Pop Art Blog

When we first moved into our new building, Dave wrote "Door-Close button in elevator does nothing" on the maintenance list, and the handyman replied "Button functions as intended" or something along those lines. Well, turns out they're BOTH right. I was reading an article that Kottke linked to about elevators, and there was a little bit in there about how the door close buttons don't do anything in modern elevators! "In most elevators, at least in any built or installed... Read More...

"I print out all my e-mails and tape them to the inside of my clothes. I know Levi and Justin use their iPhones to access e-mail outside work, but my clothes come with me everywhere, and they don't set off airport alarms. I have a DD hat, a Freightliner jacket, a Leatherman belt, and a Screaming Circuits beanie. It works for me." -- Dave, responding to a discussion about email sorting methods Read More...

Hooray! The feedback from the web development community convinced the IE development team to change their minds about the default setting for version targeting in IE8 (as I discussed in a previous post ). “In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we’re choosing differently. Now, IE8 will show pages requesting ‘Standards’ mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s ‘IE7 Standards mode’ will... Read More...

Previously on Web Developer Controversies: Aaron Gustafson from the Internet Explorer development team announced that IE8 will use a META tag to kick the engine into standards mode by targeting a specific browser version, something that was previously done by using a valid DOCTYPE. A lot of people, including Jeremy Keith, think this is a bad idea. Here are some of the more interesting points that have been raised in the discussion so far. “If IE8 acts like IE8 by default, then IE8 might break... Read More...

In 1998, Jeffrey Zeldman co-founded the Web Standards Project to fight for better support of web standards from the browser manufacturers and web developers. It was a success, if for no other reason than it provided a flag to rally behind. This year, the Email Standards Project was founded to rally support for web standards in email clients. The Email Standards Project is about working with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email... Read More...

Pop Art is currently hiring for several positions , including an account director , a .NET web developer , and most important to me, a front-end web developer . If you're interested in any of those positions, feel free to apply. Now, allow me to wax poetic about the front-end developer position for a moment. If you've read my manifesto of a web producer , then you know that I feel that production work is a separate specialization from design and programming. Here at Pop Art, I've been... Read More...

"The experienced web designer, like the talented newspaper art director, accepts that many projects she works on will have headers and columns and footers. Her job is not to whine about emerging commonalities but to use them to create pages that are distinctive, natural, brand-appropriate, subtly memorable, and quietly but unmistakably engaging." -- Jeffrey Zeldman, Understanding Web Design Read More...

"You’ll sometimes hear people joke that good programmers are 'lazy', and what this means is simply that good programmers tend to see duplicated work as a bug, and try to fix it." -- James Bennett, discussing CSS frameworks Read More...

"I’d rather answer a few dumb questions than put up with a few dumb assumptions." -- Aaron Cannon , in reply to a question about whether he tires of people asking him about his blindness Read More...