Box Seats?

First off the seats were arranged incorrectly so that some of the tall seats were at the front and the small seats were at the back. As long as I sat up very straight, I could just about see over the child’s head in front of me. And we didn’t want to say anything because you don’t want to upset people that you have to spend two hours in a small room with… . It meant though that whenever the child moved or sat up I had to dodge around. I managed to see all of the first act… very little of the second, and by the time the third started – the child had fallen asleep, so that made it a lot easier! Luckily enough, my girlfriend was able to see everything on her tall chair as this would have completely ruined the night!

All in all, it was a good night though, but I’d advise anyone to avoid the box seats unless you know the people you’re sharing the room with very well!

So then I decided to look at my comments again and came across a web service called IntenseDebate which is a way of beefing up your comments. At first I liked it very much but now, after looking at it for a bit longer it seems to be a tiny bit over the top for my this place. I’ll be looking into it again. It also has built in Akismet support so I suppose I’m doubly protected… or its cancelling each other other out… or its now become so difficult to get a comment into my blog that no-ones going to do it anymore.

Then came a project that I’ve wanted to complete for a while – my Gallery. I always wanted to have a gallery on my site but didn’t want to host it here and elsewhere too(duplication of effort more than resources…). Then I came across the flickr API and more specifically – the tantan flickr plugin for WordPress. The plugin is good because it creates the gallery with a little flickr magic and was up and running pretty fast. I had to make a pretty huge amount of modification to getting working the way I wanted but I felt that it was worth it. I’ll also be writing some of my own queries so that I can do some of the smaller stuff that the plugin doesn’t do. I’m looking forward to that! I’m also trying to get jquery lightbox to work but can’t at the minute. I think it might have something to do with the image class stuff that’s built into the plugin, but I’ll have a bit of fun trying to figure it out. I have it kind of working but have it turned off at the minute until I have it the way I want it, hopefully that wont take me too long. And then – I will be basking in Gallery goodness and will eventually throw loads of my photo’s up there.

Eric Meyer

I’m pretty certain it would be impossible to exclude Eric Meyer from any list on CSS. Any list at all, because he is probably the best, most world renowned CSS expert there is. Having practically eaten two of his many books on CSS (”Eric Meyer on CSS” and “More Eric Meyer on CSS“) I can’t recommend them enough. Presumably does not suffer from stage fright as he speaks regularly (indeed founded) a travelling web design conference called “An Event Apart“ and most recently at this event in San Francisco and Chicago, along side a number of other names on this list. You can find Eric blogging at http://meyerweb.com/ and otherwise dolling out his genius in the form or amazing tips and helpful hints there too.

Andy Budd

I first found Andy Budd when I bought CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions. It quickly became one of my favourite books on CSS and has become a excellent and well used reference. His website has also become an excellent resource - especially his extensive bookmarks at http://www.andybudd.com/links/. He can also be found blogging at http://www.andybudd.com/ too, a popular weblog where he writes about his personal hobbies and also about web design and web standards. Another branch in Andy’s CSS work is also his efforts at http://clearleft.com/ (btw they also have a ridiculous trademarked tag line - “We make Websites Better™”). Clearleft have a good few web applications and web sites under their belt and one very interesting project that they have is http://www.silverbackapp.com/.

Dan Cederholm

from http://www.simplebits.com/ - One of the books I’m reading right now, “Bulletproof Web Design” was written by Dan Cederholm, and from what I’ve read - he uses techniques and has a style of code that I really admire and now aim for myself with my projects. He is a big proponent of lean markup and CSS, and apparently in every project looks to “minimize markup and embrace the flexibility of CSS”. This is something that I’d like to be able to do and his book seemed like the obvious place to start. Having said that, “Transcending CSS” is also pointing me in this direction as its mantra of content being king is helping me see the benefits of avoiding unnessary divs, and other markup that adds nothing to the semantic value of the page.

Jonathan Snook

at http://snook.ca/jonathan/ - Having heard of Jonathan over the years and having read a couple of his articles and things, when I first found out that he’d written a book, I pretty much had to buy it. The book was “The Art and Science of CSS“, and what a book it was. It was a book that really made me turn a corner, that made me realise how much I could do with CSS and good markup. I enjoyed this book immensely and learnt a great many things from it. He does the big web and development conferences too and has graced SXSW, Webmaster Jam Sessions, and Future of WebDesign. His personal website http://snook.ca/jonathan/ is where he shares his “tips, tricks and bookmarks on web development” and I often venture there for inspiration ideas and excellent ideas. One of the handiest tools on his website is also one of my favorites - The Colour Contrast Checker at http://snook.ca/archives/accessibility_and_usability/colour_color_co/. His list of accomplishments is long and they are many, check at the about section on his website to find out more.

