Rob

Off the back of Dizi's post detailing the recent theft of her awesome layout I'd like to point the finger at a recent theft of the Rawkes layout. Daniel Saxil-Nielsen of Proton Gun (Here is a Google cache version) has blatantly taken many elements from Rawkes in the design of his website. It's obviously a compliment to see my work being reproduced but the obvious similarities have forced my hand into taking action. So far I've notified him on twitter and also written a blog post about the situation. Why do people feel the need to do this?

Oh dear, not again! I feel sorry for you Dizi. I recently had someone steal Rawkes as well – http://www.protongun.com/. I haven't chased him (Daniel Saxil-Nielsen) up on it yet but you can view his Twitter here – http://twitter.com/dtsn. I've mixed emotions about it: I'm sick that that someone can just steal it but also proud that my design was good enough to be stolen.

I've just arrived back home in Surrey from the South West so unfortunately I have to disagree with your statement. However I have to admit you do some lovely pasties down there! Welcome to the forum!

Having secured multiple web design jobs in the past without any degree (I had been to Uni, but quit the course after a year) and only self-taught skills, I can safely say that you don't need one to get a corporate job. Freelance is even less of a problem as you're your own boss and ultimately getting jobs based on raw-skill, word of mouth and your portfolio. However, last year I quit my web design job, put my freelance on hold and enrolled at Bournemouth University to study Interactive Media Production. Why would I do that if I already had my dream career in my sights? It's easy really. The overriding reason for going to University (again) was for the experience and shear not wanting to regret the things I didn't do. Eris can certainly vouch for me in that going back into higher education was an incredibly tough decision, one that I didn't feel entirely comfortable with right until the week before enrolling. The other reason for wanting to go back to uni was that I really wanted to expand my skills in other areas away from web design, such as video editing and animation. I felt that going to Univeristy was the best option for getting all of that in one go with the added bonus of having the University life tied in. All in all I feel that University is not a necessity for freelancing, but I would definitely consider going for the life experience and non-business related skills you'll pick up along the way.

Microsoft are going to stop support and updates for Windows 2000 in the near future so, again, we're limiting the damage of IE6 by preventing any new versions of it slipping out into the market. So long as the required auto updates and removal of support for older systems come into place the only thing IE6 will be doing is taking a nose-dive into the history books.

Now is a better time than any to concentrate on the internet – put simply it's cheaper than the tangible world. However if they can't, or don't, want to spend money on updating their product then that company has issues that even a web developer and IE8 couldn't fix.

I'm not a regular user of Windows but I'm pretty sure IE7 wasn't a forced update, you had to install additional updates or something. IE8 will be different as it will become part of the main updates that are 'required' to be installed for a safe Windows experience. The user can still apparently decline to install IE8 but at least it's a step in the right direction. As for the companies using IE6 because of applications built for that browser… they should loosen their wallets and hire a web developer to bring them into the 21st century, a century where their employees can use any browser they want. There is absolutely no reason for people to use IE6 over IE7 or IE8.

This is true but at least with the addition of IE8 to the auto update we now have some sort of damage limitation to the amount of computers that will be infected with harbouring a version of IE6 – namely being OAPs and people with auto update turned off. What I'm hoping will happen is that web developers take this opportunity to finally drop all IE6 support and further limit the future use of the ancient browser.

Over the weekend we found out that IE8 is going to be pushed onto the Windows Automatic Updater. Is this a start of the end for IE6? Will it have any resounding affect to us as web developers? I think this is a great move by Microsoft. Not only will this move push the latest (and greatest?) version of IE onto the majority of Windows PCs but it will also provide the perfect excuse for web developers who want to drop support for IE6 entirely. All in all I feel this can only mean good things to the industry. What about you?

I'll have to give my gf and flatmate the link to that post as they (non-geeks) have just started using Twitter. In the last few months I've seen an explosion of 'regular' people using it. I like it!

Youtube can do HD embedding for free as far as I know but I'm a sucker for good design and would definitely go for the Vimeo option. If you check out their forums you'll find they are a nice bunch who are pretty open about future developments and problems.

I'd like to echo what Wizely said and give you my abridged version of a development plan. Do your research – What is the purpose of this site? Who is it for? etc. Become the website. Write your content – Finding a decent copywriter will pay off here. Work out the page structure for the website – Basically a sitemap. Knowing the content will help at this stage. Code your content in semantic (X)HTML – Don't think about the layout or styling at this point; just content! Start brainstorming and sketching layout designs – Knowing the content will help immensely at this stage. Modify your (X)HTML to contain any classes, ids and structural elements you may need when writing the CSS. Code any behavioural JavaScript elements – It's helpful to do this without any styling on the website at first. Code any backend elements in your desired language – PHP, Ruby, etc. Code your CSS and insert images – This is where you make the site look how you designed it. Go back over anything that is still left – Tweaking and finishing any JavaScript that relied on styling. Finishing backend coding. Adding any structural elements you forgot about. Profit! I deliberately left out testing and browser compatibility because that should be done at every single stage of coding in the development process. As I mentioned earlier this is a shortened version of the process and for small projects I will probably deviate or stray from it entirely.

That's exactly the same situation as me really. I try to check up on the posts every day or so but I just don't have enough time to write more than a couple replies.

I'm still surprised that I'm the second highest poster on WDF. Come on guys, I've barely been posting the last 6 months!

