Waterfall Web

Ever since I saw the concept of the Page Description Diagram I liked the idea. A simple way of sorting out what a page has to do without any other distractions.

Actually putting one together is a bit harder than I first thought. Where do you start?

Then Ryan Singer from 37 Signals penned An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design. Bingo – someone has joined the dots for me!

1. Make a list of your “bits”- everything on the page and anything that the visitor might have to do
2. Group them where they share some commonality
3. Prioritise them (Hey, the contents of a Page Description Diagram!)
4. Design each chunk, and then put those chunks together (Hey, a wireframe!)
5. Then design away (Hey, a comp!)

Following Ryan’s steps would make it difficult to end up with a comp that didn’t achieve what it was supposed to in terms of site goals.

Not impossible, mind you, but difficult.

A bunch of new entries to the CSS Zen Garden. Some I like:

• Like The Sea
• Chien
• Hoop – Tournament Edition
• And if for nothing else than the warped sense of humour: Hengarden

That’s not a typo – Hengarden; not Zengarden…

This website has been online for almost 6 months now, And Ben has just pointed out a font sizing quirk that has made the text here unreadable on IE for Windows if the Text Size (in the View menu) is set to Smaller or Smallest.

And he was right – I’d never checked it before.

Turns out, using this is a no-no:
body {
font: 0.8em/1.6em Verdana, sans-serif;
}

Owen Briggs has written a fairly in-depth study (and taken a gazillion screen shots) highlighting the different methods of text sizing and their various behaviours across different browsers.

It appears a more reliable way to achieve the goal is:
body {
font: 100% Verdana, sans-serif;
}

#wrapper {
font-size: 0.8em;
line-height: 1.6em;
}

And before anyone gets on their soapbox and says I shouldn’t specify a font size anyway, go and read Owen’s post. I particluarly like:

“One sizing wisdom is that a document’s main text should be left alone so it can display at whatever the browser default is. This sounds good, but since most browsers default to a text size that I have to back up to the kitchen to read, I decided the zen approach to design wasn’t for me. Besides, if I was really zen I wouldn’t write a stylesheet.” (Italics mine)