Web Design — Konstruktors Notes

Web Design Archive

Remove index.html from the URL

Some servers seem to automatically append index.html to all HTTP requests, which you can remove by placing this at the beginning of .htaccess:

RewriteEngine On # remove this, if you have it already

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} index\.html
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html$ /$1/ [R=301,L]

I used this technique for a site that I built — ichomesforsale.com which is hosted at Godaddy.

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The Unspoken Heroes of Web Design

While playing with the typography of this blog, I couldn’t appreciate enough the simplicity and elegance of Tahoma, it’s wider sister Verdana and beauty serif Georgia. All of those fonts were designed by one guy — Matthew Carter, English type designer born 1937, living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.

Matthew Carter

Thomas Rickner

While you have probably heard of Matthew Carter, it’s unlikely that you’ll know Tom Rickner who hinted these fonts making them so easy to read at sizes with very few ink dots available to form their shape and guide the eye.

In the summer of 1994 Microsoft commissioned Carter and Rickner to design a new system font for Windows 95 which we now know as Tahoma. Here is the story of Verdana.

Once you’ll discover where the names of those fonts come from, you’ll never look at them the same way.

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Google humor: page speed suggestion

Google's suggestions to Google

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Semantics of Article Headline and Byline

Can you think of any reason why placing article credits before the headline, like this:

<p>August 18, 2009 by Author Name</p>
<h1>Title of the Post</h1>
<p>Post body goes here.</p>

is semantically worse than moving credits after the title:

<h1>Title of the Post</h1>
<p>August 18, 2009 by Author Name</p>
<p>Post body goes here.</p>

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No Font Embedding, Please

The limitations of web design are also its most powerful features, when compared to print. Design is all about finding the best solutions within a specific set of scarce resources.

Fonts are designed to deliver information to the reader in the easiest and fastest way. Aren’t the fonts currently available on various operating systems doing this job well?

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CSS @Imports Suck

I have never used them, and here is why you shouldn’t use CSS @imports too. Via Monday By Noon.

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Remove Border from Image Links

For illustrating anchor links in some cases you might want to use bottom-border instead of a default text-decoration:underline. In order to achieve that, one would use the following CSS rule:

a { text-decoration:none; border-bottom:2px solid; }

which also adds border to the bottom of all linked images. In order to remove it, you would think that setting

a img { border:none; }

would be enough. Read more »

WordPress Admin Header Design Tweak, Take Two

After looking at all the submissions for the WordPress Admin Design Tweak Poll I have updated my entry leaving Panel and Help buttons as they currently are in WordPress 2.7.1. The only change necessary in HTML structure would be moving #favorite-actions out of #wphead-info. Read more »

Cite, Quote and Twitter

Why doesn’t twitter use <cite> tag for all @replies and <blockquote> for the actual content? It would make things more semantic. Read more »

MediaTemple’s Disappointing Grid

Since the very first day this website has been hosted at MediaTemple. Back then it was a simple shared hosting account for a good price and a lot of good and well earned hype. Almost a year ago they started switching to a grid infrastructure which was said to be able to allocate enough computing power for every grid member no matter what the neighboring cells are doing. Read more »

6:00 AM Podcast Theme Preview

Since the feedback for the mock-up of the podcast theme for was so great, here is a little preview of how far I have gotten. Read more »

Squeeze the Header of the New WordPress 2.7 Dashboard

I love the new WordPress 2.7 dashboard design even despite all the bad things that I have previously said. Back then it was only a prototype and probably even the core developers didn’t have a clear and complete picture of how it is going to look and work in real-word environment.

Now when it is one minute away from the prime-time, I applaud Jane, Matt and all the designers and developers behind the overhaul who carried out the work in such a transparent and feedback driven way.

For me it is the new icon-only-slide-right navigation bar that makes the whole administration section work so much better than I could have imagined. All the administration sections are only one click away. Navigation takes up only 40 pixels of the cheap vertical space and thus saves much of the expansive vertical area where things get done. The result is truly amazing and it makes me wonder if anyone really knew it will turn out to be this good. Read more »

Come and See the New Design

One day I’ll stop pushing pixels and will write.

Is it true that finding solutions to problems in programming is more satisfying than discussing and stating ideas in writing? Or are these simply two kinds of people who prefer one over the other? Read more »

WordPress UI Idea: Menu Item Sorting and Renaming

Don’t like the proposed WordPress 2.7 menu structure? Why not make it sortable and with ability to rename top-level menu items so that those who still prefer Manage and Write instead of Posts and Pages can have it.

WordPress Dashboard menu sorting and renaming

Here is how it works: Read more »

WordPress 2.7 Administration UI Wireframes

Automattic have published WordPress 2.7 user interface wireframes (.pdf) that list and explain the changes planned for the next major release of WordPress.

WordPress 2.7 User Interface proposal (version 002)

I think there are only two things wrong with the purposed user interface and the information architecture: Read more »

WordPress Dashboard UI Idea #3

Fluid width WordPress administration user interface: idea (no.3). Read more »

Open Share Icon that Looks Good at Small Sizes

Here is a modified open share icon with less rounded corners which looks good even at 16px or less. Read more »

WordPress Dashboard — Idea No.3

Here is another take on how to improve WordPress Dashboard. See also the Widget Administration section. Read more »

WordPress Dashboard UI Idea Update

The UI example has been updated to support Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8. Another improvement is the unified HTML/CSS template for the list-type content inside widgets. For example, try dragging the Latest Comments widget from the action column (right side) to the content area (left side column) and see what happens with the widget’s content.

WordPress Dashboard User Interface Idea in Internet Explorer 6

Variable width drop-down menu that works in Internet Explorer 6 (CSS only)

Aside from that, I think I have managed to create the first ever CSS only drop-down menu (that works also in IE6) with the second level links expanding to the total width of that menu. If you are interested, see the source.