Sliced and Diced Sandbags

Automate text flow along an irregular outline with PHP.

Swan, Rob. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Server Side Includes>PHP

Sliding Doors of CSS

Image-driven, visually compelling user interfaces. Text-based, semantic markup. Now you can have both! Douglas Bowman’s sliding doors method of CSS design offers sophisticated graphics that squash and stretch while delivering meaningful XHTML text. Have your cake and eat it, too!

Bowman, Douglas. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>CSS>DHTML

Sliding Doors of CSS, Part II

In Sliding Doors of CSS Part I, Douglas Bowman introduced a new technique for creating visually stunning interface elements with simple, text-based, semantic markup. In Part II, he pushes the technique even further with rollovers, a fix for IE/Win’s CSS bugs, and lots more.

Bowman, Douglas. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>CSS>Semantic

Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention

Tthe usual approaches for preventing hotlinking (hijacking) images have a couple of side effects. This system works much better.

Scott, Thomas. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Security>Graphic Design

SMIL When You Play That: A Gentle Introduction to SMIL + SVG

SMIL is an easy-to-learn, HTML-like language for creating 'TV-like multimedia presentations such as training courses on the Web,' according to the W3C. The current SMIL recommendation is 1.0, and you can read all about it at the W3C address cited immediately above, and at another one we’ll mention later. This is our way of avoiding adding fifty pages to this article.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Information Design>Multimedia>SMIL

So Like Candy: Game Design in Flash 5

Demonstrating the full interactive technologies now available to Web information designers.

Balogh, Peter. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Information Design>Interactive

Spruced-Up Site Maps

The clean-n-simple site map gets a nice haircut and and a shoe-shine as Kim Siever shows us how to hook custom bullet styles to troublesome nested lists.

Siever, Kim. List Apart, A (2005). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Sitemaps

Stand and Deliver

You've got thirty seconds to sell your work to the well dressed nemesis who's paying you. Handle the next few moments gracefully, and the project will be one you can be proud of. Flub an answer, and you can kiss excellence goodbye. Are you prepared? Can you deliver?

Sleight, David. List Apart, A (2007). Careers>Consulting>Business Communication

A Standardista's Alphabet

The Lesser (or Badged) Standardista will include badges on their site to indicate which level of automated testing their site has passed, whereas the Greater (or Smug) Standardista frowns on the use of badges, and insists on double-checking every checkpoint manually.

Pickard, Jack. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

A Standards-Compliant Publishing Tool for the Rest of Us?

Publishing with web standards is not for experts alone. A new tool hopes to make it easier for anyone. ALA interviews Six Apart’s Anil Dash about what might be the first standards-compliant web publishing tool for the rest of us.

Dash, Anil. List Apart, A (2003). Articles>Web Design>Software

Starting a Business: Advice from the Trenches

Did that last 'fire your boss' spam push you over the edge? Do your wish-fulfillment dreams revolve around letterhead, legal entities, and avoiding arrest for tax evasion? If you’re crazy enough to start your own business, Kevin Potts wants you to learn from his mistakes.

Potts, Kevin. List Apart, A (2003). Careers>Management>Consulting

Suckerfish Dropdowns

Teach your smart little menus to do the DHTML dropdown dance without sacrificing semantics, accessibility, or standards compliance or writing clunky code.

Griffiths, Patrick. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>DHTML>Interaction Design

Super-Easy Blendy Backgrounds

Gradients: a nutritious part of your Web 2.0 breakfast. Wouldn't it be swell if you could get all that goodness without opening Photoshop every time you needed a little gradient bliss? Matthew O'Neill explains how you can.

O'Neill, Matthew. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design

Survivor!: How Your Peers Are Coping with the Web Design Crisis

It's ugly out there, but how bad is it, really? We asked 40 of our peers to share how they were coping (or not) with the layoffs and business failures currently plaguing our industry.

List Apart, A (2001). Careers>Web Design

Switchy McLayout: An Adaptive Layout Technique

The introduction of new mobile and computing devices challenges us to look beyond the liquid layout. Marc van den Dobbelsteen offers a way to bring appropriate layouts to a wider range of screens and devices.

van den Dobbelsteen, Marc. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Wireless Web>CSS

Sympathy for the Plug-in

If Flash is indeed a cancer on the Web, how come so many artists (and viewers) adore it? The much-maligned multimedia plug-in bites back, with help from Flash artist Peter Balogh.

Balogh, Peter. List Apart, A (2000). Articles>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

The Table Ruler

Make your site easier to use by giving your visitors a virtual 'ruler' to guide and track their progress down long data tables. With a pinch of JavaScript and a dash of the DOM, your table rows will light up as your visitors hover over them.

Heilmann, Christian. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability

Tackling Usability Gotchas in Large-scale Site Redesigns

Redesigns can solve old usability problems while creating new ones that must be solved in turn. From the lessons of the ALA 3.0 redesign comes this quick study in remapping content without frustrating readers.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

Take Control of Your Maps

It is now possible to replicate Google Maps' functionality with open source software and produce high-quality mapping applications tailored to your design goals. Paul Smith shows how.

Smith, Paul. List Apart, A (2008). Design>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>Geography

Ten Tips on Writing the Living Web

Some parts of the Web are finished, unchanging creations--as polished and as fixed as books or posters. But many parts change all the time. Learn how that part works.

Bernstein, Mark. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design

They Shoot Browsers, Don't They?

Standards-aware developers, by their very nature, will object to adding a line of unnecessary markup to their documents just to get one single browser to behave as it should by default.

Keith, Jeremy. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Thinking Outside the Grid

CSS has broken the manacles that kept us chained to grid-based designâ€≈so why do so few sites deviate from the grid? Molly E. Holzschlag can tell us that the answer has something to do with airplanes, urban planning, and British cab drivers.

Holzschlag, Molly E. List Apart, A (2005). Design>Web Design>CSS

This HTML Kills: Thoughts on Web Accessibility

Activist Jim Byrne sounds off on the importance of web accessibility, and the difficulty of doing it right.

Byrne, Jim. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>Accessibility

This Web Business

Web designers do not live by GIFs alone. In this new series, Kramer explains how to set up your business, prepare for projects, maintain profitability, and grow your firm. It all starts with a solid business plan.

Kramer, Scott. List Apart, A (2000). Careers>Management>Web Design

This Web Business IV: Business Entity Options

You've mastered Photoshop, Flash, CSS, PHP, ASP, XHTML and JavaScript; studied usability, accessibility, and information architecture; and can fake your way through XML. But there's more to running a web business than that. Part Four of a continuing series.

Kramer, Scott. List Apart, A (2003). Careers>Management>Web Design