The seminal web magazine, A List Apart, is looking for one good intern. The full details are available at Jeffrey Zeldman's web site. There's no money involved, but you'll get plenty of geek street cred, and that's arguably much more valuable in the long run. So, if any of you are looking for your big break (or at the very least, your 15 minutes of fame) this could be your chance. Prepare your application, and make sure you are prepared to discuss the relative merits and faults of the em dash and en dash.

Update: They have all the applicants they can handle! Thanks from Zeldman to everyone who applied.

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So-called "skip links" are a well-known accessibility feature, allowing users to skip a page's navigation and any other structural elements and go straight to the content. They have the added bonus of being very handy to users of handheld devices such as PDAs and mobile phones. I'd even go so far as to say they might actually benefit mobile users more than users of assistive technologies. But either way, no one can deny that skip links are a highly useful feature.

So, that being said, should skip links be hidden or visible? Mike Cherim and Gez Lemon dish it out on Accessites.org. Both make compelling points, and I can't say my mind has been made up one way or the other after reading this article - but it is certainly an excellent starting point for design and accessibility discussions.

What are your thoughts about skip links? Do they warrant screen real estate or not?

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CSS Mania is hosting the first annual CSS World Awards, to recognize the work of developers who build web sites using CSS. Unlike the Bloggies, this isn't a popularity contest; a panel of experts (including Molly Holzschlag, Roger Johansson, Andy Budd, and others) will serve as the judges. The nominees come from sites listed on CSS Mania over the past year. Awards will be given in ten categories:

1. Site of the Year
2. Associations
3. Blogging
4. Business
5. Entertainment
6. Institutions
7. Media
8. Portal
9. Web Design (Companies and Portfolios)
10. Web Tools

The winners will be announced in early July, so stay tuned!

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All serious web developers understand the importance of having high-quality tools every step of the way. For example, once I've got a page mostly complete, I'll use the W3C Validator to validate the HTML and CSS, run it through Vischeck to make sure the readability holds up for people with color blindness, and perform a handful of other tests and checks. It's somewhat time-consuming, but absolutely essential to creating a good product.

Well, I was absolutely thrilled when I found The Scrutinizer. This fantastic tool is like a jumping-off point for all the various? web tests. It consolidates all the tools I use on a regular basis, along with many I'd never heard of but will now make part of my regular page-test regimen.

The Scrutinizer automatically pulls in the URL of the referring page, or you can enter your own; from there, it's simply a matter of clicking the relevant links to run the various tests. There's also a bookmarklet for Firefox to make the process even simpler.

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Did you know that you can use PHP to generate CSS? Well, you can! Check out Patrick Fitzgerald's CSS Colors.

The possibilities are seemingly endless. For starts, you could create a server-side "skins" system - for example, you could have your site's color scheme automagically change once a week, or change to a special look-and-feel for specific dates (Christmas, Valentine's Day, etc.).

But there's more. You can also generate complete color palettes, thanks to a special CSS_Color class. Now that's something that makes this design-impaired coder smile.

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It's true that IE is the most notorious browser for inconsistencies, incompatibilities, and bugs. But the fact remains that no two browsers are created equal, and while IE is the most likely to cause headaches in the course of development, other browsers can be culprits, as well.

If you run into a major roadblock, Rafael Lima's CSS Browser Selector could be your saving grace. A tiny bit of Javascript (less than 1kb!) determines the user's browser and creates an accordingly-named class. From there, it's simply a matter of applying the styles that were written for that particular browser. For example:

.ie .example {
background-color: yellow
}
.gecko .example {
background-color: gray
}
.opera .example {
background-color: green
}
.konqueror .example {
background-color: blue
}
.webkit .example {
background-color: black
}
.example {
width: 100px;
height: 100px;
background-color: brown;
}

The colored box on the CSS Browser Selector page gets the point across better than anything else, though. Open the page in a few different browsers to see for yourself.

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Looking for examples of CSS in action? Well you have come to the right place. The examples are very crude but function perfectly. Take a peek at the source code to figure out how it was done. There is a lot to look through.

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Looks like Microsoft is the latest to be guilty of a failed redesign. Their current homepage iteration sports a table-based layout circa 1998.

They've also released a beta preview of their new new homepage - which you can view only with Internet Explorer. (When I attempted to view the preview site in Firefox, I was simply redirected to the existing homepage.) The preview site appears to use semantic markup, although the source has been compacted down to only a few lines, so it's nearly impossible to read. And with no Web Developer extension in IE, outlining all block-level elements (or all table cells) isn't an option.

