XHTML 2 is Dead

Wow, I didn’t see this coming. Zeldman reports that the W3C is not going to renew the XHTML 2 working group‘s charter this year. That effectively kills XHTML 2 in favor of devoting the resources to the HTML 5 working group.

This makes sense in that HTML 5 is already gaining traction, and we’ve seen lots of talk in the web community about switching back to HTML, but I never expected to see development halted like this.

“W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C’s position regarding the future of HTML.”

Nice to know that the W3C is clearly picking a side and throwing their support behind one product, though.

Note: This was originally posted on my work blog, and I’m re-posting it here for archival purposes.

An Event Apart Seattle 2009

An Event Apart Seattle Title

The night before An Event Apart, I was at a party with some college friends. When they found out I was in town for a conference, they wanted to know what it was about. I said it was a web conference, and they said “Aren’t those usually held on the web?”

Eventually, I explained it like this: You know how in every industry, there are the A-List people? The real movers and shakers who influence everyone? In the web design world, those people are Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman, and An Event Apart is their conference.

This was my fourth time, and it just gets better every time. The quality of the speakers, and the breadth of the material being presented simply blows away every other web conference. If you are at all involved in the web industry, whether as a designer, a developer, a copywriter, or even a project manager, I cannot recommend An Event Apart strongly enough. Guaranteed, you will learn a lot, and come back recharged about your work.

I was going to write a huge post with details about all the speakers, but to be honest, the very idea exhausts me — and if I don’t want to write it, there’s no way you’ll want to read it. Instead, if you’re interested in reading more, Russ from Think Brownstone wrote a review perfectly summarizing why An Event Apart is the best web conference available. He also shares my opinion that single-track conferences are better than multi-track ones.

Note: This was originally posted on my work blog, and I’m re-posting it here for archival purposes.

Who’s Afraid of HTML Email?

Anyone who tells you creating HTML email is easy has either never done it, or is lying. Inexperienced designers tend to think, “Oh, no problem, it’s all tables and font tags!” Grizzled veterans, however, know all too well the difficulties of getting anything but the most simple design to render well in a variety of clients.

Email design today is like web design in the early 90′s, complete with nested tables, spacer gifs, and FONT tags galore. Standards support is virtually non-existent, and even simple things like background images and table spacing are handled poorly by some clients.

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Detroit Diesel Redesign

Detroit Diesel 2008 Redesign

About a month ago, we launched the new Detroit Diesel redesign. We were working on this site when I was first hired at Pop Art, and while I’m proud of the code we wrote the first time, our standards have evolved a bit over time. The opportunity to revisit the site and kick it up a notch was very exciting.

The design team and I worked closely on a bottom-up approach, where we put a lot of effort into the templates and underlying grid structure for all pages. By focusing on these aspects of the site first, rather than designing the landing pages and then interpreting those designs for all the other pages, I think we got a more coherent look to the site. Plus, the grid that was built into the pages made it extremely simple to float photos and charts into pages without having to write complicated page-specific CSS.

In addition, our copywriters rewrote all the content on the site to better match the brand’s tone of voice. Combined with the new black-and-chrome color scheme and prevalent use of large images, and I think the new site really packs a punch.

Note: This was originally posted on my work blog, and I’m re-posting it here for archival purposes.