As announced at IE Death march, I recently dropped support for Internet Explorer 6. As newer versions of Firefox, Opera, and Safari (and others) continue to improve consistency and provide better support for standards-based techniques, having to carry IE 6 along for the ride — for any reason — is painful. Thanks to the techniques described in this article, I am free to completely ignore (figuratively and literally) IE 6 when developing and designing websites. Now that I have dropped support for IE 6, I feel liberated, free of the constraints that once enslaved my time, energy, and resources. Working on my new design, I have already saved countless hours that would have been wasted on IE 6. If you are still chained to an old copy IE 6, I highly recommend kicking it to the curb and experiencing the freedom for yourself. All it takes is a few lines of code and the decision to go there.

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Graham Smith of ImJustCreative.com recently interviewed me on a wide variety of topics, including everything from blogging and web design to theme development and social media. The interview is presented as more of a dialogue between Graham and myself, and will be presented as a three-part series. Check out the first part of the interview here.

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One of my first article series, the WordPress Basics series walks beginning users through some of the most rudimentary but essential WordPress tasks. From logging into the WordPress Admin and creating posts to setting post options and uploading images, the WordPress Basics series takes absolute newbies from zero to published in less than an hour.

• WordPress Basics: Login to Admin
• WordPress Basics: Publishing Posts
• WordPress Basics: Saving and Editing Posts
• WordPress Basics: Setting the Date, Author, and other Post Options
• WordPress Basics: Uploading and Displaying Images

Once you feel comfortable working with the WordPress Admin, I invite you to explore the many other useful WordPress articles here at Perishable Press:

• Explore the WordPress Tag Archive
• Explore the WordPress Category Archive

And, to stay current with future WordPress content from Perishable Press, I encourage you to subscribe to the Perishable Press RSS feed.

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Presenting the Perishable Press Blacklist Candidate Series!

An ongoing series of articles on the fine art of malicious exploit detection and prevention. Learn about preventing the sneaky mischievous and deceptive practices of some of the worst spammers, scrapers, crackers, and other scumbags on the Internet.

• Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-10-19
• Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-05-31
• Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-04-27
• Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-03-09
• Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-02-10
• Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-01-02

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures in the Blacklist Candidate series!

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Here at Perishable Press, I love to write about minimalism, simplicity, and usability in user-interface and web design. I have always enjoyed the minimalist aesthetic, as my Perishable Theme plainly illustrates. Fortunately, many designers and developers have embraced the minimalist concept, and continue to produce and promote minimalist design principles in their designs. As often as my schedule allows, I like to take the time to explore and share some of my favorite minimalist designs, and so far have managed to post the following in-depth reviews:

• Minimalist Web Design Showcase: ShaunInman.com
• Minimalist Web Design Showcase: Equivocality

These minimalist site reviews examine the structure, functionality, and appearance of sites that utilize simplicity and elegance in their design. These articles also feature “mini” interviews with the site’s designer/owner, and provide good insight into the thought and purpose of their respective designs. I invite you to explore the growing collection of my “Minimalist Web Design Showcase” series, and look forward to hearing your feedback concerning the various ideas and methods covered in the material.

And, as always, if you have yet to Perishable Press, please do so for upcoming minimalist reviews and other Web design goodness.

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As my readers know, I spend a lot of time digging through error logs, preventing attacks, and reporting results. Occasionally, some moron will pull a stunt that deserves exposure, public humiliation, and banishment. There is certainly no lack of this type of nonsense, as many of you are well-aware.

3G Blacklist

Even so, I have to admit that I am very happy with my latest strategy against crackers, spammers, and other scumbags, namely, the 3G Blacklist. Since implementing this effective HTAccess security method, I have seen a dramatic decrease in the overall volume of malicious activity recorded in my Apache, PHP, and 404 error logs. Thankfully, the 3G Blacklist has kept things pretty quiet around here, at least as far as malicious activity is concerned. In fact, it has been awhile since I’ve seen anything worthy of sharing with you — until now.