Funny that with the IE 7 team touting how standards-compliant the new browser will be, the Microsoft homepage flies in the face of standards. (Is that for-real ironic or only Alanis ironic?) Having worked for a few large corporations, I understand that one department's products can appear to be the antithesis of another department's, with the worker bees in both departments being none the wiser. Still, this is pretty egregious, given the emphasis Microsoft claims to be placing on web standards.

Although... we've been there before with Microsoft, haven't we? Perhaps these things are cyclical.

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HowToCreate.co.uk has an interesting guide to creating a purely CSS-based nested-list menu. This technique uses absolutely no Javascript except for IE 5 for windows. Here is the list of supported browsers:

• Mozilla 1+
• Netscape 7+
• Opera 7+
• Safari build 60+
• OmniWeb 4.5+
• Konqueror 3.2+
• IE 5.5+ on Windows (using DHTML behaviors)

Some browsers that don't support this technique display styled nested-lists instead. Go check it out.

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According to a post on IEBlog, IE 7 will be distributed via WIndows Automatic Updates.

I'm confused now, because in the interview with Chris Wilson that I linked to yesterday, Chris seemed to definitely say that Microsoft won't go that route in distributing updates. Or maybe when he said "pushing it out" he was referring to something other than Automatic Updates...?

Hmmm...

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Vitamin has an interview with Chris Wilson, Group Program Manager of the Internet Explorer Platform team at Microsoft. They're not calling it a podcast, but I'm going to. (Being a podcaster myself, I'm capable only of speaking in hip web terminology.) At just over 5 minutes, it's a quick and easy listen.

Topics discussed include: the new features of IE 7, Microsoft's involvement with the Web Standards Project, and the process of updating to IE 7. Chris WIlson's turn-ons include: RSS, Flickr, and working closely with the web development community.

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The Internet was a bland wasteland in 1996. Just take a look at some of the big corporations sites from 10 years ago. It may be downright painful, but it is a testament to see how far web design has come with the help of CSS. Check out Pepsi's futuristic web-look. Ah, those were the days...

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Many thanks to the terrific Amber Rhea for her work on CSS Insider. You can continue to find Amber on our Download Squad blog. And this site will remain available for reference and searching. Thanks to the readers who commented on the retirement of CSS Insider, and thanks to everyone who visited this blog over the last couple of years!

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Well, folks, today officially marks the final day of CSS Insider. I've had a lot of fun blogging here for the past 7 months, and hopefully my posts have been helpful and informative to you as well. Would I say CSS Insider has changed my life? Well... I tend to shy away from hyperbole; but one fact worth noting is that if it weren't for my blogging here, I wouldn't have met and interviewed Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Jason Santa Maria.

If you are so heartbroken at the thought of this blog going dark because you just can't get enough of Amber Rhea, worry not! You can find me at the Georgia Podcast Network, where I pontificate about a variety of topics; and my personal blog, Being Amber Rhea. And you might just catch me somewhere else 'round the Weblogs, Inc. network, as well.

I'll leave you with links to some of my favorite CSS news and info sites:

• A List Apart
• Position Is Everything
• css-discuss wiki
• 456 Berea St.
• CSS Beauty

Thanks, y'all.

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Safari - or at least, something not unlike it - may be coming to the Windows platform. Swift is a new browser for Windows, based on Apple's WebKit rendering engine.

Swift is in the very earlier stages of development. Practically embryonic, you might even say. The repository was created a mere three weeks ago. And, as the Web Standards Project warns, "it's marked as 1.0pre alpha, and it is very much an alpha: very rough-looking UI, no scrollwheel support, pathetic form controls and I've had reports from colleagues that some folks can't even get it to install."

Nevertheless, Swift looks promising! I recommend keeping a close watch on this project. It could be very helpful to developers who need to ensure that their sites (particularly those with heavy scripting) function across browsers.

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It's 2006, and we're still talking about site navigation? Yes, we are; and apparently we need all the reminders we can get, since so few sites seem to get it right. (Including, I'm well aware, CSS Insider. Don't hate; I didn't design it.)

In his new A List Apart article ("Where Am I?"), Derek Powazek slaps us upside the head, again, with the cardinal rules of web site navigation. From any page on a site, a user should be able to easily answer these three questions:

1. Where am I?
2. Where can I go?
3. Where have I been?

So simple, and yet somehow, so elusive to many designers.

Derek provides visual examples of great site navigation. Put your site to the test! Do you know where you are, where you've been, and where you're going?

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What 'til you see this thing. Craziness, I tell you! James at Brothercake has created a 3D dungeon model through clever manipulation of CSS and the DOM. It even has correct shading - done on the fly! - to effectively convey perspective.