Andy Clarke

from http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/ - Another recent addition to my list of really really good people is Andy Clarke. In fact I hadn’t really heard of him properly until I read Transcending CSS - A book that has literally changed how I look at new projects, and really got me thinking about the way I design websites. And although I only found him recently, it would appear that the man is a bit of a legend! He also speaks at the big conferences (like An event apart this year in Chicago…) and runs his own business from a studio in North Wales. But his book is becoming my most read book on web design(over and over again ). I really enjoyed reading it and appreciate all the work that went into it. Hopefully, I get to put many of the techniques and things learnt from this book to good use in the future.

Dave Shea

at http://mezzoblue.com/ - I first started to read Dave Shea’s website a good while ago after it was brought to my attention as a really good example of a website design, and although its changed quite a bit since then, it still holds true as a really good example of professional website design. Good use of changing themes/colours, great layout and interesting content. Also the creator of CSS Zen Garden, arguable one of the best known places for web designers to show off excellent CSS designs. Not always my cup of tea (I prefer less graphics intensive designs personally), its hard to ignore some of the really excellent things that sometimes appear here. As for Dave himself, I think he says it best himself(from the about section of http://mezzoblue.com/) - “If you’re looking for the professional bio it’s over here. In short, I do a bit of speaking, a bit of writing, but mostly it’s about the design.” He links to a differen site here and its one you should take a look at as its really excellent - http://brightcreative.com/.

Conclusions

In reality while writing this piece I could have listed about 50 more people. In fact I started off with three and it grew after looking at the books on my shelves. However I feel like these are the people that I really look to for CSS stuff and think most people will find it useful. At the very least your should be adding these people’s websites to your RSS feeds, however, then you lose one of the most important aspects of going to these websites and that’s for the great work that they’ve done on their own websites!

The next article should come soon enough on the same topic of voices that matter to me… but with a slightly different subject.

Its not often that I’ll come out and say something like this but at this morning I really am embarrassed to be Irish. Last night was Halloween and for whatever reason some people saw this as a reason to go mental and start burning everything from cars to buildings, and attacking emergency services that showed up to try and help.

Some examples from the local news websites…

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/15-knife-attacks-on-night-of-chaos-1516756.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1101/breaking4.html?via=mr

http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gdV7lOhgqzMWdYdNHzk-diMaZPrg

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1101/halloween.html

All over Dublin and the surrounding area’s, vandalism was rampant and violence against other people seemed to be at the top of peoples list of priorities. The major Dublin hospitals are this morning trying to deal with stab, burn, and otherwise beaten victims of last nights Halloween “celebrations”. Last night the Fire Services were called out to 800 incidents! A number of incidents were deliberate attempts to draw out the emergency services so they could be attacked. One area, O’Devaney Gardens in Dublin, a number of empty blocks of flats were set alight to draw the emergency services. As soon as the Fire Service arrived, bottles and other missiles were launched at the Fire service vehicles that arrived.

Other incidents involved a number of Gardai being savagely attacked on the streets of the city centre. Numerous Gardai had to be hospitalised with fractures and lacerations. In one attack a female Garda was hit so hard as to fracture her eye socket. In another, 2 Gardai on foot patrol in the city centre were attacked by a large group of youths and had to be hospitalized. 10 arrests were made at that incident. Nothing would be better than to make an example of this scum. Lock them up and make their families pay for the medical bills. Make their families pay for the damage caused to the surrounding areas.

Same goes for the area’s were youths caused damage to businesses and buildings in their own area’s. Make the families pay for the clean-up. Why should law abiding tax payers have to pay for the inability of parents to control their children. And I know what certain groups will say - “disadvantaged backgrounds” and “underfunded area’s”… Hold on a second. I come from one of the poorest area’s in Dublin and in my day I wasn’t out throwing missiles and abuse at the emergency services.

A strong statement needs to be made - that civil disruption will not be tolerated, that attacks on people who work to protect and help us will not go unpunished. However, I dont believe any political party in Ireland has the stomach to do what needs to be done. Sure, there will be token gestures… and next year will be the same all over again.

I’m also buying a house with my beautiful girlfriend so that makes for some really interesting times as neither of us really, has time to do any of the huge amount of paperwork that is required… mortgages, life assurance, home insurance, surveys, quotes for other work… It really mounts up. So as its late I’ll keep this one short and sweet…

While out and about recently, I came across two examples of sign writing genius that I just had to share with the world…

What does this sign say to you? I know what it says to me… that I would save absolutely no money in their End of Year sale… That I saw walking past the particular motor showroom on Parkgate Street in Dublin.

And now look at the bottom right of the next photo… what does that even mean??

Your! Food on the Move - I’m sorry, what? What is that even supposed to mean? How did it get past the spell checker on MS word for that matter! So there you go… A nice quick post before I resume normal service some time next week!

