Web Design Blog
How to fix z-index stacking in Internet Explorer
October 26th, 2009 by Dustin BrewerHaving trouble with elements (divs, tables, ul, lists, etc) stacking incorrectly in only IE6 and IE7? Your issue is relatively (pardon the pun) easy to fix without going too far out of your way to fix the issue. This issue has been around for awhile but I feel it is something that should definitely be out there, despite the fact we are talking about going back 8 years (nearly 9) with IE6. They even carried the z-index issue over to IE7. Fortunately the CSS issue is now fixed in IE8 (in standards mode) so we don’t have to worry about fixing it for the newest version of Internet Explorer.
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Popular fonts with their Mac OSX, Windows and Linux equivalents
April 3rd, 2009 by Dustin BrewerKnowing the different versions of fonts is important when writing your CSS because you want to ensure that your visitors will be able to not only see the same, or a similar font, but also that they are viewing it correctly on their native OS (operating system). Creating CSS font fall backs is a simple portion of writing CSS but I have noticed that some overlook making sure that they create font fall backs in their stylesheet that incorporate Windows, OSX and Linux. I’m also guilty of this at times.
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CSS fix for the double margin float bug in IE6
June 17th, 2008 by Dustin BrewerThere are several well known bugs that affect only Internet Explorer 6 that can wreak havoc on your websites. One of the most annoying is the double margin float bug in IE6, simply if you float a block level element to the left it will double the margin you have applied to the element and most of the time break your site entirely in a strange way.
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How to create a good looking form without tables, using CSS
June 10th, 2008 by Dustin BrewerThere are a lot of different attempts that we have all made over the years to master the quirky art of creating an aesthetically pleasing form. The trouble is being able to control the form and have your labels and inputs match up nicely without going to too much work. We’ve all made a form in tables, regrettably. For some this has been the only option due to restraints from CSS or frustration with cross-browser compatibility.
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CSS Naked Day 2008
April 9th, 2008 by Dustin BrewerCSS Naked day is the day that sites shed their CSS that makes our sites look good to show how seperatation of presentation and structure is so important in web design. To find out more about CSS Naked Day visit http://naked.dustindiaz.com
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Creating a photo gallery in CSS without tables
March 31st, 2008 by Dustin BrewerI have received several emails recently about creating galleries with CSS. Most people still use tables to create your basic image gallery in CSS. There is a much simpler way to do this with a list and some very easy CSS. Depending on what you want to do with your photo gallery you may want to have a caption or more information available on the page. This simple method can be expanded for use on staff pages or real estate sites to list houses for sale.
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How you can better organize your HTML with comments
March 12th, 2008 by Dustin BrewerThere are a lot of different ways to organize your HTML to ensure that others, and yourself, are able to easily navigate their ways around your code. One of the best methods for helping to order your code for others is using comment tags to show where certain tags end. The best tag to use this for are divs, at the end of each div assigning a <!-- divName --!> to show that it is ending here can help others to understand what is going on and where it is ending within code. This becomes even more helpful when you are dealing with dynamic sites (as most of us strictly deal with), especially those in content management systems.
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The best free web development add-ons for IE 6 and 7
January 21st, 2008 by Dustin BrewerWe have all used the great Firefox extensions that make our lives easier, there are thousands of lists out there of the top 10-15 Firefox extensions for web developers. There is of course a lot of resistance from web developers against using Internet Explorer because of its lack of standards support. A lot of this is carried over from IE 6 being so fundamentally broken at rendering web pages with CSS. There are always time though when we need to test web sites in IE6 or IE7 and just like we use our extensions for development in Firefox— it is a huge help to have add-ons installed for Internet Explorer that will allow us to do our job more effectively.
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Why web standards are important in web design
January 7th, 2008 by Dustin BrewerThere is a lot of talk amongst designers about why web standards are important, sometimes it is a bragging point to say that you know a lot about CSS and HTML and can make a good site within standards. Some of it is just a line to make whatever you are doing sound better. I hear a lot of local Oklahoma web design companies talk about web standards but for the most part I see some of them still designing in tables or not even getting the bare minimums in when it comes to web standards.
This article is going to be directed at web design firms, web design clients and web designers everywhere. The importance of web standards is more then just something to say, it is the way the web should be designed. There is more then just passing an HTML or CSS validator when it comes to standards. Even so there is more to making a site pass coding standards, accessibility being the primary objective. Accessibility is usability, it isn’t just about disabled it is about ensuring that your site will work from the time it is published until the end of time if it needs to. I’ll go over different web standards and accessibility guidelines and how they can be implemented, used and maintained better then just exporting a document out of Adobe Photoshop or throwing together an insane unaccessible image map.
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CSS Image replacement technique
January 7th, 2008 by Dustin BrewerThere are a lot of reasons that you would want to replace simple text with an image. One of the biggest reasons is the benefit of getting the text that is within the image for search engines. This method is used mostly for site headings. Say you were making a site about “Freelance Oklahoma Web Design†you would want to be sure to include that in your first H1 but you don’t want to use plain text to do it. So you would be creative and ensure that you are getting the same information that is within your fancy image into your heading tag. This way you can ensure that your site topic is best read by search engines without losing any of your design benefits of creating custom imagery for your design comp.
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About Dustin Brewer
Dustin Brewer is a freelance web designer based out of Oklahoma City, OK passionate about web standards, and beautiful web design. Dustin Brewer has been in the web design industry for over 8 years through freelance and professional experience. If you are interested in hiring Dustin Brewer please visit the web design services page to find out more information. You can also checkout the web design portfolio.
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