It’s worth bearing in mind that display: none still has its uses, though. Recently I’ve been working on a mobile navigation menu which is hidden from wide screen users via a media query, and a widescreen navigation menu that’s hidden in the base stylesheet. Up til now, I’ve been using the clip technique to hide these menus.

This looks fine, but it was causing problems for my screen reader navigation menu, which would dutifully read both menus (or rather, I was viewing the page sans CSS and seeing both menus). I was bodging round this by adding headings to both menus: Quick links for the mobile menu and Site navigation for the widescreen menu.

This resulted in a rather long menu. The solution (I think) is to head back to the old practice of using display: none to hide the menus from the relevant screens, so that screen readers would only read the shortened menu. I could then hide another link to a full menu displayed at the bottom of the page using the clip technique.

It’s also worth nothing that an unstyled browser page doesn’t necessarily relate to a  screen reader page.

What is it with designers and the physical form of books?

Take A Craft Of Consequences: Reader, Writer And Emotional Design. Note the hushed tones, pseudo–scientific language and camp imperatives (must be pieced together indeed.)

As in so many of these articles, the author affords an absurd degree of importance to the role of design in conveying the meaning of a text:

When a visual component accurately represents the ideas of the writer, it becomes a source of emotional information. This aids in the transferral [sic] of ideas, and promotes and persuades the reader that the content is worthy of their precious time.

So the next time you’re debating whether to read Anna Karenina or not, make sure you check out the cover, typeface and weight of the paper. You might even want to test the aroma.

An OK cover, serif font and a wonderful book that doesn't need to be sold by the design.

The truth is that the printed book is an essentially democratic, mass market medium. Movable type allowed writers to communicate ideas to millions of people. Beautiful, hand–written manuscripts were the reserve of rich people and monks.

(Possibly useless fact: the 19th century London émigré communist scene boasted many typesetters, and The Communist Manifesto came with a brand new gothic typeface.)

Yes, the typesetter’s role is important. Without good design and typography the text is difficult to read. Books shouldn’t fall apart after one reading.

But the designer’s main job is to honour the text and get out of the way of the author’s words. It’s a skill, perhaps even an art form, but it’s absolutely secondary to the meaning of the text. It’s the author’s language that aids and forms the meaning of the content, not the designer’s efforts.

So the best textual design is both readable and interchangeable. Take the Penguin Classics range:

Completely different books but the same design.

The design tells us about the publisher rather than the text itself. Even better, Penguin’s Swiss era:

A plain cover and Helvetica: silent design

In fact you could argue that this silent design reaches its apogee with the e–reader, when the text has become completely decoupled from its container.

Of course , there’ll always be a place for pleasing literary objets (coffee table books, if you like). But good book design is fundamentally silent. And long may it remain so.

So I was actually surprised to come across this impassioned article on developers building websites for Webkit only (the rendering engine behind Safari and Android), and the W3C’s proposal to adopt the -webkit- prefix as a de facto standard. Surprised because it strikes me as absurd that anyone would develop something on the web that only works for one browser.

After all, the whole idea of the web is that it’s accessible to anyone, regardless of whether they can afford an iPhone or Android smartphone. The nuts and bolts of the web are built on this idea: HTML and CSS are free, easy to learn, easy to distribute, easy to render and independent of corporate influence.

Maybe I’m old. I can remember the browser wars – a time when websites would only work in Internet Explorer. Banking websites would make visitors upgrade from Firefox to IE6. Can you imagine that now?

Graceful degradation is absolutely fine. But it’s frankly depressing that people are building websites that only work on certain devices, regardless of how trendy they are, or whether they’re made by Microsoft, Google or Apple. And none of these companies should control HTML and CSS standards.

Not so smart from Smart Planet

New(ish) year, same old problems. This time not one, but two pop overs. Not gentlemanly in the slightest.

% based layouts should only be applied to wide screens

Common sense this, but applying a 75% width to a 240px wide screen results in a very narrow content column. Generally, I apply (small) margins and paddings to my base stylesheet and only set a width=x% for wider screens.

