A while ago, I tried my hand at creating pixel patterns for tiling backgrounds, and submitted them to k10k’s pattern repository. Recently, I came across a terrific site using one of my patterns, and showing it off to fantastic result. The personal site of Jeff Croft uses one of my pixel patterns twice, and the result is wonderful. His site is very well designed, and one of the nicest blog designs I’ve seen.
Check it out, and leave him a nice comment or two about the patterns ;-)
The talented Andy Budd has created the latest CSSZenGarden design, and it’s a real winner in my book. And my opinion has nothing to do with the fact that Andy credits my Garden design as partial inspiration (for the heading styles).
I really enjoy Andy’s use of color, as well as his logo for the Garden, and it’s inspired me to complete work on my second and third CSSZenGarden submissions, which have been sitting idle long enough. I might even make an attempt at a cool looking logo myself, to join the ranks of Mr. Budd and Mr. Hilhorst.
The CSSZenGarden continues to be a dynamite display of the flexibility of CSS design, and a good challenge for designers to boot.
This is a bit disturbing, but not completely surprising. Some issues have arisen regarding the reuse of designs submitted to the CSS Zen Garden. These issues have not been brought to the fore by the designers (who are all, I believe, 100% behind Dave Shea on this project, its goals, and the particular issue at hand), but rather by an “individual” who decided to copy a few of the designs for his own distribution, and only thought to ask if it was OK after the fact.
I made quite a lengthy post in the comments of Dave’s entry, so rather than re-post my thoughts here, I’ll let you read them in context.
The results are in for my Sidebar Redesign Contest.
Although the response was a little under whelming, I like a lot about each of the three submissions (a bonus for each designer: there are three prizes, so everyone wins :-) and have decided to incorporate parts of each into the sidebar of this site (each winner will get a mention in the source of the sidebar, and the Grand Prize winner will get a link in the sidebar).
Without further ado, I proudly present:
Each winner has been notified via email of the results, along with their TypePad 20% Discount Codes. I plan to implement the changes throughout this week, and possibly into the weekend, and will post a short note when the new sidebar is live. My guess is that regular readers will appreciate the changes, especially the extra separation of the section headings (as seen in two of the entries).
A big thanks to Brad, Kjell and Hadley for entering, and not allowing the contest to slip by unnoticed. Your entries are terrific, and will make this site even better than before!
If you haven’t checked out The Old Technology Giveaway, you are missing some great collections of techno-stuff. Of note so far: Grant, Emilio, Tim and Dave.
The deadline for submissions to Sidebar Redesign is near (the 31st of this month) — if you have any suggestions at all, any ideas, or if you just desperately want those TypePad discount codes, submit something. Anything. Be creative. Heck, redesign my logo if you want; at this point, I’d rather hand over those codes to someone who will use them, than let the entire contest be a flop. Experimentation is the name of the game…
In other news, Dan Cederholm has launched a series of quiz questions to generate discussion regarding web standards, semantics and the various methods employed by developers when writing markup. It’s worth a look, especially Sunny’s comment, which nails it right on the money (you’ll need to scroll for it though: Dan has yet to provide permalinks for each comment). I’m looking forward to the next quiz already.
There has been quite a bit of discussion lately (Jason, Dan, Doug, Dave, Jeffery) regarding the difference between valid markup and semantic markup. I find it interesting that something I have taken for granted since I began my transition from tables-based design to XHTML/CSS should suddenly be the topic of the week. After reviewing the thoughtful opinions of the authors listed above, as well as the comments from many other developers and designers, it is clear that there are many “right ways” when it comes to the concept of semantically rich markup, which makes the discussion worthwhile.
While this site is not a perfect example, I have been working to improve the semantic qualities of the markup for quite a while. There are still some things that are not as I would like (the primary navigation, for example), but I have used the current design (version 2) to build on what I learned from version 1. New projects are even more semantically correct (it’s always easier to start with a clean slate than to fix in place what is already broken), and I’m beginning to think this site is ready for Version 3: The Semantic One.
As I commented on Dan’s post, I believe responsible designers will find their way to more semantic markup on their own. Granted, books like Designing With Web Standards and Speed Up Your Site (both are currently on my nightstand) should almost be required reading for any web designer, and there is no question in my mind that reading both will make any developer better at what they do, but there is so much information available to help guide developers and designers through the transition to XHTML/CSS that their markup will naturally become more and more semantically rich.
It’s all about being comfortable: Designers have to focus on design first, which means leaving semantics (a somewhat intimidating subject to begin with) alone until they are comfortable with writing valid XHTML and CSS, and have left table-based positioning behind entirely. This is where XHTML and CSS validation is a good thing: it provides positive reinforcement to designers making the transition; for many, those “dumb” validation apps might be the only encouragement they receive (especially for in-house developers).