Stoney's Zone » Web Design

Getting Real

stoney — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 19:33:01 +0000

I just finished Getting Real, a book by 37signals. I bought the PDF version, but it’s available online for free as well.

The book’s main thesis is to keep it small, simple, and flexible. “It” being both the product and the company. There’s a lot to like about that. The best software I’ve created has been either a solo effort or a small team operating without a lot of management constraints.

Obviously, there are many products that can’t be small and simple, but if you approach software development as both an art and a craft, as I do, then this is a very inspirational work. Highly recommended.

Moving to DreamHost

stoney — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 01:31:46 +0000

After nine years with Pair, I’m moving to DreamHost.

Their sale (ending April 24) was too good to pass up. Over 7 GB of on-line storage for $16/month! I can put my Gallery photo albums there.

This is all necessary because I’m dropping my T1 from Savvis this summer when the contract expires. When I started it, Comcast had just shown up in Concord, and couldn’t give me the service I needed. There are many more alternatives now, and I can’t justify keeping a T1 and paying 10x Comcast’s fee.

Over the next few months, I’ll be migrating my web sites and those I manage to DreamHost. I’ve spent the last few days exploring it, and am quite satisfied with what I found. They have a much better “control panel” than Pair, and their policies are very flexible. Since they’ve been around since 1997, I hope that means they’re stable. The reviews I’ve found on the ‘net are quite good.

CSS Rocks!

stoney — Sun, 06 Oct 2002 02:27:37 +0000

This site was built mostly by hand using all CSS – no tables!

I’m really impressed by how much CSS simplifies the structure and reduces the size of web pages. I’ve used Adobe GoLive since it was GoLive CyberStudio, mostly because of the WYSIWYG table support and the site management, but CSS simplifies the pages so much that I’m using BBEdit now.

The site management tools in GoLive are fine, but they don’t work with templated sites, like this one. I expect that I’ll be abandoning GoLive altogether before long.

The books by Eric Meyer were excellent for learning how CSS works and how to build sites with CSS. Granted, I’ve gone to the edge here by ignoring compatibility with older browsers, but that’s part of the fun!