Pagination 101
One of the most commonly overlooked and under-refined elements of a website is its pagination controls. In many cases, these are treated as an afterthought. I rarely come across a website that has decent pagination, and it always makes me wonder why so few manage to get it right. After all, I'd say that pagination is pretty easy to get right. Alas, that doesn't seem the case, so after encouragement from Chris Messina on Flickr I decided to write my Pagination 101, hopefully it'll give you some clues as to what makes good pagination.
Times are changing
It's finally time: I'm changing the structure, nature and overall feel of the site entirely. Gone with the web standards-blogging (for now), no more "strictly professional content" policy (I failed on that a few times, anyway). Comments are off, due to the site turning static for a while, and to start off in the new direction I present to you a long post about far more personal subjects than I've ever blogged about.
A change in direction
Last Friday was the one-year anniversary of version 8 of the KuraFire Network, as well as the FACE project. It went by without so much a whisper, albeit unintentionally. Ordinarily, I use X-year anniversaries to reflect on what's happened and changed in the past year, how it has influenced my life and so forth. This year, though, what happened was me making a decision and that decision made me totally forget to write about V8 and FACE. I made the decision to take my site in a new direction entirely.
CSS hacks: useful, evil or …laziness?
Despite me having become quite silent the last few months, the scarcity of activity on this site hasn't affected traffic much at all. To commemorate (read: challenge and test) that, I figured I should throw in a semi-controversial poll to see where people stand these days. The question is as follows: are CSS hacks a useful tool, utter evil incarnate or a sign of laziness in the web developer that uses them? Elaborations after the cut!
Updates on the web
Time flies by when you are having fun/busy like crazy - or both! So November's here already, which means that Refresh Orlando is just around the corner. After that, Christmas and the New Year are soon upon us, leading us to 2007 - another fine year for web conferences no doubt. It starts off with South By South West, but even before that - in February - we have Web Directions North with a fantastic line-up. If this is to reflect how the rest of the year will be, it's going to be a great 2007!
Pink for October
Over a month ago, Matthew Oliphant asked me if I would support the Pink for October initiative. I said I would try and do something, for I strongly support it and this October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but unfortunately the only thing I managed to do is write this post to highlight it all. It was also my birthday until 68 minutes ago, which makes me happy (about my birthday falling in this month). Here's some thoughts.
Flickrlicious Screensavers with iPhoto 6
Here's one for Mac users. It's dead easy, it's dead obvious, but chances are you've never thought about doing this (I'm sure plenty of you have, so those of you can just ignore all this). Flickr exports RSS feeds for photo streams of almost any kind; iPhoto 6 offers Photocasts, for feeds containing pictures; Mac OS X allows you to specify a folder or Photocast from iPhoto as screen saver. With only very little work, you can have a screen saver showing the photo stream of your choice - no plugins or anything required, providing you have iPhoto 6. Let me show you how.
On FACE updates and getting published
It's been quiet on the KuraFire Network of late, though for good reasons. I've been very busy with a plethora of things, not in the least of which comes moving to an apartment of my own in Ealing. However, I feel compelled to give you a long, very long overdue update on FACE as well as a small overview of the things that I've been busy with outside of this blog, most of which revolve around getting published!
Great speakers I admire
Presenting is a wonderful art that takes skill and talent just as much as it does hard work and dedication. It can be the most exciting and at the same time the most nerve-wracking experience you can have, and where some people wouldn't ever dream of standing in front of hundreds or even thousands of people, others can't wait for their next opportunity. Some people do it well; others do it superbely. Who are those great speakers that inspire me?
A new passion
For about eight years and counting the Web has been one of my life's greatest passions. Building websites isn't all that much different from one of my other great passions: creating stories. When building a website, you have the chance to tell a story, your story. Your choice of color and imagery, your style of writing content, all of the elements that you use to put the website together tell the visitor the story of who you are. I've now found a new passion, and again it bears resemblence to the telling of a story: photography.
Standards-senses tingling?
