Distractions

Links and articles from around the web related to website design and development.

• BabyFilter Staging Site The staging site for my ExpressionEngine series of articles has moved. Please update your bookmarks.
• A List Apart Changes Course Not that it is really news- their scope has been gradually changing for months. Still the authority on web standards and CSS.
• McCain vs. Obama - The Website Debate Funny and interesting analysis of the candidates' website technologies.
• Sequel Pro A new, free OSX GUI for MySQL (and soon other db's). Seems more stable and better looking than its ancestor, CocoaMySQL.
• Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is Available In related news, I hear Darth Vader coming. Thankfully.
• Ubiquity This could signal a very big change in the way people search the web. I'm excited about this line of thinking. Be sure to view the video.
• Jeremy Keith Liveblogs AEA San Francisco I really ought to be there instead of reading about it online. Alas, budgets prevented me from driving down for the event.
• Clever Andy Sell designs that your clients pass on. A unique concept to make a little cash on designs that would otherwise languish in your file system.
• Hidden Costs of Running a CMS Paul Boag posts some interesting thoughts on content management systems.
• Which Domain Names? People used to buy every available combination of a name. Web Worker Daily tells us what has changed.
• A Web Forward Movement Kenny Meyers discusses the problems with the slow-moving web standards community
• Don’t Screw With Conventions Mark Boulton discusses the design of airport signage, among other things.
• The Survey, 2008 The second annual Survey for People Who Make Websites is open at A List Apart. I took it! Again!
• Silverback The usability application launches. Looks like they nailed it (as expected).
• Silverback Review Garrett Dimon's extensive review of the building and use of Silverback, a new OSX usability app from Clearleft.
• 37Signals Makes the First Move On 8/15 37S will begin phasing out support for IE6 in all of its products. They are the first major web app company to do so - let's hope many others follow suit. IE6 is down to 26% market share.
• Classic Zeldman There is a reason this man speaks so soundly to so many like me. Here is a breathtaking example of Jeffrey Zeldman, the man.
• Google Can Index Flash Content It took years for Flash to find its place in the web design world. I'm guessing that will change again now. Yay.
• Matt Week The folks at Carsonified build a web app in a week. Oh, if we only had that kind of time to spare.
• UPS Worldport The Louisville, KY masterpiece of innovation sorts hundreds of thousands of packages every night. Here's how it works.
• The Web Dev Soundtrack Seems like everyone is talking about Girl Talk, with good reason. His stuff keeps me jamming at the keyboard all day long. Give it a try!
• Font Stacks Nathan Ford of Unit Interactive discusses the limited use of fonts in most websites and gives some excellent alternatives for choosing fonts.
• The Website is Down If you can get through the entire clip, a hilarious spoof with just about every cliché about working in web or tech support.
• Designing for Internet Explo(d)er 6 Ayush Saran of deDestruct compiles a pretty comprehensive list of issues to watch out for when building a site to work in IE6.
• The Paragraph in Web Typography & Design Jon Tan writes a thought provoking article on styling the most basic collection of words, the paragraph, for the web.
• Jason Santa Maria Rethinks, rather than redesigns, his website to allow the design to be driven by the content.
• Simple XHTML/CSS/PHP Templating System Phil Thompson makes life easier by using a common system for all his sites.
• Aaron Cannon, Blind Web Developer Observe how Aaron navigates web pages. Very insightful. Aaron has been blind since birth.
• Firefox 3 Version 3 of the popular and revolutionary browser drops next Tuesday. Still on IE? Please make the switch.
• ForgEdit Text Editor A new text editor combining some of the best features of Textmate and Coda.