StraTechnologist

Five simple steps to better typography

Typography, I find, is still a bit of mystery to a lot of designers. The kind of typography I’m talking about is not your typical “What font should I use” typography but rather your “knowing your hanging punctuation from your em-dash” typography. Call me a little bit purist but this bothers me.

So, in an attempt to spread the word here’s the first of five simple steps to better typography.

Mark Boulton | Information design | Journal | Five simple steps to better typography

I think that probably the debate on Fixed against liquid will never find a definitive word. But now perhaps there’s another option: the Progressive Layout. In this article, that is a small extract from the Italian version, we’ll see how to easily turn with Javascript a CSS-based layout (fixed or fluid doesn’t matter) into a progressive one.

Progressive layout combines the advantages of both fixed and fluid layout: it’s a fixed layout under and over certain resolutions, but it’s fluid between. In the liquid stage the layout is quite different from the classic fluid layout, since the width and the margins of the layout vary accordingly to the browser width.

Progressive Layout | Web Design | PRO.HTML.IT

What is doiop? Some web addresses (URL) are very long and complicated. doiop creates for you a short URL with a keyword you choose, making it easy to remember or give away. This link will not break in emails and never expire.

doiop.com

This project is concerned with a favorite problem of web designers: websites look different in other browsers.

Testing a new site in many browsers can be quite time-consuming. Not everybody has a farm of legacy machines with older OSes and browsers.

There are online services that offer screenshots of websites in different browsers for considerable fees. For the hobbyist and for open source projects, these fees may be prohibitive.
Community to the rescue!

The idea behind this project is to distribute the work of making browser screenshots among community members.

Everybody can add URLs to the job queue on a central server.

Workers use a small program to automatically make screenshots of web pages in their browser and upload the results to the server.

Browsershots

Incoming links from appropriate sites bring traffic and can also help your site’s search engine rankings. In fact, the smart web marketer’s motto might be “They link, therefore I am” since it’s almost impossible to promote a site effectively if it has no incoming links!

The Incoming Links Guide (see right-hand column) will teach you how to locate likely potential sources of incoming links, how to approach them and how to keep track of your progress and follow up as needed to keep your promotion efforts moving forwards.

An excellent way to build more links is to track down niche directories that cover the subject matter of your site. Finding these directories can involve a lot of hard work - which is where the Directory of Directories comes in. It lists 601 niche, topical directories that accept outside submissions.

Incoming Links Development Guide and Directory

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