Web Standards

Coding for IE6 = Progressive Enhancement

By Louis Lazaris / June 22, 2010 / 22 Comments

It was disappointing to see the unwarranted uproar that occurred in the comments of my article on Smashing Magazine on cross-browser CSS. But in retrospect, it was probably a good thing, because a more important (but related) issue was brought to light in the discussion.

At this stage in modern web design, all front-end coders should at least be familiar with (if not very capable of implementing into their projects) the concept of progressive enhancement. In most cases, we tend to associate progressive enhancement with JavaScript and CSS, and rightfully so, because those technologies help us layer our functionality in a way that makes a website accessible to as many people as possible.

But progressive enhancement isn’t just limited to what we accomplish with fancy Ajax, jQuery, and CSS3 — that’s just part of it (albeit a very significant part). I would like to take the Wikipedia definition of progressive enhancement just a little bit further. Here is the definition:

Will EOT Become the Standard for Font Embedding?

By Louis Lazaris / October 21, 2009 / 5 Comments

If you’re at all familiar with the various methods in use today to embed custom fonts in web pages (sIFR, Cufon, @font-face, etc), then you also may have heard of a font format called EOT. Well, if Microsoft has it their way, EOT will become the standard, allowing web developers — with permission from font vendors — to be free to use virtually any font in a text-friendly manner in their web pages.

So what is EOT, and how has Microsoft pushed to standardize this method? Embedded OpenType fonts are compact OpenType fonts designed by Microsoft for use as embedded web fonts. They are recognizable by their “.eot” file extension. By means of data compression and removal of superfluous data, EOT files are made small in size and include features that protect the fonts themselves from being copied and used in unauthorized ways.

The Ultimate Guide to Embedding Sound in Web Pages

By Louis Lazaris / September 18, 2009 / 8 Comments

This exhaustive article includes relevant links, best practices, and other useful resources that will enable all web developers to incorporate sound effects into their web projects in a manner that conforms to the latest in standards and best practices.

If you’re looking for a reference that you can bookmark and use for any project where you’re asked to include some type of audio clip into a web page — whether it’s MP3, MP4, WAV, WMA, and more — this is the article for you.

This is the one and only resource you’ll need to assist with all your audio-embedding needs.

10 JavaScript Quick Tips and Best Practices

By Louis Lazaris / July 1, 2009 / 18 Comments

Recently, a few blogs and tutorial sites have posted some really good articles on JavaScript tips and best practices, and I thought that was a good topic that could easily be expanded upon. So I put together a list of 10 fairly simple JavaScript tips and best practices of my own.

I tried to include stuff that was not mentioned in those other posts, but I’m sure there is a little bit of overlap. Keep in mind that these are brief tips and recommendations, so I don’t go into great detail about the reasons and such, but I may go into some of them in depth in future articles and tutorials.

In the meantime, please enjoy this list of tips, recommendations, and best practices for JavaScript coding.

25 Classic Web Design Articles That Significantly Impacted the Way We Code

By Louis Lazaris / May 27, 2009 / 9 Comments

Over the years there have been hundreds, if not thousands of articles published online that have each had a tremendous impact on the world of web development and design. Some have been truly memorable, and have remained quite relevant for years, and remain so today. Others have outlived their usefulness, but we remember them because of the impact they had on our code and on the way we think about web design.

Occassionally, while reading or doing research, I still stumble upon “classic” web design articles. So I thought it would be a great idea to list what I feel are some of the most important articles that have been published in the relatively short history of the web development industry.

Originally, I had started with the idea of listing 10 articles — but when I began the research, I slowly started to realize that was not going to do justice to this list. So I settled on 25. I think this is a good collection of some of the more significant articles that have been produced over the past 13 years or so.

Why IE6 is the Greatest Browser Ever Made

By Louis Lazaris / September 8, 2008 / 18 Comments

How would you react if I told you that I had released a piece of software on August 27, 2001 that was deemed (at the time) to be of high standards and quality by its users and reviewers, and that, although it is unstable and buggy by today’s standards, currently holds a 25% market share […]

SEO Rules vs. SEO Concepts

By Louis Lazaris / July 18, 2008 / 1 Comment

Often times, web development blog posts recite easy to understand, step-by-step instructions on how to optimize XHTML code for SEO. Generally, I think this is good. The fact is, web users have low attention spans, and usually the best way to get a message across is to state it simply in point form. But in order for developers and internet marketers to enhance their abilities over the long haul, more is necessary, as we’ll discuss. With this article I’ll show how online writers and readers alike can become part of a long-term commitment to making the web a better place to surf.

Must-Use Methods to Spam-Proof Your Email Address

By Louis Lazaris / June 25, 2008 / 3 Comments

Working for a busy web development & hosting company exposes me to the sad fact that well over 90% of website owners today do virtually nothing to protect themselves from email spam. Spam filters are good, and they’ve come a long way, but they are not the perfect solution — far from it. Even with a close to perfect spam filtering system in place (which never happens), users will still be inclined to waste time sifting through junk mail just to ensure that nothing was incorrectly filtered.

In this post, I’ll describe a few solid methods to ensure that your email address will not be harvested by “bots” or other automated programs that harvest emails from naive website owners.

Do You Comment Your DIVs?

By Louis Lazaris / May 25, 2008 / 2 Comments

Since I started working for my current employer, I’ve built a number of sites from scratch using CSS layouts. I’ve also had to work on older web sites built using older HTML methods. The good thing is, many of these sites have CSS-based layouts. The annoying part is that some of them suffer from divitis (i.e. too many nested <div> tags, in the same style as table layouts). In my view, if developers are going to use this style of layout, then they might as well use tables.