Go mad and use most of your available space

Scherzo 3 uses 90% of the screen, plus some 3ems of padding. Using most of the available screen looks good.

Scherzo at 75em

Set a max-width as well

Because a lucky few people have really wide monitors, I set a maximum width of 75em. This means the Scherzo 3 content column won’t expand beyond 707px (assuming the user hasn’t upped the font size), which is a decent enough limit for reading 16px Georgia comfortably.

% calculations are absolute

Sounds odd, but if you use ems to define your website layout, changes to the base font-size will affect font size and your layout. While this is logical, most people are only looking to change the size of the font rather than the layout dimensions.

Furthermore, upping the base font size in an em based layout can result in a horizontal scroll bar should the calculated width extend beyond the width of the screen. 90% of the screen width, on the other hand, is an untouchable value.

Testing Scherzo 3 on my own site for a while.

This dramatic picture of New York simply demonstrates how Scherzo does wide images.

Note: You can see Scherzo 3 in action (or a child theme, at least) on my reading list website.

I use Google Reader to collate all my Google News and Blog searches. It’s a really good system that generates a long list of articles that match various search terms.

So if you’re trying to catch my attention one thing you’ll need to do is write a good headline (more of which later, although the Baymard Institute has written a post on constructing eye catching headlines that’ll keep you entertained in the meantime).

The other thing you’ll need to do is establish some form of credibility or trust. And one of the quickest ways of doing that is by putting a real name to your article.

There’s nothing more suggestive of a robot churning out content than an Admin byline:

A Google Reader snippet. Lots of information here that I can use to evaluate the article. The headline is good, but the byline indicates this was written by a machine.

Setting a real name for website administrators is simple. Make sure you remember to do it whenever you set up a new site.

Also: there are two types of HTML signs. Those that tell machines what document role (paragraph, heading, list item etc.) a piece of content has (internal) and those that tell machines what role they serve in the world (time, small print, citation etc.) This is somewhat sketchy.

<time>1789</time> simply tells the machine that 1789 is a date. Not what it means.

And what this means? Simply that the pursuit of more meaningful markup is a waste of time. And that HTML can’t be judged or compared according to its meaningfulness.

The only considerations are how efficient, effective and manageable it is. How we can make meaningful interpretation easier.

Can’t say I agree with the premise, though:

Integrating social media services in your website design is vital if you want to make it easy for readers to share your content.

Displaying your latest tweets is a good way to encourage people to follow you on Twitter. The most common place to display tweets is in the sidebar, although you can add them to any area of the website.

All this extra stuff around your content is noise. People come to your site in order to find something out or for some entertainment. If they want to share your article on Facebook or Twitter it’s really not difficult to copy the URL and paste it into a box.

Do you ever use share links?

If people want to see your tweets they’ll look at your Twitter stream. Besides, a list of half conversations isn’t particularly interesting.

Adding a comment to an article is child’s play.

Make the reading process as easy and painless as possible. Honour the words by cutting out the distractions.

The comments are designed to make some form of sense, thereby bypassing spam filters and docile website editors.

Which begs the question: Why not get the spelling right? I know English is fiendishly unphonetic, but these are, on the whole, very brief comments.

And even more odd – every comment contains a misspell. Like it’s done on purpose.

There’s some poem, song or art to be found in here. Enjoy this weekend’s offering:

