Okay, I’m sure that if you’re looking at Webmacster87.info, you’re wondering, “Whoa, what happened? Where did the great big W go? Where did the beautiful-looking theme go?” (If you’re reading this post in some kind of RSS fead reader, go to Webmacster87.info and start reading this post over again.)

Well, today is the third annual CSS Naked Day, and also the first one that I heard of in time to make the necessary preparations to participate in. The purpose of today is to promote the purpose of web standards and its importance in our everyday use of the internet. In fact, I think that Lorelle VanFossen said it best:

This is the third year of the annual CSS Naked Day which honors web design and designers around the world who help make our websites and blogs look “pretty” to the eye while still being totally functional under the hood. Dustin Diaz wanted to give the web world an opportunity to remind everyone of the benefits of CSS web page design. By removing the stylesheet for the day, the world would see naked web pages, giving a little more appreciation for the skills of web page designers.

Webmacster87.info is one of hundreds of websites going naked today for this cause. My blog will be entirely CSS-free all day today (in my timezone, anyway, as defined by the clock on my website), and since the event is done in honor of designers, I want this to honor my good friend Hans Reikmann (macattacks10), who has graciously volunteered his time to do numerous designs for me over the years, including the artwork for both this version and the previous version of my website, some of my 2005-era forums, and all of my podcasts.

If you want to go naked on your blog or website today, there’s still time, and Lorelle has suggestions for how you can participate. In the meantime, enjoy this low-fi version of Webmacster87.info!

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, today is the 100th Day of 2008! Woo hoo!

Tags: blog, community, CSS, design, event, internet, naked, standards, web design, Webmacster87.info

I may not be a big fan of the iPhone, but like it or not, it’s built-in web browser interface is revolutionary. As soon as a few patents expire, we are going to start seeing the iPhone’s web interface in more and more places. In my latest Lorelle on WordPress guest post, I cover some of the basics on making sure that your site is easily usable and readable for iPhone users, along with a link to Apple’s more detailed documentation on how you can build full-fledged web applications for this iPhone.

Check out the article.

Tags: Apple, article, guest blogging, iPhone, Lorelle VanFossen, web browsing, web design, website

Every new Mac since 2006 comes bundled with iWeb, Apple’s program for quickly designing websites. At first, a number of web developers (myself included) were excited by this announcement, but when we actually tried this program ourselves, it became apparent that this was not going to be a tool that existing and already-knowledgeable web designers were going to embrace. There’s no interface for editing any code, and even when you look at the source of any published iWeb website, it looks horrible. iWeb doesn’t use any kind of external CSS file, instead opting to use the style=”" attribute on every single element. Furthermore, it converts text and things into complex images, and all that stuff. In fact, I think Leo Laporte said it best on MacBreak Weekly 52: once you use iWeb, you’re locked in. Without a doubt, iWeb is just an app aimed at an audience that is completely foreign to the idea of building a website.

Enter RapidWeaver. RapidWeaver is a WYSIWYG editor produced by Realmac Software, which is similar in form to iWeb, however it offers its users more control, produces cleaner code, and is overall an application more suited to serious web development.
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Tags: coding, FTP, iWeb, Mac, review, Software, web design

Well, if you know me, you know that I enter various stuff at the San Mateo County Fair every year, and if I recall correctly, this is my 10th year to enter. However, this is the first time where I actually found out what I won before I went to go see it for myself, but sure enough, the San Jose Mercury News apparently reported on one of the brand new divisions this year: Website Design. There were three award-winning entries in the new division, two of which were mine. At least someone else did enter, when I had called the County Fair office a month ago to ask for entry details for websites, I got a “That’s the first time that question has been asked!” response, which got me worried that I would be the only one entering.

Anyway, congratulations to Taylor Hansford who does the website for Pacifica 4-H (it’s the county fair, after all!) and won 1st place. My own Webmacster87.info won the red ribbon, and the 17th District PTA Website, which I maintain and entered under the class “Website for a Business or Organization”, took third.

Thanks, by the way, goes to Larry and Anthony who sent me the link and asked me “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I haven’t been to the fair yet, so honestly, I had no idea that I’d won until they sent me the link.

There are some things slightly ironic about the San Jose Mercury News article. For one thing, San Jose isn’t part of San Mateo County, but I’ll let that slide since our fair is open to all the neighboring counties as well. However, they said that “Neither boys were available for interviews.” Besides that being bad grammar, I wasn’t even at the fair today, so of course I wasn’t “available” for an interview! The article also claims that they were looking for me and the other kid in the livestock section. I can’t speak for Taylor, but I’m not part of 4-H and don’t spend very much time in the livestock section. I might spend 5-10 minutes in there during the fair to look, but I don’t exactly hang around there waiting to be interviewed, if you know what I mean. Now, I did get a phone call today from the fair saying that the San Mateo County Times wanted to interview me, albeit about my being a judge for a contest in the Culinary Arts division, but they have setup a time to meet me there at 4:30 PM on Monday. So, San Jose Mercury News, if you’d like to say hi to me, I’ll be there on Monday willing to answer questions.

Anyway, I am glad that my websites received the recognition from the judges (hopefully they didn’t try to view this website in Internet Explorer, which doesn’t work that well), and I’m glad to have helped the San Mateo County Fair get their technology entries going. Who knows? Maybe next year they’ll have a division for best podcast. Stay tuned next week when I’ll post a full list of everything I entered this year and how well I did!

Tags: Awards, Bay Area, Blogging, event, interview, News, Personal, PTA, San Mateo County Fair, Technology, web design

No, I’m not talking about the next season of new cars. For one thing, I wouldn’t call 95% of the cars out there “worth it”, mostly because their gas mileage would make any non-American laugh with their fingers pointing, and for another thing, I really don’t care about cars anyway. Nevertheless, yesterday, Apple released iLife and iWork ‘08 (along with some other new stuff, which aren’t the focus of this article), which Steve Jobs claims to be their biggest updates ever to both releases. But after spending a couple of hours today following the announcements through Engadget’s live coverage, rubbing my eyes all over the Apple.com website, watching demo videos and tutorials, and all that stuff, I’m ready to judge for myself if iLife and iWork ‘08 are really that substantial, and if they’re each worth their respective $80 upgrade price.
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Tags: 2008, announcements, Apple, documents, GarageBand, hardware, iDVD, iLife, iMac, iMovie, iPhoto, iWeb, iWork, Keynote, Mac, Microsoft Office, movies, Numbers, Pages, photos, podcasting, presentations, PreviewCast, Software, Special Event, spreadsheets, Steve Jobs, web design

Coda is Panic’s new web development package for Mac OS X, and it recently won an Apple Design Award for a good reason: it’s functional, it’s Mac-like, and it’s beautiful. But when it premiered last April, it would take more than beautiful to convince me to change my web development workflow, particularly at the high price point (a Coda license will sell for $99, however there’s currently an introductory $20 discount, and registered Transmit owners get an additional $10 discount). However, Coda also delivered a web development environment that’s fully integrated and works well, and it has become my new standard piece of software. And I didn’t even have to wait for a MacHeist bundle or anything to be convinced to pay for it!
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Tags: coding, CSS, Discounts, FTP, Mac, programming, review, Software, SubEthaEdit, text editing, Transmit, web design