Andrew Clarke rides into town to remind us of the importance of having a proper contract in place between those providing a service (usually us) and our clients commissioning the work. Projects that don’t run to plan are a fact of life, so make sure you’re prepared.
Dan Donald conjures up the ghost of Christmas the Web Yet To Come through the possibilities offered by the contextual data available to us from web-enabled devices.
Meagan Fisher casts a thoughtful glance back over her work this year and considers what it means to design a product rather than a marketing experience. Pour yourself a cup of eggnog, grab a mince pie or two and gather around the fireside. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then we shall begin.
Aarron Walter adds a powerful hit to your Christmas cocktail in the form of advice on putting together user surveys to gather important data you can use to inform design decisions. If you build it, they will come.
Scott Jehl unties the ribbon on his cross-browser method of clearing away the address bar from small mobile screens to make more room for your design. So clear a space under the tree and on your phone for more Christmas pixels.
Guy Podjarny sounds a sober warning during our festivities, and gathers some winter fuel to help secure your apps and users from the web’s occasionally cruel frost. So mark his footsteps good, my friend, and tread thou in them boldly. Thou shalt find the hacker’s rage freeze thy site less coldly.
Jeremy Keith loads up his sleigh this year with a nifty mobile-first approach that responds to onscreen conditions. So, no matter the size of your Christmas stocking, there’s something the right size to fill it.
Anna Debenham spruces up your workflow by surveying the snow-strewn field of web style guides, and explaining how to tie them up nicely with a bow for the benefit of you, your faithful team of developer huskies, and your ever-loving clients.
Remy Sharp picks that old chestnut – tabs – and roasts it afresh on the open fire of JavaScript to see how a fully navigable, accessible and clickable set of tabs can work. Everybody knows some scripting and some CSS can help to make your website bright. Although it’s been said many times, many ways, please be careful to do it right.
David Greiner offers invaluable insight into building HTML emails. Just like HTML for the web, email requires an intimate understanding of the software used to view your work. Allow Dave to share from his wealth of experience.
Darren Beale explains how Vagrant can fit in to existing development workflows and bring many benefits to those of us maintaining multiple virtual development environments. Set and forget – a gift that keeps on giving.
Mark Mitchell casts coarse salt upon the pale icy sheen of recent web design aesthetics to sound a warning that we may be on thin ice. The tension between low contrast tastes and high contrast needs is a story as old as the <font> tag, and yet it bears frequent retelling. For snow has fallen snow on snow.
Brian Suda ponders some techniques for maintaining correct color contrast whilst still offering your users the ability to customise their own color scheme. So put your slippers on, kick back with a sherry and let the algorithms do the work.
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.
Meri Williams brings her kanban work home with her — but to solve problems, not cause them. There’s a trick or two here that Santa could use instead of making a list and checking it twice.
Nathan Ford delves deep into the sack of CSS goodies and rewards our attention with a clever object-oriented, scalable and modular approach to attribute selectors. Old wine in new bottles.
Dan Rubin pops down the chimney to deliver a neat little CSS gift that, in certain circumstances, could be just the trick needed to obtain those matched height columns so often desired. Whilst no technique is perfect for every situation, the more sharp tools we have in our CSS toolbox the better.
John Allsopp has a shining example of what can be done to customise the look of HTML buttons without resorting to images. Custom button styles are a frequent request, but the use of images can heavily restrict the implementation. Avoid those pitfalls by sticking to pure CSS.
Drew McLellan opens our 2010 season by revisiting the way we implement maps to cater for all types of visitors. Should we be building all-or-nothing solutions when it comes to mapping, or can progressive enhancement play its part here, too?
Nicole Sullivan understands how the accumulated weight of small typographic decisions can mount up into a tangle of CSS declarations. With a new tool at your disposal you can take stock and clear up the mess like it’s Boxing Day.
Cennydd Bowles reveals his thoughts on the important moment when we present designs to others. With thoughtful decisions and a considered approach, showing and explaining your designs can be a gift to your clients that keeps on giving.
Tim Van Damme continues our advanced CSS theme by introducing what can be done in Webkit browsers when things start to get animated. Get ready to put some motion in your ocean.
Elliot Jay Stocks steps us through publishing a set of contact details using the hCard microformat. Once the basics are in place follow along as we add some sparkle with the aid of CSS3 web fonts, text-shadow, border-radius and first-child selectors.
Eric Eggert celebrates the simplicity of making websites accessible and, when accessibility is as fundamental to a project as performance and code quality, how it can improve the experience for all users. The web, like a gleeful cheer of “Merry Christmas” at yuletide, is for everyone.