remake/remodel

nerdpile

The world continues to go to shit all around us. What are you going to do about it? Make something nice, I say, and play with your toys while you can; movies have taught me that they don’t fare so well during that first massive electromagnetic pulse that accompanies the detonation of a nuclear device. Celebrate the ephemeral, tinker with your web site, write a letter, trim the plants in your front yard, play some Zelda, fix my bike, Hoss.

I told Chris I would send him a couple web design-related links the other night, but then I thought it would be easier to just gather a ton of such links and post them here for anyone who’s bored. So. Some links. And when I say ‘web design,’ I’m talking about ‘design’ in the most liberal sense of the word, meaning ‘not like design at all.’

• The Color Blender. I had spent several days last fall painstakingly converting chomp to use XHTML and CSS, which later made the hated “Who had a baby boy?” color scheme possible. This was the tool I used to find all the blues that made Hoss cry.
• Squidfingers.com patterns. These are gorgeous. I hope somebody I know will use one or two.
• Guiltless image use. A clever technique for marking up graphical text logos so that they display appropriately for people who don’t use graphical browsers.
• Glish.com, Blue Robot, and Real World Style. Techniques and examples for CSS-based layout. CSS-based layout isn’t superior to table-based layout in all respects — most notably when compatibility is considered — but one nice thing is that the readability of your HTML markup improves tremendously, and all of the tricky bits are shunted off to your stylesheet. There’s a certain academic satisfaction, as well.
• ppk on Javascript. A thorough Javascript tutorial and reference.
• Bookmarklets and favelets. Bookmarkable Javascript programs that tend to be helpful when writing web sites.
• mod_rewrite tutorial. Mod_rewrite is an Apache module that allows for the seamless mapping of “real” URLs to “virtual” URLs. For example, using mod_rewrite, a particular song on shoplifters might be found at the URL http://www.spaceshipnofuture.org/shoplifters/song/1552/, though there is no /shoplifters/song/1552/ directory on the server; behind the scenes, the web server redirects a request for http://www.spaceshipnofuture.org/shoplifters/song/1552/ to the URL http://www.spaceshipnofuture.org/shoplifters/comments.php?id=1552&type=song. The advantage here is that I can change the underlying implementation of shoplifters in the future with no visible changes from the user’s perspective. I’m sorry, I’m from some alternate dork universe where this sort of thing is cool.
• Dive Into Accessibility. A 30-step program for making your site content accessible for those who are not blessed with perfect vision or dexterity. If you take these tips to heart, you’ll have your hands full, but consider it penance for making fun of Steven Hawking. Well worth reading.
• WWII timeline. I’d like to remind everybody that Holland, Norway, and Belgium surrendered first, and nobody gives them a hard time. Be nice to France.