Tag: Web Design

New Design = Almost Done!

It feels like it’s only been about a week since I moved to the new host. That’s the reason the new design is not yet live (not really a reason, I know). But it’s nearly finished. Below is a little teaser of what the design will look like, to whet your appetite (if you even have one for my blog!).

Once the design is live I will post an entry explaining how the design came about, sites that helped influence it and articles that helped make it a reality.

Till then…

~ Update ~

As you can see, the new design is live!

It’s just gone 12pm and I don’t have the energy to write up a detailed post about the design, so I’ll leave that until tomorrow :-)

Your Choice of CSS Book?

If you could only choose one CSS book for your shelf or library, which one would it be and why?

Below is some reference material to help aid in your decision :)

Web Standards & Doctypes?

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know enough about web standards. I’ve been designing web sites for several years and have known about web standards for only the last few years. In order to learn as much as possible about web standards I now read lots of Web Design blogs. Thankfully I’m learning more and more from those blogs. There’s always plenty of interesting posts on web standards, accessibility, usability, and the likes.

But what I don’t get is why there is the need for so many Doctypes. Can someone please explain it to me?

With all the talk about this site and that site conforming to Web Standards and this site and that site not conforming to web standards, why isn’t there anyone trying to simplify the situation?

Why isn’t there only two doctypes? One for standard compliant sites and one for non-compliant sites. In fact, why isn’t there only one doctype – a standard compliant one?

Why do we need three doctypes just for HTML 4.01, and three more for XHTML 1.0? What’s the rational behind this? I have honestly no idea, but hope that someone will impart their wisdom upon me and make me all the wiser :)

Upgrades

Today I upgraded Wired Vision’s copy of WordPress and Mint. Fortunately neither were too difficult. In fact, it took all of 20 minutes or so, to do both :)

Unfortunately, I still have several other scripts that have yet to be upgraded. Namely vBulletin (x2) and ArticleLive. That’s one drawback about running several sites :(

I’m pretty sure the vBulletin upgrades will go smoothly as I haven’t installed many plugins and haven’t hacked any of the code at all. Plus the fact that Jelsoft have put plenty of work into the upgrade process.

ArticleLive on the other hand is going to be a handful :( I had to do some extensive hacking of the source code to make Web Design Point standards compliant (even with it’s templating system!). This means I’m going to have to upgrade my local copy first, make all the neccesary changes (which will probably take a week minimum!) and then upgrade online using the changes made locally. Ugh!

Web Design Point Redesigned

Web Design Point (a site for web design articles) has been redesigned to comply with web standards (XHTML 1.0 Transitional). The layout is based on Layout 14 from the Layout Gala, with some minor tweaks to get the desired result.

The design has been in place for quite a while now, but I forgot to blog about it (coupled with the fact that I’ve had PC problems for about 8 weeks – sorted now!). The site in itself is still very young, and lots of articles still need to be added, so if you are interested in writing for Web Design Point please get in contact!

I’m looking forward to an influx of emails now, y’hear :D