Developing websites and mashups for small businesses has offered me the opportunity to venture into new territory with almost every client. Along the way I have learned to create, hack, and fix PHP pages for Forums, Blogs, Chatrooms, and even Ecommerce applications. Customers needing special effects taught me some cool CSS and Javascript tricks too.

But the latests thing I had to learn was to create a custom HTML/CSS template for email. While this sounds easy on the surface you have to consider the users email application and whether it will display images, background images, or even ignore all your CSS code. So you have to be logical in your design. While many designers may drop back to the comfort of nested tables I chose to use CSS. The customers newsletter had featured a right sidebar and left content. In order to use table structure I would have had to put the sidebar contents below the main content. But since the sidebar included the Table of contents and several important bits of text, the CSS structure allowed me to place the text above the articles which if all CSS was turned off, would read more logically.

Jeffery Zeldman has a couple of recent posts about whether email should even be a platform for design, and questions if we should even be trying to design HTML email. Catch it at…Zeldman.com

I was deleting my Comment Spam caught by my spam filter this week and had the thought of creating a “Spam Popularity” widget. We could judge a blog’s popularity not by its subscribers but by how many spammers try to invade it daily. Ok so maybe Spam Popularity is not so great, but a visual spam counter does let me know when to go dump the comment spam so none of it seeps in.

I knew I wanted it in my sidebar but not too intrusive or attractive to spammers. So I began analyzing the sidebar widget code and found that I could easily modify the Google Search widget. That gave me the text but no counter. So from there I tapped into my Wordpress database and found the spam counter field that my filter is using. A simple include of a SQL query and my spam popularity widget is done.

And just to make it a little prettier I gave it its own class and a little CSS formatting. Scroll down to the admin section of the sidebar and you will see my little widget in action. Oh and for you comment spammers, this is not a challenge for you to run up my numbers, just a little something to let me know you came by. Legitimate comments are also moderated.

Order Now!

Sitepoint has a new web design book: The Art and Science of CSS, Authors: Jonathan Snook, Steve Smith, Jina Bolton, Cameron Adams, and David Johnson. Sitepoint is offering a free chapter for review before purchase.

The free chapter is an in depth description of how to style forms. I saw several of these tutorials over the last few months, and this one offered nothing new if one is already familiar with the legend and fieldset tags. The author did illustrate a variety of forms one may encounter or need to develop. Based on the one free chapter this book could be a fairly useful addition to the library. The chapter descriptions on use of images and rounded corner methods look promissing.

You can buy the book at sitepoint.com and download the free chapter to judge for yourself. You will have to submit your email address to get the free chapter, but you can signup for sitepoints newsletters at the same time.
You can also order it here by clicking the book cover above (at a slight savings).

For years I have used a very thick HTML and XHTML reference book from Sams. But today I picked up Web Designer’s Reference By Craig Grannell (Published by: FriendsofEd). Flipping through it I saw some tidbits of code I had forgotten. This is one of the easiest reference books to read as well. It was neatly organized and explained things in a very simple way. The book is much more likely to be used than a w3c style reference bible. But more than a reference it covers modern coding techniques, web standards, CSS, and even a resonable introduction to typography. I would consider this a great read for those moving away from web design tools to hand coding.

I also personally like Craig Grannell. I first became exposed to his work at Practical Web Design magazine (now incorporated with .Net magazine). He is an excellent writer and produces some remarkable web designs. He was quite friendly on the forums and had some great ideas to share. You can view his work at www.snubcommunications.com

Tickets are now available for An Event Apart Chicago, August 27–28, 2007, at the Chicago Marriott Downtown. Two days of web standards, best practices, and creative inspiration. Website: www.aneventapart.com

Featured Speakers
* Dan Cederholm, author, Web Standards Solutions, Bulletproof Web Design