Google just introduced Doctype, a new wiki-style encyclopedia by web developers, for web developers. Looks to be a valuable resource, and has been added to my personal bookmarks. I especially like that they list browser compatibility for all of the CSS properties.

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Google Doctype is an open encyclopedia and reference library. Written by web developers, for web developers. It includes articles on web security, JavaScript DOM manipulation, CSS tips and tricks, and more. The reference section includes a growing library of test cases for checking cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility.

Google Doctype is 100% open.

• Open source
• Open content
• Open to contributions from anyone

Making us nerds look a little cooler…

Emil Stenström recently wrote about his experiences with Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 (MOSS) entitled, Sharepoint 2007 from an interface developer’s view. This is a task that I am currently undertaking at work, and I couldn’t agree more with his point of view that if you really want a CMS with a custom UI, then you should avoid Sharepoint if at all possible.

I order to progress within this project, I have been forced to revert to the HTML methodologies of yore (table-based layouts in particular), and to write messy code that I am not proud to call my own. I have however manged to produce a somewhat clean Masterpage, and have been able to keep the majority of the presentation coding within the CSS files. Working on this intranet site however, does make me VERY appreciative that the majority of the projects that I’m working on these days are built in Rails.

Today I am very excited to show off our most recent site launch here at Barefoot. The Know Theatre is one of Barefoot’s 2007 grant recipients and a large portion of their grant campaign was invested into building a brand new website. In addition to the website, our team designed and developed 6 print ads (featured in City Beat), 4 print guerrilla executions, 3 bumper stickers, and an external theatre sign.

In addition to being a beautifully designed site, it is probably the most technically progressive site that I have had the pleasure of working on to date. Built with Ruby on Rails; we managed to throw in everything plus the kitchen sink. The site features a fully custom CMS, RSS news feed, flickr photo feed, iCal event feed, some Microformat love, and AJAX out the wazoo! Also be sure to check out the nifty animated GIF rollover effects on the main navigation.

In the most recent project I’ve started I decided that I wanted to try implementing a reset style sheet. There’s been a bit of discussion about them lately around the web, such as over at meyerweb. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, and I’ve finally kicked myself enough times to do it.

The simple reasoning for using a reset style sheet is that the engines that power our many different browsers all have a different set of default styles. <h1>, <ul>, <p>, etc. all carry different default values for margin, padding, font-size and their various other attributes. Using the reset style sheet to set these values to zero will force me to define them in my main style sheet and give me a more uniform presentation across browsers.

It may require just a little more work than usual and will most likely be transparent to the regular user, but I think the level of detail it will force me to control will provide a much better overall presentation and experience for all users whether they know it or not.

I ran across Joost de Valk’s site where he shows of several features of the future CSS3. Many of these new features will be a dream com true. Who knows how long before they will be commonly supported across all browsers (mainly; how long do we have to wait for IE to support it). Some very exciting stuff. Rounded corners, opacity, text-shadows, multiple background images; just to name a few.

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