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March 24, 2009 | Jason Gibb: The Hidden Danger of Proprietary JavaScript

Recently Richard Stallman, long-time proponent of free and open source software (FOSS), posted an article about the “dangers” of proprietary JavaScript code. The argument goes something like this: Unlike desktop software that is installed voluntarily (where, presumably, the user can review a licensing agreement in advance), licensed JavaScript code may run automatically in your browser without your knowledge any time you view a Web page or run a Web application.

March 06, 2009 | Erik Uetz: The Skittles Super-Mashup: Taste the Social Rainbow

Mars, Inc., is taking a brilliant new approach for their Skittles brand’s public website. By creating a mashup of popular social web applications, they have essentially relinquished control of their public website to the people.

March 06, 2009 | Darin Livdahl: Grid Systems On The Web

When I get a sense of “wow” regarding web design, some of my first observations tend to focus on the use of typography, simplicity, clear and sometimes bold appearance and the sense that everything seems to fall into place. Along with the understanding of a set of design principles more and more web designers have turned to the typographic grid and its series of vertical and horizontal axes to structure content. The typographic grid or grid system can be thought of as a guide to bring all elements of page layout together to create order and help designers achieve coherence in their workflow.

February 12, 2009 | Jason Gibb: CSS Animation Coming to a Browser (and Smartphone) Near You

Last Friday the WebKit team (makers of the engine in Apple’s Safari browser and iPhone), introduced a new CSS animation feature in the nightly browser builds. CSS animation allows Web designers to incorporate keyframe-based animated effects in a stylesheet.

February 09, 2009 | Jason Gibb: Information Security = Web Application Security

It’s not a question of “if” but “when.” In the past, corporate information security meant firewalls, strong passwords, virus protection, operating system updates, and physical security. While all of these techniques are still important, in an age of massively interconnected systems these basic security measures are no longer enough.

February 04, 2009 | Erik Uetz: How to Make Your Site Look Good Naked

There are a lot of web browsers out there that have limited CSS support, including most mobile browsers and older desktop browsers (like Netscape 4). Also, shutting off stylesheets is popular with those who are miserly with their bandwidth. So chances are there are plenty of people that have seen your site without styles. How can you keep your site sexy when the styles are stripped away?

January 30, 2009 | Ben Hamilton: Maintaining Trust, My Experience with One Internet Service Provider

Recently, I made the decision to switch my internet service provider (ISP). I switched to another company that charges more, and features a less convenient setup in my home office. This new ISP also had me sign a 2 year contract, which I despise. So why did I make such a drastic switch? It’s simple, my old ISP lost my trust.

January 08, 2009 | Lon Keller: Video on the Web is a Standard Expectation

Recently, comScore released new data from its Video Metrix service.  In November 2008, U.S. internet users watched 12.7 billion videos, an increase of 34% from one year ago.  What’s more amazing is that 77% of all Americans that use the internet watch online videos.

December 23, 2008 | Paul Bourdeaux: SD West Offers Testing & Quality Track (plus a shameless plug)

SD West 2009, one of the country’s premier platform independent software development conferences, is once again offering a track that is near and dear to my heart.  The Testing & Quality track presents the latest information and best practices on testing, process improvement and quality, along with leading-edge thinking as to how software should be built.  And rumor has it that there is a GREAT session called Code Coverage Revealed: Getting Effective Coverage Analysis from Software Unit Testing…

November 26, 2008 | Ben Hamilton: Flexibility vs. Usability:  The Web Developer’s Dilemma

As a web developer, many of the sites I build are based around a CMS (content management system) which allows the client to update their own site with little knowledge of web development. Custom tailoring the CMS to fit the client’s expectations and skill set often becomes as much a part of the project as the development itself.

November 26, 2008 | Darin Livdahl: Room For Improvement: Web Standards Support in Popular Email Clients

Last month I wrote about recent statistics regarding email marketing which contained a listing of email clients and their percentage of the market share. I’m going to stay on topic, and cover a few key points about producing HTML messages and the level of web standards support found in popular email clients.

November 04, 2008 | Erik Uetz: Tables Are Only Mostly Dead

I was recently browsing through a web development forum when a particular posting caught my eye. A member was asking what is the best way to mark-up and design a calendar in HTML without using a table. He got plenty of answers, with a lot of advice on complex code structure and CSS floating techniques, some with a few existing examples. He also got few responses telling him to just do it in a table; but he remained convinced it should be table-less.