I’ve always been a fan of the showcases and galleries showing off talent within the web design industry. It’s inspiring to browse them daily and it’s exciting to have your work showcased within them and discussed. Some people love them, and others couldn’t care less. For those of you that adore the galleries, I have taken time out to say why niche is nice when it comes to showcases.

This post is not meant to say that the classic showcases are no good any more - that’s far from true. I’m trying to open your eyes to some of the more focused galleries. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 5 years, you’ll know that showcases are abundant. They’re ten-a-penny. For those rock-dwellers, here’s a fairly exhaustive list: Smashing Magazine’s compilation of galleries.

But first, the classics…

I mentioned the classic galleries and so would like to start by mentioning which galleries I most respect before focusing on the niche sites. After all, the big guns could still offer a lot of untapped power if used wisely. My top 3 (in no particular order) are:

• CSS Beauty
  An old faithful. I love how CSS Beauty combine standards complaint sites with beautiful graphics. Simple and effective, and boosted by an intelligent, design-savvy community.
• Web Creme
  Always beautiful. A graphical treat almost every day. If you dislike glossy sites, stay away though.
• CSS Mania
  Maybe sacrificing quality (only slightly, mind) but regularity is guaranteed.

The more popular showcases seem to be based upon either quality or quantity. Galleries with these extremes seem to have survived through the ages. Now let’s take a look at the niche gallerie, with some examples, and see what makes them tick.

Niche Galleries

OK, examples:

• CSSgreen
  It’s not difficult to see that the colour green has something to do with the sites on show. Let’s hope for their sake that green never goes out of fashion.
• cssdesignyorkshire
  Niche in a geographical sense this time.
• css Zen Garden
  OK, a big player in the CSS gallery world, but still niche in it’s format.

Successful Niche ~ Content & Format

It seems that after looking at the niche sites that they don’t thrive simply on quality and quantity of gallery items. There is more to it than that. More factors are involved - namely content and format. Both CSSgreen and cssdesignyorkshire both rely on niche content. Without that niche, they simply wouldn’t have got out of the starting blocks - why would you visit them when the mature galleries offer the same content? css Zen Garden is niche in a different way altogether - format. It a) doesn’t showcase actual websites and b) users create designs solely for the gallery. It’s an inspiration source for all and a CSS resource for beginners.

Thoughts

Discuss, if you will. What makes you visit particular showcases? What niches would you like to see? I’d be interested to hear your opinions on this subject.

Alright, I’d like to start off with an explanation of what this article is not. This is not a rant against MySpace (or its apparent lack of aesthetics) in particular, or social networking. I’m not going to say that it’s a waste of time.

I’m pretty sure we all know, that when done right, social networking can be incredibly useful for making new contacts in your field of work, finding creative people, or just meeting new friends. It’s a good idea, and a tool that we should probably all be using.

So what’s the problem?

Well, any problems that occur within a social network almost always come from (gasp!) the users themselves. Let’s face it, humanity is very efficient at taking a good idea and turning it into something ugly. Take, for example, the infamous MySpace:

Well, letting non-designers hack at the markup of their pages is a bad idea in my opinion, but the real problem comes from the people you find on the site. It’s so hard to get around all the twelve-year-old emo kids, spammers, stalkers, and Amway representatives these days that it takes the fun out of the whole thing. To say it plainly, social networks are getting less useful, even as they get more popular. I could go on, but I’m sure you’ve all experienced these things for yourselves.

Alright, alright… solution?

There may be a few:

Give the entire network a single focus:
Humblevoice has a good model going. If you make a social network centered around one thing (in this case creative arts) then it’s much easier to see and root out spammers and the like. Conversely, it’s much easier to find the creative talent you’re looking for.

Relentless, ruthless moderators:
It’s hard to find enough people to help you manage your site, especially if your site is as big as MySpace, or Tagged, but you have to do it. Some (if not most) of us will not push that little “report button”. We’ll just move on.

Friends only:
Not all social networks are about creativity. The most popular ones seem to be just about meeting people, and it can sometimes be a little harder to distinguish between the regular users, and the undesirable ones. Hi5 uses the “friends only” model, where only people you invite can actually see your profile, and many people tell me it works. I believe it can, if implemented right, and if the users (gulp!) don’t screw it up themselves.

Artificial intelligence is no match for artificial stupidity. - Author Unknown

Feedback

Got anything to say on the matter? Got any suggestions as to how we can improve the state of social networks?

