A blog must evolve! 6 ways to improve it

I made some layout changes over the weekend, intended to make this blog more readable for new users. I think the new arrangement is better to navigate, and contents of the website are easier to find. I included some social bookmarking elements (Go, Digg this post! Thanks!). All this sums up to this article on how to improve a blog, step by step.

And the Spam Design Award goes to (sponsored by Viagra, Levitra and Cialis)

Spam is the cancer of the Internet — and I am repeating myself. I get almost 100 spam comments every week, but thanks to Akismet plug-in I described before, I don’t have to deal with them by hand. But today in my mailbox I’ve found an odd little one, which really caught my eye. This will be the first design post on the blog, but I mean, just look at it — for a moment I thought it was something from Apple Inc.

5 tips on being smart with HTML and CSS

Remember — always code your site in the most simple and flexible manner. Once you’ve designed and developed your website, and put it online, you can be quite proud of yourself. However, when you come back later to make some changes or improvements, you can discover, to your surprise, that you would spend less time making it all over again, than just updating the current code. Either way, it’s just waste of time and brains. Here are some small tips that may save you lots of time in the future.

Read luggage conditions before flights - you may be positively surprised

In an era of cheap flights over Europe, the one not cheap thing about them is the luggage transport. In most cases, you are entitled to just one piece of hand baggage, and they really mean one — if you wish to have a purse with you, then you can’t have anything else. Also, check-in baggage is normally restricted to 20 KG, and you have to pay for each piece, plus the overweight. However, before your departure, always read the fine print about luggage conditions, as sometimes the airlines (both cheap and regular) have interesting rules.

Real “nofollow” links using simple JavaScript

Today’s web is all about being in the search engines, i said that before. And since Google is the biggest search engine, I can safely say that today’s web is all about being in Google — which then again all breaks down to having a high PageRank (PR). It’s magically calculated basing on inbound and outbound links to the given site. And often having bad links brings your PR down. That’s why it’s good practice to use nofollow. But I will show you how to make it even more No.

Display Twitter timeline in Expression Engine - Part 2

Last time I explained how to display your Twitter timeline in Expression Engine (EE) using a simple plugin. Today, I will show how to achieve the same and even more using Twitter timeline feed. This approach gives a bit more flexibility and some advantages over the method described in Part 1. We use it on ProcessOne website to push our CEO’s latest tweets.

Roundup on Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

So I am leaving Paris today, coming back home to the busy times of the Holidays (oh the irony). The blog will return to normal in 2 weeks time, for now just leave your laptop and go have fun, I think. That’s what I’ll do at least. Until next time - I wish you all Merry Christmas with your family and a really full blown New Year party! Happy New Year, let the 2009 be at least not worse than this one. And an annual blog roundup below, with the most interesting posts so far.

Display Mac colors as on PC using gamma correction

If you are a web designer, you probably noticed already that colors of your design differ on Macs and PCs. It’s mainly due to the fact that on Macs, the default gamma correction value for LCD displays is 1.8, while on PCs — it’s 2.2. As a result, PCs have deeper blacks, higher contrast and are less pale than Macs. Apple is going to change that in the next iteration of their OS X, but in fact, you could change that yourself, even way back in the Panther times. Here’s how you do it in current Leopard.

Google-friendly SEO for Expression Engine

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a huge market, because frankly these days, if you’re not in the top search results, you barely exist. That’s why it’s a good practice to take some time time and properly prepare your pages, so that the GoogleBot, and others, will like them. Especially since it really takes just a few minutes in Expression Engine (EE).

Rounded edges on links with pure CSS

Last time I showed how to make reusable rounded edges on block elements. It was a very effective technique, but it had some HTML overhead. Today, I will show how to make rounded edges on any elements using just CSS. Just like my rounded link highlights. But it can be extended onto list elements, headlines and actually, any other element that can be partially block.