When to stop testing?

As a web developer there comes a time when you need to consign a browser to the dustbin of history, and remove it from your testing suite. It’s a decision I find difficult to make – I am a visual designer and hate the idea that a website I built might look less than perfect for anyone at all. But to offer our audience an experience that takes advantage of the best the web has to offer, it is necessary to weigh the needs of the many against the needs of the few. In this article I will look at some best practices for dropping support for a browser, and suggest a list of browsers that make the cut (and ones that don’t).

DeepLink: Flash deep linking class

The inability to bookmark ‘deep’ content has long been an accessibility criticism leveled at Flash. In fact, with a bit of Javascript and Actionscript trickery it is possible to create bookmarkable URLs that provide direct access to a Flash movie’s internal content. And with the introduction of the ExternalInterface class in Flash 8, this two way communication between Javascript and Flash just got a lot easier.

Inspired by the work of Theo Hultberg and Asual, I have developed a simple Flash class that demonstrates the implementation of deep linking in a Flash movie. While I don’t propose that my DeepLink class should be used as a substitute for Ausual’s excellent SWFAddress, it might provide a useful building block for exploring what the ExternalInterface class is capable of.

Web design tips for print designers

Web design tips editorial illustration

Over the years I have had the opportunity to collaborate with a number of print designers on website designs. The way these collaborations usually work is that the print designer will mock-up initial static layouts for the website, and it will fall to me to bring their mock-up to life in either Flash or HTML. These collaborative efforts can be very rewarding, but there are a few common “gotchas” that tend to catch print designers unawares when they first try their hand at designing for the web. Most of the problems stem from design challenges that are particular to the web, and wouldn’t typically be encountered by a print designer.

Linkfest – Nov 03 2006

Here’s a roundup of the news articles, weblogs and just-plain-cool websites I’ve been visiting recently and think are worth sharing.

I ♥ typeworkshop.com

Typeworkshop student work

They say pictures speak loader that words. If that’s the case then typeworkshop.com must speak volumes, because its practical lessons in type design utilize both.

Transparent PNGs in IE6 standalone

Now that Internet Explorer 7 has been released, I imagine many web designers will be running it as their default installation of IE, and using standalone versions to test sites in IE 6 or older. One longstanding drawback of these standalone versions is the inability to use the AlphaImageLoader filter, which enables the display of transparency in PNG images. Thankfully there is now a simple solution at hand.

Educating your clients

In my experience, most web design clients don’t know much about design, and even less about the web. This isn’t a fault, and it doesn’t make them a bad client. It makes them a regular web user. But sometimes the knowledge gap between a designer and their client can lead to communication problems. I have found that with a little education my clients are better equipped to understand my decision making processes, and we are able to start talking to each other, rather than past each other.

The visual design of Web 2.0

If you didn’t blink, you may have noticed that for a few days recently Wikipedia’s entry for Web 2.0 included a subsection describing the visual elements of Web 2.0. Gradients, colorful icons, reflections, dropshadows, and large text all got a mention.

A few days later the “visual elements” addition had been removed after a vote by wikipedians. The objection, I suppose, is that no set of visual criteria can accurately define something as being characteristic of Web 2.0 – if Web 2.0 can be understood as an approach to generating and distributing content, then it needn’t be tied to a particular visual style.

Nevertheless, it’s true that many Web 2.0 sites do share a distinctive aesthetic. Wikipedia’s editors may not think it’s a worthy part of the Web 2.0 discussion, but I say bring it on! Let’s take a look at the some of the communication issues facing a Web 2.0 site, and see how the “Web 2.0 look” can help to solve them.

IE7 Release Candidate 1 Standalone

You can pick up a standalone version of Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) at Tredosoft.

Getting HTML newsletters right

For a long time I was wary of designing email newsletters. I had read how difficult it was to construct an HTML newsletter that displayed as intended in all the popular email clients. I had heard about the horrors of creating layouts using tables. I had been warned about the perils of using CSS. But this year I have had several clients request that I design email newsletters for them, and had no choice but to school myself in the arcane art of HTML email design.