Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Blog

  • Not So Minimal

    It’s official: My first (well, second really; see below) entry to Dave Shea’s CSS Zen Garden has been accepted: Not So Minimal

    My original submission was deemed too minimal for Dave’s anti-minimal policy — I don’t disagree with this judgement, though I still believe minimal design is as valid a style as any other. “Not So Minimal” is the result of a few extra hours spent with my original design, adding some color and the obvious abstract image composite for the header.

    I’m working now on a few more designs, this time with different goals (more fluid designs, less grid-like layouts, etc.) — they should be ready in a few weeks (work permitting), and we’ll see how they fare once submitted.

  • Zeldman’s DWWS Mini-site Bug

    If you check out Zeldman’s Mini-site for Designing With Web Standards with IE 5/Mac, you will notice a few differences when compared to the same site viewed in just about any other current browser: the secondary navigation (an unordered list displayed inline) aligns the text to the left, and each button’s clickable area is restricted to the link text, not the entire visible area of the button.

    I figured I could fix this, without requiring a new version of IE 5/Mac, and so I tinkered a little: Zeldman: DWWS BookSubNav Bug Fix.

    The fix above reduces the navigation to just the UL and its parent DIV, and in my testing it works in all browsers except Opera 6 (which breaks when viewing Zeldman’s original layout anyway).

    What did I do to fix the issues? I simply added a <span> to the button text, like so: <span>Home</span>

    That’s it! Now the buttons display properly on all browsers, since this addition does not alter the way the other browsers render the CSS.

    I’ve sent the changes off to Zeldman, so hopefully this post will soon be rendered obsolete.

  • Microsoft & AOL; IE Updates; State of the Web Browser

    Lots of web-related news has appeared in the last week, noteably Microsoft’s deal with AOL and Microsoft’s decision to cease development of a standalone version of IE.

    The combination of these two news bites in the same week has caused some panic in web development circles, specifically among those developers who actually care about the user experience, and who would prefer to see standards-compliant web browsers lead in the percentages.

    Some smart folks are talking over at Web-Graphics, and some interesting ideas are being born…

    Also: do not miss Dave Shea’s commentary.

  • Zen Inspiration

    I’ve been inspired by Douglas Bowman’s submission to the CSS Zen Garden — Golden Mean is an excellent example of what can be done with CSS and some good design skills (not that the other selections are terrible, quite the contrary; however, Douglas’ entry is absolutely stunning in my opinion).

    I had been holding off putting a design together for the Garden, primarily because I’m already putting too many hours into non-profit projects (hmm, my bank account balance only has 3 digits before the .00 — is that bad?), but now I’m determined to put my skills to work — I can’t outdesign Mr. Bowman, but I’ll do my best to contribute to the project and its purpose.

    I’ll post updates when the design is complete.

  • On the Nightstand

    I try to stay away from simply publishing lists, however the following are causing me great enjoyment (personal and professional) at the moment: