Beast-Blog.com
2006 September

This article is my version of the What, When, and Who of Internet history — with a few of my own additions — from when it was wood-burning to present. I have hopefully made it inclusive and comprehensive but please be sure to read the Credits and my Disclaimer. That said, I hope you find it as interesting reading it as I did writing it. I must confess that it was a pretty big challenge, more so than I had envisioned. Enjoy

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It’s not a meme — or maybe it is — but either way I decided to jump on the bandwagon and give it a go myself. Just for the fun of it. Click here to view or download my contribution or click on the inset thumbnail. Want to see what others have done? In addition to Veerle Pieters’ and the lastest one from Roger Johansson, check out this extensive collection on flikr to view the 143 of them loaded there so far. Fun stuff. Enjoy my green desktop!

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I recently published one of my mad experiments, CSS: Text Shadows (see the experiment page itself) and I linked to one of the best solutions I found on the web when doing some research. The innovator, Scott Jehl, got in touch with me to explain the merits of his method. He was very reasonable and appreciated what I had done so I decided to post here to have some open dialog (I will invite Scott to give his views in full). And I’d like to hear from others as well.

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Onmouseover and onfocus events in JavaScript, and :hover and :focus pseudo element actions using CSS, open up a world of interactivity on the web for both mouse and keyboard users alike using most browsers. (I wrote most browsers because IE doesn’t recognize the pseudo element :focus and must use :active, and that’s only on anchors.) Font colors can change, backgrounds can change, static images can be replaced with new images. In fact, swapping out imagery can be the root of some of the more creative uses. But like everything, the more you offer means the more it can cost in terms of user resource demands and smooth interactivity.

Continue reading “Preloading On-Demand Images with CSS” »

I’m pleased to announce my accessible Beast-Blog theme has been once again localized, this time in Hebrew — the first one was done in French. I’m grateful to Sharon Gefen for doing the work on it. Toda raba, Sharon. I must say it looks pretty cool with a right-to-left letter direction. It really pleases me to see the popularity of this theme keep right on growing and growing.

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First of all I will state that I had this article in my drafts, started with a single line: “What’s in a name?” I was going to offer something I felt was logical topic of conversation regarding naming classes and IDs for what they are so as to remember them and so they would make sense to you and your client. However, between then and now I had an unintentional but highly valuable discussion with some fellow Web Standards Group members. The topic will remain the same, but the advice I’m going to offer has been altered. I’m thankful I got the information I did before writing and publishing this article because I can now offer a more well-round article. The reason is some of the advice I was going to offer would have been a bit off mark and possibly misleading and I want nothing more than to offer solid information here. I was going to tell you that a logical class name for, say bold text (not to be confused with emphatic text using the <strong> element), would be .bold. I was wrong on some levels. While on the surface it may seem like a logical choice, it’s maybe not the best choice. I now realize it’s often best to name style classes not to define the style, but rather to be indicative of the function of the style. Why is it styled this way?

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I sometimes see features on websites that, for a few moments, make me think wow, that’s cool. Then, upon using the site for a bit, I start thinking wow, that’s pretty damn annoying. Initially I feel the site’s developer or webmaster might be onto a good thing, but then the old usability angle comes into play and changes my mind. You may have experienced the same thing. It’s perhaps just a subjective thing. After all I am just a single user with my own tastes and preferences. I mean no disrespect to anyone, and some of the things I have grown to dislike most certainly have their place in world of the web. They can be neat tricks that, if used at the right time and in the right place, can make a site really shine and come to life. Okay, I suppose you want an example. All right, here goes, here’s one: CSS pop-ups; the kind used for tool tips. They often bug me.

Continue reading “Site Features Overload” »

I wanted to open up this latest experiment for comments since it was the comments to Roger Johansson’s Build your own PHP style sheet switcher article that inspired me to add cookie acceptance detection functionality to my own PHP Style Changer Experiment. It seems to work nicely but I figure it’s always good to get some real-world feedback. And since I don’t accept comments at MikeCherim.com I figured I’d do it here. The link above leads to the supporting article, but here’s the actual experiment page, and here’s the well-commented script provided as a text file. Feel free to use it and tell others if you like it — it is safe from XSS so use it with confidence. It’s been in use a long time but I never released it.

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