From the killersites.com magazine:

In a nutshell, webslices are an IE8 specific feature that allows the web designer to tag part of a webpage as a ‘webslice’. By tagging sections of a web page, users of IE8 can then subscribe to it, much in the same way that they can subscribe to an RSS feed.

Read the full article about webslices.

Thanks for reading,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

I’ve been a professional nerd for many years now, and over that time I’ve learned to use many different technologies including 8-9 programming languages, a few operating systems and a whole bunch of frameworks, database programs etc …

… The sad truth

Recently, I was challenged with some tech problem, and to be honest about it, I forgot the specific steps to solve it!!

This always bothers me – when you forget how to do something you once knew so well.

I am now resigned to the fact that I’ve probably forgotten more than I now remember. I guess there is only so much room in your brain ..?

You can’t know it all

This brings me to my larger point: as a professional nerd, it is not realistic to think you will learn everything that is out there. There is simply too much and you have to pick your battles.

That said, that doesn’t mean you should learn one or two things and then just rest on your laurels. No, you have to keep learning otherwise you will fall behind and you won’t stay competitive.

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The web design magazine is slowly taking off.

… We have our first article from John Beatrice who has given us a sneak-peek at the new IE8:

Internet Explorer 8 is Microsoft’s response to the growing interest in interactive web services and rich online experiences. This is Microsoft’s second attempt to build a browser that follows standard compliant HTML and CSS. So, will designers and developers embrace this new Internet Explorer?

You can read more about the Internet Explorer 8 beta in the magazine section of the website.

I hope you’ll find it interesting.

Stefan Mischook

Microsoft recently released Expression Web 2, their new web design program.

Frontpage is old news:

For those of you who don’t know much about it, Expression Web replaces Frontpage and as such, you won’t be seeing any new versions of Frontpage.

… You can read more about Expression Web 2 in the magazine.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I can’t tell you how many times that my programming experience (in Java, PHP etc) has guided me in my web design work … and strangely, even in other aspects of my life not at all related to topics ‘nerd’.

… Ah, nerd wisdom prevails in all aspects of life.

Anyway, here yet again, is another example where programming guides me: this time, it’s all about web design and code.

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Over the last few years, the consensus in the web design community has been to streamline code. In real terms, that comes down to:

• collapsing html
• collapsing css
• … and consolidating css code into one file, to minimize the number of server hits.

… The idea is to speed up web page load times and to reduce web server loads.

This is an important goal and something all web designers should be concerned about. The problem is that if you are concentrating on optimizing your CSS or HTML to speed things up, you are concentrating on the wrong parts of your websites.

The fact is, that most of the optimization opportunities is actually found in your images, Flash movies and other multimedia content – not the code.

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