Jon has a good piece on @font-face, and specifically how to make it work in both IE and other browsers. Great stuff. Visit site »
This seems like such a smart, elegant, simple solution to targeting browsers with CSS - I’m surprised no one thought of it before. Visit site »
A nice selection of CSS filters for many of today’s browsers. While I certainly advocate avoiding these kinds of hacks whenever possible, there are times when you really do need them. Via Inman. Visit site »
Dave chimes in on a topic that is very relevant to me lately. He says:
I wonder whether designing around scaling text is still a skill we need to hold on to, and for how long.
I also wondered aloud whether we still need to be using relative unit for type in my typography talk in Sydney a couple weeks ago, and the Twitter haters came out of the woodwork to say that I didn’t care about accessibility and and I was “not thinking about about my fellow man.” It’ll be interesting to see how they react when Dave wonders the same thing. Visit site »
Some really, really nice additions and changes to both the functionality and design of my favorite browser debugging tool. Visit site »
Microsoft is moving all their proprietary CSS extensions to the -ms- namespace for IE8. Glad to hear it! Visit site »
Firefox 3 gets big kudos for its incorporation of kerning and basic ligatures in the new version of the browser. However, these improvements are negated by the fact that it also enables discretionary ligatures by default, which is likely to destroy the look of pages rendered in certain typefaces. Visit site »
Safari is probably the most reliable browser out there when it comes to rendering things as a standards-aware developer would expect, but there are those rare times when you need to target it specifically with some unique rules. For those cases, this article will point you in the right direction. Visit site »
Talk about scratching your own itch… Visit site »
Oh man, this looks sweet. I’ll say it again: the WebKit team is totally doing the right thing here by continuing to innovate with these new features. Dear WebKit: web designers everywhere thank you! Visit site »
The new Safari build includes several items of interest to cutting-edge web designers and developers: CSS animations, HTML 5 audio and video elements, and downloadable fonts. Visit site »
Chris Wilson and his team at Microsoft release a “readiness toolkit,” for IE 8, which includes (among other things), a beta of the application and a new debugging tool long the lines of Firebug. Nice.
As of today, the Web Standards movement is over. We won. Visit site »
“We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can.”
So there you have it. This should make a lot of standards-oriented developers happy, as it makes out jobs easier. I think this is the right move by Microsoft, although I never could quite figure out very firmly where I stood on the whole topic. At the very least, it prove MS is listening to the developers, and that can only be a good thing. Visit site »
Eric shares a story about a time in his days at Mozilla when they were faced with a similar situation to that which led Microsoft towards version targeting.
I feel sorry for the guys on the IE team. Having talked to a few of them personally about this, I know they’re smart people who want to do the right thing for the web. But the right thing, for Microsoft, is not necessarily the same as the right thing for the web. They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, and they’re trying to make the best of it. Debate the pros and cons of Microsoft’s version targeting proposal all you want, but do keep in mind that these are genuinely good people, working hard at bringing IE up-to-par with web standards (no easy task, as far behind as it had gotten). They’re not the evil Microsoft borg — they’re regular people. They’re doing the best they can in a no-win situation — give them a bit of a break. Visit site »
James Bennett talks again about X-UA-Compatible (Microsoft’s IE8 version targeting mechanisim). This one is funny, and probably accurate — but it still doesn’t make me get that up in arms over the fact that I have to add a meta tag to my documents. Even if I have to do something similar again in a few years with MS releases IE9, I’m not that upset about it. Why? One, because getting up set isn’t going to change anything, and two, because in the time it takes people to write ALA articles about this stuff, I could re-jigger 150 sites for IE8 and move on with my life. To put it bluntly: I disagree with with MS is doing, here, but not passionately enough for me to spend a lot of time fretting over it. Visit site »
Jeremy and Jeffrey have a bit of a shoot-out regarding the IE version targeting mechanism in the latest ALA. For what it’s worth, I come drown more on Jeremy’s side of this one — the version targeting was a good idea; defaulting to the IE7 rendering engine was not. But, I also think this is ultimately not that big a deal. All we have to do is add a single meta tag to our documents, and all is well. No, we shouldn’t have to, but we do, and it will take us no time at all to do it. I just don’t see this as the end of the world. The only part I disagree with Jeremy on is that MS’s plan is “doomed to fail.” It’s not. Yes, people will object to adding the meta tag, but they’ll do it anyway, because the alternative is writing pages for the IE7 rendering engine. Visit site »
For anyone trying to make sense out of the whole IE8 X-UA-Compatible nonsense, James Bennet's explanation is almost certainly the most well-thought out and easy-to-understand one you're going to find. I now have an opinion on this matter. I'm with James: X-No-Thanks.
But even though I have an opinion, it’s not a very strong one. Why? Because, quite frankly, I’m just not that interested. If X-UA-Compatible lands in IE8, I'll suck it up and spend 20 minutes putting the tag in all my sites, toss a few more curse words Microsoft's way, and move the fuck on. Ultimately, for those of us doing standards-based work, this isn't that big a deal. If we're doing things right, and this actually happens, it means we have to put one measly meta tag in our code form now on. Big f’ing deal.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t ever happen, though. Visit site »
Here’s to innovation among browser makers! Nice work, WebKit. Mozilla and Opera, where you at? Visit site »