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Joy Gems Newsletter

2008 Year In Review - The Best Of Joy Gems

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By Bud Kraus
bud@joyofcode.com
Joy Of Code
Creator And Instructor

v4 i19
Originally Published: December 18, 2008

2008 to 2009

As I have done for the almost 4 years of writing Joy Gems, at this time of year I take one last look back and offer up what I think are the best JGs of the past year.

Before I get to the best of 2008 stuff, here's a sneak peek at some of the subjects I'll be writing about in 2009. ('09 already?!?! Wasn't it just yesterday that we were in panic mode trying to cure the Millennium Bug?)

  • Web Design/Development Skills Needed In A Rotten Economy
  • The Basics Of Staying Constantly In Contact
  • The Essentials Of (X)HTML
  • Online Tools For Web Designers
  • PHP
  • WordPress
  • These Are A Few Of My Favorite Sites
  • Laying Out With CSS
  • What's Black And White And Hardly Read All Over Anymore?

I'm going to change Joy Gems into a more general newsletter about the web. Sure, I'll still write plenty on web design and design standards, but I'm going to take a broader look at the web and what it is doing for - and to - us.

And now, I present The Best JGs of 2008!!

PDFS Are Web Pollution

More than a few of you did not exactly agree with me on this one. However thoughtful the disagreements were, I'm sticking to my assertion that PDFs are ersatz web pages just clogging up the web.

PDFs break the web. PDFs have a lot of strengths, but linking to them from a web page is certainly not one of them.

The Purpose Of (X)HTML

(X)HTML has no presentational characteristics. It does not convey style, size, color or layout.

Its only purpose is to provide meaning to content and it does this through its tags. Heading tags, paragraph tags, table tags, etc., do not have "looks" because that's the job which belongs to Cascading Style Sheets.

This is where learning about the separation of structure from style comes in. The structure of your web document is handled by (X)HTML. Leave all the pretty stuff to CSS.

Kill The CAPTCHAs

For many people it's more than annoying to come to a page where one has to enter into a text box the distorted characters from an image in order to proceed to the next page. Some sites have ameliorated the effects of this by providing an audio alternative but many sites have not been so considerate.

While I understand why CAPTCHAs are used, it is beyond my pay grade to come up with an alternate solution for making sure a human person is genuinely entering data into a form.

The Blind Spot In (X)HTML Validation

If you've ever taken one of my classes, you know that I beg my students to do (X)HTML validation. This is an error checking process that assists web page designers and developers in removing errant code.

Forget to close a tag? Improperly nest a tag? Validation is perfect for helping you figure out what you did wrong.

What it doesn't do - its blind spot - is tell you if you used the tags correctly. Can you use two <h1> tags on a page? Should you use an <h3> tag before using an <h2>? Should you use a table to layout your design? Validation is silent on all of these important issues.

But not me. The answer to all of these is NO!!.