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Complete Joy Gems Archive

• 2008

• Kill The CAPTCHAs
  If you don't know what they are no doubt you've seen them. They do a great job at what they're designed to do. And that's the problem.

• You're Smarter Than Dreamweaver
  If you're leaning on DW as a Cascading Style Sheet authoring tool you ought to think of laying off it. At the end of the day you'll end up with more trouble than it's worth.

• Lessons Learned: The Making Of A Sustainable Web Site (Part 2 Of 2)
  More things I learned when re-making this site.

• Lessons Learned: The Making Of A Sustainable Web Site (Part 1 Of 2)
  Might be pretty obvious but here are the first two: 1) Set Your Design Priorities At The Start and 2) 2. Build A Perfect Page Template

• A Short Guide To Writing Style Rules
  I came up with a way to bring order to chaos.

• Don't Call Them Coders
  My attempt to elevate and appreciate the work of those who translate ideas into web pages.

• Useful Comments
  What can you do with <!-- and -->? A lot.

• The Purpose Of (X)HTML
  It has nothing to do with style, appearance, and layout. It has everything to do with giving meaning to content.

• Open Borders
  You don't want a silly border around images used for links do you? This is a reminder of how to get rid of them.

• The Future of (X)HTML
  New and better tags are on their way.

• The FONTain Of Youth
  Just when you thought you'd be stuck using arial, verdana, and georgia forever, I found a few good new fonts for web pages.

• PDFs Are Web Pollution
  A rant against using PDFs as if they were a web page. They're not.

• 2007 Year In Review - The Best Of Joy Gems
  My annual shot to play judge and jury of the best Joy Gems of last year.

• 2007

• Google Earth Live
  What if Google Earth went live and you could see people and things moving about in real time?

• The Mother Of All Good Web Sites - A Web Page
  Make a great web page template for the site you are designing and you've got it made.

• What Are They Looking At?
  Usability gurus can track eyeball movements across a web page.

• Writing Design Specs For A New Web Site
  Whether your web site is designed in-house or outsourced, a plan must be committed to paper (or screen) before anything is ever made.

• Good Lookin' Email: Which Way To Go
  Creating formatted email is no walk in the park as email clients are even more varied than web browsers.

• The New And Improved Joy Gems Newsletter
  After a few years, it was high time to redo the look of Joy Gems.

• The Code To Content Ratio
  Less code, more content. That's what you should be striving for in your web page designs.

• Google Analytics
  A simple, effective, and amazing way to track visitors to your pages.

• What's To Learn?
  When it comes to using Dreamweaver, what is the most important thing you need to know?

• Where To Go For Web Mastering Help When You Get Stuck
  Using online forums when all other resources have been taped out.

• What Is It? A Link Or An Underline?
  Don't you feel foolish when you click on underlined text thinking it was a link? Here's a remedy for the problem.

• Turning Users Into People
  Better quit calling the people who use your web site "users" because they're not users. They're people.

• Dreamweaver Revisited
  When Adobe took over Macromedia, what did they do to assist web designers and content creators in creating web pages that follow web page design standards? Not much.

• Just The Opposite Is True
  Do you think that by following web page design standards you'll be unable to create visually engaging web sites? Think again!!

• It's The Navigation, Stupid
  After you've killed yourself getting visitors to your site, what's the thing that is most likely to drive them away?

• That Bright Line - Part 2 of 2
  One of my students also understands the separation of structure from style - and why that is useful.

• That Bright Line - Part 1 of 2
  The more I understand web design standards, the easier it gets for me to see the difference between document structure and style.

• What Means Work?
  How do you define an hour of work in the Digital Age?

• Font Tester
  An online tool that let's you easily test out your ideas about which font to use.

• Serving All The Masters - Part 2 of 2
  More of the same as Part 1, but with an example.

• Serving All The Masters - Part 1 of 2
  Use web page design standards and you'll make everything - and everyone - happy.

• What It's All About
  Web page design is a process by which informed (let us hope) decisions are made.

• 2006

• 2006 Year In Review - The Best Of Joy Gems
  I picked out a few of the best Joy Gems of 2006. At least I thought these were the best.

• The Past, Present, and Future Of The Joy Gems Newsletter
  My chance to ask JG Readers - "What would you like me to write about?"

• A Little Of This, A Little Of That
  A short collection of interesting resources that generally lead to the same place: web design standards.

• Buy These Books
  A short selection of great web design books, mostly for newbies, from a Friendly Web Design Instructor.

• White Open Spaces
  Frequently forgotten - and most important in web page design - is the space where nothing is said or done.

• A Useful Microsoft Tool (really) Hidden From View (naturally)
  What's free, in front of your face, and can FTP files from your (Windows only) computer to a server?

