Design Archives

Highlighting form fields with unobtrusive JavaScript
Automatically highlight the form fields on your web page.
July 19, 2006 - 357 words, 6 comments

Signs
Beautiful and useful signage.
February 6, 2004 - 5 words, 3 comments

Tab Wraps
How to keep CSS tabs from wrapping to multiple lines.
October 10, 2003 - 74 words, 11 comments

Online Readability
You would think that a newspaper would know something about readability, but the Boston Globe is proving otherwise with their Web site.
October 6, 2003 - 306 words, 15 comments

OSCommerce button set
A replacement set of buttons for OSCommerce
October 3, 2003 - 54 words, 8 comments

Combination layouts
Do you know how to combine tables and CSS layout effectively?
September 19, 2003 - 67 words, 4 comments

Outline numbering
Outline numbering can be accomplished on the Web by using nested ordered lists and a bit of CSS.
August 7, 2003 - 78 words, 6 comments

More standards sites
Zeldman lists some larger commercial sites that were designed with Web standards.
August 6, 2003 - 48 words, 2 comments

Becoming standard
A year ago it was notable when a company redesigned with Web standards. Now it...
August 6, 2003 - 140 words, 6 comments

Rounded corners in CSS
There lots of ways to create rounded corners with CSS, but they always require lots of complex HTML and CSS. This is simpler.
July 23, 2003 - 682 words, 365 comments

CSS dotted borders in IE
One of the many irritating things about CSS support in Internet Explorer is that it incorrectly shows dashed borders instead of dotted borders. Here’s how you can fix that.
July 23, 2003 - 493 words, 69 comments

Simplifying the web, one step at a time
Some things in Web design are too complex. They make a site hard to build, hard to use, and hard to maintain. So I’m simplifying the everyday components of a Web site and writing case studies and examples in a new feature called Simplified.
July 17, 2003 - 128 words,

Be yourself
When does emulating Amazon’s user experience become copying?
June 13, 2003 - 35 words, 3 comments

Let it go
Netscape 4 is six years old.
June 9, 2003 - 27 words, 6 comments

Rounded tab corners
Jemima Pereira has added rounded corners to my CSS tabs code. By opening the code, it was made stronger. That’s the value of open source.
May 25, 2003 - 76 words, 7 comments

Zeldman likes it
Jeffrey Zeldman has proclaimed my CSS tabs "Best CSS tabs ever." That’s high praise indeed.
May 23, 2003 - 15 words, 3 comments

CSS tabs with Submenus
Accomplishing tabbed menus with submenus using only CSS and semanticly-correct HTML.
May 15, 2003 - 176 words, 117 comments

Cingular Standards
Cingular Wireless is now using CSS for their site layout.
April 22, 2003 - 69 words,

IE6 CSS bug
Working around yet another Internet Explorer CSS bug and other frustrations.
April 22, 2003 - 196 words, 4 comments

The web isn't print
The web isn’t print. Don’t use popular print conventions like columnular layouts on a Web page.
April 2, 2003 - 288 words, 1 comment

Another reason for favicons
Including a favicon for your site makes it easier for people using tabbed browsers.
January 19, 2003 - 78 words,

Credible Design
If you want your customers to have confidence in your company, make sure your site is well-designed.
November 19, 2002 - 59 words,

Commercial CSS layout
Here’s a couple of large-scale Web sites that use CSS instead of tables for layout. Do you know of others?
October 29, 2002 - 100 words, 4 comments

Embrace the medium
The Web is different than print, television, or any other medium. To be successful, designers must embrace those differences.
October 15, 2002 - 450 words, 4 comments

Search box patterns
A thorough analysis of search interfaces.
September 9, 2002 - 68 words,

Another list of design patterns
More on design patterns.
August 12, 2002 - 112 words,

Does Flash help?
In New Architect’s Why DHTML Will Win, Steven Champeon asks of Flash, "When was the...
May 14, 2002 - 48 words,

e-Business Patterns
IBM has an interesting set of patterns for developing Web applications. The site presents a...
April 19, 2002 - 22 words,

Writting helpful error messages
The job of an error message is to inform the user of a problem and...
March 21, 2002 - 49 words, 2 comments

Accessiblity Design
Dartmouth’s Web teaching site has a 20 page Word Document describing specific guidelines for creating...
February 13, 2002 - 29 words,

Design patterns
Design patterns are familiar conventions that get used in interactive design. A progress bar is...
October 17, 2001 - 95 words,

CSS browser extensions
If you use CSS in your Web site, grab the IE extensions that allow you...
October 10, 2001 - 48 words,

Designer Knowledge
What does a Web designer need to know?
May 30, 2000 - 138 words,