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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.
It turns out that I've recently found quite a talent for cooking, allow me to share a recipe...continue reading
Yesterday I vented my frustration with the CSS WG. Today I wonder how to address the problems.continue reading
No matter if we write on our own blogs or fumble around in the strange hoops, disjointed blogs, and antiquated mailing systems the W3C claim are "open dialogue"; designers are ignored or simply don't know they are being engaged (which means that they aren't being engaged at all)... The future of CSS layout and display is not going to be decided by any Working Group. It'll be decided by browser vendors who implement stuff they come up with after listening to designers (transitions, transforms, font embedding, etc), and for the next few years, it'll be all about JavaScript patching up display problems because CSS can't do what we want. I've seen it coming, many other's have seen it coming, not least Eric Meyer. I hate that, but that is exactly what is going to happen: we're going to rely on JavaScript for display.continue reading
Where have I been over the last month? Well, Christmas I went back home and got full blown Flu, so I spent from boxing day until the end of my holiday lying in bed, alternately sleeping and coughing. Other than that it was a nice Christmas. January has been busy.continue reading
This post brings to a head a lot of my thoughts and feelings with regard to CSS3 and the way the W3C is developing it. It does not aim to look at specific topics in detail, but to step back and question some fundamental issues that I feel need to be addressed.continue reading
The goal is to produce a standard accordion menu, with the requirement that the parent buttons (the big grey ones) accommodate up to two lines of text, and that text must be aligned vertically to the middle. Button content may be dynamic, and so text-length is unknown: that means no hackery of providing a class for single-line buttons and a class for multi-line buttons.continue reading
Just a small note to anyone that visits here. I hate my website. It is a terrible reflection of my skills, it's unfinished, it's broken, it's three years old, it's out of date in many ways, forms don't work well, the user experience is poor. It embarrasses me, and it's a terrible advertisement for me considering I'm a professional web designer. In short, the site is getting a serious re-factoring over Christmas to bring it in-line with my skills and abilities today. If you're reading any technical articles and thinking my words are at odds with my site - you're right. You'd never know I walk the walk as well as talk the talk by looking at this. Time to kick things into shape.continue reading
YouTube have started including a "brand bar" with search field in their embedded players. That's a bad idea for two reasons; firstly embedded players are in the context of another site, and shoving a YouTube bar in the player quite easily ruins carefully crafted designs: "hey look at the video! Let me grab your attention!". Secondly, this is an embedded player - it's there because the author of the page including the video thinks the content of the video is relevant to their audience. Given that is the only use case for embedding a video, why would anyone want to search youtube for a different video at that point? By all means include this new functionality, but do it after the video has played, you know, when it's relevant. Not before.continue reading
There has recently been quite a bit of attention paid to the idea of using CSS Tables for layout, now that all browsers support display:table; and its associated attributes. Using CSS to force layout in a table-like manner has been written about in books, talked about in blogs, and hailed as a revolution in CSS based design. It's not. It's really bad. Don't do it. I'm writing here to convince you why you shouldn't.continue reading
I've been neglecting the site again, but it's time for a quick catch-up and another batch of photo's. There are shots from a couple of photography sessions with the Bangor Photo Society, a few of the fireworks at Llandudno, and a few from Kath's 21st Birthday.continue reading
A selection of noteworthy links I've recently discovered…
Dave Shea talks about the state of fonts on the web, and where it’s all heading. The future is pretty.
An absolutely beautiful animation, in a number of ways.
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.
A spot on assessment of the differences between purists and perfectionists, and why you want to be the later rather than the former.
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.
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:
I’d love to see the numbers behind this, considering their market sector. At last, IE6 is starting to die!
This goes one step further than my usual approach. Normally I include the browser chrome in the graphic, so the design has context. This idea is even better and I can’t believe I’ve not thought of it myself.
The much anticipated release of the third version of the best browser in the world didn’t go particularly smoothly.
I bet they wished they had heard of pressing F11 in Firefox. And then Ctrl+Tab to switch tabs. Would have saved them a whole lot of time.
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