Most of us have been around CSS for long enough to know the good and the not-so-good of the business. Many of us have been frustrated at times at the behavior of seemingly straightforward in unruly browsers, namely Internet Explorer. As a result, the web development community has found numerous solutions around these problems. CSS hacks have received a lot of attention in the last two years as a relatively safe way to tame the problems these browsers present to us - but is it really a good idea?

A Brief Introduction to CSS Hacks

For those who don’t know a lot about CSS hacks, here’s a simple explanation: they take advantage of browser bugs (or browser “weaknesses”) to hide certain styling rules from specific browsers, using special characters/words that are interpreted differently. The use of these hacks is a subject of much debate in the blogosphere these days.

Various standardistas and web designers such as Roger Johansson and Peter-Paul Koch have spoken out against the use of CSS hacks, saying conditional comments are the way to go. In my opinion this the best option for every designer who needs to assign different CSS property values for different browsers. It rids our stylesheets of the messy hacks and workarounds used to tame the pages, and it helps to organize and streamline our CSS.

Code for the Future

Abstaining from using CSS hacks is the way to prepare for the bright future of CSS. This was mentioned by Roger Johansson a while ago in an interview that was posted on Fadtastic, and I want to reinforce that point again. In this uncertain world we code in, there’s really no telling what bugs will be fixed and what bugs won’t be. There must not be any place in the semantic web for a mess of “!important” hacks and weird selectors.

I think it’s pretty obvious that the clean, straightforward stylesheet (with no hacks) is the ideal setup, and the closest we can get to this for the time being is conditional comments. This is for the time being, leaving room for browser improvements and less hassle when cleaning up our code to comply with the new breed of browsers.

Do conditional comments fall into the “hacks” category? If you consider a CSS “hack” to be anything that gives special instructions to certain browsers, the answer is yes. But since conditional comments don’t utilize one browser bug to fix another one (as all real CSS hacks do), they can be put into a category of their own.

Conclusion

Finally, I’ll say that every web designer should use CSS hacks as a last resort only, and not as common practice. If your pages have a rendering problem in Internet Explorer, spend as much time as you can searching for a semantic solution that doesn’t use a CSS hack to solve the problem. If this fails, use conditional comments to correctly apply the proper rules to the misbehaving browser. Keep hacks out of your code, and you’ll set an example for the design world to follow (and save yourself some grief down the road).

The Problem

Admit it. Go on. How many times a week are you caught out on the Internet by sarcasm? Or rather lack of understanding what is and isn’t sarcasm. I’d be the first to admit I get tripped up at least a couple of times a week. It happens on forums, blog comments and in communities. The problem is rife and we need something to de done about it.

The Need

I call for the <sarcasm> tag. HTML 5 should be able to accommodate another tag without too much harm. So, W3C, consider this an open letter (seems to be the fashion according to the Digg crowd these days) to call for its inclusion. Many an argument and misunderstanding would be prevented.

The Rendering

Of course every new tag needs a default rendering style by the browsers. And as sarcasm is a form of humour, why not render in bold Comic Sans like the following? (assuming you have this great font installed)

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

And there we go. Sarcasm solved.

May 20th, 2007, I turned eighteen. I suppose we all have things that we wish for on our birthdays. I was going through my list when I realised that at least half the things I wish for are web design related. So just for the fun of it, I’ve listed a few of the most important ones here for you (not in order of importance).

The List

• Adobe Creative Suite CS3 on Linux - Think of it now, the best of the design industry on a speedy and secure operating system. I know that already exists for Mac users, but for people that prefer Linux (or that just don’t have enough cash for a Mac), it would be nice to have these programs.What about the Open Source alternatives?The GIMP’s major flaw (in my own opinion) is that it was designed by programmers, not artists/designers. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some great stuff made with the GIMP, but I personally think it lacks in the usability department. Not to mention it’s very, very bad type support. But all the same, props to the guys who put their time into it.

  As for Inkscape, Scribus, and other software alternatives to the CS3 suite, well, I can’t wait to see what they come up with, but it’s clear that Adobe has the cutting edge.

• text-align-vertical: center; - This is a CSS property that I’d really like to see. Who wouldn’t want an easy way to vertically center the content of a div, or just about any other block level element for that matter?

