November 25, 2009

Reset your CSS

Ever wanted a website that looks the same in all browsers? Tired of fighting slimy monsters while searching for excellance? Do these differences in UL padding make your head explode? So it's time for you to apply some CSS Reset Magic.

When it relates to CSS reset, there's a bunch of literature, do's and don't's, faqs and howtos, so this one won't take us too long.

November 17, 2009

Progressive enhancement example: Language Selection

It's easy to get lost in the Internet while looking for information. It's one of its greatest points: There are thousands of millions of websites out there. Information is the key purpose of the net and nobody can deny it.

But, as in many other cases, quantity does not equal quality. Poor designed websites, too bloated, with many inlined styles or little semantics (if none), are begging for trouble: Their information have lost accessibility.

November 11, 2009

Frames without frames. AJAH selective insertion

And W3C said Let there be frames, and there was frames, and they were used (and abused) and it was good, and W3C said This is right (we're gonna deprecate them soon) and there was much rejoicing.

Is not new that web developers hate all that's made with frames. They're a burden nobody wants to carry, so confusing, so "nineties", so... well, deprecated, that's it. So you may think I'm just delving into the past. Frames, as we know it, are dissapearing into extinction but, the main idea, more or less, is still needed nowadays.

November 09, 2009

Refactoring code smell

I work every day with PHP, developing management tools for the company where I work, but when I accepted this job I was a pure noob in this language. In fact I was hired for some C++ programming, but soon my tasks evolved so that wherever there's code, I was there too. So, learning PHP was the logical evolution in this case.

As you can imagine, being a PHP developer fresh from the oven, I ended up committing many atrocities in my code. And now is when, with some more maturity and knowledge, I can detect, by sense of smell, where those design flaws are. It's a fact, bad code smells.