Scott Vandehey's Blog

Did you know that if you declare a custom font using @font-face, the browser will try to fake the bold and italic styles if it can’t find them? This is a clever little feature that avoids a scenario where a themer specifies a font and is then confused that bold and italics don’t work, but it can be very confusing if you actually have a bold or italic version of the font. In this article, I’ll walk you through how to properly load your font files to avoid the browser’s faux-italic and faux-bold styles. Read More…

The annual Survey for People Who Make Websites from our friends at A List Apart has gone up, and I encourage you to take ten minutes to participate. This survey is the only source of information about our industry, and by taking it, you benefit us all. Here's what they have to say about it: Read More…

When the W3C started working on HTML again in 2007, they posted a set of guiding principles for the new version, emphasizing compatibility, utility and interoperability. I’d like to highlight four of these principles that I think are especially important. Support existing content Degrade gracefully Pave the cowpaths Priority of Constituencies In the process, I’ll explain why HTML5 is not just the latest version, but represents a fundamental shift in the philosophy behind HTML. Read More…

Like any Drupal themer, I've done my share of grumbling about the frequently ridiculous level of nested divs with dozens of classes. I'd heard some people mention a module called Semantic Views, but I never really understood what it was for until I found this video. If you don't understand what the big deal is either, take the four minutes to watch. It's a total "ah-ha!" moment. I'm happy to say that I just used Semantic Views for the first time on a client site, and it's just as awesome as everyone says. It saved me a ton of work and let me get exactly the markup I wanted, even while working around Chuck's nested views. Read More…