Beast-Blog.com
Mike Cherim's Professional and Personal Web Log

Gas prices are high. Driving my Jeep creates pollution. That contributes to global warming. Driving is also known to be dangerous. I avoided all these negatives this year by doing all of my holiday shopping online. It’s fast, convenient, saves time, and hopefully with the precautions I take and knowledge I posses, safe. I didn’t have to spend hours driving all over creation finding the items I wanted.

Continue reading “Unmet Friends in Unseen Places” »

As I did in 2006 and in 2007, I have created a “best of” post highlighting certain articles that I published in 2008. As I mentioned last year, some of the articles were chosen because I really liked them, others because you really liked them. If you want more of the latter let me know what you’d like to see. Sometimes I get stuck for ideas — though I usually think of something — but requests help.

Continue reading “The Best of the Beast in 2008” »

Local brick-n-mortar businesses, those who rely on walk-in, on-location commerce, will often have a web site to promote their business. It’s a good idea. The cost of having a web site is next to nothing, maintenance is easy if the site was built with updating in mind, and it can be a great service to existing and potential customers, depending on how it’s used. One such service would be helping the potential client find the business’s physical location. This can be easily facilitated by adding a location map to the site. How one should do this is the subject of this article.

Continue reading “Adding a Map to Your Web Site” »

A while back I mentioned I made a AAA web site that conformed to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0. The site was for California disability rights attorney, Lainey Feingold, who works primarily with the blind and visually impaired community on technology and information access issues. She is nationally recognized for negotiating accessibility agreements and for pioneering the collaborative advocacy and dispute resolution method known as Structured Negotiations. That’s from her site — a site which is one of just two AAA implementations (the other being Vision Australia).

Continue reading “My WCAG 2.0 AAA Implementation” »

The past 100 years have brought about enormous change. Not the shallow electoral kind of change. I’m referring to much more potent changes, like those in communications, medicine, aerospace, manufacturing, and transportation. And more. A lot has changed in that time. And with all that change has come a not always flattering public opinion about it. Take Rock ‘n’ Roll, for instance, my parents didn’t go for it, they pretty much hated it. Not me, though.

Continue reading “Enduring Rock” »

That question is hot on the mailing list run by the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) right now. Specifically Accessites has been called on to explain why it is has one submission criterion demanding support for an 800×600 monitor resolution — meaning that it must be viewable without side-scrolling. Apparently more than a handful of developers at GAWDS feel that 800×600 support is a bit out-dated and no longer needed as it once was. I’ll answer this, not for Accessites, but rather for myself. I’ll explain why I feel it’s important to support that smaller resolution — or maybe I should say window size, since not everyone computes or browses with their windows maximized.

Continue reading “Should Web Developers Support 800×600?” »

As you may or may not know, dear reader, I’ve divided my time between my usual role as a web developer and my newer passion for photography. If not, I’ve recently explained it. Being so divided and all, I’ve somewhat neglected reading other people’s blogs, now only spending a fraction of the time doing so. I’m still out there, though. Just recently, in fact, I was checking out that A List Apart (ALA) article by Dave Shea: CSS Sprites2 - It’s JavaScript Time.

Continue reading “Keyboard Support: Mysteries Unveiled” »

When I made my How to Build a CSS Web Site tutorial I purposely started with a valid and well-formed, but unstyled HTML page — within the tutorial’s styled page (tricky). I then applied styling gradually, seen as the tutorial runs. The Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) additions are marked on the example text “File” for each page. By the time one gets to page twenty the template is done, hack-free, and the style sheet is complete. I didn’t use universal resets in this build, so I really just whipped a couple of elements into shape with as little styling help as possible. I let the browsers do their thing instead of butting heads with them. During this element whipping I also “tweaked” list types in this template (on page 18). It’s this I want to point out because I think its works well, especially for the minimalist.

Continue reading “Tweaking Your Lists” »

This article is about the pros and cons of writing a script, then freely sharing it with others via distribution on the web. Specifically I’m focusing on a script, but believe me when I tell you the points raised in this article are equally applicable to open source templates, themes, widgets, and more. I’m writing this so that you, as a script author to be, will be better informed and prepared for what’s involved if you want to do it right. The information herein is based on my own experiences as a script writer, both good and bad.

Continue reading “Writing a Freely Distributable Script” »