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While we all watch as Internet Explorer 6 dies a slow, painful death, many unfortunate designers and developers continue to find themselves dealing with IE6’s lack of support for simple things like minimum and maximum widths. Fortunately, there are solutions to this problem, primarily in the form of CSS expressions such as this:

/* set the minimum width for IE 6 */
#target_element {
	width: expression((document.body.clientWidth < 335)? "333px" : "auto"); /* min-width for IE6 */
	min-width: 333px; /* min-width for all standards-compliant browsers */
	}

Although ugly, invalid, and resource-intensive, this technique works well at setting min-width properties for IE6. But beware! There is a catch. Chris Herdt recently wrote in with an important discovery:

…inclusion of any padding or margin on the element that has the fix applied will cause IE6 to crash…

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My favorite series of articles here at Perishable Press, the “Obsessive CSS Code Formatting” articles explore the esoteric minutia involved with producing clean, well-formatted CSS code. From indention and spacing to opening and closing brackets, the obsessive CSS code series explores techniques and tricks used to transform ordinary stylesheets into streamlined masterpieces of inspiring beauty. Creating poetic CSS integrates the high art of employing consistent coding patterns and formatting methods with the practical functionality of proper syntax, logical structure, and concise delivery. These posts are extremely subjective, opening dialogue concerning the obsessive-compulsive behavior many of us embrace while implementing the powerful and essential coding language that is CSS. So, without further ado, here is a periodically updated list showcasing the all of the currently available articles in the series..

• Obsessive CSS Code Formatting: Organization, Comments, and Signatures
• Obsessive CSS Code Formatting: Indentation and Spacing
• Obsessive CSS Code Formatting: Opening and Closing Brackets
• Obsessive CSS Code Formatting: Patterns and Trends

If you have yet to do so, Subscribe to Perishable Press for all the latest CSS formatting tips!

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The “CSS Hackz Series” focuses on useful hacks, tricks, and workarounds for specific presentational and styling issues on various browsers. Although a majority of these articles provide solutions for Internet Explorer, other browsers are covered as well, either specifically or in general. The articles in the “Hackz” series are written to be as clear and concise as possible, focusing on application rather than theory. Thus, these posts cut right to the chase, presenting comprehensive methods and techniques aimed at those already familiar with the basic principles of Standards-based Web design. So, without further ado, here is a periodically updated list showcasing the all of the currently available articles in the series..

• CSS Hackz Series: Targeting and Filtering Internet Explorer 7
• CSS Hackz Series: Clearing Floats with the Clearfix Hack
• CSS Hackz Series: PNG Fix for Internet Explorer
• CSS Hackz Series: Minimum Width, Maximum Width for Internet Explorer 6

If you have yet to do so, Subscribe to Perishable Press for all the latest CSS Hacks, tricks, and tips!

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After announcing my intention to redesign Perishable Press, I received some great feedback addressing everything from site architecture and navigation to appearance and usability. As the conversations continue, I want to spend some time thinking about usability, navigation, columns and sidebars. The current minimalist design features a single column layout with no sidebars. Content is located prominently front and center, with all navigational links appearing in either the oversized “footer” area or at the end of each individual post. As several people have pointed out, such navigational strategy (or lack thereof) discourages visitors from digging deeper into the site. Apparently, the pile of links at the bottom of each page — the menu, as I like to call it — requires far too much effort to decipher. I mean, really, just because it all makes perfect sense to me, doesn’t mean that everyone else will “get it” too.

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Recently, I have been getting a lot of requests for multiple-loop configurations in WordPress. It seems that multiple-column, multiple-loop configurations are in high demand these days, especially ones that display posts like this:

• First column, first loop: display posts #1-5
• Second column, second loop: display posts #6-10
• Third column, third loop: display posts #11-15

Using WordPress and a little CSS, this configuration is relatively easy to accomplish. Let’s cut right to the chase..

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