using the right technology at the right time
CSS sprites are a great way of speeding up your website’s load time, but there is a point where you can take it too far. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I think that the biggest way that you can abuse this technique is by applying the technique to your website’s logo in the header. Let me explain how it affects your users and your overall marketing efforts.
I had a problem when adding vertical borders to my blocks in Blueprint CSS. It kept forcing the last block of the line to the “next line” below the row of blocks. I kept going back and counting up my spans, prepends, and appends, but it took me a while to figure out what the real issue was.
Read on to find out the solution.
I’ve become a fan lately of a small trend in breadcrumb design. Some sites are starting to put the page’s header (in <h1>) at the end of the list of breadcrumbs. It’s an interesting way to show how the site’s hierarchy leads up to the current page.
On Adobe’s site:
Read on for a couple more examples.
There is much truth in what martinibuster says about designing for IE6 in this Webmaster World discussion:
In my experience, when a site layout was blowing up, it usually took my site designer about an hour or two to fix the error and make the site display well for IE6.
So I am still not convinced that spending an hour, two hours, or even a single day is such a hardship, and less convinced that the minimal time typically required, about the time it takes to eat a sandwich, is going to impact sales to those who use more modern browsers. How could an hour or two spent upgrading a site for IE6 take away from sales? Is that a legitimate reason to throw away 10-15% of web traffic?
As far as the assumption that those who use IE6 don’t have money and correlate to trailer parks, I think there is absolutely no basis for that conclusion. Equally, I believe there is no foundation for believing that those who use modern browsers are more technically savvy.
The question should not be, Do you still design for IE6? The question should be, Why are you throwing away traffic by not designing for IE6?
This got me thinking about some of the assumptions that I’ve made over time. For example, I picture most IE users as grandmothers feebly trying to read the text on their screens. But would you be confident that your VP or CEO would not be the same?
I know of the pain and hardship that Internet Explorer 6 causes. I’m there often. But he has a really good point. Don’t get me wrong. I still look forward to the day that we can bid IE6 adieu.
Using some CSS voodoo, you can display a text link’s URL in parenthesis after the link text. This would be very useful for printer style sheets, where you can’t see where the links are pointing when the page is printed out.
Read on for more details and the code.
Thanks to Microsoft’s SuperPreview, I am able to test my websites in Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, and 8, all from one copy of Windows.
Read on to see a screenshot of the tool and how it has helped me out thus far.
As I’ve been working on an uber portal application, I’ve run into a major information architecture problem. My design wasn’t allowing enough space for navigation options.
Read on for sketches and concepts that I used to solve the problem. I wanted to use standard concepts that wouldn’t be confusing to the user. I think I accomplished that.
Interesting ICANN announcement that anyone will be able to create their own custom top level domains (TLDs). So I would be able to buy a domain name like www.webdeveloper.chrispeters. I can see this scenario at least for the next 10 years. And lots of idiots will go out of business because of the frustration that [...]
As a web developer, some design decisions are in your hands. The UI team (if you have one) isn’t going to decide on what every single screen should look like. Every now and then, I run across something like this: Thank you. This assessment is now complete. To return your assessment list please click on [...]
I stumbled upon a web-based browser testing application called Browsershots. Although you aren’t able to test things like JavaScript behavior, at least you can see what your web pages look like in different browsers. Most notably, you can run tests on quite a few OS/browser combinations. You can also test with different parameters like Flash, [...]
About MeI'm Chris Peters, and I'm a lover of web design and development. I'm based in Columbus, Ohio. Follow me as I have successes and struggles in this fast-moving technology environment.
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