Author
Jeffrey Zeldman
Jeffrey Zeldman (@zeldman) founded The Daily Report in 1995, A List Apart in 1998, and Happy Cog™ design studios in 1999; cofounded the web design conference An Event Apart; publishes A Book Apart; wrote the industry-changing Designing With Web Standards (now in its third edition); hosts The Big Web Show podcast; and teaches in the MFA IXD program at School of Visual Arts NYC.
Entries by Jeffrey Zeldman
-
The Virtues of Vertical Media Queries
Devices come in all shapes and sizes, and pivot between portrait and landscape orientation. Desktop and laptop browsers can also be contorted into all sorts of shapes. It’s time to stop ignoring short (and tall!) viewports and start using them to creative and user-pleasing effect. Anthony Colangelo shares why and how.
-
Smells Like Design Sales
A multi-blog discussion challenges the secrecy design studios maintain around their sales processes and pitch success ratios.
-
Outside the Box
Yes, the clipped logotype at the top of the page is intentional.
-
On Alt Text
Any web designer or developer with her heart in the right place knows that, to be accessible, every image requires an alt text. Except when it doesn’t.
-
I Vant To Be Alone
Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk?
-
Writing for the Web
When Brian and I launched the original LIST APART in January '98, we had two goals: to create a noise-free, high-level discussion list for the web; and to cover all the bases of webmaking – from pixels to prose, coding to content. Posts in the digest have begun that work. It continues with this article, the first in a series. The scarcity of online writing about online writing is baffling when you consider that most websites consist of words.
-
Why are Links Blue?
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, is credited with making hyperlinks blue, a decision he appears to have reached at random. But although accessibility may not have been on Sir Tim's mind at the time, the color choice was a happy one, according to Joe Clark.
-
A List Apart 5.0
A design that departs from our past and a platform on which to build the future. Welcome to the relaunch of A List Apart, for people who make websites.
-
Say No to SOPA
A List Apart strongly opposes United States H.R.3261 AKA the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an ill-conceived lobbyist-driven piece of legislation that is technically impossible to enforce, cripplingly burdensome to support, and would, without hyperbole, destroy the internet as we know it. SOPA approaches the problem of content piracy with a broad brush, lights that brush on fire, and soaks the whole web in gasoline. If passed, SOPA will allow corporations to block the domains of websites that are “capable of” or “seem to encourage” copyright infringement. Once a domain is blocked, nobody can access it, unless they’ve memorized the I.P. address. Under SOPA, everything from your grandma’s knitting blog to mighty Google is guilty until proven innocent. Learn why SOPA must not pass, and find out what you can do to help stop it.
-
Real Fonts on the Web: An Interview with The Font Bureau’s David Berlow
Is there life after Georgia? We ask David Berlow, co-founder of The Font Bureau, Inc, and the first TrueType type designer, how type designers and web designers can work together to resolve licensing and technology issues that stand between us and real fonts on the web.
-
Ten Years
When Google was little more than a napkin sketch and the first dot-com boom was not even a blip, we started a magazine for people who make websites. Celebrate A List Apart's first decade. Join Zeldman for a look back at the way we were—and why we were that way. Find out what we've done and who did it with us, peek into our process, and get a clue about what's next.
-
Version Targeting: Threat or Menace?
Version targeting shakes our browser-agnostic faith. Its default behavior runs counter to our expectations, and seems wrong. Yet to offer true DOM support without bringing JScript-authored sites to their knees, version targeting must work the way Microsoft proposes, argues Jeffrey Zeldman.
-
Understanding Web Design
We'll have better web design when we stop asking it to be something it's not, and start appreciating it for what it is. It's not print, not video, not a poster—and that's not a problem. Find out why cultural and business leaders misunderstand web design, and learn which other forms it most usefully resembles.
-
Web 3.0
Web 2.0 is a fresh-faced starlet on the intertwingled longtail to the disruptive experience of tomorrow. Web 3.0 thinks you are so 2005.
-
A List Apart 4.0
From the crown of its cranium to the tips of its Ruby-slippered toes, A List Apart 4.0 is both old and new.
-
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.
-
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 his company’s easy-to-use, standards-compliant publishing tool, TypePad.
-
Fix Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE!
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.
-
Better Living Through XHTML
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.
-
Getting Paid
As businesses struggle to stay in business, many are short–changing vendors or woefully delaying payment. Zeldman laments the difficulties of getting paid.
-
Mac Browser Roundup (with Håkon Lie and Tantek Çelik)
We test drove and reviewed the new Mac browsers, then asked browser makers Håkon Lie of Opera and Tantek Çelik of Microsoft to respond to our comments.
-
Why Don’t You Code for Netscape?
Long considered the Holy Grail of web design, “backward compatibility” has its place; but at this point in web development history, shouldn’t we be more concerned about forward compatibility? ALA makes the case for authoring to web standards instead of browser quirks.
-
Patents, Royalties, and Web Standards
This week there is only one web story that matters. The W3C has written a patent policy that opens the door to royalty payments on web standards.
-
SMIL When You Play That
A gentle introduction to the SVG and SMIL standards for programmable vector graphics and accessible rich media.
-
From Table Hacks to CSS Layout: A Web Designer’s Journey
Redesigning A List Apart using CSS should have been easy. It wasn’t. The first problem was understanding how CSS actually works. The second was getting it to work in standards-compliant browsers. A journey of discovery.
-
To Hell With Bad Browsers
In a year or two, all sites will be designed with standards that separate structure from presentation (or they will be built with Flash 7). We can watch our skills grow obsolete, or start learning standards-based techniques. In fact, since the latest versions of IE, Navigator, and Opera already support many web standards, if we are willing to let go of the notion that backward compatibility is a virtue, we can stop making excuses and start using these standards now. At ALA, beginning with Issue No. 99, we've done just that. Join us.
-
Survivor! (How Your Peers are Coping With the Dotcom Crisis)
It’s ugly out there, but how bad is it, really? We asked 40 colleagues to share how they were coping (or not) with the layoffs and business failures plaguing our industry.
-
Much Ado About 5K
A full-fledged website under 5K? Some of the brightest people in the industry swore it could not be done. Yet hundreds of developers not only came in under the 5K budget, they built great sites in the process. Zeldman explores how the 5K Awards rocked the web.
-
Why IE5/Mac Matters
It complies with two key web standards. And leaves out two others. It's IE5 Macintosh Edition, the first browser on any platform to truly support HTML 4 and CSS-1. Its accessibility enhancements put the user in charge, and its clever new features solve long-standing cross-platform and usability problems. All this ... but still no XML or DOM. Zeldman explains what IE5/Mac means to the web.
-
Why Gecko Matters: What Netscape’s Upcoming Browser Will Mean to the Web
Netscape is about to unleash its new browser, built around the Gecko rendering engine. Theoretically the first completely standards-compliant web browser, Gecko enters a world where most people use IE5 (which is not completely standards-compliant). Is Netscape’s effort too little, too late? Or is it the beginning of a new and better way to create websites? Zeldman articulates The Web Standards Project’s position and explains what Netscape’s browser will mean to the web.
-
Netscape Bites Bullet
Netscape’s bold move to fully support the W3C DOM and sacrifice backward compatibility raises a few concerns and much hope.
-
Fear of Style Sheets
“No-fault CSS” can help you work around frightened clients, buggy software, and readers who still love last year’s browser. In Part One of a series, Zeldman walks you through the fear.