Lately, I've been sensing a fair amount of apathy in our corner of the web industry, concerning the fight for web standards. It is as if a lot of people have started wondering, "is it all really worth the effort?" Or maybe some of us feel that, after all, it's just a part of our job and not a life goal? Maybe it really is - but then, what fight, exactly, are we fighting right now?
Review: Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
Three years ago, a pirate movie came out and won the hearts of millions upon millions of people. It had everything you could ever have wanted in a pirate movie: fantastic sets, a genuine pirate feel, good supporting music, terrific acting, great plot, oh and let's not forget, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. In fact, it was such a good pirate movie that many people had big concerns when the sequel was announced. Was there any chance that it would not disappoint, after the first movie? Well rest assured, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is one tremendous movie that certainly does not disappoint.
New events and meetups
@&!media have passed (that is @media and NotMedia) but the time of meetups certainly has not! If you thought you could just get back to work like that, you were gravely mistaken. Ahem. Okay, let's look at what's in store for the coming period!
Belief
Tonight I took things easy and just sat behind the TV, casually watching the World Cup football match between Switzerland and the Ukraine. It was a mindbogglingly boring game, not worthy of the name football, but as my mind wandered away from paying attention to the players, I was reminded of one of the things that have become a core principle of my very being, my place in life and in this universe: I was reminded of the incredible importance of belief.
NotMedia redux
@media and NotMedia - the tribute to @media's great atmosphere and success, for those who couldn't afford to or were otherwise unable attend @media this year - were nothing short of a ton of fun. NotMedia in particular involved fun things such as a scorpion on a string, meeting John Cleese and a chicken on someone's head. In other words, NotMedia 2006 was a success.
NotMedia update
After Tantek reminded me of the hCalendar Microformat, I went back to my NotMedia mini-site and added some Microformatty goodness. You can now subscribe to all NotMedia events (for updates and what not) using your calendar tool of choice, with this URL:
webcal://feeds.technorati.com/events/http://notmedia.kurafire.net/
London revisited
I'm back in London, but this time I'm here to stay--for about a year, anyway. After that, I pack up again and move on to California, where the plan is that I will stay permanently - real permanently. But for now: London! I'm here and so are many other Standardistas, so we're organising a variety of meetups. Quite a lot, actually, so let's get started!
NotMedia mini site launched
Nine days ago I announced NotMedia, but now there is a NotMedia mini site where you can see an overview of planned events, participants and more. So if you are going to be in London between June 14th and 17th, add yourself to the NotMedia events that you can and want to attend!
WaSP Café reminder
Just a quick reminder: this Saturday, May 27th, we have the WaSP Café and Happy Clog meetup at 14:00 in the King Arthur Café in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The meeting will be held in English, this time (because not everyone attending it speaks Dutch). If you're coming, please RSVP in a comment if you haven't already, so that I can inform the café of how many people there will be (roughly)
Django: first impressions
For a long time now I've been thinking about where to take my programming next: should I build yet another PHP-PostgreSQL Content Management System, one with real framework tendencies, or should I jump the bandwagon and learn Ruby on Rails? No decision was made when one day, Jeff Croft started talking about Django. He has since published a few pieces on it, but just the introduction was enough to sway me. I compared Ruby and Django for a bit, found that Python (Django's underlying language) is much more my thing than Ruby is, realized that Django's philosophies were much more akin to my own and felt that Ruby on Rails was too intently focused on hype, AJAX and Prototype (a JavaScript liberary I've only heard bad things about). So Django it is, and here I am now to give you my first impressions of it so far.
Reflections.js
Sometimes, your silent but deepest dreams are answered completely unexpectedly. For a long time have I wondered if it would be possible to use Javascript to create image reflections "on the fly," so as to prevent you from having to do it manually or server side. As it turns out, it's entirely possible but more than that, it's available for you by name of Reflections.js. With a hat-tip to Sid Udaphyay for pointing me to it.
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- Starting with CSS-based design
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- Review: System of a Down - Hypnotize
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- Times are changing
- A change in direction
- CSS hacks: useful, evil or …laziness?
- Updates on the web
- Pink for October
- Flickrlicious Screensavers with iPhoto 6
- On FACE updates and getting published
- Great speakers I admire
- A new passion
- Standards-senses tingling?
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