Anyhow, I decided to conduct a little poll. When designing, what resolution do you design for the most frequently? Obviously there are always exceptions, but I’m talking about in general here. Feel free to share your reasons why as well.

So, back on to today… Today I noticed something. Twitter has quietly rolled out some design changes over the last month or two. A font change here, a background change there. But, now there’s something else. I’m calling it the million follower club. Why? Because that is the only immediate link I see between these accounts. What is so different about these “millionaires” when compared with other accounts? Not much. Just a slight difference. Take a look at the screen shot below. (Click on it for a larger version.) The first row are all members of the million follower club. The second row, not. (Though, for good measure, I threw in a couple that are inching their way up there.) See if you can notice the slight difference between the two rows. (Please forgive the crudity of the screen shots. But, I thought it enough to demonstrate the point.)

Did you see it? The fonts for following/followers are bigger and bolder for the million follower club. Is this small adjustment only encouraging this ‘widening gap’? Or, is it so subtle as to not make much of a difference? What do you think?

I found myself with a little extra time on my hands tonight. (Actually, I have a pile of things to do but was looking for a reason to distract myself for a few moments.) So, I headed over to check out what was new at the Cleveland Web Standards Association site. What follows is not supposed to be a negative reflection on them at all. I think what they’re doing is great. However, after running their blog page through the W3C validator, I had to sit back and scratch my head.

The idea to validate came to me while perusing their pages. So, I gave it a go. Home: check. About: check. Blog: uh-oh! As you can see from the screenshot, their blog page failed the W3C validator as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. 18 errors!

Most of the errors had to do with improperly nested tags, which I suppose could be a result of the blogging platform(s) the writers are using. But one that did surprise me was the misuse of the alt tag. (It was used on an anchor tag.) I didn’t look at the all of the errors in detail, and from personal experience I know that one error can cause cascading errors, which may be the case here. Still, a little surprising. (Just to be clear, the blog page is actually a collection of content from various local Web development blogs, not from the site itself.)

Again, I don’t mean this as a cut on the Association, or the individuals that are writing the content. I just think it’s a good reminder for all of us, as developers, to make sure that our pages validate. (You never know who might be looking! : )

This test was conducted at 7:30pm on Monday, January 12th, 2009.

You need to download a small app they have that keeps track of your total points. And, just for signing up, you get 500 free points. Pretty cool. But, be sure to read the terms of use to decide if you’re comfortable participating. Some information is sent back to MSN, as the point of the promotion is to help them improve their search engine. So, be quick about it. The promotion is only open to the first 1,000,000 people that repsond, and registration ends December 31, 2008.

One of the features I personally found nice about YARPP is the ability to add to/change the HTML tags that the results are displayed in. For users that may know how to add a class or an ID to a tag, but run a high risk of “breaking” a PHP script by altering it, this is a nice feature. Also, the output at the right in the Dashboard was handy to me, as it gave a bit of assurance that the changes were being saved once I clicked “update”. All in all, I’d say this is good plugin from a usability standpoint. I hear good things about it’s actual performance, so I look forward to seeing how it works out.

But, I’m still amazed at the number of well-known sites that rely heavily on tables.  Instead of being surprised when a site is using a table, I’m pleasently surprised when they’re not.  Isn’t there something wrong with that picture?  I understand that browser support can be a bit sketchy for CSS at times, but the trade-offs, to me, far outweigh any extra work you may need to do to make a site cross-browser compatible.  Not to mention, tables were never intended to be used for design/layout. 

It’s truly a case of using the right tool for the right job.  Think of it this way.  If you’re sitting down to create, for instance, some sort of digital art, what’s the first tool you open.  Microsoft Excel? Probably not.  More than likely, you’ll choose a tool that’s suited for design, perhaps Photoshop, the GIMP,… even Paint would be a choice!  Now, if you were going to record this week’s payroll information into a table, Excel would be a good choice.  See the difference?  It’s not that the tool in itself is wrong… it’s the misuse of it.  Tables are great… for tabular data.  Not for design and structure.  That’s what CSS is for.  Even tables can be used effectively with CSS.  The benefits will soon become apparent.  From faster page load times to less time spent updating and maintaining pages, you’ll be thankful.

Again, I can’t stress enough: consider your target audience.  I did a project with a company who’s client was a group comprised of mostly elderly people.  As such, their screen resolutions were likely to fall into the 800×600 category.  I worked with that company for almost a year and a half on various other projects, and I got into the habit/mindset of designing for 800×600.  We both thought that with the statistics available at the time, and with the clients they have, this would be the best choice.  But, things are changing, and likely will continue to change into the future.  The beauty of Web development is that it’s constantly changing, constantly evolving.  So are our users.  We need to keep our thumb on the pulse of the times and make sure that, regardless of what resolution we design for, we’re keeping our users first in our mind.

My point?  No, I’m not saying orange and teal are out for site design.  I’m saying: consider your user, consider usability, and consider accessibility.  On a broad level, does the design, (colors, layout, etc.), suit your user(s)?  Narrowing things down, is the site easily readable?  Will the user’s eyes begin to hurt after reading only a few lines of text?  Consider, too, the possiblity that your user may be, for example, color blind.  Are there still clear indicators of important items?  (Such as headings being indicated through text size and weight.)  Or are you relying on colors where you shouldn’t be.  I’m not saying don’t include them.  But I am saying not to rely on them.  Finally, there’s the user that may access your site through a screenreader.  Are your images standards compliant, using the alt tag for textual explanations of the picture?  This is one way to make browsing your site by impaired users easier.

I’ll be writing a more detailed post on how to make your site more accesible, usable, and overall standards-compliant.  But, I thought this would provide some interesting discussion info for now, as well as giving some background on moia.  Let me know what you’re thinking below.