Quick Notes: Caching Google’s WebFont Loader

As with Google’s other hosted libraries, providing a more specific version number of webfont.js will effect browser caching.

Quick Notes: Soupgiant WordPress themes on Github

The Soupgiant base WordPress themes are now available on GitHub. There’s no documentation at this stage, I’ll write up a blog post with details in the coming week.

Behind the Websites: HTML5: I couldn’t (quite) do it

I found it difficult to use pure and semantic HTML5 when dealing with current versions of Internet Explorer. I really tried to adopt the commonly advocated view that it’s okay to require website visitors have JavaScript enabled but settled on a different option I could actually live with.

Quick Notes: Branding is hard

Making a great brand starts with having a great name and that means being able to buy a great or, at least, good domain name as Jason Calacanis explains.

Quick Notes: How @font-face loads in different browsers

Why do you sometimes see the fonts change on a website after it loads? This is just one of the many ways browsers behave differently, as explained in this quote from Richard Rutter.

Behind the Websites: Forms are forms, not lists

I have often seen HTML forms coded as part of a lists, including from some publications and people I highly respect. I believe this to be incorrect.

Design: Poka yoke UX design

There’s a theory of Japanese car construction called poka yoke. It was described to me as meaning a form of idiot-proofing but it really means “mistake proofing”. Pieces of the car are manufactured in such a way that they can only be used on one particular part of the car. We need to apply this theory to website design.

Behind the Websites: Selectivizr with CSS on a sub-domain

Updating the Soupgiant base WordPress theme recently (among other things we were porting it to HTML5), we needed to decide which shims and/or polyfills to use. We starterd with Remy Sharp’s HTML5 enabling script but another to consider was Selectivizr to improve IE‘s support of CSS3 selectors.

Behind the Websites: A half-baked (CSS) idea

Spritebaker has done the rounds a fair bit in web development circles over the past few weeks. It’s a great idea, done well. The only problem is it has the strange effect of making it seem like the page is actually taking longer to load. I take a look at a possible solution.

Business: Simplifying can complicate things

I’ve played with Google Wave (OBM) and toyed with PBWorks. I tried wikis and intranets, I implemented networks and created complicated Excel spreadsheets. I have used at least five different time trackers and even more wireframing tools.

None of those things ever helped get the work completed quicker, more efficiently or better in any way.