Easy Reader

In reaction to my latest article for A List Apart, on FigureHandler, many folks have boldly claimed that this sort of thing should be done server-side. Below are my thoughts on the matter as posted as a comment in the article’s discussion thread.

Many of you have brought up that this should be done server-side and, while I agree that it could, it would need to be done in the most flexible way possible (which many won’t bother with). You see, what this script allows quite easily is redesign; a designer can change page layout—of an entire site or section by section—without ever having to touch the back-end. It also allows for different columns to receive different figure classification schema.

If this were done on the content-entry side (as some have suggested), the image classifications would be stored in the database (or XML or whatever) along with the rest of the content HTML. That means that if the design were to shift to a wider column (for example), the figures that once occupied a half-column, may no longer continue to do so, making the classifications hard-coded in the HTML incorrect.

The only way to truly do this flexibly on the back end (as far as I can see) is to leave the classification step to be handled by a function which pre-processes the page output, dynamically assigning the classifications to each figure based on values obtained from the CSS for that page. Essentially, the script would need to go through the same steps as the JavaScript, but it would need to be able to go the extra step of determining applicable CSS rules to obtain the column width. Thankfully, most server-side languages support some means of DOM walking (albeit sometimes in less-than-desirable ways), but, as far as I know, none have a CSS parser, so you’d likely need to write that as well. From a server overhead point-of-view, I imagine that preprocessing would be fairly costly (most DOM-related stuff is), but the output for each page could be cached, reducing it somewhat.

If you’re interested in doing something like this, goodonya. I’ve built you a pretty decent roadmap for implementation, but I don’t imagine it will be easy to get it up and running. That said, I wish you luck…it would be yet another great tool for enabling designers to create consistent layouts with figures.

While working on a new site, I started playing around a little more with 8-bit PNG files, comparing them to GIFs. In a few cases the PNG was smaller (it didn’t used to be that way, but perhaps Photoshop CS2 does a better job of compressing PNG files or something), so used it. All was good until I started testing the design in IE, where the colors were all off. Here’s a breakdown of how the same graphic (placed as a CSS background image against a background color equal to its own background color) rendered between the two browsers:

I am well-aware of the issues regarding IE’s handling of alpha transparency in 24-bit PNGs, but had not heard of any color-related issues with 8-bit PNGs in IE6. I did a test in IE7B2 to see if the error was there too and it was.

I did some searching on Google and couldn’t seem to find any documentation on this bug, but it’s certainly something I’d recommend they fix for the final release of IE7. For now, however, the only solutions appear to be adding color-correction to your CSS for IE (if you are dead-set on using an 8-bit PNG) or using a GIF.

That beautiful bastion of standards-based e-commerce, Karova, has gotten a face lift. Mr. Malarkey deserves many kudos for yet another rich, engaging and playful design. And if you think the sales materials look good, you should see the store management dashboard. I was offered a sneak peek and couldn’t help but fawn over its sophisticated simplicity. It’s not only usable, but it makes managing a web shop (dare I say it) kinda fun. For a little background on the redesign, read Andy’s writeup.

Now if only we could find a suitable partner to bring their product to the US (hint, hint).

I just saw a copy of the latest issue of DMNews and Dave’s hard work garnered the Wadsworth Atheneum a feature story and Cronin and Company some major kudos. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

An online campaign initiated by the 161-year-old museum and developed by Glastonbury, CT, ad agency Cronin and Company Inc. doubled visits to the site at www.wadsworthatheneum.org. Components included a SurrealPainter Web tool, banner ads and the seeding of blogs.

Central to the campaign is the tool at www.wadsworthatheneum.org/painter. Visitors through Dec. 18 can choose from various colorful backgrounds and objects, then flip, copy, layer or scale them. Once completed, the online artwork can be titled, printed, published and e-mailed to family and friends.

Be sure to make your own surrealist painting, while you still can.

Today’s chosen site: Canadian Pharmacy

Andy’s beautiful standards-based design is gone, replaced by a table-based pile of (ahem) tag soup. Being the gentleman that he is, Andy has chosen to remain silent on the issue, but he has provided a forum for anyone else who wants to chime in. Molly posted an open letter to Disney which I think sums the whole thing up quite well:

Shame on you Disney.