For a recent WordPress project I wanted to create a number of different pages which pulled in different sidebars using the default WordPress get_sidebar function. The layout of the pages was identical apart from the different navigation sidebars. I wanted... [read more]
I was surprised to see an infographic at CSS-Tricks. It showed that LESS was a more popular CSS preprocessor than Sass. I’d always thought that Sass had the higher profile. I use Sass, and I think it’s great because it... [read more]
Many blogs and other websites (like this one!) present a front page of teasers for multiple stories. These excerpts are intended to provoke interest and encourage readers to delve deeper into the site content. The default WordPress the_excerpt call makes it... [read more]
There’s a problem on your website. Your code isn’t validating. Maybe there’s a layout glitch. You look at the source code and there’s a big mass of nested elements. Which closing tag is for which element? Where does that div... [read more]
One of the more interesting and challenging web design tasks I’ve faced recently was the TerraCycle Israel website. A Hebrew website features a script and language I have no knowledge of, and a visual site alignment that’s a mirror image... [read more]
One of the challenges when creating a universal structure that will apply to multiple websites is providing flexibility of configuration options. Each of the 18 TerraCycle websites run on the same Rails 2.3 structure, allowing development to continue on a... [read more]
The TerraCycle website has an index of collection programs that users can join. The programs on the index page are list items formatted to display in a grid layout. That’s easy when you know how many list items there are... [read more]
This is a really easy way to use jQuery to equalize a two column web page layout or otherwise manipulate element heights . As well as providing for visual symmetry, this method of jQuery height manipulation provides wider layout flexibility.... [read more]
In working with the Ruby on Rails based TerraCycle site, I’ve become a huge fan of the code framework from a web designer’s point of view. The simplicity and convention based aspects of Rails extend beyond the back-end code and... [read more]
One of the basics of semantic HTML is the correct use of <h1> tags. It also has benefits for search engine optimization. It’s not that correct use of <h1> is going to have a massive impact in itself, but it’s... [read more]