We arrived last Thursday and had a few beers at the hostel. Then some food in the Augustiner brewery restaurant (Would recommend that you check this restaurant out if you ever go - also they keep the beautiful black horses that you will see at the festival in the stables right beside it. They even have a window so you can see them while you are eating!) and then off to the tents. Of course the tents were very busy, so we didn’t manage to get a seat - and the only way to get served is to have a seat. So we wandered down to the Paulener tent and sat outside - And the first Maß round was bought. How cool are Steins? Very! We joked about how boring pubs back home were going to be when we couldn’t bang our drinks off the table(and no spillage or breakage!) and sing hilariously loud songs! Anyway, just after the first round was bought, one member of our group headed for the toilet and promptly broke his arm! He slipped and fell and snapped the bone in the upper part of your arm and had to be rushed to hospital in an ambulance, and that unfortunately was the end of his Oktoberfest as he spent the rest of the trip in a bed in hospital.

The hostel we stayed in was The Meinenger hostel just about a 2 minute walk from where the tents are and was a really good place to stay. The bar they had didn’t seem to have a closing time and a number of night we’re pretty sure we saw dawn the next morning! Great fun was had by all in this hostel, and would recommend it if your going with a group of lads. TV’s in the rooms, comfortable beds and friendly staff make this the best hostel I’ve ever stayed in. It was a little on the expensive side - €200 for the 4 nights including breakfast but being so close to Oktoberfest probably warrants that.

I’ve been to Munich before and found it one of my favorite cities to visit. Its very tourist friendly and the people are always nice. I was there last year for their Christmas market with my lovely girlfriend and it was amazing. I stayed in the Arabella Sheraton Bogenhausen, which was a little expensive but very luxurious and perfect for a weekend break with your partner. This trip on helped that view as again I found the bavarian locals as very friendly and helpful. Even the police were ultra friendly (unless of course you’ve done something wrong and then you can expect a world of efficient pain!). It has loads to do, and one of those things that I’d recommend is a trip to Dachau concentration camp. It’s an eerie place, that teaches you a lot about what went on. Myself and my girlfriend went at the end of our trip and we recommend you do that unless it taints your view of the people you meet on the rest of your trip. The people that committed those crimes can never really be forgiven but its in the past and I really wouldn’t want it to taint your view of modern Munich as a beautiful friendly city. It can never really escape its history but can be proud of the city that it has become. All in all, I can recommend Munich as perfect for a weekend trip with the lads or the partner.

The install went without a problem. The only issue I had was that it didn’t ask me if I wanted a shortcut on my desktop. This was important because as I use Vista, if you don’t install programs on the C drive, you don’t get a program menu item to click on. Still I was able to do it manually directly from the folder. Not any trouble at all really.

So I started into the game and looked up and it was 3 o’clock in the morning! And the only reason I looked up is that I was getting a good talking to about leaving all the lights on all night! What a game. It just draws you in and keeps you going. For hours! A couple of nights now I’ve been enthralled by the game. So easy to play and yet keeps me - a pretty hardcore gamer - going.

Now I really don’t have the kind of witty mind that you need to review games so I’ll leave it to the experts - Games Radar had this to say about it. Also as soon as I started playing I knew this was a great opportunity to break copyright laws everywhere… As some great pictures here show. Now I didn’t quite manage this level of brilliance, in fact I managed about about a million times worse than that but it really shows what you can do. But its not all about copying stuff that’s already been done - it really gives you the chance to show off some originality!

Now that’s just my opinion - and lots of people differ from it. In fact - check out the reviews on amazon. People are going nuts over the DRM stuff. And the simplistic nature of the game - but I love it. Its easy to pick up and play and can see this being one that even the better half might have a go at.

