Blogging and all that malarkey

A simple jQuery plugin that checks if a browser supports a given font.

Would you be surprised if you heard me grumble about CSS3 and web typography *?

A little over a week ago, but what seems like much, much, longer, my wife and I made the long trip from home to Australia to host three Visual Web Design Masterclasses in partnership with our good friends at Web Directions. It proved to be quite a week.

It’s always a pleasure to have the opportunity to build on work that I have done in the past, so a few weeks ago I jumped at the chance to work on a small visual design realign for my friend Richard Rubin of Really Worried fame.

I've got a Honda CRV. It's eleven years old. It's rusty around the bonnet, the electric windows are sticky and the exhaust is noisy. That's OK. It's been reliable, hardly serviced and as I only drive it a few miles about twice a week, it does everything that I need it to do. I'll probably drive it until I can't drive it anymore.

You might have noticed already, things are looking a little different around here. Over the Easter weekend, I took some time away from the pressing matter of eating chocolate to work on a redesign, specifically to address (justifiable) concerns over the previous design’s readability but also to prepare bringing For A Beautiful Web visually in line with a coming redesign of the Transcending CSS book site.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might know that I've spent the last couple of weeks in San Francisco, recording several DVD titles for New Riders. Most will be available in around three months, but I'm pleased to announce that one, I Can Make You A CSS Zen Master, is available today. Watch the trailer below to find out more.

The Internet Explorer team today posted details that IE8’s Compatibility Mode (replicating IE7) will not render sites exactly as IE7 does.

In just a few short weeks, in the middle of April, I’ll be squeezing myself into an airline seat and flying the 9500 miles from home to Australia. This will be the third time that I’ve made the trip in four years, the last two times to speak in Sydney at Web Directions.

A couple of weeks ago, Ryan Taylor interviewed me for the Boag World bodcast on the subject of Internet Explorer 8 and the state of CSS in browsers generally.

I’m sorry for posting twice on the same day about tweetCC, but it’s not everyday that something that I have worked on and feel super passionate about is picked up by, and hits the homepage of Wired.

This week Brian Suda and I launched tweetCC, a Twitter micro-app that allows Twitter users to declare a Creative Commons license for their tweeted content. I’ll be writing more about why we decided to make tweetCC and why licensing you tweets is important in a future entry, but as several people have commented on my design and CSS implementation, first a few words about them.

I’m currently spending my time writing and preparing content for a new DVD title, Designing Accessibility (For A Beautiful Web), part of a series of DVDs that I am making for New Riders, that will be published sometime in 2009.

Today it came to light in a blog post on Microsoft’s IE Blog that the company intends to include a new ‘compatibility feature’ and black/white list that it hopes will help users if sites break in the up-and-coming release of Internet Explorer 8.

As the title suggests, we’re spreading our wings and taking our For A Beautiful Web Visual Web Design Masterclass to Australia this April, with dates in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney.

I’m really pleased that I can announce that, along with a formidable cast of old pros, I’ll be speaking at @media2009 in London on 25th and 26th of June. This will, incredibly, be the sixth time that I’ve spoken at @media (2005, 2006, 2007 (twice), 2008 and now 2009) and this year I’ll be talking about something a little different.

Running a small business means that I divide my time between the things that I love doing (project planning, designing and dealing with people) and the things that I don’t enjoy so much (business planning, accounting and dealing with (some) people).

Last year, Leslie Jensen-Inman was working on her graduate thesis and interviewed a cast of shady characters including Andy Budd, (Gentleman) Jon Hicks, Jeremy Keith and yours truly on the subject of web design and development education.

At the moment I’m writing a script for a DVD tutorial on microformats  that I will be recording for New Riders at the end of February. While designing some shiny new examples for the hCalendar event microformat, I’ve been revisiting the problems and discussions of accessibility that surround the date design pattern and thinking about possible design solutions.

Nothing drives me crazy like TV ads for insurance comparison web sites (if I hear once more that you don’t have to be a computer wizard to use confused.com, I might just drive over the edge).

Let’s be fair, few customers are professional writers and few hire one when making a web site. That is why I now include professional copywriting into every estimate as a non-removable item. When customers are adding their own copy to a site, I give them ten simple tips to follow.

The United States’ soon to President Barack Obama’s choice of Tobias Frere-Jones’ Gotham typeface has been well documented.

Important: Contract Killer has been updated.

24ways goes from strength to strength each year and I was so pleased when Drew McLellan asked me back to contribute again.

Stuff and Nonsense is ten years old today.