Tag: web design

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Web development

Fyrdility 2.0

Picture of new designFyrdility has a new design. Hope you like it!

I actually took some time with this one, rather than just incrementally making changes as I had before. I’m likely to still tweak it here and there, but I’m happy with the overall design as it is right now.

The design uses the same basic colors as the last one, while being (hopefully) more visually appealing. There’s also less experimentation (currently no border-radius or SVG background image), since I wanted to keep most features cross-browser compatible. However, IE6 support is gone, as you may have suspected from all the alpha-transparent PNGs. As my IE6 visitor usage is under 2%, it’s a privilege I am thankfully able to afford.

Note that future changes/additions will likely see more SVG/CSS3 features, since I am a big believer these technologies as well as the use of progressive enhancement. I just want to make sure I put them to proper use, and not just for sake of it (as I have been guilty of before).

I’d also like to add more interface improvements, as I love working with jQuery and improving the visitor experience. The biggest challenge I suspect is to find a way to improve things for visitors that are already used to standard blog/website conventions. I myself am not a fan of new features on sites that should make the experience better, but end up just confusing me or that give a sense of disorientation.

Your feedback is appreciated, especially let me know if you notice any accessibility issues or you feel your experience could be improved somehow.

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Web development

Direct URLs to browser support table selections

The “When can I use…” page now makes URLs based on selections. For example, I made the following links:

Just selecting the options at the top of the page will immediately generate the URL.

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Web development

When can I use…

Preview of the 'When can I use' page

A few weeks ago I was trying to find out which browser supported exactly which experimental feature, be it CSS3, HTML5, or something else. I found a couple of useful pages, but nothing quite as detailed as what I was looking for. Since I enjoy graphs, charts, and showing the world how much IE6 really sucks, I went ahead and made what I was looking for.

Thus was born the “When can I use…” page, which shows tables of a variety of current and upcoming web technologies. For all major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome), versions for four different eras (past, present, near and far future).

The page can be customized to show only certain browsers/features/eras, so you have the option to ignore lesser used browsers or for that matter the most used one (it’s a lot of fun to pretend Internet Explorer doesn’t exist). I’ve also included a summary at the bottom of the page, which shows what percentage of the displayed features are supported.

Most features were tested myself, to ensure that the information is accurate. Please let me know if you notice any mistakes. Keep in mind that a “supported” feature may not actually work 100%, as well as the fact that some of the specifications are not set in stone yet, so what may be supported today may not actually work in the future. However, it is likely that in most cases the browser will update its support as the spec changes.

The feature list includes anything I personally feel is of significant use to web designers, but still lacks support in at least one browser version. I am open to adding more features, but only if it’s of significant importance and not just a detailed subset of another feature.

I intend to update the page as new browsers are released, or at the very least once a year. Due to its popularity, the page is updated as soon as new information becomes available.

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Opera blog post Web development

IE8 beta 1 first impressions

Anyone who cares has heared that IE8 beta 1 has just been released, with quite a bit of documentation.

Mark “Tarquin” Wilton-Jones offers a pretty good overview of the changes. Many are good, and I’m especially happy with the Acid2 support and the decision to make the IE8 rendering mode the default. It is also important to note that there is still “much more” expected in beta 2.

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