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

A pull quote is a selected blockquoted passage from the post it accompanies used to reveal or emphasize a portion of the post.

On most of my posts you’ll typically see some sort of decorative image. I do this to jazz things up a bit and give my posts a sprinkling of good old fashioned artistic love. I think it compliments the posts. I started thinking, though, that a pull quote would also be cool. I’m sure you’ve seen them elsewhere. Now you can learn a decent way to make them a built-in WordPress feature. This may be especially useful to theme makers, but anyone can do this.

Continue reading “Making a WordPress Pull Quote” »

I had mentioned in a previous article, “Replicating Browser Behavior: The Top Link,” that I named it the way I did with the notion that I might expand it into a series of articles. Following through with that, I am offering a look at another browser function often replicated by web developers: The print function. For the record it isn’t really a browser function, but rather a function of the operating system accessed through the browser. I’m including it in that category, though, so let’s take a look.

Continue reading “Replicating Browser Behavior: Print Function” »

As most of my readers know, one of the things I do is make themes and templates for WordPress web logs and stand-alone sites. The themes and templates I make are accessible, universal, standards-compliant, and strictly valid. I take a lot of pride in what I produce and I try to turn out nothing but the highest quality stuff. Once users download the fruits of my labor, my responsibility of quality control ends and the users take the reigns. That’s when things sometimes go awry. But in many instances, it’s not the users’ fault.

Continue reading “Stop Writing Garbage Code, Please” »

With interest I watched an exchange on the Web Standards Group discussion list as to whether developers should bother replicating browser behavior such as keyboard shortcuts. I didn’t weigh in with my thoughts at the time. I was too busy to join the fray, plus I wanted to first consider all the possibilities and read everyone else’s comments. The result was I didn’t change my position. Since it’s sort of after the fact on the list I figured I’d discuss it here. My quick conclusion is yes and no; it depends on the behavior being replicated, the ease of making the provision, its perceived usefulness, and really the content itself.

Continue reading “Replicating Browser Behavior: The Top Link” »

Web accessibility can be a scary thing to get into, and being that starting any project can be the hardest part — the motivation comes before momentum — it was determined a solid place and plan to start, all while throwing out the rule book so to speak, is something some developers really need. Trying to master accessibility will prevent some from even attempting it, but it’s really an unnecessary obstacle as mastery isn’t needed to begin. We’re attempting to illuminate the easy path.

Continue reading “Practical, Entry-Level Web Accessibility” »

I recently published one of my mad experiments, CSS: Text Shadows (see the experiment page itself) and I linked to one of the best solutions I found on the web when doing some research. The innovator, Scott Jehl, got in touch with me to explain the merits of his method. He was very reasonable and appreciated what I had done so I decided to post here to have some open dialog (I will invite Scott to give his views in full). And I’d like to hear from others as well.

Continue reading “CSS: Text Drop Shadows” »

First of all I will state that I had this article in my drafts, started with a single line: “What’s in a name?” I was going to offer something I felt was logical topic of conversation regarding naming classes and IDs for what they are so as to remember them and so they would make sense to you and your client. However, between then and now I had an unintentional but highly valuable discussion with some fellow Web Standards Group members. The topic will remain the same, but the advice I’m going to offer has been altered. I’m thankful I got the information I did before writing and publishing this article because I can now offer a more well-round article. The reason is some of the advice I was going to offer would have been a bit off mark and possibly misleading and I want nothing more than to offer solid information here. I was going to tell you that a logical class name for, say bold text (not to be confused with emphatic text using the <strong> element), would be .bold. I was wrong on some levels. While on the surface it may seem like a logical choice, it’s maybe not the best choice. I now realize it’s often best to name style classes not to define the style, but rather to be indicative of the function of the style. Why is it styled this way?

Continue reading “Class & ID Naming Conventions” »

I sometimes see features on websites that, for a few moments, make me think wow, that’s cool. Then, upon using the site for a bit, I start thinking wow, that’s pretty damn annoying. Initially I feel the site’s developer or webmaster might be onto a good thing, but then the old usability angle comes into play and changes my mind. You may have experienced the same thing. It’s perhaps just a subjective thing. After all I am just a single user with my own tastes and preferences. I mean no disrespect to anyone, and some of the things I have grown to dislike most certainly have their place in world of the web. They can be neat tricks that, if used at the right time and in the right place, can make a site really shine and come to life. Okay, I suppose you want an example. All right, here goes, here’s one: CSS pop-ups; the kind used for tool tips. They often bug me.

Continue reading “Site Features Overload” »

If you’re into web standards as I am, you will of course use Cascading Style Sheets or CSS for presentational purposes; you won’t use mark-up to control this aspect of your web pages. If you’re into web standards, you’ll also use proper elements, just like me. I use heading elements for headings, the paragraph element for paragraphs, etc. And you do, too, right? See how much we have in common?

Continue reading “A CSS Starter File” »