Inspiration Bit

There are hundreds of CSS galleries on the Web and each one claims to be unique. Although everyone has already noticed that most of these galleries repeat each other showcasing the same websites. Several articles were written about how pointless most of these galleries are, how everyone is tired of viewing the same average or similarly looking sites appearing in most of their collections. “A word to the wise, css galleries are over”, asserted Devlounge; CollyLogic wrote about “the end of CSS showcases”, and Wisdump wisely concluded that “they really ended a long time ago when everyone decided they would start their own showcase”.

While I do agree with many things they mentioned in those articles, I don’t think that CSS galleries are worthless, they are source of inspiration for many designers, they do support the latest coding standards on the Web and they do encourage designers to create a better looking websites worthy of submitting to galleries and getting noticed for their artistic talent.
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There are two questions that web designers argue about a lot and even though most of the time they decide for themselves which way to go, they still have doubts about which option is the right one.

1. What minimal screen resolution we should keep in mind when designing a website?
2. Should we go with a Liquid (or fluid) design or a Fixed-width one?

As I said, every designer has his own opinion on these topics. I usually design with 800×600 resolution in mind, thus trying to get my main website content to be below 760px. I think that even though 1024×768 is becoming a more common screen resolution for most web users, many people still prefer to set their monitors to 800×600, or they like having several different application windows open at the same time, thus minimizing their browser window as much as possible. I often have multiple windows tiled up on my screen.
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It’s already a well-known fact that kids today are more tech savvy than their predecessors. When my daughter was only 11 months old she managed to press the right combination of buttons on the TV remote to order a “Harry Potter” movie on Pay-per-View. When we noticed what she was watching it was too late, next month we had to pay the bill for that movie.

Often, she comes to me when I work and to keep her entertained I open one of the kids websites in a separate small browser window, aligning my open applications next to it. So she watches her cartoons and lets me do my work - thanks to my wide screen. Fortunately, there are some great websites for kids, and I often enjoy playing all those games or watching shows online with my daughter.
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Another week has passed. It’s unbelievable how time flies. Sometimes it feels like there are only three days in a week: Monday (a start of a new work week), Friday (finally, will be able to get some rest on the weekend) and then SaturSunday comes and goes so fast that I don’t even notice, and it’s Monday already. Plus, tonight we move our clocks one hour ahead, so this weekend will end even sooner.

Anyhow, here are the 8 Worthwhile Weekly (I’ll abbreviate them as WWW from now on) bits from the past week:
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It was a cloudy and rainy day in Vancouver today, but I did go to the Cruise Ship Terminal at Canada Place with my daughter to see a very interesting exhibition organized by CANstruction Vancouver. This year’s theme, “My favourite things”, has challenged several teams of graphic designers and students to build fascinating sculptures using only cans, cereal or juice boxes, bottles. As I mentioned before, next week all these cans will be donated to the local food banks.
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While reading an article from Wired magazine “We Are the Web”, recommended by Brian from Epic Edits, that talks about Internet in 1995, 2005 and predicts the future of Internet for 2015, the memories from past came to my mind, and I felt an urge to write about them.

I was very fortunate to get involved with the Internet from the early days of World Wide Web. I remember my first time on the internet in April 1996. I was introduced to it by my boss, he showed me how to search on the Web. I was stunned. I was so overcome by the sea of possibilities. Do you want to know what were my first searched keywords? “The Doors lyrics”. I was ecstatic to browse numerous websites dedicated to my then favourite band. I’ve printed some of the lyrics right away, and was showing them off to my friends. The next thing I typed in the search field was “Sotheby’s auction” (don’t ask me why - I guess I just wanted to test if I can find something about it on the internet as well), and was going through the latest auction items. From that day on I was hooked on the internet, searching and reading hundreds of websites.
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Usually I don’t have time nor do I like to read very long articles on the internet. If I find something really worth reading and it’s long, then I print it out and read the hard copy. But this analysis of Digg written by 3Monkeys got my attention and I read the entire article online.

Three guys have collaborated on a research paper for a Georgia Tech project and started digging into Digg. One of the authors was a regular Digg user while others registered on Digg to study the environment. They did interview several Top 20 Digg users, as well as some common Digg users (you can read their profiles in the post). Their article proved my suspicion that most of the Top Digg users are male. They were able to locate one female Digg user who agreed to participate in the research.
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I guess by now, every blogger knows that Digg users don’t like blogs. I wrote about Digg before with a self-explanatory illustration What Can Digg do with your website from blaugh.com. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that bloggers don’t try every trick in a blogosphere’s book (written by the same bloggers, who’ve been dugg) to reach Digg’s front page.

Well, nobody wrote about this particular trick on how to become Digg’s favourite blog, but two students from Germany have certainly discovered the secret formula of success and turned their blog into a front page Digg machine. So what’s the secret?
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