I thought I may as well stick in my 2 pennies worth. Personally I haven't been active enough since I joined University last October to notice these disappearing threads and all the censorship. However, I do understand both sides of the issue here: The forum needs to keep certain guidelines – decency, no harsh personal attacks, keeping the moral compass from drifting too far south. On the flip-side the users of the forum need free speech, they need to feel that the hard work put into posts won't be flushed down the drain because someone takes offence. It's a tough issue and one that is nigh on impossible to solve. What's interesting is that we had a massive debate in one of my seminars recently on the topic of censorship on the internet, part of which focused on forums. Something I loved about the seminar (and what I want to see more of on the forum) was the encouragement from the tutors for us to speak our minds and really have a go at each other, so long as it stayed civil and didn't get personal – then it just becomes senseless attacks and no one wants to see your dirty laundry in public. In the end we had a very productive session and the debate brought about many great ideas for solving the issue of censorship on the internet and also proved a valuable lesson in arguing for everything. Debating is healthy! What I have noticed in my visits to the forum these past few months is that the dynamic has changed. There doesn't seem to be as high quality posts going on. There are few posts questioning current and hot topics in web design. It seems people are afraid of stirring up trouble even if it will actually prove healthy and productive for everyone as a whole. You can't please everyone all the time and you should never be afraid to speak your mind if you believe you're – so long as you don't needlessly attack someone. This lack of quality content is what has been stopping me from joining back into the community here. I have enough time to write a few posts every now and then but unfortunately don't have the time for idle chit-chat and the same basic questions time and time again. One thing I do agree with out of this whole crazy event is that pointless and morally grey threads should be closed, but not deleted. Everyone knows when a thread has gone way past it's prime or when it's going in the wrong direction. There is no problem closing these threads (such as the Jade post – which I unfortunately haven't seen) if they are serving no valid purpose apart from providing a platform for racism, bullying, or morally wrongdoing. A utopian view but ultimately this forum serves a purpose for providing a community for web designers to talk and share advice. There are other forums around the internets for unproductive, senseless arguments and petty, immature comments. All in all I think WDF will come out of this bashed a little but we'll brush ourselves off and get back to being the community I remember and love from 6 months ago! Rob.

Hi Crin. I haven't had a chance to test this out in IE7 yet but I've found an issue that could be causing this. Basically your #mainContainer <div> is not registering a height because it has floated elements inside and it hasn't been float fixed, a common problem with floats. If you could try adding overflow: auto; to the styling of #mainContainer then you should fix at least that problem. Also, like IanC mentioned you need to move the <script> at the top of your document so it's within the <head> area of your HTML. Only the <DOCTYPE> should be at the top (first line) of HTML source code. Let me know if that doesn't solve the IE issue for you.

Hi dvp. Your link doesn't work for me either.

HTML 5 is basically the first major revision to HTML in about a decade. It adds a bunch of new tags that allow for more semantic mark-up based around content rather than design and layout. For example, there is a new tag called <article> which will prove immensely useful for websites that contain lists of posts (eg. blogs), there is another tag called <header>, another called <footer>, etc. The result of HTML 5 will be that we will be able to shed our addiction to <div> tags (amongst others like <span>) that are used purely for layout styling via the CSS – they serve no usable purpose for the content. By using these meaningful tags we'll have code that is easier to maintain and just generally isn't full of cruft. My advice is to definitely start learning HTML 5. Read through the W3C spec on HTML 5 and the blog post BlueDreamer linked above. I wouldn't worry about XHTML too much unless you really need to use the XML side to browsers – which I doubt. You'll be able to use your current XHTML programming style with HTML 5, by closing tags like <img> and <br>. As for the difference between HTML and XHTML you should definitely check out the post Understanding HTML, XML and XHTML on the Safari development blog.

Happy birthday Scott

The best case I've ever owned for my MacBook is the fitted Neoprene Sleeve from Incase. It fits the old plastic MacBook like a dream, not sure how it'll fit the new aluminium ones though. You can get them on the Apple store website.

It was about £1600 in the end. Worth every penny in my opinion.

If portability isn't an issue I would definitely recommend the iMac for the screen size, power, and comfortability. My iMac has the following specs: 24" Display 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4 GB RAM 1 TB Hard drive NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS 512 MB The only problem I've had with it was a dead pixel that come with my first one. Apple replaced it straight away I've been happy as larry since then. As for the MacBook I'm looking for £550. I bought a brand new Apple battery for it a few weeks ago. The specs are: MacBook Black 13.3" Display 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 3 GB RAM 120 GB Hard drive I hope this helps

I'm lucky enough to have a MacBook (for sale), MacBook Pro and an iMac so feel free to ask me any questions you might have. It basically all boils down to whether you need the portability of a laptop and how much power/what you're going to use it for. MacBooks are great as you can take them anywhere but they slip up with the graphical power and the small screen – Photoshop isn't much fun. Also typing on a laptop keyboard can get annoying and the same goes with the trackpad, you'll find yourself getting an external mouse/keyboard. As for the iMac it's a lot more powerful and the larger screen is to die for. Even the beefiest apps load up quickly and look stunning in the 1900x1200 display. Photoshop is a dream on the iMac. If I had to choose between just having a MacBook Pro or iMac then it would have to be a MacBook Pro simply because I need the portability for University.

The new Safari looks tight. It feels very Chrome like, which is an interesting move and makes me a little curious about if Google will change anything for their Mac release of Chrome. Overall I think the tabs at the top are a good idea, and the top sites feature looks very Apple-esque – not sure how much I'd use it though. However until Safari implements a decent plugin architecture I won't be switching back from FF. Yes it will, as far as I can see.

Pimp My Safari is probably the best place for finding Safari plugins.