Navarr's Tech Side The Technical Side of my Life

12Sep/090

Patterned Backgrounds & Background-Attachment

Something very crucial to most, if not every, website layout is commonly overlooked by even some of the most experienced amateur web designers:  Using Background-Attachment properly on Patterned Backgrounds.

When using a patterned background, such as simple lines or a pattern, you generally don’t think about how it will affect the user’s eyes or attention, but more so the way it will look, and generally you don’t specify anything more than a background-image.  The default value for background-attachment still exists, though – and it is scroll.

This is a bad thing for one major reason.  A scrolling, patterned background distracts the user from the content of the page.  A person’s eyes follow movement.  It catches there attention and pulls them in.  This technique is often used for form elements, such as buttons, or navigation.  However, when using a patterned background, this is a bad thing.  Instead of being able to focus on the content of the page, the user’s eyes will instead be distracted by the moving background images, making it harder, and slightly  more painful to see.

Continue reading to see and compare the differences of the two styles.

5Jan/080

About the Author (part 1)

There are some people reading this tech blog of mine, so, I guess I should introduce who I am, eh?  Considering that most people reading this are people I've never talked to before, or some of the people that know me online.

My name is Navarr Barnier.  I'm a sixteen year old student at Klein Collins High School in Houston, Texas.  I work in PHP, (X)HTML, XML, CSS, and am starting to get familiar with JavaScript.  I considering myself a Web Developer.  I can't really do anything with layouts, but code and backend, they are my friends.

Recently, I've started being more active in the Web Design and Development Community.  I've joined the mailing lists for Microformats, became a member of the DataPortability Google (and Facebook) group, Joined the APML Facebook group, and started the process of getting a spot in the HTML5 W3C working group.

I hate the terms, but I love the concepts of Web 2.0, Web 3.0, the Semantic Web.  The internet is truly moving in a good direction.  We are truly entering the Information Technology age.

Those are the basics.  When I post Part 2, I'll cover over what www.gtaero.net is as well as its future.

3Jan/080

The Purpose of CSS in the Semantic Web

The Term Web x.x is overused like the bottom of a shoe, and because of such a term, its scoffed at, laughed at, and generally made fun of on any tech site or twitter you can find.  However, the term does have some importance attached to it.

"Web 2.0" would best be defined as the Internet for Design.  Web 2.0 cares more about the Design side of pages.  The Fancy fonts used, the rounded borders, the interactivity (AJAX!).  That is definitely what Web 2.0 is all about.

"Web 3.0" is all about Semantics.  The important part is that the code can be extracted via a machine or script or something.  Here, standards take importance.  XML, Microformats; we have to have standards that dictate how to write our code so that a program like Operator can pull the relevant information from it.

Now, once we have a code like that, CSS becomes VERY important.  We need to use CSS to position our elements and colour them to make them look useful to the viewer, not just the machine, while still having machine readable code.

You see what I'm getting at?  If you still don't understand, try opening a random XML or RSS file (without a CSS, XSL, or XSLT file) in Opera.  That's actually perfect rendering of an XML file, and that's what it would be to any ordinary user.

Thankfully, Microformats were designed with Human Readability in mind, so they will properly work (bare minimum) with the HTML that is used with them, but, obviously, CSS is important to make it look like something nice.

So, now you know, the importance of CSS in the Semantic Web. ;)

Important Links:

3Jan/082

XHTML2 vs. HTML5

What the hell is up with this fanboy war?  The web design community has already started getting used to XHTML, but now the WHATWG group wants the continued update of HTML?  Isn't that a step backwards?

HTML was wild, unordered, and controlled by the browser vendors (at least from what I've seen), however, XHTML was started and controlled by the W3C group, making sure that it gets properly implemented, however, the WHATWG group doesn't like it.  They want to stay with their old fashioned <b> tags.

I admit, web designers from the 90s have gotten used to the old style HTML tags, and its still what they're teaching in school, but that is no reason to stay with it.  Technology changes over time, this is the same for any tech profession, the data will change, and then you'll have to learn something new.  This isn't just the case for tech jobs, but jobs that use computers.  Microsoft publishes a new Operating System, your company updates, and you need to re-learn it.

XHTML1 supports backwards compatibility with HTML for the old authors who are still getting used to it, and so that browsers can still render old code, XHTML2 doesn't, but all browsers should properly implement both.  But by creating HTML5 and "XHTML5", WHATWG is requiring browser vendors to include yet another set of standards into browsers in order to properly display the internet.

Personally, I have yet to find a website that uses HTML5.  Most websites have already started using XHTML, and so I truly believe that implementing a new version of HTML is a step backwards.

If the WHATWG group wants to continue their efforts (like their wonderful work with Web Forms 2.0), I think their best bet would be to join the W3C's work with CSS and XML Events, and XForms, don't you?  If the two worked together, instead of fighting about such silly things, then maybe standards could be developed a lot faster, after all, the W3C does seem to be taking a long time to update and recommend standards.  Lets get things done faster, I want to start using XHTML2 and CSS3 already :-p

3Jan/080

First Post

This is the first post for my new technical blog.  What will go here?  Well, probably stuff like XHTML, CSS, HTML, Dave Winer, Twitter, and other random useless things that have something to do with the internet.

I'm not really sure how to start off this blog but by breaking the third wall and recognizing its a blog.. or does that only work in Cartoons and Movies?  Either way, Third wall broken, Hello Audience :3

I guess that is all for now, I'll write some more later.