

  1 Comments

• News on the vine

  04 March 2006 by Clive Walker

  Newsvine is a ‘news website’ that was recently launched. However, although news is the main theme, it’s actually a bit of a social community website as well. Here’s our short review.

• Let your feet do the work?

  02 March 2006 by Clive Walker

  The BBC reports that Microsoft are developing a foot pad that will enable you to perform common computer actions using your feet

• Creating different CSS styles using the body tag

  28 February 2006 by Clive Walker

  It’s sometimes useful to have different styles for different website pages. Perhaps to highlight a particular aspect of the page. Well, CSS provides a neat way to do this. For example, the navigation tags (above right) are highlighted differently depending on the section of the website.

  2 Comments

• RSS - really simple surfing

  24 February 2006 by Clive Walker

  Problogger has published a good article explaining RSS feeds and web content syndication. In other words, pushing out web content to your website readers.

• Applying fade effects with Fireworks

  19 February 2006 by Clive Walker

  Macromedia Fireworks (now part of Adobe) is a sometimes underrated programme but we think it’s great for creating sliced web layouts and for image manipulation. One of the tools available is a quick and easy way to apply fade effects to a bitmap image or image object.

  2 Comments

• A better search engine - part 2

  15 February 2006 by Clive Walker

  An earlier post described Del.icio.us and how it can be used as a search engine. In the article, it was interesting to speculate about user bookmarks as a way of rating website search results

  1 Comments

• BMW blacklisted by Google

  07 February 2006 by Clive Walker

  The BMW group has been blacklisted by Google for using 'doorway' pages in order to influence search results. Naughty.

  3 Comments

• A better search engine than Google?

  06 February 2006 by Clive Walker

  Del.icio.us is a well-known website that enables its users to post and share websites that they like. It’s a public bookmarking service or “a collection of favorites – yours and everyone else’s”. In some ways, it’s a better search engine than Google.

• Where to put AdSense on your blog

  31 January 2006 by Clive Walker

  Google has published an article called Blogtimize which provides information about the best AdSense placements for blogs.

• New CSS web standards book

  31 January 2006 by Clive Walker

  There are some good CSS web design books out at the moment and another one is about to hit the shelves.

  4 Comments

• Website layouts for maximum profit from AdSense

  26 January 2006 by Clive Walker

  How to make the most money from your website with Google AdSense is a question that is often asked by AdSense publishers.

• Are websites more difficult today?

  24 January 2006 by Clive Walker

  At the start of the Internet era (~1996), web designers charged lots of money for websites. Some businesses made a success of their website and some did not. Hey, it was all new. Therefore, prices were high and websites were perceived as difficult/technical.

  1 Comments

• Impressions count

  16 January 2006 by Clive Walker

  The BBC reports that web users make up their minds about website quality in a fraction of a second. Blimey, not much time to make an impact!

• Validate HTML with a Firefox extension

  13 January 2006 by Clive Walker

  Have you ever wanted to validate your HTML whilst previewing web pages on your PC? Are you curious about the HTML validity of other websites? Now you can do both using this Firefox extension.

• Improving your RSS feed

  09 January 2006 by Clive Walker

  Recently, we changed the RSS feeds on this blog to the Feedburner versions. So far so good. We'll report back on our experiences in a few months.

• Does Google have a spellcheck?

  06 January 2006 by Clive Walker

  One of the best methods (we think) for getting to the top of Google is to write good website content on a frequent basis (let’s say, update your website once a week). Does Google reward websites that are well-written with good punctuation and no spelling errors? Does Google have a spellcheck?

• CSS showcase websites

  03 January 2006 by Clive Walker

  Interested in looking at other CSS website designs? There are several ‘showcase websites’ that do the job.