Vos Virtual Network

Last Saturday, I started a Designing With Web Standards group on Facebook. You might be familiar with the book, by Jeffrey Zeldman, Designing With Web Standards. I’m happy to report that (as of this writing) over 600 members have joined in the first week, from all over the world.

Members are from the following countries, or regions: Australia, Belgium, Belize, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Haiti, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, UK, USA, Venezuela, etc.

Please join us as we are talk about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ECMA-script web standards in the Facebook discussion forum.

Tags: book, CSS, facebook, HTML, Web Standards

Started reading Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards, 2nd Edition today… More about this later…

Tags: CSS, How To, Web Standards

It’s Monday morning. I took a few aspirin for my back pain, but the CSS three column layout thing is still bugging me. So I did a little more reading over at saila.com, on the topic of CSS and HTML standards (eg. Tables vs. CSS) in web designs that actually work in real-world browsers, and pass (x)HTML validation and CSS validation tests. Craig Saila provides some HTML layout templates, CSS examples, and analysis of how they perform with various browsers. Craig also has nice annotated version of his v2 layout with discussion of browser quirks and hacks.

So, after doing a little more reading, my confidence level is up that my design goals will be achievable. And I hope to begin implementing my vvn.net homepage makeover using the new PHP templates I am creating.

Tags: CSS, HTML, layout, php, templates, validation, Web Standards, XHTML

Still looking for the perfect 3 column layout done correctly with web standards and CSS? Bob Easton has compiled a list of CSS based 3 column layouts, and provides some analysis. The CSS Discussion Group and Wiki (hosted by Incutio) has tons of great CSS information if you are getting serious about CSS (like I am trying to do.)

Boy am I on a goose chase today… and I hope I catch the one that lays the golden eggs! This research about CSS lead me over to Big John Gallant and Alex Robinson and the Position Is Everything website. Big John has a link over to a tool that generates a layout based on what you want and how you specify it. Alex and John talk about a lot of CSS bugs, and quirks in various browsers, as well as pitfalls to avoid as you continue in Search of the One True Layout.

Mark Newhouse has a nice three column layout (CSS and html design pattern) that also iplements a header and footer. (Wow - looks like he wrote this article back in 2002.) I have been doing layouts like this for years with tables, inside of tables, inside of tables… (Sounds like I am confessing my sins again — for not following web standards.) With the advent of Firefox 1.5, Opera 9, MS-IE 7, and NN7 - these things are changing.

Mark has not updated his Real World Style blog since May 5, 2005 — but as of this writing, most of the material is way ahead of where most people are at anyway.

Hey, a bunch of you lurkers are laughing at me, but when are you going to update your old web pages that have all that crufty old html junk, styles, and design patterns from 1995?

Tags: 3 column layout, CSS, design, HTML, style, templates, XHTML

This morning, I was looking at some cool multi-column CSS hacks over on glish.com. One of the articles talked about a makeover the author did for Noah Grey. I’ve been reading about the concept of doing a CSS and web-standards makeover since reading how Wired magazine did their makover about 4 years ago… So this is not a new concept for me. I really like the concept of following web standards. Normally I follow web standards for simple layouts… but then I fall back to using tables if some shlocky old browser will not behave… It’s just that everytime I try it, it works great for one or two browsers, and then some other browser really messes up the layout. (Feels like I am confessing my sins.) So over the past few years, I have studied the concepts of cascading style sheets ( CSS1 and CSS2 ) and web standards, and tried to find the perfect layout techniques to do 3-column layout — without tables inside of tables and all that old cruft.

I enjoyed the CSS articles from glish and I really like the new Noah Grey web-site because it is a really clean page layout and I think his music page is interesting (but I have never listened to any of the music, so can’t recommend it.) [Note: J.V. says be careful what you recommend.]
This also led to a couple nice articles and example layouts over at bluerobot.com, and the cool 3 column layout example.

So I’m getting ready to re-tool my vvn.net homepage with some cool new CSS tricks — but I also need to fix some broken RSS feeds and test with some more browsers. I’ll let you know when the major upgrade is complete.

Tags: 3 column layout, CSS, hacks, HTML, layout, Web Standards, XHTML