CollyLogic | Simon Collison's Illogical Waffle

Workshops For Web People

2nd August 2007

With Workshops For Web People, top quality, very affordable web design workshops have finally reached the East Midlands. With early-bird places priced at just £100, this stands up very favourably against the other more established workshop events we’re all familiar with. Although I don’t know exactly who our two new employees will be yet, we’ve already booked them onto this workshop, and I’m gonna pop along for the post-workshop drinkies…

#708 | 02/08/07 | CSS Inspiration Web design | More >

CSS Creative Design

31st July 2007

Hopefully you will thank me that I do not have time, energy or desire to write up my lengthy moans about the big Arctic Monkeys super-gig I attended at the weekend. Sufficed to say that the bands were excellent, as expected, and that most of my moans are to do with beer queues, my age and its importance at all-day gigs, and having hundreds of teenage girls shrilling the lyrics to Mardy Bum at Emma and I until our ears bled. At least the stage artwork was amusing. Nope, lets have a bit of self-promotional CSS-based news instead.

The Erskine Design and Erskine Corp sites are featured in a gorgeous new Japanese book CSS Creative Design. A few snaps of the book can be seen in this Flickr set.

Thanks to Kazumichi Takahashi for sending us a copy all the way from the other side of the world. What a nice person.

#707 | 31/07/07 | CSS Erskine Music | More >

The Dead Goods

25th August 2006

What do Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Jeff Buckley, Janis Joplin and Keith Moon have to do with CSS? That was the question I posed back in June.

Well, here is the answer. Hope you like it.

#636 | 25/08/06 | CSS | More >

Two books for Dvorak

7th August 2006

DVORAK / acronym:
Dismiss Vitriolically Opposing Reason And Knowledge.

Jeff, Dan, Ian and I are a little late here, but we have only just finished formulating our gift to John C. Dvorak.

#633 | 07/08/06 | CSS | More >

The end of CSS showcases

17th May 2006

It could be the end of an era. This week, Stylegala is for sale, and the Web Standards Awards site has now closed. I totally agree with this snippet from the WSA site’s closing statement:

Now we’ve arrived at a situation where beautiful sites with beautiful code are being produced by the hundreds; every month, every week, every day. It’s no longer a myth that you can produce a stunning site with Web Standards...

I couldn’t agree more. People have moaned that us Stylegala judges no longer post new entries in the gallery, but how can we? There are now thousands of CSS experts out there, all producing stunning designs, many of which are faultless under the hood. To choose one for the gallery is to ignore many others equally worthy of inclusion.
So, do we even need the CSS showcase galleries any more. Sites like Stylegala and CSS Beauty are still hugely popular and important, but perhaps only as purveyors of fresh and useful news. The galleries themselves are now little more than windows into a transitional era of web design. I think the time has come for showcase sites to diversify - and quickly - or die a death. They were important, inspirational, incessant, and we are all grateful for the role they played. That said, things move on.

#614 | 17/05/06 | CSS | More >

Peter’s Resizable Underlines!

14th November 2005

Previously I’d noted that Jonathan Snook had cracked the CSS Challenge. Well, whilst he certainly made headway and surpassed everyone else’s approaches, has he now been outdone? Check out what Peter has come up with! The guy’s not only cracked it, but he’s offered up several working examples and a very detailed explanation. Go visit Peter’s Resizable Underlines for the full skinny.

#531 | 14/11/05 | CSS | More >

Snook’s Resizable Underlines

31st October 2005

After much head-scratching over the CSS Challenge, finally a combination of methods from Ian Lloyd and Simon Willison (plus the input of quite a few other luminaries) led Jonathan Snook to get closer than anyone else. It’s not quite perfect yet, but today readers, I give you Snook’s Resizable Underlines.

#525 | 31/10/05 | CSS | More >

CSS Challenge: Come on, boffins!

28th October 2005

Today a colleague set me a CSS challenge that I just can’t meet. I can sort of achieve the desired effect with appalling markup and combined paragraph and unordered list styles, but that’s awful. Maybe one of you boffins out there can make it work, or maybe it’s just plain impossible. Here’s the skinny…

#524 | 28/10/05 | CSS | More >

Part 3: CSS showcases - be selected

24th August 2005

Right. In part one we discussed the showcases themselves, and in part two we had a go at the trolls. Most of the feedback seemed positive, and most of you agreed. Excellent.

So, to part three (phew! three articles in three days!) which may patronise some, but hopefully be a bit of a wake up call to those who have submitted their designs to the showcases, only to be continually rebuffed. As a reviewer, I constantly see the same mistakes being made in the markup and the CSS, and I note that many simple design principles are being ignored. I’m going to give you my personal hate-list, and tell you how to avoid making me close the browser window when I pull up your site from the submissions list. Following a few of these tips could just get you listed on one, two or all the showcases, so listen up!

#480 | 24/08/05 | CSS | More >

Part 2: CSS showcases - the trolls

23rd August 2005

So, in part one the showcase sites got a taste of their own medicine, and I don’t think I upset too many people. Think of our industry like the music industry - you create music, therefore you open yourself to criticism. Bands slag off other bands, critics slag off albums, bands get upset, but bands get stronger as a result (or maybe die a painful death). The web is no different, and to avoid complacency we need constructive criticism.

In this second part of this mini-series, I’m shifting my focus toward the community of commenters. I never cease to be amazed by the moans, groans and gasps of those that seek to pour scorn on the reviews that are always added in good faith. I’m talking comment trolls, false accusations, jealousy, inaccuracy and the damage this can do.

#479 | 23/08/05 | CSS | More >