• Tools Of The Trade
  What programs do you use to make web sites? Here are a few long trusted and worthy friends.

• Think Before You Code
  Don't just dive into making web pages when you start putting your site together.

• The Holy Grail Of Web Page Design: Look Ma' No Tables
  To use layout tables or not to use layout tables - that's the question.

• MySpace Is Not My Space
  The popular online teen community is teaching kids a few bad things about web design.

• The Funer Side Of Web Design
  A few sites that poke fun at web design - and where you can learn a thing or two.

• Where's The Cascade In Cascading Style Sheets? Part 2 of 2
  More on how the 3 Style Sheets work together to influence web design.

• Where's The Cascade In Cascading Style Sheets? Part 1 of 2
  How the 3 Style Sheets work together to influence web design.

• Are We Ever Going To See IE7.0?
  What that 800 lb. Redmond Gorilla is doing to their new browser.

• What Style Is Your Parachute?
  Where does one's sense of style in web design come from?

• A Writer's Medium
  After you strip away all the fluff of a web page you're left with the naked truth.

• Sometimes You Have To Hide
  Yes Virginia, there is a way to hide your web site from pryin' eyes.

• Why Bother To Learn XHTML?
  The case is made.

• Fonts Fonts Fonts
  A Fontophile takes an overview of something too frequently overlooked.

• Navigation Tips - Moving About In Infospace
  Some things to keep in mind when making a web site. (Don't forget your visitors!!)

• 2005 Year In Review - The Best Of Joy Gems
  I picked out a few of the best Joy Gems of 2005 - the ones you liked and so did I.

• 2005

• Web Accessibility Toolbar - A Good Friend For Webmasters
  Put this baby in your browser to easily evaluate how others - and you - make web pages.

• Beginners' Guides To Cascading Style Sheets
  Some places to start if you're new to CSS - or even if you're not so new.

• The Other Side Of CSS And Web Standards
  Other perspectives about Cascading Style Sheets and Web Standards - be practical.

• Color My World With Great Online Tools
  A few well worn online color tools for web designers, developers, and content creators.

• So, You Want To Know About HTML Goodies, Huh?
  The well known site where you can get HTML tutorials and much more.

• A Well Formed Document Is A Beautiful Thing
  This is more important than beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

• Helpful Hints When Writing For The Web
  Learn to write in hypertext.

• 5 Web Design Principles To Live By
  Follow these ideas and you won't go wrong.

• SearchDay, Every Day
  A newsletter that's a must for anyone who needs to know everything about search.

• SEO: Giving Your Site A Chance To Be Found
  Meet Jill Whalen - a giant in the Search Engine Optimization biz.

• Speed Thrills: A Way To Optimize Your Pages So They'll Download Faster
  Meet Andy King - a web page speed freak.

• Check It Out - W3C's HTML And CSS Validators - Part 2 of 2
  Couldn't fit it on one page.

• Check It Out - W3C's HTML And CSS Validators - Part 1 of 2
  If you don't know what validation is, it's time to learn.

• Image Depots - Where To License Royalty Free Images
  Meet Corbis and Getty.

• Top Style - An Awesome Tool To Help You Make Cascading Style Sheets
  Sorry Mac users. The best of the breed was made only for Windows users.

• A Few Thoughts From The Past And Present On Site Development
  Some things I wrote years ago still hold up.

• Color Help - Two Tools That Check For Color Blindness And Contrast Issues
  Color matters.

• A Method Of Building A Small Web Site - Part 2 of 2
  Step 3 - Templating, Step 4 - Building.

• A Method Of Building A Small Web Site - Part 1 of 2
  Step 1 - Charting, Step 2 - Wire Framing.

• Listamatic - The Magic Of Working With Lists And Links
  One of the classic works of art on how to make list mark-up work in unbelievable ways.

• Tidy GUI: Fixing Up Code And Converting To XHTML
  It doesn't look like much, but it's handy to keep around in your web designer tool box.

• CSS Zen Garden - The Power Of CSS
  Want some inspiration about what you can do with Cascading Style Sheets?

• Bobby And Cynthia - Two Tools To Test Your Pages For Accessibility
  Bobby's been taken over by WebXACT but still doing the job on accessibility testing.

• The History Of The Web
  We've come a long way, baby!

• The Granddaddy Of Browser Archives
  You won't believe how many web browsers have been developed.

• Things I Hate About The Web - Part 2 of 2
  Too much for one page.

• Things I Hate About The Web - Part 1 of 2
  Pop ups, underlined text, poor multimedia controls, and more.

• Never Published as a Joy Gems Newsletter

• Old World, New World
  I was thinking out loud when I discovered Daoism.

Bud Kraus: friendly@joyofcode.com 973 235 1452

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