Thinking about the web

HAPPY COG founder and creative chief Jeffrey Zeldman has been thinking and writing about the web since he began designing for it in 1995. Key articles are listed below. Zeldman also publishes The Daily Report, treating subjects of interest to all who design, produce, or manage websites. For more of Happy Cog’s thinking about the web, see Books, Publications, and the Colophon.

Coding for Easier Redesigns (@ Macromedia.com)

Lead for the 17 October 2003 issue of Macromedia’s The Edge Newsletter. Although the words are new, the tune will be familiar to readers of Designing With Web Standards. “Coding for Easier Redesigns” explains how designers can make the transition to structural thinking, thereby saving their readers bandwidth and time, and saving themselves much future labor.

Style vs. Design (@ Adobe.com)

Removed by Adobe.com for no apparent reason, with no forwarding address. The essential difference between design, which solves problems, and style, which may convey brand attributes or nothing at all. Originally published August 2000.

99.9% of Websites are Obsolete (@ Digital Web Magazine)

Excerpted from Forward Compatibility: Designing & Building With Web Standards, to be released by New Riders in 2003. Originally published September 2002.

NYPL Style Guide (@ The New York Public Library)

Understanding XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): a complete tutorial, co-authored with Carrie Bickner of The New York Public Library. Originally published October 2001.

To Hell with Bad Browsers! (@ A List Apart)

The article that prompted thousands of designers to learn CSS layout and to use CSS instead of tables even when that meant hiding the design from old browsers. A nutritious part of ALA Issue No. 99, in which we converted to CSS layout and challenged ALA’s 65,000 readers to do the same. Many did. Originally published 16 February 2001.

Fix Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE (@ A List Apart)

You’ve done everything right, but your site is breaking in the latest browsers. A faulty DOCTYPE is likely to blame. This essential ALA article will provide you with DOCTYPEs that work, enabling you to fix your site with just one tag. Originally published April 2002.

Better Living Through XHTML (@ A List Apart)

Everything you wanted to know about converting from HTML to XHTML, including why you’d want to, tools that help, changes in the way browsers display XHTML pages, shortcuts, bugs, workarounds, and other tips you won’t find elsewhere. Originally published February 2002.

Fear of Style Sheets 4: Give Me Pixels, or Give Me Death! (@ A List Apart)

The fourth and final entry in our “Fear of Style Sheets” series that evangelized CSS while offering workarounds for the nightmarish flaws in then-current implementations. In this final installment, we pointed out why pixels offered the only sure means of visual control across browsers and platforms (if visual control was what you needed). We showed why other methods failed (and most still do) and acknowledged that the pixel method came at a high cost in terms of accessibility. We urged browser makers to (a.) fulfill their promise to properly support CSS and (b.) include a mechanism that would allow users to resize text set in pixels. Originally published sometime in 2000.

Why Don’t You Code For Netscape? (@ A List Apart)

The case for authoring to web standards (and thus, for all browsers and devices) rather than bending over backwards to accommodate the quirks of non–compliant browsers. Introduced the term “forward compatibility.” Originally published December 2001.

Where Have All the Designers Gone? (@ Adobe.com)

Removed by Adobe.com for no apparent reason, with no forwarding address. If the best designers abandon structure, content, and the hassle of dealing with clients, who will be left to build the web? Originally published February 2000.

I See Dancing Beans (@ Mappa Mundi Magazine)

The horror of commercial (dot-com) web culture in its final moments of glory. Originally published December, 1999.

Slouching Toward Authorship (@ A List Apart)

It’s time for web designers to stop defining themselves as mere vendors, and begin thinking like independent content creators. Originally published in 1999, this article articulated many concerns of the independent content movement.

Web Publishing Secrets: Make Websites That Work for All (@ Macworld Magazine)

Debut of Macworld “Web Secrets” column focuses on using web standards to deliver your content to all web browsers while tailoring better experiences for better browsers. Originally published September 2001.

Reconcilable Differences (@ Macworld Magazine)

Online version of Macworld how–to article for Macintosh users who want to design websites without running afoul of cross–platform compatibility problems. Originally published July 2000.

Over a year’s worth of Zeldman columns for PDN-Pix Magazine are no longer available online but may be found in a library near you.

Additional entries in the Macworld Secrets column are no longer being posted at Macworld’s website. Nor is much other recent Macworld Magazine content being posted on the magazine’s site. Many print magazines have scaled back online operations. This may change if the economy improves. Meanwhile, check your local library.

Additional Zeldman design columns for Adobe are were available at adobe.com if you look around but have been removed for no reason.

More articles

A more exhaustive listing of Zeldman articles For A List Apart, Adobe, High Five, Macworld, PDN-Pix, Crain’s Creativity, and other sites and periodicals is available on an old page of zeldman.com. Sites go out of business or randomly change URLs like rabbits reproduce, so we cannot vouch that all links will work. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.

More thinking

See Publications, Books, and the Colophon for more of Happy Cog’s thinking about the web.

Copyright © 1995–2003 Happy Cog Studios LLC. Active ingredients: XHTML1 and CSS2.