How did he do it? The solution builds off of Tantek ?elik's Study of Regular Polygons (which is fascinating in its own right), adding some Javascript to accomplish the shading. Check out the examples at Brothercake and appreciate CSS borders in a way you never thought possible. (You can even navigate through the CSS-based underworld!)

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In an article entitled "Visual vs. Structural," Tommy Olsson compares the two most typical - and often competing - web design approaches: visual design and structural design. The balanced and well-written article makes the point that while there are often no major differences in the code produced from one design approach or another, using a structural approach can result in more accessible sites.

While I hesitate to use such loaded words as "better," I definitely agree that structural design can contribute to a product that is more scalable, easier to maintain, and more accessible. (I say this from the perspective of someone who has employed both approaches at one time or another.) And remember, "accessibility" doesn't just mean "blind people." As the web moves away from being confined to the desktop computer, accessibility is as much about accommodating mobile technologies as it is about making sure content is available to disabled users.

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Not sure if this is a cool tip, but this is something I always do when I start on a full bleed design in Photoshop (I mean a design for print, obviously). I thought I share this one with you…

Here is was I do:

• I create a new document using the exact dimensions
• I add guides on all sides of the document (make sure Snap to Document Bounds is checked in the View menu)
• I add the bleed area by enlarging the Canvas Size (Image > Canvas Size)

For me it's just a logical thing to do, but I know from reading the comments on my blog, that everyone does things differently. I'm curious now, do you do exactly the same or do you have a smarter trick?

In one of my previous posts I promised that I had some more news about what is going on in my world lately. As most of my readers know I’m always pretty busy and the balance between work and life is mostly in favor towards work. I’m not complaining or anything, in fact that’s how I like it. But a few months ago we received some news that has thrown everything out of balance completely.

Unexpected news

Two months ago on a beautiful Friday morning the postman brought us some disturbing news from our landlord that we need to leave the building. We have lived here for twelve years and knew the owner rather well. He lives just across the road so we saw him several times a week, but still he failed to mention any of this news to us. The official notice was the first time. Is it just me or would you expect more after such a time? It's not that we are bad tenants, we always payed on time and even helped him out on several occasions.

6 months to find something...

Luckily for us we live in a country that has its shit together if something like this happens. They have to give us 6 months to find something else, at least a decent period if compared with the US where this is only a month according to my overseas friends. So after the initial shock we did what any true geek would do and that's checking the Internet for a new home. Now you have to know that we stayed at our current place so long because rent was pretty low and we never actually created time to search for something. Always work work :)

Buy or rent?

We both felt that it wasn't opportune anymore to rent something, prices for a place big enough to work and live would cost us as much or more than buying a new one. So after all that calculation work the pretty amazing thing was that it took Geert only 3 pages on www.easy.be to find a place that we both liked very much. But as you know it is always smarter to look around a bit more and that's exactly what we did. We drove around for two weekends but didn't find anything better than our first love. It's true what they say, you have to fall in love with a house and feel its vibe or potential.

Houston we have a house!

Recent statistics showed that 70% of the people in Belgium own a house and now we are included in those figures :) There is even a saying that every Belgian citizen gets born with a brick in his stomach. As any house owner knows it comes down to money, so as you guessed by now we had to talk to several banks too to get the best deal. Luckily for us we have an accountant that is a true diamond and he helped and assisted us in this matter. We own him a great deal of gratitude!

I'm proud to say that we now own a house that will also have enough room to fit Duoh! our company. It's a new house that they are still building only a few minutes from where we live now. You also have to imagine that most people prepare such a life changing thing a year ahead. We didn't know anything about building a house at all, the work and exploration that comes with it like choosing tiles, parquet, bathroom, kitchen, lightening etc. We never spend so much time in shops as of late!

• Groundlevel blue print
• 1st level blue print

So much to do and to plan + some reader advice...

Of course it's all exciting and if you know me from my work environment posts, you know I like to decorate. But for painting we will have to wait for a year because the plastering of the walls needs to dry out. That's not bad at all since there is so much else to do. That's were I hope I can learn a little from my readers too. For example we are thinking about contacting a carpenter to:

• Create an table like the ones you find in the Apple Store.
• Another thing that comes to mind are custom made built-in cabinets.

I was wondering if any of my readers have experience in this and would like to share tips and experiences in the comments. Is this something that is expensive? Materials don't have to be top notch just good looking if you know what I mean. Another thing that I would like to know a little more about is:

• working with a landscape architect to design your garden

So if you have something interesting to tell, please don't hesitate. It can be about anything that has to do with building a new house. Thanks in advance angels :)