web-related articles 2010

Closing the recap of 2010 is my unflinching take on the competition (2008, 2009). The net is vast and infinite and we are just a blip on the radar, so it's only fair to look beyond and see what others have been writing about. On the whole I feel slightly disappointed by the lack of progression we made with new technologies like css3 and html5, but I'll try to focus on the good. Make sure to use that "open in new tab" functionality because you will be leaving my site once you click!

10. how webkit loads a webpage

Sometimes you have to go deep, way deep. If you want to fix certain issues (often related to timing and performance) it becomes crucial to know what steps a browser takes to render a page. Concrete information on this topic is often quite hard to find, so when the webkit team released a quick rundown of the process it was quite helpful indeed.

How webkit loads a webpage

09. bbc coding standards

Admit it, we are all a little voyeuristic. When the BBC released their coding standards on the web I went over there immediately to see how our own standards compared. As it turned out, we're probably a bit more strict than the BBC ... which was nice. Want to know how your standards compare? Take a look.

bbc coding standards

08. css parent selectors

People have been asking for parent selectors for a very long time now. The following article explains in detail why this might not be such a good idea. While the concept itself might save us some trouble, the price we have to pay is simply too high. So whenever you feel yourself aching for the parent selector, just come back to this article and reassure yourself it's not worth the trouble.

css parent selectors

07. death to email address re-entry

Together with captchas one of the worst common practices when it comes to data entry on the web. Most people simply copy their email address anyway, so why bother people with this obnoxious extra step. A very nice read indeed.

Death to email address re-entry

06. html5 video

One of the top evolutions on the web this year was html5 video (and the related battle between Apple and Adobe). Several good players became available, most of them featuring Flash fallbacks. If you need a good overview of the strengths and weaknesses of each player, look no further.

html5 video

05. w3c tests html5 compatibility

Internet Explorer is back in the game. The past couple of years they made great leaps to catch up with the competition, now it's finally paying off. Still not quite there yet, but when the news arrived that the w3c crowned IE9 as best html5 compatible browser (at that time) a creepy silence wrapped itself around our community. Fun times.

w3c tests html5 compatibility

04. in defense of comments

One of these appears every year, but with many bloggers still disabling comments or redirecting their readers to Twitter (or related services) it remains a relevant topic. A nice writeup that argues the strengths of in-page comments. I can only support the author's vision.

In defense of comments

03. css positioning 101

Can you imagine an article on basic css positioning appearing on ALA? In 2010? Everyone has their head up high in the html5/css3 cloud and apparently there is still a need for this basic info on one of the leading web development platforms. Sadly, this is the reality we have to deal with and even though the article seems absolutely obsolete, their choice to publish it was completely justified.

css positioning 101

02. yahoo shutting down delicious

With all the hype about "the cloud" and keeping your data centralized on the net, stories like these eat away at the confidence of the end user. Apparently companies can simply pull the plug from leading internet platforms without much hassle. People who invested years in their bookmarking library can export them and find some other place to store them. Just like that. Puts your feet back on the ground, doesn't it?

yahoo shutting down delicious

01. 20 things i learned

A very interesting project illustrating all that's good and bad about the current web. It's an awesome tech demo, uncharacteristically polished for the likes of Google, but the format itself is a complete failure. Made to work on touchscreen devices, it's hell to read on a desktop and almost impossible to finish one or more pages, let alone the whole article. Bad use of real-world analogies killed this one.

20 things I learned