24 ways

Drew McLellan rounds off our series with a look at the challenges facing a site that needs to cope with occasional peaks in traffic without spending out on high-performance hosting that’s not needed for the majority of the time. Come behind the scenes at 24 ways and see how we keep the site online through the month of December each year. Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!

Brian Oberkirch gives a little respect back to his users, and suggests some way in which you might be able to do the same. Like a plate full of brussel sprouts, your users deserve a little respect, you can’t just rush in there. Not that I consider my users to be in any way like stupid old brussel sprouts. Oh no. What a mess.

Molly E. Holzschlag discusses the importance of the medium to the message, and how a better understanding of the theory and just technique can help in developing our craft. After all, a piece of chocolate is a piece of chocolate. But press it into a coin and wrap it in golden foil, and that’s Christmas right there people.

Brian Fling offers his insight into the state of the mobile web as we hurtle towards 2008. Just as Web 2.0 taught us to rethink our assumptions about the web, Mobile 2.0 looks to do the same. There’s a little something to mull over as you munch your mince pies and move onto bottle of Sherry 2.0.

Eric Meyer describes a technique for using CSS as a diagnostic tool for finding potential problems or issues within a page. Going beyond the styling for the delivery of a site, the use of CSS as an author-time development tool holds many possibilities. Now if only there was a selector to show me which presents I’ve forgotten to buy this year.

Jonathan Snook introduces us to the world of Adobe AIR and talks us through using standard web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript to build a run-anywhere desktop application. I used to think I could run anywhere, but after sprinting through the town centre naked, the antisocial behaviour order has rather put a stop to all that.

Christian Heilmann delves into the world of JavaScript application dependencies with a smart technique to help manage the loading of parts of your application as and when needed. Just as Santa only loads the presents he needs for each trip into his sleigh, keep your loading lean and the reindeer will thank you.

Richard Rutter delivers us an early Christmas present in the form of Font Matrix, a table detailing available fonts across Windows and Mac operating system versions and with different versions of common software packages installed. Need to know how widely your font of choice is available? Just look it up. This, my friends, is the future right here.

Dave Shea considers the impact of shape and balance on design, and how it can affect user perception. Like that oddly shaped gift under the tree that never quite makes sense until it’s unwrapped, sometimes you can never be sure until you give it a shake. So let’s get shaking, people.

Ethan Marcotte explores methods of delivering browser-tailored CSS to uncooperative user agents if the need arises. Like the brightly coloured, ill-fitting sweater granny gave you last Christmas, there’s some styles that are only appropriate in certain company. Choose wisely, my friend.

Andy Clarke looks to the world of comic books and graphic novels for inspiration in web design. Personally, I look for design inspiration is Christmas wrapping paper, which, as it turns out, is a less successful technique. On the whole I’d recommend Clarke’s approach above mine. Lesson learned.

Ann McMeekin decks the halls with some practical CSS techniques that can help in making your site design as accessible to as many different users as possible. ‘Tis the season of good will to all men (and women), after all. Fa-la-la.

Simon Willison gets practical with microformats and the jQuery JavaScript library to demonstrate how data can be unobtrusively extracted from a page and plotted on a slippy map (like the ones we built the other day). See – it all links up. We think about this stuff.

Brian Suda rings in the festivities by demonstrating how merriment can be plotted on a graph using the Google Charts API. It’s critically important to keep track of my mince pie consumption each year – it goes on my tax return. If you like your stats visual, let’s see how it’s done.

Paul Boag shares his tips for smoothing the path between design brief and sign-off. Like cooking Christmas dinner, it’s all the in the preparation. And like a good figgy pudding, your designs will go down best with custard.

Natalie Downe sets the presses rolling with an in-depth look at the state of print stylesheets in 2007. Often neglected by developers but much loved by the user, the simple print stylesheet can really add that finishing touch to even the best site designs. So get this down you. Ding dong!

Matthew Somerville takes us behind the scenes with a peek at how reindeer tackle internationalisation issues client-side. A tongue-in-cheek article with a serious message and a practical method for approaching internationalisation within JavaScript. Howzat?

Mark Boulton revisits the HTML data table for a quick look at how legibility and communication of complex data can be helped through careful typesetting. Everyone likes a neat table at Christmas, especially Aunty. You wouldn’t want to upset Aunty now, would you?

Gareth Rushgrove runs us through some of the useful tools available to help minify code and images to increase web site performance. No need to feel slow and bloated this yuletide; get your site in shape without breaking so much as a sweat.

Mark Norman Francis leaves no stone unturned in the quest for better markup. Today’s target is the humble, yet oft-abused definition list. Help the suffering stop this Christmas. With your help, the definition list can rebuild its life and learn to be happy again. We’re counting on you.

Stuart Langridge ponders that if a desktop application can warn us when Caps Lock is on, why not on the web too? Avoid unsightly login errors with this handy JavaScript technique, offering the opportunity to warn users that they have Caps Lock on when entering their password. You don’t have to tell me twice.

Elliot Jay Stocks demonstrates how, with careful selection, an image can be manipulated so that it can repeat for as long as necessary. Like a 30lb turkey, just when you think it’s gone, there’s always a little bit more.

Andrew Turner helps us take our first steps into neogeography by creating interactive, draggable maps using the Mapstraction library. So if you’re aiming to mash-up more than swede and carrots over the holidays, or simply need to plan an effective pub-crawl there should be something here to get your chestnuts roasting.

Drew McLellan kicks off our 2007 festive season by revisiting the thorny issue of support for alpha channel PNGs in Internet Explorer 6. Why not be charitable and lend a helping hand to those poor IE6 users? They could use some Christmas cheer.