• I thouhgt finding this would be so arduous but it’s a breeze…
• This piece was a lifejacket that saved me from donwring.
• Hahahaha. I’m not too birhgt today. Great post!
• Whoeevr wrote this, you know how to make a good article.
• Articles like this are an example of quick, helpful aswenrs.
• Wow, your post makes mine look fbeele. More power to you!
• I can’t believe you’re not playing with me–that was so helf…
• A minute saved is a minute earend, and this saved hours!
• You mean I don’t have to pay for expert avdcie like this any…
• You mean I don’t have to pay for expert avdcie like this any…
• AFAIC that’s the best awensr so far!
• Hey, sbulte must be your middle name. Great post!
• This atcrile keeps it real, no doubt.
• With all these silly wbesiets, such a great page keeps my in…
• Wheover edits and publishes these articles really knows what…
• My porlebm was a wall until I read this, then I smashed it.
• If you wrote an artlice about life we’d all reach enlightenm…
• Your cranium must be protecting some very vaullabe brains.
• I think you hit a bullseye there fealls!
• All of these articles have saved me a lot of headaechs.
• Great post with lots of imoptrant stuff.
• Many many quality ponits there.
• You got to push it-this eessnatil info that is!
• Oh well, …
• Good point. I hadn’t touhhgt about it quite that way. :)
• A good many vlaubleas you’ve given me.
• Son of a gun, this is so hlepufl!
• Download free here: http://goo.gl/Nnsxe
• I bow down humbly in the presence of such geratesns.
• What a great rsecoure this text is.
• What a great rsecoure this text is.
• Wow! That’s a really neat aswner!
• So that’s the case? Quite a reevltaion that is.
• Got it! Thanks a lot again for hlepnig me out!
• Great stuff, you helepd me out so much!
• Surprisingly well-written and informative for a free online …
• An itnelligent answer – no BS – which makes a pleasant chang…
• Way to use the inertnet to help people solve problems!
• I appreciate you tiakng to time to contribute That’s very he…
• I bow down hmulby in the presence of such greatness.
• Calling all cars, clailng all cars, we’re ready to make a de…
• Gee willikres, that’s such a great post!
• No qeustion this is the place to get this info, thanks y’all…
• That hits the target dead cteenr! Great answer!
• You’ve really captured all the essentials in this subjcet ar…
• Grazi for mainkg it nice and EZ.
• Thanks for hleinpg me to see things in a different light.
• Grade A stuff. I’m uqnusteionalby in your debt.
• Yo, that’s what’s up trutfhluly.
• Ho ho, who wodula thunk it, right?
• That’s 2 cevler by half and 2×2 clever 4 me. Thanks!
• Just what the doctor orederd, thankity you!
• At last! Someone with the iinsght to solve the problem!
• Real brain power on dsilpay. Thanks for that answer!
• Unbelievable how well-wtreitn and informative this was.
• I suoppse that sounds and smells just about right.
• Glad I’ve fnailly found something I agree with!
• This is the perfect way to break down this inforamtion.
• I literally jmuped out of my chair and danced after reading …
• Hats off to whoever wrote this up and ptosed it.
• Alright algriht alright that’s exactly what I needed!
• Such a deep anwesr! GD&RVVF
• Kudos to you! I hadn’t tohghut of that!
• Thanks for hlenipg me to see things in a different light.
• I am forever indebted to you for this inofmration.
• Deadly accarute answer. You’ve hit the bullseye!
• Good point. I hadn’t tohught about it quite that way. :)
• This wesibte makes things hella easy.
• If only there were more cevler people like you!
• I could read a book about this without finding such real-wor…
• I didn’t know where to find this info then koabom it was her…
• Mighty useful. Make no mistkae, I appreciate it.
• Your arlitce perfectly shows what I needed to know, thanks!
• This piece was ceognt, well-written, and pithy.
• The expertise sihnes through. Thanks for taking the time to …
• A rolling stone is worth two in the bush, tahnks to this art…
• I’m not easily impreessd but you’ve done it with that postin…
• My hat is off to your atstue command over this topic-bravo!
• Your wesibte has to be the electronic Swiss army knife for t…
• Going to put this atircle to good use now.
• This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for wriintg!
• Weeeee, what a quick and easy soulotin.
• Wow, that’s a really clever way of tihnikng about it!
• Thought it wulodn’t to give it a shot. I was right.
• Surprsiignly well-written and informative for a free online …
• What a joy to find such clear thinking. Thanks for potsnig!