How To Make a Web Site the Modern Way. Part 14: Formatting, Shorthand, Resets and Organization

We continue with our examination of CSS with some real basics- formatting, writing rules, organization and the like. Nothing groundbreaking, but the basics are important in any endeavor, so here they are. Formatting During development I format my CSS with selectors on one line and then each property on its own line. The declarations are […]

How To Make a Web Site the Modern Way. Part 13: The Cascade/CSS Specificity

One of the most important things in CSS is understanding the way rules are inherited and applied in the browser. This is one of those things that many developers “get” intuitively but don’t necessarily understand at a granular level. There’s actually an algorithm, so if you’re stumped, you can actually count it out. It works […]

Why Do I Like Web Performance? For One Thing, it’s Easier to Measure Success

One of the reasons I’m drawn to the performance side of the business is that it’s one of the few pieces of of your site or application where you can really know when you’re doing the right thing. There are a lot of questions that can run through your head during a site build. Is […]

How To Make a Web Site the Modern Way. Part 6: Best Practices for Common HTML Elements (IMG, A)

We’ll finish up our tour of the body tag with several posts featuring general notes about common content elements. I’ll be taking my time with these as getting this stuff right will go a long way towards getting the most out of your site. Comfy? On with it then. Links <a> The link is the […]

How To Make a Web Site the Modern Way. Part 4: The Body

The body is clearly going to take a while, since it contains all of the content on the page. I’ll be breaking it out into chunks. This first post will focus on how I use the body tag itself. I generally use the body tag to hold basic information about the page to use with […]