Blog

WordCamp Sydney Slides

I presented an expanded version of my CSS Naming Conventions talk at WordCamp Sydney. Thanks to everyone who came along, my slides are below.

I’ve put together a quick one page site linking to various resources at cssnamingconventions.com.

(more…)

September 27, 2014
Sass Media Query Mixins

There are a few Sass media query mixins going around for dealing with old versions of IE. Often they include predefined break points, whereas I like the simplicity of passing a numeric value.

Capable browsers wrap the content in a media query, incapable browsers get the unwrapped content. (more…)

September 10, 2014
CSS Naming Conventions – Be Responsive

I had the pleasure of speaking at Be Responsive Melbourne last month on the subject of CSS Naming Conventions.

Both my slides and the video from the evening are now available. (more…)

September 4, 2014
Speaking at What Do You Know Melbourne

I’ll be speaking at Web Directions’ What Do You Know Melbourne — The Smackdown Edition on August 27. You should come along.

There will be eight speakers debating four topics for five minutes each. Plenty of variety without going on too long. I’ll be arguing RWD is better than an m-dot site.

August 18, 2014
What’s in a tweet’s metadata

There is talk of requiring Australian ISPs collect & store metadata as a user browses the net. Metadata can include a lot of information, for example this is what’s included in a single tweet (more…)

August 6, 2014
Imported posts from Big Red Tin

I’ve imported my posts from 2011 and earlier from their old home at Big Red Tin.

Some of them need a little tidying up to point internal links to the correct location, others need to be tagged as obsolete (fallbacks for CSS rounded corners anyone).

It’s been interesting going back and reading some of my old pieces. Although my methods have changed, there’s a good number that I still hold to be true; the importance of !important is one such post.

July 31, 2014
Open site redesign using a pattern library

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m in the process of redesigning this web site. It’s very much a work in progress.

Pattern Library

As a first step I’m building a pattern library and I’ve decided to open source the repo during the build process. I’m using Pattern Lab for the purpose.

(more…)

July 23, 2014
The HTML5 Document Outline

The MDN page titled Sections and Outlines of an HTML5 Document includes the following warning:

There are currently no known implementations of the outline algorithm in graphical browsers or assistive technology user agents […] authors are advised to use heading rank (h1 – h6).

Given the speed at which CSS3 is implemented, this is disappointing. Visitors to this site use modern, capable browsers; it’s a shame not to be able to use the most logical document outline.

July 15, 2014
Firefox inputs and line-heights
For years, Firefox has taken the prize for the single most frustrating rule in a UA stylesheet.
```
input {
  line-height: normal !important
}
```
(more…)
July 5, 2014
Why Use a Naming Convention

In my last post, I mentioned I was trialling the SUIT CSS naming convention as I redevelop this site. More generically, let’s address why a naming convention should be used at all.

For the purposes of this post, I’m talking specifically about class naming conventions. (While one may have naming conventions for JavaScript functions, variables, and HTML IDs too, they’re not the focus of this post.) (more…)

July 2, 2014