Here’s another post on Net Tuts+ that you’ll likely find helpful. This time, Siddharth (that’s the author’s name) tells us how to get around some of the issues with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Here’s his top 9 hit list but visit the site to see how to solve these problems.

1. Centering a Layout
2. Staircase Effect
3. Double Margin on Floated Elements
4. Inability to Have Elements with Small Heights
5. Auto Overflow and Relatively Positioned Items
6. Fixing the Broken Box Model
7. Setting a Minimum Width and Height
8. Floated Layout Misbehaving
9. Space Between List Items

Source: Net Tuts+

Andrew Burgess has a post over at Net Tuts+ about building forms. Forms play a huge role in the modern web. The title says Beginners but I’ve been around long enough to see some ‘experts’ really mess up forms, so, I’d say this is good for everyone to read.

Andrew gives us four main areas to focus on:

1. Semantics
2. Accessibility
3. Functionality
4. Design

Source: Net Tuts+

Today, Feb 10, Photoshop turns 20. To celebrate the birthday of every one’s favorite piece of software, Web Designers Depot, takes us through the history and development. From it’s origins, when just four programmers are listed on the splash screen to now when Adobe gland handers are listed. I bought Photoshop at version 2.5 in 1992. I was a Windows geek back then, working in a photo lab as both a photo tech and computer tech. I also weighed 125 pounds…

Souce: Web Designers Depot

The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.

I try to keep politics out of the class room but this crazy. I have no doubt it would help them track pedophiles, gays, leftists, rightists, centrists, dumb blondes… the list goes on. All joking aside, this is bad. Very bad.

Source: C-Net

Now here’s an interesting post at Web Deloper+ about some very cool CSS tricks. I have to admit I did not know many of these but I’ve already started using some of them. Remember that some of these will only work in a modern browser so Internet Explorer isn’t going to display some of these. Here are some that I really liked, in to particular order. Be sure to visited the website to read the rest of this list. The rest of their site has lots of Good Stuff, too.

1. Change Text Highlight Color
2. Prevent Firefox Scrollbar Jump
3. Print Page Breaks
4. !important
5. Replace Text With Image
6. Highlight links that open in a new window
7. Drop Caps Using CSS
8. Attribute-Specific Icons

Source: Web Developer +

One of my favorite blogs, Six Revisions, had post back in January (hey, I’m still trying to catch up) about simple but necessary usability tips. I don’t want to rain on Brujo’s parade but here’s two that leaped out at me. Be sure to read the whole thing. It’s that good.

• Pay special attention to web page organization and layout
• Keep the user interface consistent

Source: Six Revisions

I’m reading a technical article on how FaceBook makes their site (it’s in PHP, btw) and they mention that they get 400 billion page views a month. Four-hundred billion. Wow.

Here’s the article.

A company that I’d never heard of (which doesn’t mean anything, btw) called CX Partners have produced what might just be a very useful set of form design guidelines. They did it using a couple of cool techniques. One, called heat maps, something you can do (LabsMedia, wikiPedia, KnowteBook) and the other is called eyetracking. Eyetracking uses a computer that looks into your eyes (not unlike how then President Bush looked into the eyes of then President Putin but that’s another post) and can actually track what you look at and for how long. They examined the signup forms of four major websites: GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and eBay. I’ll list five of the ten guidelines they came up here.

1. Use a simple vertical layout with labels above the input fields.
2. If vertically aligned labels are not possible, make them bold and left-aligned.
3. If you put more than one field on a row (e.g. first and last name) make them look like a single piece of information.
4. Emphasize section headings (via color or shading) if you want people to read them.
5. Only ask for required information. Identify optional fields rather than required fields (don’t use asterisks).

Whet your appetite? Visit CX Partners to read the whole thing.

Source: CX Partners