I was recently asked to review the look and feel of a website for someone. When I first looked at the site I was surprised at how wide the content region was. Sitting at close to 1200 pixels wide I thought to myself, there's the first red flag. But, when I pointed it out to the site developer he didn't think the width was a problem. After talking to him for a few minutes I discovered that he was under the impression this was now an acceptable resolution to use.

He was under a false impression. But, how do you show someone they are wrong? Browser Size is a tool that can help do just that. It takes a look at page size and shows you what percentage of browser users can view how much of the page.

If we take a look at 1200 pixels we see that only 50% of those surfing the web can view that width without having to horizontally scroll. Yikes! Read more »

I've head a lot of great things about using CSS frameworks in site builds. Two of the more popular options I'm interested in are Blueprint and 960. When I tried to find a good comparison between the two I found, for the most part, opinion pieces on why one was better than the other. I couldn't find a detailed enough analysis to feed my need. What is an inquiring engineer to do? I did the analysis myself. Read more »

Since most of use don't get to use Regular Expressions on a regular basis, tools to help us write them can make a huge difference to our sanity. Especially, if your trying to write anything complex that you can't find the solution to with a simple Google search. Here are a few simple tools that may help writing those fun and challenging regex. Read more »