Anonymity in Blogging
31 Mar 2024
I had been considering whether to start up a personal newsletter. I subscribe to friends’ letters, in which they describe the various goings on in their life—family, house projects, travel, etc. As an email, it feels more intimate. Couldn’t what I say in an email also be said on the blog? Which led me to consider a number of things… With social media, we can see who follows us. ...
Pruning
04 Nov 2023
As I’ve been going through my projects, I’ve been needing to ask myself the question of what to get rid of. When I rebuilt the SMACSS site, I was able to simplify a lot but also cleared out a bunch of stuff I no longer needed, such as workshop reference materials for workshops that were from six years ago. For this site, I’ve been wanting to consolidate some content. Namely, I’ve l...
SMACSS Rewrite Progress
16 Jan 2016
I feel like it’s been more than a year since I mentioned how I wanted to rewrite SMACSS. It’s been slow going, that’s for sure. Mostly because I hadn’t been spending time on it. Apparently, you need to actually write for a book to get written. As the ball dropped to kick off another new year, I decided to get serious about getting the book done. I’ve put together a more concrete outl...
Just Write For Me
26 May 2015
She said, “Just write for me.” Yes, I don’t blog very much anymore. To think I’ve run out of things to talk about couldn’t be further from the truth. I have plenty to talk about. But I seem to have lost my ability to put those thoughts into words and to do so eloquently. “This isn’t blog worthy,” I’d say. I have a list of a dozen blog posts that I’ve wanted to write....
Selling my e-book on Amazon
21 Oct 2012
After reading Thomas Fuchs’ post, 5 rules to sell thousands of copies of your ebook, and the ensuing Twitter discussion, I decided to share my thoughts on selling my book, SMACSS, on Amazon. Had you asked me before I wrote this post whether I would sell on Amazon again, I’d have flat out said no. Having researched and compiled numbers for this post, now I’m not so sure. Let...
My Notes on Writing an E-book
09 Feb 2012
So, yeah. I wrote an e-book. It has been an interesting experience and I thought I'd share a few random thoughts on how things have gone so far. Backwards When I first started down the path of writing the SMACSS e-book, I had intended it to be either an e-book or a printed book. After months of writing and not getting enough written, I released what I wrote as a web site. A free web site at ...
SMACSS Statistics and Gender
21 Dec 2011
I hesitate putting this information out there as I'm not sure what its relevance is. I merely note it as interesting, especially in light of gender inequality in our field. In number crunching the people who have purchased a SMACSS e-book or site membership, I've noticed that the numbers are heavily skewed in one direction: 94.5% of the purchases are by men. That means only 5.5% of purchases w...
Contributing to InsideRIA
21 Jan 2008
O'Reilly and Adobe have teamed up to develop a blog focused on Rich Internet Applications (RIA). It's aptly titled InsideRIA. RIA is a term that Macromedia came up with a few years ago to describe web-based applications with the power and features of a desktop application. We've certainly seen RIAs become very popular over the last few years and technologies like Adobe AIR continue to blur the l...
Learning about Adobe AIR
19 Dec 2007
24ways is in full effect again this year and Drew was kind enough to ask me to write an article on AIR. Christmas is in the AIR steps you through building a simple desktop application using the HTML environment within AIR. The article could have easily been three times longer with all the stuff I wanted to cover. If you're interested in AIR, I invite you to check it out. ...
The Art and Science of CSS
16 Apr 2007
I have been keeping this under wraps but no longer: The Art & Science of CSS is out! I first got a peek at the book when the Sitepoint folks were at SXSW and it looks really nice. Luckily, I now have my own copy which I promptly pull out whenever someone comes over to the house. I also make sure to walk around the house with my pipe and smoking jacket saying "indubitably" quite frequ...
Objectifying JavaScript
19 Sep 2006
My latest column over at Digital Web has gone live. Entitled Objectifying JavaScript, I cover various approaches to creating objects in JavaScript and why you might use one approach over another....
Rapid DOM Slides from Webvisions 2006
21 Jul 2006
My presentation is done and overall, I was happy with it. I have to admit that this was my first time presenting and it was a great learning experience. I feared I might go through my material too fast (which I did) or just stumble over my words (which I didn't so much). The hardest thing for me when putting this together was knowing what the technical prowess of my audience would be. I didn't wan...
Internationalization Primer
06 Jun 2006
Interested in internationalization or localization? For my latest article at Digital Web, I cover a few introductory topics on the subject. Internationalization (often shortened to i18n) is essentially the process of making the application or site available in any language. It's often the framework for localization (L10n). Localization is the process of making an application or site tailored to a ...
Productivity is like a Train
13 Apr 2006
Productivity is like a train. You start off slow and begin to pick up speed until you're just chugging along. Distractions slow you down and result in you having to pick up steam again. Some people are trolleys while others are bullet trains. I just wish I wasn't stuck at the station all the time. ...
Now, where was I?
12 Apr 2006
Yes, these is technically part of a chain letter but I thought it'd be interesting to reminisce. And like Kyle said, you can blame Bryan Veloso. One Year Ago April of last year I was working at Fuel Industries. I don't remember what projects I was working on but no doubt something interesting. My wife and I started looking for a new house. We were living in a townhouse but in thinking of expandin...