• font: url(path/to/font.ttf); - Recently, typography has become more and more important to me. As I learn more about it, the more frustrated I become at the lack of good typography support in modern browsers. SIFR is nice, alright, but we shouldn’t have to rely on Javascript and Flash for something that should be built into our browsers.

• height: fill-available; - And lastly, another inventive CSS property. This one would simplify so many layouts, remove the need to use background images as faux columns, and much more.

Feedback

Alright, I know my list was rather short, but I’ll bet you guys can think of plenty more. Help me add to the list.

A while back when I was a young, optimistic, enthusiastic web designer (not that I’ve changed) I took part in a debate at my local web meet-up to discuss whether there should only be one browser. (I was young and reckless back then, I know.) I thought it may be interesting to bring up the debate again. I’m aiming to present both sides of the argument (not all of the below echo my thoughts) as well as I can remember, add my own views and then I’m opening the floor to you, dear reader, for discussion.

Just to confirm, the title of the debate was “Should there only be one browser” - not “Should there only be IE/Firefox/Safari” etc. There is a difference. And please have an open mind, meaning that the following points are relevant to web designers and normal internet users.

Issue 1: Competition

Imagine the space race if you will. Two nations competing to achieve something not done before. New boundaries and so forth. Without the race (read competitive) element, we may not yet have made space travel possible. So what is it that I’m trying to say? Competition drives innovation and technology. If only one browser existed, the rate of innovation would likely be much slower than in a multi-browser world.

Winner: Multi-browser world. Although there may be less need to learn as much technology in a one-browser world.

Issue 2: Hassle for the designer

Designer meaning front-end developer here - the HTML/CSS coder. It’s an every day occurrence that your beautiful code isn’t quite producing the desired results in a certain browser. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if all browsers rendered the same (and correctly for that matter)? From personal experience, that could shave 5-10% of coding time. For others, I’m sure this could worth celebrating.

Winner: One browser world. Although I have a suggestion in the conclusion.

Issue 3: Security

One browser rules them all. Result? Security issues. Let’s hypothesise and say that there was only one browser and also that a very malicious, contagious, nasty processor-melting-hard-drive-eating-browser-specific virus was released. It’s almost a cert that you’ll get it at some point. Do you stay off the Internet until a patch is released? In a multi-browser world you could switch browsers for a few days. But not if there’s only one. Time to backup.

Winner: Multi-browser world. Unless the one browser was impenetrable. Which I doubt, somewhat.

Debate Conclusions

It’s worth knowing what came out of the debate. The following points came out as the general consensus:

There should be more than one browser, but every browser should use the same rendering engine.

This is an interesting point. It would solve the dilemma of designers spending too long fixing browser-specific issues. It wouldn’t hold back innovation either as browsers could still compete on the bells and whistles - essentially improving user experience and adding features without disruption to the design world.

My Thoughts

I have one final point before handing it over to you. Imagine the world of cars (how cliché) - cars are produced to serve different functions (off-road, family travel, sports.) Browsers are the same. Some browsers cater to different people’s needs. I can’t imagine a browser that would suit everyone’s demands and so I cannot see a one-browser world personally. But, it’s fun to debate…

“There should only be one browser “

Discuss…

Introduction

I have decided to write something up for you guys once a week. The goal is to improve my writing skills, and to contribute more to Fadtastic. Enjoy.

The Thought

On just about every design blog, you will find at least one post that attempts to define “Web 2.0″, and what it’s made of. All the “hip” sites claim to be “Web 2.0″, and companies now put out job bulletins requesting that designers have “Web 2.0″ skills. I personally think all the hype has gone too far.

The History

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that for a site to be “Web 2.0″ used to mean that its creator had used good design sense combined with new technologies or new ways of implementing old technologies (ie. AJAX). When “Web 2.0″ first emerged it was touted as the future because it was based on solid, common sense ideas. This has changed drastically.

The problem with any good idea is that it can be taken completely out of context. “Web 2.0″ became a popular buzzword almost overnight and people thought “That’s where the money is.” The unfortunate result is that many people have completely forgotten the original concepts behind the buzzword, and you can see the disastrous effects (ie. MySpace) all around the net.

AJAX has become synonymous with drag ‘n’ drop functionality. Usability is about big fonts. “Web 2.0″ itself has been relegated to a system of gradients, shiny graphics (see Ultimate Web 2.0 Layer Styles), and blingblingpuddapuddasha. I see this as a major problem.

