After a good deal of consideration over the last year or so, I’ve finally decided to take a measurable step toward an IE6 free lifestyle. I’ve been waiting for, and trying to anticipate, the “right time” to stop designing for IE6 as part of my normal process. I think that time is finally here (for me anyway) with last week’s release of IE8. This step away from IE6 is a little complicated from a business perspective because several of my clients require support for IE6. Even though I don’t like it (and in some ways don’t understand it), I do acknowledge that the need for IE6 support is real and important to these clients as well as their customers/users and that it cannot realistically be ignored. Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a compromise, doesn’t it? I thought so too. The compromise is this: new clients will continue to be offered support for IE6, but at an additional cost. Existing clients will continue to enjoy IE6 support (as per norm) until such time as their website realizes a major redesign, at which point IE6 support will require additional cost. I feel like this is a reasonable way forward that will help smooth the transition away from IE6 and toward arguably better browsers while rewarding existing clients for their loyalty over the years and providing them with options for consideration as their websites continue to grow and evolve.

Getting my head wrapped around the idea that Digital Web Magazine will not be publishing in the way we’ve become so accustomed to has been a struggle. I keep thinking they’re just on holiday and things will get back to normal soon – wishful thinking. It’s been a regular read and resource for me for a long time and although I understand the situation, I’m sorry to see the change. Thankfully, the site will be alive, accessible and curated for the foreseeable future. Nice to know we’ll have it around to refer to and remember the good ‘ol days.

After spending a full day working with Firefox 3 in conjunction with Firebug 1.2.0 Beta, I have formed some initial qualitative impressions. Overall, Firefox 3 feels like an upgrade over the previous version of the browser. It seems snappier and more responsive and in general I am getting used to the new skin fairly quickly. The new Firebug beta is definitely still a beta (more…)

In the spirit passing along some of the web design and development tools that I just couldn’t live without, I wanted to mention another plugin that works great with Firefox that is created by Chris Pederick – The Web Developer Toolbar. This is another one of those amazing little gems that has been around for quite a while and has proven to be invaluable to me for both getting work done on a daily basis and learning from time to time. The toolbar has a ton of useful features that can be life savers during the design process. There are options which allow you to, among other things, very quickly enable or disable images, css, and javascript, precisely resize the browser window, quickly validate code (HTML and CSS), and even outline various elements right in the browser window to graphically see how a document is built. (more…)

Needless to say, Firebug is not new news these days. It’s been around, widely used, and in my opinion, very excellent for quite some time now. Occasionally, I have found Firebug to be a handy tool for deconstructing and understanding Web pages that have been mysterious to me in terms of their functionality or design. Historically, Firebug has not been a primary tool in my daily workflow, but rather a little gem that I employ every now and again when I need it (kinda like decaf coffee – admit it – you know what I mean). (more…)

This may be old news to some of you, but I thought it worth a mention nonetheless. I found an excellent online reference for standards aware designers. Sitepoint has published nicely organized HTML and CSS references worthy of bookmarking. If I understand correctly, they will be bringing developers into the fold before too long with a Javascript reference as well (at the time of this writing the Javascript reference is not yet published but I believe I have the url correct). I am finding that an online reference is much less disruptive to my workflow than a trusty reference book. Its lighter too carry too! Hope this benefits somebody out there.

On the long journey back to Florida from Hawaii, I found myself trying to enjoy a seemingly endless layover in Atlanta. Thankfully, I had decent connectivity to the Edge network via my iPhone so I was able to read some of my favorite sites and surf a bit. As much as I love my iPhone, I can only stare at it for so long before I have to look at something bigger. I opted to look at a big cup of coffee, yum! While sipping away at my newfound, delicious, scalding hot beverage, I got to thinking about how convenient and nice it was that the coffee cup had one of those little cardboard sleeves on it so that I could accomplish the simple task of holding the beverage without discomfort to my hand. Simple and effective. Shortly after that, I was sitting at the gate waiting for my next (and thankfully last) flight when an airline employee wheeled up the wheelchair pictured (ok, it didn’t actually have a PixelLevel logo on it) above. That got me thinking about how nice it was that we have things like wheels attached to chairs and ramps to help people who need a little help getting around. Again, simple and effective. I was beginning to see a theme here which got me thinking about web standards and specifically about web accessibility. It was a reminder to me that as web designers and developers we need to be mindful and remember that we too have our own cardboard coffee cup sleeves and wheelchairs and ramps (metaphorically speaking) that we need to use in our daily work in order to make the web sites we build useable by everyone.

The folks over at Panic have done it again with their new–ish web design and development application called Coda (for Mac OSX only – sorry Windows users). Coda is really sort of like a swiss army knife in that it has a number of slick little tools built in and they all work pretty well. (more…)

I am very excited to have recently been approved as an Authentic Jobs affiliate member. For those of you not familiar with Authentic Jobs, in short, it is a place where web standards–savvy designers and developers seeking employment can get connected with with employers who are web standards aware. It is a tremendous resource for job seekers as well as job providers and I am very happy to be on board.

@media 2007 America was quite a show and it seems like a good time was had by all. With any luck, the conference was enough of a success that it will be feasible to bring it back to the United States again next year at some point – I really hope so anyway. The venue was excellent (even though there were some pretty serious renovations going on in the hotel at the time) as were the talks and the panel discussion(s). It was really fun to make some new friends and get to meet and speak with some of the best thinkers in the Web standards community. (more…)