You may have read my rant earlier this week about Network Solutions trying to trick me into allowing them to send me spam. As part of that dark pattern, Network Solutions asks me to verify my contact information, and then tries to up-sell me, and then suggests that I need…
In late 2012 I related my extreme displeasure of trying to register a domain through the intentionally confusing Network Solutions ecommerce flow. In my post, Network Solutions and Dark Patterns, I used a whole lot of screen captures to show the convoluted flow that I believe Network Solutions uses to…
Depending on how much you spend staying up on web browsers, you’ve probably heard the cry of Opera did it first more than once (though the low-hanging fruit, browser tabs, wasn’t technically Opera first). When Google announced that Chrome would offer a data compression mode, you may have figured you’d…
I’m a bit behind on my reading. There is always some new wiz article on web technologies and it’s hard to keep up. Since any chummer can write one, sometimes you have to approach them with caution even if they’ve survived the meat grinder of public review for as long…
Today my second article at Web Standards Sherpa has been posted, Tracking Printed Pages (or How to Validate Assumptions). I fit a lot in there, but the gist is that I show you how to track when and what pages from a site are printed so you can make a…
Ganesha may or may not be stealing chocolate from the advent calendar. For a few years now web developers around the world have celebrated Saturnalia Christmas with advent calendars covering topics related to the web. Some come and go, but you’ll probably recognize a few regulars on this list. I…
I have alluded to this point in the past. Usually when I get off on a rant about print styles, I lump it into the overall process of making responsive sites and I use media query formatting in my examples. But I haven’t just flat-out said that print styles are…
Yesterday Henny Swan asked a simple question on the Twitters: I'm curious to know, who uses subtitles on web content (X device) who's not deaf or hard of hearing? For example I did when breastfeeding.— Henny (@iheni) November 12, 2013 Adam Banks put together a Storify of the responses that…
Last week I mentioned that the Internet Archive WayBack Machine had released a feature to allow custom URLs for on-demand archiving. That wasn’t the only coolr feature it announced. Another nifty feature that the Internet Archive offers is the ability to enhance your 404 pages. You can provide a visitor…
Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the University at Buffalo (my alma mater) to give a presentation for its CIT professional development series. I got to talk about responsive design. Knowing in advance that the room would have technical and non-technical users I went for a code-free presentation. One…
I started this post way back in March after reading Brad Frosts’ bit on carousels. Then I let it sit unfinished. With the buzz around ShouldIUseACarousel.com this week, I figured I’d finish it up. The data is old, although I offer updated numbers at the bottom. The Process I looked…
Yesterday Matt Cutts from Google tweeted that Google search results for users on smartphones may be adjusted based on the kinds of errors a web site produces (of course I was excited): Important: if your website has smartphone errors, we may change rankings for smartphone users: goo.gl/x8R4A #smx— Matt Cutts…