I’ve been talking about it for what seems like forever. Over the past week, I finally started to make the jump. If you’re reading this entry, the DNS changes have propagated to your neck of the woods, which means you’re getting the new version of this site. The title of this post is a phrase former colleagues at Lycos used when we were redesigning a site or changing the backend while the site continued to function live on a public server. A task which seemed impossible, but had to be done. continued

Alright, now it’s personal because there’s shame involved. The company I used to work for (Lycos) used a project in which I was originally involved (a redesign of HotBot) as a base for a CSS skinning contest (Hack Hotbot). I don’t care what the internal debates and politics have been between HotBot product management and Lycos Legal, but this situation totally blows: continued

With the confirmed news that Microsoft is ceasing development of Internet Explorer for Macintosh, a wave of sadness sweeps through the web design and development community. Three years ago, I was only getting my feet wet by messing around with style sheets, constantly frustrated that Netscape 4 wouldn’t do what the CSS spec said it was supposed to do. IE5/Mac provided my first opportunity to dive head-first into CSS and begin to realize its potential for designing on the Web. To friends on the Microsoft Mac Biz Unit who poured years of their lives into this product, my condolences. IE5/Mac, you raised the bar, and certainly served us well.

In a related note, Quark recently redesigned their site using XHTML for structure and CSS for presentation and table-free layout. The pages are simple and beautifully clean. The main navigation features slick slide-down subnavigation, though they could have built this navigation using an unordered list, then kept the subnavigation properly nested within the main nav list. The majority of their top-level pages validate using XHTML 1.0 Transitional. continued

In January of 2002, Quark dumbfounded Mac design professionals by releasing QuarkXPress 5 sans support for Mac OS X. Because of Quark’s rush to release an already outdated product, Mac-based print designers have either held back in upgrading from OS 9 to OS X, or have bumbled along, forced to run QuarkXPress in Classic mode, or directly within OS 9. Since I continue to accept print design projects, like Jeff Veen’s latest book, Quark’s incompetence has been one of the reasons I’ve avoided switching back to Mac and to OS X. continued

Via Paul Boutin, an interesting read from Peter Maass over at Slate. “Salam Pax Is Real” tells an inside story of Driving Mr. Pax, discovering his musical and literary tastes, and taking advice on buying Persian rugs — all without ever realizing this hired interpreter was the Iraqi star of the Web and burdened by huge ISP costs:

He usually drifted off to one of the few Internet cafes in town. I assumed he was just writing e-mails to friends, though he often complained about the high cost of downloading and uploading. This struck me as odd, because sending and receiving e-mail shouldn’t require a lot of bandwidth–unless, of course, you are posting photos to your blog and receiving more e-mail than Bill Gates.

I returned last night from a relaxing holiday weekend spent in Pismo Beach with a few good friends. One afternoon, while most of the others retired to their rooms for a midday siesta, I pulled out my laptop, settled into a big rocking chair looking out into a garden filled with native California shrubs, trees, flowers, and herbs, and was finally able to polish off a design submission for the CSS Zen Garden. continued

Two days ago, Jeffrey Zeldman brought to our attention a petition to encourage Microsoft to include proper PNG support in Internet Explorer for Windows. Yesterday, he wrote up a fabulous explanation of the benefits of the PNG image format, points out examples of it in use, and why it needs to be fully supported in IE/Win. If you haven’t done so, and believe in the cause, go sign the petition.

It’s been a while since I’ve stumbled into The Canvas, paid for a latte and a pastry or ordered a sandwich and salad from the counter, perused the art hanging around the side walls, and camped out at one of their tables under thirty-foot ceilings. I used to love coming to this place because I like their concept. Combine an art gallery (a real one, with lots of art from a mix of local and regional West Coast artists) with a nearly-full-menu cafe, put it in an interesting space away from normal tourist traffic, and you’ll attract a nice range of art enthusiasts, students, laptop-laden geeks, and java-sippers of all ages. continued