The Atom API will specify an open standard for editing blogs, Atom feeds, and other such resources. Any program or device will then be able to interact with any Atom server software that supports the API. As long as it meets the minimum technical requirements, that is. In the past, we planned to build in...
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You may be shocked to learn that not all feed reading and feed producing software adheres strictly to the RSS and Atom specifications, nor to the recommended practices for the use of them. Yeah, right. I doubt that comes as a surprise to any of you. Perhaps the best way to convince software vendors to...
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The nature of a weblog--a site whose primary content is the periodic postings of (usually) textual material by one or more people, arranged sequentially with the most recent entries appearing first--dictates many of the basic design decisions for such a site. Thus the details are where a blog designer's efforts will be expended. Or not....
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I'll be talking specifically today about adding a blogroll to your Blogger powered site, but even if you're not interested in doing that, this might be worth a read for some other principles that will be illustrated.

To start off with, let me point out the WRONG way to add a blogroll to your blog....
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Last night, Tim Bray posted a request that 'for the next few months, whenever we're talking to a co-worker or a journo or from a conference stage, to say never say "Atom" without, within the next 45 seconds, also saying "which as we all know must be served as application/atom+xml or it won't work"'. We're...
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This blog entry will be dated Tuesday, July 13, 2004 at 8:51 AM, MDT. What does that mean? Can it change? Should it change? What should be required before it is changed? Is it the "right" date? What other dates might be associated with this blog entry? Are there dates associated with it that no...
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You're website design is feeling a little stale. You need to find some fresh ideas. Where do you go? Here are some ideas:

Visit the sites of well known designers.

If you happen to know the names of some well known designers and web-techniques masters, you can find their homepages with a Google search. A...
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Yesterday, I had the RSS Weekly webcast running in the background as I worked. Since I was only listening with half an ear, I probably got the wrong impression, but one of the guests or callers sounded like they were trying to shoehorn data into RSS that just didn't belong there. How far should a...
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No design blog would be complete without a reference to Dave Shea's css Zen Garden. The CSS Zen Garden is an experiment in just how much the design of a website can be controlled with CSS. Shea created a webpage, and invited designers to submit stylesheets to alter its appearance. As of today, the site...
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In case that headline caused anyone's heart to seize up momentarily, let me say first that Atom will have some sort of linking capability. It just may not be found in an element named "link". Objections are raised from time to time that the link element, with it's seemingly constantly expanding list of @rel values...
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