There are some very interesting things going on recently in terms of how we put together our sites and it’s leading to quite a few interesting discussions, mostly between those who aren’t ready to even consider using new web technologies until IE offer support for them and those who have whole heartedly embraced the ideas of progressive enhancement and graceful degradation. Personally I fall into the latter category, using HTML5 to code up sites and using CSS3 all over the place.
Tag Archives: HTML5
Some notes on a site refresh: The new look KamikazeMusic
As you may have noticed about a week ago I gave the blog a spring clean and changed to a new theme I’ve been working on for a little while. I’ve felt for a while that the old site was rushed out a little back in October when I wasn’t 100% sure what was going to be the main focus on here and only a few months down the line I wanted a refresh for various reasons.
Using the great WordPress theme test drive plugin I worked away in the background with the site live putting together my new theme.
Why are you browser testing last?
We always seem to leave browser testing till the end, open up Internet Explorer and within about 10 seconds of page load there’s a variety of swear words and we go off to hack our CSS or put in IE only style sheets. God help you if you go crazy and open up IE6, you’re sure to find some form of mess awaiting you.
Recently though my work habits have changed and I’ve decided to stop leaving it until the end, this has been prompted by a few things such as approaching the end of a project having not checked in IE7 and sending a colleague off to show the site to a client who, you guessed it uses IE7. (Sorry Andrew!)
Coupled with that I’ve started to develop sites in Google Chrome. I was impressed with Google Chrome when it first came out and apart from a few too many crashes with flash content it was pretty slick. However the lack of developer tools left me developing in Firefox and using two different browsers seemed a bit impractical.
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HTML5 CSS3 starting template
*Now updated with jquery 1.4.2 and removed supersleight as usage of IE6 only stylesheet removes most of the need for it*
Merry Christmas Twitters and RSS subscribers and all those who have found their way here via some other route.
Having started to get into using HTML5 and CSS3 in quite a big way recently I’ve put together a base package that I’ve been using to start projects off. (I’ll hopefully have some of them finished for you to see in the new year).
I was thinking to myself what better way to encourage people to start using all this new stuff than sharing the package with everyone. Now it’s not up to much but it will give you a basis to customize and start from for HTML5 and CSS3.
There’s a good chance my coding may not even be to your liking but that doesn’t matter, I’m making this available so you can download it and change it into your own starting point.
You can download it right here.
[download id=”8″]
Why we should all be forward thinking
Having attended the “For a beautiful web” workshop in Newcastle I was very impressed with Andy Clarke and as such there’ll probably be a few more posts on here related to the stuff I picked up from the day and I would highly recommend anyone who can to attend a workshop or see Andy speaking if they get chance.
For those who don’t know, the workshop was all about using new technologies such as CSS3 and central to everything was the fact that websites don’t have to look the same in every browser. (Check out http://dowebsitesneedtobeexperiencedexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/)
I was convinced, the arguments for progressing and using this new stuff are great but I left and my first thought was “well it’s all right for Andy he gets good clients, but I couldn’t start doing that with our clients”. Which I’m sure is what a lot of other people think straight off, and then I did a bit more thinking and realised that was the stupidest thing I’ve possibly ever thought to myself. Continue reading