Author
Ben Gremillion started playing with pixels in the mid-1980s and building websites circa 1997. When not hiking or stargazing, he crafts HTML and CSS, spends a lot of time debugging PHP and MySQL, ponders the details of user experience, and injects bits of personality into staid websites. He blogs about his lessons learned in web design at benthinkin.net.
February 4, 2013 in Learn
While presenting information online is a design problem, the challenge of making it work is technical. Web designers use CSS frameworks to focus more on the former and worry less about the latter, just as grids — a staple of…
January 30, 2013 in Learn
The trouble with the word “grid” begins and ends with edges. A page in a book, a broadsheet newspaper or the back of a napkin — regardless of format, print design can count on two known values: Width and height. But…
December 20, 2012 in Learn
In CSS, float and clear serve for layout much the same way as the tables they replaced: As stand-ins that work well enough. But they’re still limited. One proposed solution is called the CSS Flexible Box Layout Module, commonly called…
December 3, 2012 in Learn
CSS frameworks have gone responsive, squeezing content into a spectrum of desktop and mobile browsers with varying degrees of success. While any CSS solution for layout is preferable to nested tables, no single solution fits every website. But that hasn’t stopped…
November 28, 2012 in Learn
It’s not easy, doing the same with less. Screen sizes have steadily increased since the web was invented, and web designers have learned to use that space well. Grid systems start around 960 pixels wide and allow for unlimited depth….
November 12, 2012 in Learn
The adage that visitors judge a website in a second may be questioned, but the lesson is not. The first few seconds create expectations on the subject matter at hand. Businesslike or casual, helpful or self-serving — especially on sites…