Author: Connie Finkelman

  • Styling :before

    On the desktop version of a shopping cart I was styling I had “column headers” (flexed divs in a non-table layout) that had no relevance when the page was viewed in mobile, since the columns stacked vertically. I needed to remove the desktop headers and apply the labels to each individual element instead.   I…

  • Why I won’t pay for AdWords

    I did a search on my favorite unicode character site for the non-breaking hyphen character, which is very useful for phone numbers. I got this ad:

  • Making a Custom Icon Font for Your Website

    Reducing server calls for image resources will speed up your page load and enhance performance. A great way to do this is to replace sprited icons with mobile-friendly custom fonts.

  • Design Fail: A cascade of bad decisions

    Design failures usually aren’t the result of one bad decision but rather a chain of mistakes that lead to an inevitable conclusion. When I see something in a design that doesn’t work I try to trace it back to the decisions that caused it.

  • Responsive Interactive Map

    Image maps won’t work in a responsive layout and Flash won’t work on mobile. If you want a responsive graphic with shaped hotspots and rollover effects you need SVG.

  • Accessible Custom Checkbox

    In an earlier post I explored custom styling of form selects. In this article I discuss how to make accessible custom checkboxes to match your interface styling. The same technique can be used for radios.

  • Lessons from Failed Projects

    Spend enough time in IT and you’ll see plenty of failed dev projects. Although there is a huge amount of wisdom to be gained from a failed project, I have never seen that benefit reaped by an organization. That’s really unfortunate, but it could easily be avoided. I want to begin by talking about how an organization identifies a failed…

  • Lose My Number

    iOS has a handy built in feature: automatically sensing phone numbers and making them active links. When you touch them you get a dialog to make a call to that number. Unfortunately this can cause problem with your layout and your pages.

  • The Gummy Worms of the Mobile Website

    The mobile website I built Office Depot received a perfect score from Keynote Systems, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. There is always room for improvement. When it comes to peak performance even small gains can make a big difference. What’s wrong with this picture? At first glance it seems okay. The site checks in…

  • Office Depot’s Mobile Website Gets a Perfect Score

    A recent article by Internet Retailer states that the Office Depot m-commerce website “exhibits spectacular performance”, citing our first-place ranking in Keynote Systems’ weekly rankings, in which the Office Depot mobile website achieved a perfect score of 1000. There are two main components in this performance rating: uptime and page load speed. The uptime is the…