XHTML, HTML and the What Challenge?
July 8, 2005
In the interview "Ten questions for Russ Weakley," Weakly talked a bit about the "MIME type challenge" and gave references to a number of articles on the subject.
First CSS Design Postmortem
June 28, 2005
After a short absence due to being buried under, I'm back to say... I finally finished the beta version of my first all-CSS design for a client. Yay! I'm very proud and tired. Here are my initial thoughts about building a "real" CSS site for the first time.
A Mother's Prerogative
June 19, 2005
Although my husband and I aren't particularly religious, our kids attend a Jewish Day School. Recently, I went to pick up the kids in the afternoon as usual, and my 6-year-old's teacher pulled me aside.
"Do you know what your son and another boy were playing on the playground at recess today?" she asked.
Passion & The Writing Process (Part II)
June 17, 2005
After a day or two of thinking it over, I realize that saying "the process and mechanics of writing don't matter" isn't a very helpful or illuminating statement. Yes, the how, when and where of writing is not very important. Fascinating, maybe, especially with eccentric writers (but who's ever heard of one of them?), yet ultimately inconsequential. But there is more.
Voodoo & The Writing Process
June 15, 2005
I just stumbled across a discussion on "The writing process" on Roger Johansson's blog. I love discussions about writing, particularly when I don't want to write, and Roger's blog is always interesting. A lot of people responded with thoughtful details about their own writing processes. For other writers, this is fascinating reading. Of course, I started thinking about my own writing process, and I came up with some surprising conclusions.
Basecamp, New York & Other Totally Unrelated Things
June 9, 2005
I'm in New York for, of all things, an auction at Sotheby's (it's a long story involving my husband and a Babe Ruth contract, but I'm sure you, too, have had it up to the eyeballs with sports, so I'll just breeze by all that). For the out-of-towner, NYC is like a jolt from a giant defibrillator. Everything perks up and picks up the pace. You find yourself moving more quickly and even talking faster. They should re-nickname it The Big Java.
The Past Isn't Always Pretty
June 4, 2005
I am a designer with a past. A dark, secret, shadowy past of nested tables, inline font tags and spacer gifs. My past is littered with shamefully bloated sites built with disgracefully contorted HTML. I'd like to forget about that past. But what they say is true. The past does come back to haunt you.
Design 101 1/2: Fear & Panic
June 2, 2005
Yesterday was a lousy day. I fired up the computer, all prepared to get to work on the site I've been building for over a month. I took one look at the homepage flickering on the screen, and suddenly I recoiled in horror.