1. Tutorial9 - An absolutely superb website. I use it primarily for Photoshop tutorials and don’t think I’ve come across a better website for this purpose. Regularly updated with posts and great tutorials, I go here first for subtle ideas that really shine to use on new projects. Written by David Leggett, it’s a very good resource for multimedia designers. Personal favorite : 5 Pixel Popping Techniques
2. Smashing Magazine - I really cannot give this website enough credit. Scarily helpful and useful, it is unbelievably good at what it does. So good in fact that I would pay to read what they write about… but lets not tell them that . Maintained by two legends - Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz, It is hard to leave this website once you’re there. More articles than you can shake a stick at, this website is one of the best on the Internet. Seriously. Personal favorite : Excellent Blog Designs
3. Fuel your Creativity - Along the same lines as smashing magazine except obviously not as big. Still has a great selection of articles though and can often turn up some real gems. Does some really good designer interviews aswell and these can be really interesting. Personal favorite : Typography is Sexy
4. The Blog at Elite By Design - A web design company that also runs a very nice blog. There is a 5 part series that I’m currently going through that really caught my attention and brought me to Brian’s (that’s all he refers to himself as…) site. Personal Favorite : Design articles to keep you motivated and follow the rest!
5. Sitepoint - An great resource for web developers and designers, Sitepoint covers everything from the business side of things, through to the purely design side of it. They also include a CSS and HTML reference section to their website that is very useful. Their news section tends to be quite a good read to and the forums are always busy. In fact I liked this website so much that I bought a couple of books from them which I can definitely recommend - “The Art and Science of CSS” and “The Principals of Beautiful Web Design“. Though as you can see from my website… I lack the creativeness to gain much from this book However it did taech me alot about typography and layout so I’d still recommend it.
6. Alistapart - One of the best resourses out there for web devlopers, it often leads the way on cutting edge techniques that are perfect to be your next subtle (but killer) addition to your website. Everyone knows the list apart sliding doors method of adding background images to lists.
7. Max Design - An Austrailian web design and development company, based in Sydney, they have also set themselves up as a bit of an authority on CSS, accessibility and Web Standards. What sends me to this site? The writers, Russ Weakley and Anna Gregg and an un canny ability to find some really good articles etc. on what we should be reading. Personal favorite: The “Light Reading” category always has something interesting to read.
8. 99 Designs - Unlikely as it seems to have a site dedicated to the buying and selling of logos and designs but you can learn alot from the very many talented people on here. It used to be the haunt of design students etc., a kind of place where they could earn some money on the side - however it tends to be very much dominated by graphic houses in the almost devloped (india, china… ) world that are able to do great work for that little bit less money. Still there’s alot to learn from these talented people.
9. CSS Zen Garden - I tend to find many of the designs here too graphic heavy. However there are a lot of very good ideas on display, and these can be very useful for any projects that you have. It’s a useful resource but I don’t feel you could really use any of the designs, however I don’t think that’s the point. It s more of a place where designers can show off what they can do. And there are really some out of this world designs in here.
10. Freelance Switch - What? Im recommending this for inspiration? Well… Yes. The purpose of the site is teach people how to make the switch to becoming a freelancer. And to help those who already are… and you can see where I’m going. They have some really good articles aimed at keeping freelancers out at the front on their industries so its for that reason that I put it in last here. It’s one of my places to go but it may not suit everyone!

Well, that’s it. When I have a new project coming up, the first thing I do is go scrapbook hunting. Then I trawl the above sites for things that I’d find useful and might be able to add to my site or add to an old site that I’m still maintaining. Let me know if I’m missing anything though…

I believe from reading his further comments throughout the page that he means that it is unprofessional to use them on client sites or on a… say… web designers/developers main business site. In this case I kind of agree with him. I however disagree with him over a number of his points.

…their use should be considered nonprofessional in every seemingly professional context.

I only agree with this statement if our definition of professional context is the same as I mentioned above. What about on a web designers/developers personal blog or website?

He also states:

Do these claims make “professionals” look professional, or does it make them rather untrustworthy?

By this he is referring to his analogies about various professionals (doctors, soldiers etc.) claiming to be proficient at their job. He is trying to say that if a doctor tell you he or she knows what they are doing then they obviously don’t… However Doctors do this all the time! Take a walk down to you local GP or Hospital Doctors office. See all those letters after their names? They all mean very specific things, and should be taken quite seriously. Would you allow a doctor to operate on you if “B. Ch” wasn’t in there? No. Why not? Well how do you know that he or she is a surgeon, and not just some Obstitrician that got bored? I know, I know, unlikely to happen - but all of this is very important.

Assuming too much?

I think perhaps Jens is assuming too much knowledge on the part of the consumer. The client who wants a new website. By looking at your website they’re not going to know, and whats more likely is they’re not going to care. That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be teaching them. Or making them aware of the need to be accessible and compliant. Jens is assuming that just because we’re in the business that we should be doing it already. However if you take a look at the following examples that clearly isn’t the truth. I’d also like to point out that Jens Meiert probably has a better type of consumer than the rest of us :) He is a very intelligent man and I appreciate the other stuff that he has written for the community.

• http://purcellplant.com/ - Someone paid someone to do this to them…
• http://www.orbrio.com/ - they make websites… like this one - http://www.takeawayfood.ie/
• http://www.flynns.ie/ - Again someone paid for this.
• http://www.budgetwebdesignlimited.com/Portfolio.html - And the money comes in to keep them going… to be able to make perfect sites like this - http://www.chostaekwondokilanerin.com/

I could go on. Most of the examples came from this thread on the Irish Webmaster Forum. Its good for a laugh.

Raising Awareness

For me, making your website standard compliant is a big thing. Its not really that difficult, and the more people that do it the more inclusive we become as an industry. So that’s why I love seeing valid CSS, or valid html or even better - WAI-AAA valid, badges on websites.

As long as its used in the right context - to raise awareness and to get more people doing it, and if you’ve taken the time to do it, then why not?

Wear your badges with pride.