Category Archives: Application Design
Pragmatic Progressive Enhancement
A few weeks ago at the jQuery Conference (San Francisco 2011), Nicholas Zakas delivered a wildly entertaining presentation entitled “Progressive Enhancement 2.0″ (slides 65-79 are especially great), updating the basic rules of PE for a modern age. While prior Progressive Enhancement techniques included layering content, presentation, and behavior (conveniently represented as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). [...]
Also posted in Opinion
Device Independence on the Open Web
Open Web advocacy can get pretty lonely working in Big Enterprise. Armed with slow moving standards bodies, and held back by antiquated browser support, architectural battles over tools and frameworks can get pretty hairy if you don’t approach them with the right frame of mind. Big Enterprise is traditionally known for creating development environments that [...]
Posted in Application Design
Registration Forms Suck, Let’s Mitigate Suckiness
A lot of people complain about registration forms. Some people have suggested getting rid of them altogether, allowing users to utilize login credentials from accounts they already have through OpenID. But registration forms aren't going away. How can we make them more friendly?
Posted in Application Design Tagged API, Forms, OpenID, Registration, Security
Double Whammy: OpenID and Microformats
Own your Identity had a great post today detailing a great feature on the signup form of the Get Satisfaction site.
They rely on the fact that sites like Twitter and Flickr publish an hCard microformat for all of their users publicly on their website.
Also posted in Interface Design Tagged Flickr, hCard, microformat, OpenID, Technorati, Twitter
Screen Readers and Listening at the Speed of Sound
Here is a presentation given by a guy named Victor Tsaran on how he personally uses screen readers to browse the web. As web developers, accessibility is an important aspect of our work and cannot be ignored. How many websites have you browsed that had flash navigation? If you’re not a web developer, you need [...]
Also posted in Web Browsers Tagged Accessibility
Checklist for Web Applications
As the first post in this new category of web development, I’ve decided to keep it simple and post the different components and architecture considerations a developer must consider when making a new application, especially in today’s world of in-page dynamic interaction and the complications that has put on the problems that were considered solved [...]
Posted in Application Design


A Mobile Web Divided