Scarf*oo

Looks like the guys over at Typekit have found a way to legally provide us with a large library of fonts and a simple way of integrating them in our web pages. If this proves to be the truth and not a scam, I’m really wanting to know the details. As the authors put it:

As a Typekit user, you’ll have access to our library of high-quality fonts. Just add a line of JavaScript to your markup, tell us what fonts you want to use, and then craft your pages the way you always have. Except now you’ll be able to use real fonts. This really is going to change web design.

via Introducing Typekit « The Typekit Blog.

Too bad that there are still many clients running and demanding your product to run on IE6. At least in my case, 80% of the clients are of the aforementioned sort and I am in no position to change that. It’s a sad sad thing really.

Someone should really write a conditionally included universal CSS file to handle IE6 bugs and just be off with it. On the other hand, there are other approaches such as providing a universal readable and pleasant style just for IE6 users and hoping the clients will be happy with it.

Check the proposed style in question at Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS | For A Beautiful Web.

Interview with Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML 5 specification. – The Web Standards Project. A lengthy interview on HTML5 and accessibility – well worth reading.

An interesting short article on the pitfalls of using CSS to hide page elements: Hiding with CSS: Problems and solutions | 456 Berea Street.

Personally, for elements where accessibility matters, like navigation menus, etc. I prefer hiding those elements with a short javascript statement I put right after the element I want to hide. This way the user does not notice the element getting closed and best of all, it remains accessible to all.

Welcome to the second part of the Back to The Basics series of articles here on Scarf*oo. Back to The Basics focuses – in simple terms – on the basic stuff every web developer should be familiar with. In the first Back to The Basics article we covered the shorthand CSS notation. Today, we’ll be looking at the obscure box model and what does it mean to us and how can we manipulate it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the first part of the Back to The Basics series of articles here on Scarf*oo. In this series, I’ll focus – in simple terms – on the basic stuff every web developer should be familiar with. Today, we’ll be looking at the shorthand CSS notation, a quick way to write long CSS statements in one short line.

Read the rest of this entry »

Take a break from work, sit down comfortably and watch this nine minute clip with Jeffrey Zeldman discussing web standards, how it all began and why should we care about them. Now I know how young our job is and how even big minds like Zeldman find themselves constantly taking tradeoffs when developing web sites.

A great tool to clean up text on any web page. Just configure a layout that best suites your reading preference and create a bookmark to the tool. A single click will hopefully transform any messy web page into pure reading bliss. Readability – An Arc90 Lab Experiment.

Hear ye, hear ye! i invite you to take a look at NVDA – a free, open source screen reader. There is a short review of the software over at 456 Berea Street if you’re interested.

Just wanted to let you know that the 280th issue of your favorite e-magazine can be found of the web-shelves right now. As usual there are two fresh articles, one is all zen-y in it’s pursue of imperfection, while the other focuses on coaching your e-communities. Perhaps both are worth a read.