Web Design by Sheriar Designs: Impeccable Code | Beautiful Design

I’m just wrapping up putting together a portfolio site for a wonderful designer I know, John Malmquist of Malmquist Design. John specializes in identity, branding, packaging, and signage. Basically, John is a print guy. He thinks in inches, not pixels. And he’s looking for that kind of control over every detail of his site.

Now, don’t get me wrong … I understand and even admire John’s attention to detail and desire for fine control. I get it. I really do. But when he asked that every line of copy break at just such a place, I wasn’t sure how to handle it.

Recently I took a few hours to look through the entire database of Firefox extensions and check out a few new ones. Wow. It was so worth my time.

But in an effort to save you, my wonderful reader, that same amount of time, I thought I would give you the top-10 list of extensions new and old that I just wouldn’t want to live without.

Occasionally I’m asked to create a page where there is tons of information (passed in through a database) and the information needs to be broken up into manageable page-like junks, but I can’t actually create multiple pages because the programmers require that the page does not refresh. Through some pretty simple css and javascript we can use buttons or tabs (or links of any kind) to switch beteen various data on a page.

Ahh … if only I had written this article! But alas, no. To me, this is the best explanation of css positioning on the web. I attribute the start of my mastery of css in very large part to this one article. When I read it, something in my brain went, “Ooooooh … oh my god … I actually understand now!” I am am eternally grateful.

If you need a primer or a refresher on how to position things using css, then this is the thing to read.

Enjoy.

I recently finished a relatively large site involving 12 different page templates. When I was finished, I sent off all the templates to my client for production, along with one enormously long style sheet. The client was very pleased with the site, but wanted me to make things more “modular” – the production team was a large one and they needed for multiple people to be able to work on various sections of the site at once, using a version control software to keep track of changes. I had already marked up each page-specific area on the style sheet with comments, but apparently when my client’s production team tried to pull these sections out and deliver them only to their intended templates things were breaking all over the place.

Ok, this so this is kinda off topic but … If you’re at all like me you may have several various electronic goodies in your bedroom. I have an answering machine, a wireless router, a modem, a laptop, a cellphone charger, a vonage thingy, a video game console, and an Altec Lansing iM3. Sheesh! And all of these electronic goodies have little glowing lights which have been driving me slowly mad.

Isn’t it annoying when you have a horizontally centered site that jumps about 20 pixels to the left when you come to a long page that requires scroll bars, and then jumps 20 pixels back to the right when you come to a short page that doesn’t require scroll bars?

Do you often find yourself wishing wistfully that you could use min-height or min-width in your css layouts, if only it weren’t for that pesky IE? I have seen many complicated hacks and even scripting solutions to this … but I stumbled on an extremely easy way to use my old friend !important to get the job done with no muss or fuss.