What Can We Do?

I’m afraid it’s up to us as designers to change things. “Web 2.0″ for the public is synonymous with a lot of hype. For us designers, it’s an abused buzzword. I think it’s time for us to break out of the mold again. Constant revolution is the only thing that keeps this world turning (pardon the pun), and some one’s got to push the big red button.

The best start would probably be to promote the values behind “Web 2.0″, and forget the buzzwords entirely. But what are these values? Let’s go over the list.

• Following Good Design Principles - KISS, non-confusing navigation, grid systems, basic color theory, and the list goes on
• Follow The Standards - Make things validate.
• Making Sites Accessible - Know your audience; if your site’s users use screen readers, text browsers, or the like, is your information there for them? (There is, of course, more to this, but you get the drift.)
• Push The Boundaries - While keeping the above points in mind, try out new web technologies, or implement old technologies in a brand new way.

Please feel free to add to the list.

Keeping with these values is a key part of good design. These are the ideas that need to stay with us, even when a new generation of web technologies arrive and someone shouts, “Web 3.0!”

Feedback

What do you think? Who else is tired of “Web 2.0″? What base values do you think make up Web 2.0? Should we just drop the Web 2.0 tag and promote these values in their own right?

On behalf of the entire WordPress team, I’m proud and excited to announce the immediate availability of version 2.2 “Getz” for download. This version includes a number of new features, most notably Widgets integration, and over two hundred bug fixes. It’s named in honor of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz.

Goodies:

• WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. This functionality was originally available as a plugin Widgets are now included by default in the core code, significantly cleaned up, and enabled for the default themes.
• Full Atom support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface.
• A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.
• Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page. (I know it sounds geeky, but try it!)
• We now protect you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.
• Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server.
• We’ve added a hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari.

In addition there were also dozens of UI and accessibility improvements, ranging from more concise wording around options and links to things like a view and preview link above the content box when you’re editing a post or page, as well as several important security fixes. We don’t plan to continue to support the 2.1 branch, so this is a required upgrade.

Developer Features:

We also improved a great deal under the hood that hopefully you’ll never notice, but if you’re a developer for the WP platform it provides a lot to sink your teeth into. Here is a sampling:

• A new set of WordPress-specific XML-RPC APIs that allow for editing pages, setting categories, and much more.
• We now use jQuery for a number of internal functions, and hope to transition all of our JS to use it. (We still need volunteers for this.)
• Comment feeds now support multiple formats, including Atom.
• Our internal mail functions now use phpMailer, which allows for things like SMTP support.
• You can now set database collation and character set in your config file.
• You can also hardcode your site and WP URL in the config file, overriding the values in the DB.
• Finally we’ve increased the inline documentation of a number of functions inside of WP, which should help you navigate those parts of the code.

If you’d like an in-depth look at everything that changed, here is a list of all 244 closed tickets in our bug tracker and you can use this link to see what files and lines of code changed. (It was a lot!)

New Development Cycle

Most interesting about this release is that is our first under the new, experimental development cycle that we first talked about when we released version 2.1 fewer than 4 months ago. We delayed a few weeks from our target date in April, but ended up under our original goal of a 4 month major release cycle. My thanks and congratulations to the entire WordPress community for pulling together and making that happen. It wasn’t without its bumps, but the things we learned along the way will make our next release in September even better. You can now look forward to a fast but stable schedule of new features and goodies several times a year from WordPress.

Around the Community

There were 1.4 million downloads of WordPress 2.1 in the four months it was available.

I wrote a post that covers some of the media that WP has been getting lately and its history.

We’ve expanded WordPress.org quite a bit, most notably the very active plugins directory and the ideas forum.

Come meet other WordPress users and developers at WordCamp, which is going to be taking place July 21-22 in San Francisco.

Don’t forget to check out WordPress’ cousins MU and bbPress, both of which have been seeing some pretty cool development lately.

Help Out

The most valuable thing you can give back to WordPress is your time — the time to help a friend discover the joy of blogging, the time to help a stanger (a friend you haven’t met yet) on the support forums, or the time to help make WordPress a better product.

I asked various 9rules members to come forward and speak openly on their chosen blog CMS. Here are their opinions in all their glory.

Kyle Neath of warpspire.com

CMS:
Wordpress (Hosted - not domain.wordpress.com)

Killer Feature(s):
Absolutely amazing framework with unchallenged extendability and flexibility.

