At the time of writing this (August, 2010), 1024×768 resolution is still the standard resolution we all shoot for while designing for the web. We’ve heard it a million times… A website needs to work at all screen resolutions, but it should look best at 1024×768. I have a bit of a problem with this, seeing that as of January 2010, 76% of users have a screen resolution higher than 1024×768, and are actually at a multitude of different resolutions. My belief is that a website should look its best at all these resolutions, especially accommodating the ever-growing number of wide-screen displays. So then this raises the questions… Why is 1024×768 still the standard, and why are we still designing so small? Read more…

Much has been made of the public Facebook data recently released by Canadian security consultant Ron Bowes. Scary and semi-scary headlines like this one from FoxNews: 100 Million Facebook Users Learn True Meaning of Going Public, or this one from normally more restrained CNET: Searchable Facebook user data posted to Pirate Bay were typical. Cyber security firm personnel were trotted out on the local and national news to weigh in (I know because the firm we use was on the local news discussing it – the same folks who were nice enough to pass along a copy of the data and save me the trouble). But what actually happened – and how much should you care? Since I’ve looked at the data, I’ll let you know what I found: Read more…

What is “The Semantic Web”? Sounds like a fluffy term for the meaning of the web, doesn’t it? Well, it’s actually a term that’s been around for a long time and wikipedia has some geeky-great detail on this subject for you. Essentially, The Semantic Web is anything that helps better define the World Wide Web. Some techies have gotten much more into the detail, but to the consumer, it could be understood as a branch of what might be “Web 3.0″. It is the future and it’s so geeky-cool! Read more…

Web developers lead schizophrenic lives. On the one hand, I’m constantly following and reading up emerging technologies and standards (geolocation, rounded gradients and 3D canvases, oh my!). On the other hand, I’m painfully aware of the snail’s pace by which mainstream web standards move (Internet Explorer, IT departments and oblivious consumers, oh my!). By the time any new tech finally permeates through the browser makers, businesses, computer manufacturers and home users, the next round of promises is already distracting me. (By the way, 2022 is the actual year HTML5 is going to be finalized, not an inane year that I made up in my head).

HTML5 and its related technologies are full of juicy features for us web-fanatics. So, what can we appreciate now, without completely breaking pages for the majority of our clients? Read more…