Monthly Archives: May 2008

Design (And More) Spotlight: Webmonkey 2.0

Webmonkey, around sine 1996, is one of the most well-known and long-running web development sites. Their blog was one of the first blogs I read, and the first one that I subscribed to via RSS. Some changes have been happening lately over at Webmonkey. They’ve been purchased by Condé Nast, the parent company of Wired Magazine, and they’re restructuring their site.

Let’s start with their blog. When it launched, it was known as Monkey Bites. Eventually the blog was moved over to Wired.com, where it ran for awhile before being renamed to “Compiler.” The blog is, once again, known as Monkey Bites, and is now residing at webmonkey.com/blog and it’s integrated more tightly with Webmonkey than ever before.

The WebMonkey site itself is now a wiki. What used to be a repository for tutorials penned by HotWired’s designers and developers is now opening-up and allowing anyone who knows what they’re talking about to submit articles to be included. It looks like WebMonkey is moving forward into the 21st century, making an effort to keep up with today’s technologies, instead of staying a dusty collection of out-of-date tutorials.

Now, let’s move on to the design.

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Fixed vs. Liquid Layouts

This is yet another web-related topic that gets people arguing. Not quite as bad as “Mac vs. PC,” it really gets some people going. Which is better, a fixed-width layout, or a fluid one that resizes to fit the browser window. Unlike some people,…

Why Not to Use Blogger or WordPress.com

If you’re serious about blogging, I strongly advise you to avoid using Blogger, WordPress.com, or *shudder*, LiveJournal. The first thing you should do when you start a blog is get a domain name. At $7-$10 per year, it’s not going to empty your bank…

Is This Enough Ads?

What do you think, does Forbes have enough ads on their website? [Screenshot.] While I’m still avoiding using AdBlock, sites like this make it hard to resist. Hovering over either of the two CDW banner ads triggers an overlay of various products. And there…

32 Lightweight Designs

Once again, I’ve been skimming through the design galleries and looking through notes and bookmarks in search of noteworthy designs. This time around, I’ve put together a collection of light designs. While more graphic-heavy designs may look great, simplicity and whitespace can go a…

Net Neutrality in a Nutshell

Net Neutrality is very important. For both website operators and the average user. It’s a much-talked-about subject, though far too many people have no clue what it means. Despite the somewhat boring name, Net Neutrality is something that everyone (who isn’t the RIAA, the…

BlogBuzz May 17, 2008

Rank Your Domain

How good is your domain? Take the test and find out! How Short is the Domain? Give yourself one point if it’s 16 characters or less (excluding the TLD), two points if it’s 10 characters or less, and three if it’s under 7 characters.…

DNS Pinger

DNS updates are a pain. They test your patience as you wait “up to 72 hours for your changes to propagate,” and often you need to know when it’s done. If you’ve ever moved from one web host to another, you know how tricky…

IES4OSX – Run Internet Explorer on Your Mac

Internet Explorer, a.k.a. the Web Designer’s Plague, unfortunately, isn’t available on the Mac. Many will say this is a good thing, but for designers, or anyone who makes many changes to their template, Internet Explorer is pretty much mandatory for testing. So many people…