On Reaching 400 Posts
21 Mar 2006
Just a quick aside. This is actually post 401. Back on September 23, 2003, I set up MovableType. It's the point at which I really decided to jump onto this whole 'blog' thing. Previously, I just used this site as a resume and to post a few things that I had been working on at the time. Most of it was hand-coded but MT was big at the time so I took the plunge and installed it. 400 posts, over 220...
An Interview with Dean Edwards
19 Mar 2006
Dean Edwards was kind enough to answer a few questions on JavaScript. Tell me a bit of your background and how you got into JavaScript programming? I’ve been a programmer (professionally) for twenty years. Most of that time I’ve been a GUI builder using things like the Windows API and visual tools such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio. Five years ago I saw that The Web was the f...
CSS Mastery by Andy Budd
15 Feb 2006
Andy Budd, along with Simon Collison and Cameron Moll, have put together CSS Mastery covering advanced web standards solutions. If you're curious as to what this book looks like, be sure to check out Andy's set of pics on Flickr. My favourite shot of the book has to be this one. Thanks Andy. ...
Web Presentation Patterns
24 Jan 2006
Another article of mine has made its appearance on Digital Web. In Web Presentation Patterns, I quickly touch on design patterns in general and then touch on MVC, page controller, and front controller has various implementations of design patterns. Best of all are probably the resources at the bottom. Plenty of stuff to get you into and excited about design patterns. ...
Tables with Style
18 Dec 2005
If you haven't heard of 24ways, I highly recommend you hop over there right now. An idea hatched by Drew McLellan of all in the <head>, 24ways is an advent calendar for web geeks. It features an idea a day from the December 1st until Christmas Eve. I have the pleasure of having today's spot on the calendar with my article, Tables with Style. I cover a few quick tips on adding some funk to y...
E-mail Makes You Smarter
29 Nov 2005
Purely observation but I believe that e-mail has made people think I am smarter than I am. Somebody asks me a question and I have the time to formulate my response. Reread and rewrite it until it's grammatically and argumentatively correct. I can research possible options. It gives me the flexibility to answer on my own time. In person, I'd end up stumbling over the right word or misphrase things...
Interview at mcville
21 Nov 2005
Marko of mcville.net has something pretty interesting going on. The site is becoming the Stylegala of the interview world with interviews of web personalities from around the world. And he's smart in asking each interviewee what they like or don't like about the site. What a perfect way to illicitelicit feedback from quality designers (myself excluded). In fact, if you could change one thing about...
Hidden Rewards
17 Nov 2005
You see them everywhere. Links to hosting providers, Amazon, and other referral programs. Ads, like Google or Yahoo, are clearly indicated as ads but Amazon links often aren't. Referral programs, especially for hosting companies, almost never are. My question to you is whether there should an obligation from the site owner to disclose these types of things? Does it matter whether the site owner r...
Feeling nostalgic
13 Nov 2005
After reading an interesting post about Another World (a great game from a few years back) on Binary Bonsai, I took a look at his about page. What caught my eye was his first "logged" entry on the Internet going back to 1996. So, being curious, I checked to see my earliest record and it goes all the way back to January 1994. Wow, two more months it will have been 12 years since that post. Don't I ...
The Solution to Getting Things Done
09 Nov 2005
The solution to Getting Things Done: "Stop reading this and get back to work!" And it's counterpart, "Stop writing this and get back to work!" ...
Variable Scope
17 Oct 2005
I've often found new programmers have trouble with variable scope. It happens no matter what language you work in and every environment has its own slightly different rules. So, be sure to check out my recent article on Digital Web, aptly titled Variable Scope for New Programmers. A couple examples: C#: variables declared inside an if or while statement aren't available outside the statement. Ac...
Joining 9rules
19 Jul 2005
Everybody else is doing it and I wouldn't want to be left out. (Yes, I would jump off a bridge if everyone else did.) For those unfamiliar with 9rules, it is essentially a collection of well-written blogs (and yet they still let me in). The value I hope this brings to the site is the increased audience that can foster greater, more thought-out discussion on the various web development topics tha...
Ode to Keyboard
29 Jun 2005
I want to go Home; I keep Shifting. I turn the Page Up, I turn the Page Down. It's time for a Break! Where have I gone wrong? Like an F4, I want to <fly>. I just want to Escape. Where do I Start? Have I reached the End? I've lost Control. Insert, Delete, Return. Insert, Delete, Return. Insert, Delete, Ret-- ...
New Column at Digital Web
28 Jun 2005
To help spread the gospel, I've started writing a new column for Digital Web Magazine called Behind the Curtain. The column is geared towards those just getting into web programming and to help introduce basic concepts and offer tips to avoid common pitfalls. I hope to keep the articles language-agnostic to make them more universal. In my first article, I touch on how HTTP works. Knowing how HTT...
Writing at YourTotalSite
07 Jun 2005
Garrett Dimon was kind enough to ask me to become a regular contributor to YourTotalSite and I graciously accepted! What does this mean for snook.ca? Absolutely nothing. While it may not have been obvious, I tend not to create opinion pieces or touch on beginner tutorials on web development. Instead, I've tried to keep true to my tagline: tips, tricks, and bookmarks on web development. So, what ...