Scarf*oo

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.

While I loved playing Lemmings, I never loved playing with IE. After spending a full week in bed, this is the first news I ended up stumbling into – IE8 Has Arrived. My head is still swimming around from the fever, so you’ll excuse me for not delving into the depths of this release.

If you are clueless about HTML 5, take a look at Christopher Schmitt’s Looking into HTML5 slides. No audio on the slides, but interesting to watch and read anyway.

Roughly another month and another issue of our beloved A List Apart is out on the webs with two fresh articles to dig your teeth into. This time it is Ethan Marcotte‘s time to write on Grid layouts, particularly on converting a traditional pixel-based fixed grid into a liquid one.
The second article written by Christina Wodtke is of a more philosophical nature as it delves into the social aspect of web applications.

Eeeeenjoy.

This one’s got my heart pumping again – and it hasn’t happened in a while, mind you. I am talking about Mr. Jason Santa Maria and his latest article titled Making Modular Layout Systems over at 24ways.org.

The method is simple: write a bunch of well-thought classes, chain them together and you get a robust and versatile grid layout. A recommended read!

Ever happened to you that after applying one of the many solutions for fixing IE’s png background image support, links on that element didn’t work? How about repeating background images? I bet most of you will nod in agreement. Well, Drew Diller from dillerdesign.com‘s got the solution for you. While his script fails to apply PNGs to the body element and to an img tag (for now), it solves the problem with background-position and background-repeat.

All you have to do is call the following script and voila, your headaches are over:

<!--[if IE 6]>
<script src="DD_belatedPNG.js"></script>
<script>
    DD_belatedPNG.fix('.png_bg'); //EXAMPLE
</script>
<![endif]-->

Head over to the DD_belatedPNG page for downloads and more examples.

Here we have been blessed with the green light to step up from WCAG 1 to the latest and greatest WCAG 2. You can read more about the topic by following the links below:

• Overview of WCAG 2.0 Documents
• How to Meet WCAG 2.0 (Customisable quick reference)
• Transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0
• Accessible Forms using WCAG 2.0

This issue is all about the standards we love (or hate). Molly E. Holzschlag tells us how the standards movement is splitting and going separate ways and opens a can-o-worms for us to discuss upon. The second article written by Scott Jehl is all about testing the target browser capabilities before delivering specific enhancements to the web. An interesting read, although who will bother implementing it is a completely different story.

Over at ALA, Dave Shea branded a new technique called CSS Sprites2, which is basically a combination of our beloved CSS sprites technique turbocharged with the famous jQuery javascript library we all learned to love (or hate). You can find the lengthy tutorial over here.

What can you expect following last year’s, 37 questions sized A List Apart Web Design Survey? This year’s survey, or course. Named differently, yet pretty much the same lenghty, snore-inducing, honey-please-make-me-coffee 18 page survey. No game to watch on TV tonight? You know, you want it.