I was directed to this really nice CSS-based form by a colleague a few weeks ago and I’ve used it in three sites so far. I have in the past built a number of forms but this one looks nicer; I like that it provides an example of just about every type of input field you might need. Highly recommended.

I just read one fricking fantastic post by Andy Rutledge on web quality.

This is great - it defines the ongoing battle between designers who support web standards, and those who ignore/shun/berate them, as basically being a matter of semantics. That is, web standards are not about standardization or compliance, as some would maintain; web standards are really about the quality of web craft. ‘Standard’ is a high level of quality to strive for, not the confining destroyer of uniqueness in design that some would have us believe.

This is so simple and really gets to the heart of the matter, but I never thought of explaining it this way.

Andy also talks about the misuse of the search engines. Search engines being a completely essential tool for correctly organizing all that information on the web and being able to call it up - correctly - when that information is sought - this is the purpose of a search engine; like an enormous virtual card catalog. Andy says that it’s “irresponsible to hinder this worthy task” by viewing the search engines as only things to be manipulated or exploited for commercial or personal gain.

I highly recommend that all the web designers I know go read this article. Quality is what being a professional is all about!

I just got the new issue of BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine and read “No Geeks Required.” This article is all about those inexpensive, pay-by-the-month build-it-yourself websites offered by the likes of Yahoo, MSN, Homestead and a few others.

While small business owners may feel they’re getting a good deal by developing their own sites using these services rather than paying a professional web designer, what happens after their site launches?

Do any of those services consider the importance of optimizing sites for better free, not paid, search engine results? Do they stress the importance of adding fresh content regularly, or of making a site more accessible?

If a website can’t be easily found, or it shuts out potential customers, it’s not really benefiting a business, no matter how easy it was to build. The advice of a good web designer can contribute greatly toward helping a site become successful in the long run - especially after the launch.

And as far as charging super-high prices for the simplest of sites, or taking a month to make a simple edit to a site, that’s just an unfortunate choice of designer, in my opinion. I don’t do that and I know plenty of other professionals who don’t do it either.

I’m using an old (2002-2003?) Dell Dimension 2400 as my main work machine in lieu of my laptop. About a month ago, something started making a lot of noise, and through some investigation it seemed to be the PSU.

I bought a new one, a Thermaltake that was highly recommended on Newegg. I installed it and all was blissful silence - everything was nice and quiet.

The old PSU was the stock Dell, I think 250w, while the new one was 430w. Now I’m wondering if the new generated more heat than the old one? The 2400 case is very tight with little room for anything, and I have all the PCI slots (all three of them) filled with a wireless network card, NVidia GeForce 5200 graphics card, and Soundblaster Audigy card that I added about two months ago.

I also have two hard drives running in this case. It has 1g of RAM (also maxed out).

Monday the PSU (the new one) started making noise. All of my apps started really slowing down. Yesterday my computer shut down and checking the error log, I had a ‘thermal event’ associated with the CPU fan.

So… I have to get a new fan from Dell (which takes a week to ship). I put the old PSU back in this machine, it’s at least quieter than the new one, which I suspect is fried.

But I don’t know what’s going on. The CPU fan I’m replacing sounds fine, no bearing issues. A local computer guy checked it and said so too, but the only alternatives are (1) fried leads, requiring a new motherboard or (2) a fried processor.

Is the case overheating from the components I’ve installed? Could the extra heat from the bigger PSU caused the CPU fan to die? I just don’t know… I’m so tempted to just cancel the fan order, purchase a case and new motherboard with processors and have done with this machine. But I don’t know… I hate having to wait a week.

I’m now sitting here with the case open and a floor fan blowing air through it. It sounds like a wind tunnel in here; I’m just backing off the work I’ve done this week so I can restore it on my laptop while I wait for the fan that I don’t think is going to solve the problem.

I just wish I knew whether it’s the motherboard or not - that would save me at least the wondering about it until next week.

I don’t know about other designers out there, but when one of my clients has someone in-house that’s ‘helping’ with the site or installing backend interfaces and that kind of thing, it just makes me cringe when I get a page back that I carefully put together (indents and all) and find it triple-spaced with a nested table dropped right into the middle of my carefully written CSS.

If I reformat it, sure enough that works like a pheremone to bring the ‘editor’ back for more. Maybe to throw in a few more 3-deep nested tables just for fun.

Call me obsessive, but I like my super-clean, super easy-to-read code. When it gets mutilated even before the site launches, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I don’t like to think about what happens to it after I turn it over to them. That’s a nightmare I choose to avoid.

This happened to me this morning and I found a neat little trick on the Microsoft site to fix it: on the desktop rightclick and go to Properties> Settings. Change the color quality/color depth to any other setting, wait for it to do its thing, click No to go back to the original color setting and the icons should be back to normal.

I don’t know if this always works but it’s better than editing the registry if it’s an isolated incident.

web designer's tattoo

My IT pal sent me this one today. I’m kind of tempted.