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

Somebody out there wants you to be a fool. Somebody out there is hoping you’ll be a fool. In fact somebody out there is counting on it. And if you are, it’s a shame, because it reinforces the belief that fools abound on the web and the non-fools have to suffer for your ignorance or, in some cases, plain old stupidity. Have I piqued your interest? Good, there’s hope for you yet. Please keep reading as herein are fifteen ways to prevent yourself from becoming an Internet fool and thus saving the rest a few headaches. In a place where no fools exist, those who ply the trade of foolery will eventually get tired and move on.

Continue reading “Don’t be an Internet Fool” »

This has been long overdue — almost a year — but I have finally reworked my old contact form completely and I’m extremely pleased to re-release it as my all-new Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form v.2.0. I made a vast number of improvements to enhance its accessibility, usability, and most notably its security. To get the full picture about its features, and to download it for yourself, please see this official download page, and if you want, you may also check out the working demo form. I have slaved over this for more than a week adding fourteen fifteen sixteen security features and myriad enhancements. My main goal was to make it spam-proof. It’s not, there are no absolutes, but it should be very resistant. Think of it as you would a waterproof watch. Sure, it won’t be ruined when you go swimming, but at around 2000 feet it’s going to implode. Anyway, I’m really pleased with the results and hope you like it too.

Continue reading “PHP Contact Form v.2.0 Released” »

This post is here to support potential commentary in response to an Accessites.org article written by Gez Lemon and myself being called The Great Accessibility Camp-Out. In the feature we discuss our views as to how we define “web accessibility,” but that’s not the purpose of the article. Gez and I agree to disagree and get along just fine, and that is more to the point. Sure you can read it and agree or disagree with one or both of us. That’s fine. We’re not looking for votes. We realize that regardless of how we define the word, the goal in the end is the same: To make the web more accessible. Period.

Continue reading “Re: The Great Accessibility Camp-Out” »

This article is my version of the What, When, and Who of Internet history — with a few of my own additions — from when it was wood-burning to present. I have hopefully made it inclusive and comprehensive but please be sure to read the Credits and my Disclaimer. That said, I hope you find it as interesting reading it as I did writing it. I must confess that it was a pretty big challenge, more so than I had envisioned. Enjoy

Continue reading “What, When, Who… Internet History Timeline” »

It’s not a meme — or maybe it is — but either way I decided to jump on the bandwagon and give it a go myself. Just for the fun of it. Click here to view or download my contribution or click on the inset thumbnail. Want to see what others have done? In addition to Veerle Pieters’ and the lastest one from Roger Johansson, check out this extensive collection on flikr to view the 143 of them loaded there so far. Fun stuff. Enjoy my green desktop!

Continue reading “Design is Shades of Green and Other Colors” »

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” »

Onmouseover and onfocus events in JavaScript, and :hover and :focus pseudo element actions using CSS, open up a world of interactivity on the web for both mouse and keyboard users alike using most browsers. (I wrote most browsers because IE doesn’t recognize the pseudo element :focus and must use :active, and that’s only on anchors.) Font colors can change, backgrounds can change, static images can be replaced with new images. In fact, swapping out imagery can be the root of some of the more creative uses. But like everything, the more you offer means the more it can cost in terms of user resource demands and smooth interactivity.

Continue reading “Preloading On-Demand Images with CSS” »

I’m pleased to announce my accessible Beast-Blog theme has been once again localized, this time in Hebrew — the first one was done in French. I’m grateful to Sharon Gefen for doing the work on it. Toda raba, Sharon. I must say it looks pretty cool with a right-to-left letter direction. It really pleases me to see the popularity of this theme keep right on growing and growing.

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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” »