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Personal Homepage of Matthew Wilcox

Matt is an English web designer based in Great Britain.

Those of you who don’t know me allow me to say hi, shake your hand (gents), give you a welcoming hug (ladies) and guide you to the about section.

Most recent enteries

Managing responsive designs is hard, so let's use our <head>

Exerpt / Summary

Here is what I believe is the best proposition yet for managing our responsive designs. This includes managing our CSS, JavaScript, and inline <img>'s.continue reading

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Posted:
Sun, 13th May 2012 at 12:58 UTC
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A better method than <picture> and srcset?

Exerpt / Summary

Denis LeBlanc has a much more concise method of solving the responsive images problem than any I've seen, which is backward compatible, and has the flexibility and power of using <picture> media query support.continue reading

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Posted:
Sun, 13th May 2012 at 09:14 UTC
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Opera further messes up the vendor prefix mess

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As hard as it is to believe, the mess of vendor prefixes is actually worse than I thought given Opera's current implementation of -webkit- hijacking.continue reading

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Posted:
Sat, 12th May 2012 at 15:36 UTC
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Different Flexsliders at different display sizes

Exerpt / Summary

A design I was working on called for a mobile sized display to have a single slide visible at all times, but a larger display to have two slides visible at the same time. It also required each view to scale fluidly without revealing a partial slide or looking squiffy. Here's how I managed it.continue reading

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Posted:
Sat, 5th May 2012 at 16:13 UTC
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Vendor Prefixes, the wider problem.

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Vendor prefixes were always a bad solution, as pointed out by a few people at the time. Why? Because in reality any vendor's goal is to increase their user base, whether for business reasons (more users = more money) or for influence (more users = more sway in decision making circles, regardless of anything else). Given the importance of user base size, any vendor's secondary goal is to stop loss from their existing user base. No one wants less profit or less influence. Only after looking after the bean-counting does a vendor's goals move to championing standards or any other wider context issue. This is a reality, and this is why vendor prefixes were always going to be a serious problem leading to its own destruction.continue reading

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Posted:
Wed, 2nd May 2012 at 00:15 UTC
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Enochs Fish and Chips, Llandudno

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A responsive website featuring a lot of CSS3 animation; an experiment in how far things can be pushed at the moment.continue reading

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Posted:
Thu, 26th Apr 2012 at 09:12 UTC
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How do we deal with images in HTML?

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A re-recording of a talk I did recently for Standards Next, discussing the problem we have with <img> in HTML, ways that is can be tackled, and the future of how we may solve it.continue reading

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Posted:
Thu, 22nd Mar 2012 at 16:52 UTC
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Why I love working on the web

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The web is a brilliant place to work. I moan (often) about the technologies, I moan (often) about organisations. But I don't think I would ever say anything bad about the people who help make it. The huge majority are incredibly nice and talented people, with an enthusiasm and passion for what they do. For many, the web isn't just a job - it's something much more. And it shows. It's a privilege and joy to be even a tiny part of that.continue reading

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Posted:
Wed, 21st Mar 2012 at 10:38 UTC
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Responsive design: fixing our sensors and technology.

Exerpt / Summary

This is a follow up from my previous post where I talked about the problems with our current approaches to modifying our technologies (HTML/CSS/JS) in order to enable building responsive websites. Please read that to understand why our current approach is not future-friendly, and will cause us problems in the long run. Here I propose a solution; it's this:continue reading

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Posted:
Wed, 14th Mar 2012 at 11:41 UTC
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Impending problems with authoring responsive designs

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With responsive design the whole web stack needs to adapt to common breakpoints. Yet there's no efficient place to set those breakpoints. We're in for a world of DRY hell.continue reading

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Posted:
Sun, 26th Feb 2012 at 20:11 UTC
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External links

Reviews

Reviews of books, products, and other things.

The Alloy of Law

Brandon Sanderson’s latest book is a sequel of sorts to his fantastic Mistborn trilogy.

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Lastolite All in One Umbrella Kit 80cm (34")

For any photographers out there, my thoughts on the Lastolite All in One Umbrella Kit.

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The Way of Kings: The Stormlight Archive

My thoughts on Brandon Sanderson’s newest novel, “The Way of Kings: The Stormlight Archive”.

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Of The Moment

A selection of noteworthy links I've recently discovered…

Why old tech pundits are less accurate at predicting trends than a school kid.

Katherine Noyes thinks iPads are a passing fad. Lol! Here’s why that’s so funny…

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When emulation isn't emulation. Microsoft IE9 and it's IE8/7 modes

IE9 has an IE7/8 mode. They don’t actually work like IE7/8. Because that would be too easy wouldn’t it. *cry*

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Adobe CS5

I would jump for joy if all they did was add no new features and fix the god-awful broken mess they so jokingly call a User Interface. As in I would literally get off my seat and bound around the office as though someone had strapped pogo-sticks to my legs with over-bounding joy if Adobe release a new product that doesn’t infuriate in new and fundamentally diabolical ways. Because I don’t think I can take much more of Adobe’s “improvements” without booking a plane ticket, heading to their offices, and going on a rampage screaming “remember before you bought Macromedia? Remember when you gave a shit about users rather than shareholders? Remember when you were good? DO THAT, mother******!” I know of no other software that can make my blood boil just because it’s so self-righteous that it refuses to understand the OS basic Cmd+Tab behaviour properly.

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Font Embedding Now

Dave Shea talks about the state of fonts on the web, and where it’s all heading. The future is pretty.

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A short love story in Stop Motion.

An absolutely beautiful animation, in a number of ways.

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Petition to drop the 1984-esque UK Communications Data Bill

If you’re living in the UK, and you’d rather the government didn’t hold a complete database of every phone call, text message, and website you ever go on, you need to sign this petition.

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Foxworthy

A spot on assessment of the differences between purists and perfectionists, and why you want to be the later rather than the former.

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PHP5.3 alpha is out, PHP4 is now officially dead

PHP 4.4.9 was rolled out today, and marks the end of development for PHP4. So everyone jump to PHP5, now. PHP5.3 alpha was released today and includes namespaces; a feature planned for PHP6, but apparently pulled forward.

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Cuil, the new Google contender

Cuil is a new search engine with a larger index than Google, built by former Google employees. It’s very interesting. Here are my first impressions:

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37 Signals, makers of Basecamp, begin phasing out IE6 support

I’d love to see the numbers behind this, considering their market sector. At last, IE6 is starting to die!

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