Let Down(s):
Updates (again). But this is more a gripe with hosted software rather than Wordpress itself. For instance, Wordpress is 100x easier to upgrade than punbb and 1000x easier to upgrade than Typo.

What feature would you add to it?
Better support for tiered categories. (i.e. in_category for parent categories).

Ben Gillbanks of binarymoon.co.uk

CMS
Wordpress

Killer Features
The plugin system, almost anything you can think of you can do. The price, you can’t beat free.

Let Downs
I’m sure i could think of something… eventually - but off the top of my head I have nothing.

What features would you add to it
More support/ features for multi author blogs (multiple authors on a single blog)

John Phillips of jwphill3.com

CMS
Wordpress

Killer Features
Very easy to get used to as long as your familiar with a little xhtml/css/php markup. In my situation, I’ve learned a whole lot about php through using Wordpress.

Let Downs
A lot of poorly written plugins that are a headache to customize

What features would you add to it
Nothing that I can think of.

Volkher Hofmann of livingwithmusic.com

CMS:
Expression Engine

Killer Feature(s):
Custom fields, expandable (modules, plugins), feature-rich; there’s nothing this baby can’t do. Great community with very fast response. Continuously updated and expanded (forum, gallery, commerce module, wiki, user management) by a great team. Pretty good whitelist/blacklist spam protection. Coupled with Akismet, when I compare my EE installation with lots of visitors to my WP installation with hardly any, the spam ratio seems to be around 0.1:10 … in favour of EE.

Let Down(s):
The complexity of it for “normal” users = steep learning curve; the documentation is pretty good but I think regularly-updated and decent printable docs are a must for such a complex CMS. Other than that, none. For the average user, the price is perhaps a problem?

What feature would you add to it?
Easier way of templating, better control panel (it can be a pain in the neck trying to remember which setting is where in a multitude of sub-sections.

Derek Punsalan of 5thirtyone.com

CMS:
Wordpress (Hosted - not domain.wordpress.com)

Killer Feature(s):
Absolutely painless / pain free installation, great framework for creating a custom website to meet your needs.

Let Down(s):
Why must I install WP-Cache (plugin) in order to survive high surges of traffic like that from digg?

What feature would you add to it?
Automatic updates + the necessary framework to support plugin update notifications

James of rightonblog.net

CMS
Wordpress Hosted

Killer Features
Plugin architecture, ability to make it do ANYTHING I want it to, even things it wasn’t originally designed for.

Let Downs
The lack of an AutoUpgrade feature without installing a 3rd party plugin.

What features would you add to it
I’d improve the UI of the admin panel as shown in the WordPress Shuttle Project

Darice de Cuba of darice.org

CMS: Simplelog (Ruby on Rails)

Killer Feature(s):
As simple as it can get, clear admin with no fuss. AJAX to facilitate creating post(comments, tags, pings).

Let Down(s):
Not for “normal” people, requires some knowledge in SSH, Ruby on Rails, UNIX command line and some patience.

What feature would you add to it?
Photo upload.

Ben Gray of openswitch.org

CMS:
Textpattern

Killer Features:
Lots of built in capability.
Plugins for all the stuff that’s not built in.
It’s open source which really appeals to me.
It’s a CMS first, blogging engine second. I use it for a blog but it’ll be perfect for future more ’standard’ websites I build in the future.
You can put anything anywhere within the site, in that way it’s less rigid than WordPress.
Real template tags, not modified php calls.
Very very flexible.
Built-in caching.

Let downs:
Templating system and free ‘ready-made’ templates are lacking.
Steep learning curve coming from WordPress just because of the way the site functions.

Features I’d like to add:
A stronger templating system would be nice, but since this isn’t a ‘blogging only’ platform it would be somewhat unrealistic.

Me of fadtastic.net

CMS:
Wordpress (Hosted - not domain.wordpress.com)

Killer Feature(s):
The community. With such a great backing from the community members, coupled with the Codex, it’s easy to find the solution for every problem.

Let Down(s):
The updates. Not necessarily the amount of updates, but the time it takes to upgrade. The same goes for plugins. For a large site, it can be a draining process to seek and upgrade all your plugins on a regular basis.

What feature would you add to it?
Automatic updates and install plugins/themes from the admin panel. I’d also like the Moon…on a stick.

Over to you

What are your thoughts on your blog platform? Feel free to use the same format as above.