There 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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Popularity: 10%

We all know the blood, sweat and tears we have put into countless hour of development specifically for Internet Explorer 6 since August of 2001. Now it looks like we may be coming to battle with another problematic browser from software giant, Microsoft. The IE8 team is deliberately making up their own rules again and now adhering to the organizations involved with standards even though they are (seemingly) active members of the respective groups. You would think that with the budget that the team has to develop a decent browser that they would be able to product something worth-while. Unfortunately for the rest of the world that because IE comes pre-installed on Windows machines most consumers don’t know the difference.
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Popularity: 9%

When it comes to voting for the future president of the United States, or even for the primary election to choose which candidate your party will choose, the decision can be difficult. There is health care, the war in Iraq and the economy amongst major issues for the 2008 presidential election. One of the major issues probably isn’t whether their web site’s design looks good or has valid code. However, most of us visiting this web site are probably at least curious. I know I am. I would totally run a poll to see who thought which web site’s design was best amongst the presidential candidates— but we all already know who has an obsessed and loyal following on the internet. Needless to say, the results would be a little skewed.
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Popularity: 15%

It is rare to come across a tool that works across all of these browsers but it looks like there is one that can be very helpful. It is a lot like Aardvark meets the Web Developer toolbar. The tool is called XRAY and it is a bookmarklet that you can drag to your links toolbar in order to click and activate it on any web site you want. The tool works by you activating it and then selecting an object on the web page you are on. Once you have selected the object it will give you information about the position, width, height, float, border, margin and padding as well as the exact height and width of the object you have selected while highlighting the entire object. A very handy addition to your web development arsenal.

Popularity: 9%

I don’t have much to say on this topic yet because I haven’t even gone over it much. Check it out though if you are interested in some specs and general information about the future of HTML5. The HTML5 Working Draft for January 22, 2008.

Popularity: 11%

I consider myself one of those people that monitor 100s of RSS feeds daily and actually read a large portion of the articles I see a day. So when it comes to using a feed reader, you need it to be very good at what it does. At one point I used Opera’s built-in reader but with the amount of feeds I had it wasn’t running very fast and so I ditched it. Firefox is the same way, I can’t use their live bookmarks or feed reader extensions because I already bog it down too much with extensions.

I’ve gone through all of the RSS feed readers I can find online, I can’t use the feed readers that are local software because I need to be able to access my feeds from work, home and on the go with my Treo. It is also handy for when I am using my laptop at Coffee shops and Cafes. So using an online-based service is paramount to me when it comes to making a decision for RSS and Atom feed readers. So here is my list of my favorite online feed readers.

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Popularity: 14%

There are a lot of job boards out there that can help freelance web designers find work, a lot of them aren’t very good and you can find some clients that expect to pay pennies for hours worth of potential work. The problem you will mostly find is that a lot of people that post jobs on job boards aren’t expecting to pay much. I have compiled a list of freelance job boards for web developers that will allow you, the freelance web designer, to find work that actually pays good enough to be worth your time. Contact me, however, if you are looking for a freelance web designer.

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Popularity: 49%

Twitter isn’t exactly new but there are a lot people that see it as a waste of time when it comes to marketing or even using. Used incorrectly it can be a very big waste of time, not to say that it can’t be entertaining or useful for communication and amusement. There is more then the straight-forward aspects of Twitter though. The social network can be used as a great marketing and even networking tool for you and your blog.

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Popularity: 48%

Ian Hickson has announced on his web site that he is running a contest to come up with some great JavaScript (EMCAScript 3) tests for ACID3. Ian has set aside some criteria for the test that need to be followed but once you think you meet the requirements and feel the test is effective he has requested you email it you him. Currently there are about 84 sub tests and Ian is shooting for an even 100 subtests, so there is a lot of room for some good browser tests.

1. The test must consist of the body of a JavaScript function which returns 5 when the test passes, and which throws an exception otherwise. It doesn’t matter what kind of exception.
2. The test must compile with no syntax errors in Firefox 2, IE 7, Opera 9.25, and Safari 3. (You can use eval() to test things that are related to syntax errors, though.)
3. The test must not crash any of Firefox 2, IE 7, Opera 9.25, and Safari 3.
4. The test must fail (throw an exception) in either a Firefox trunk build from January 2008 or a Webkit trunk build from January 2008 (or, ideally, both). (Opera and IE are failing plenty of tests already, I don’t want to add more tests that only fail in one of those. Of course if you find something that fails in Firefox or Webkit and Opera or IE, so much the better.)
5. The behaviour expected by the test must be justifiable using only standards that were in the Candidate Recommendation stage or better in 2004. This includes JavaScript (ECMAScript 3), many W3C specs, RFCs, etc.
6. You must be willing to put your test into the public domain. (I don’t want us to end up with any copyright problems later!)

Popularity: 53%

There have been some great posts over this past week from all over. It really can take quite a bit of effort to sort through the articles you read and receive through email to pick out the best to share. There are always a dozen more articles that I think should be included in my weekly list but these are the ones for the week I found most interesting and applicable other web designers and web professionals.

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Popularity: 65%