If you’ve been keeping an eye on your 404 errors recently, you will have noticed an increase in requests for nonexistent mobile files and directories, especially over the past year or so. The scripts and bots requesting these files from your server seem to be looking for a mobile version of your site. Unfortunately, they are wasting bandwidth and resources in the process. It has become common to see the following 404 errors constantly repeated in your log files:

• http://domain.tld/apple-touch-icon.png
• http://domain.tld/iphone
• http://domain.tld/mobile
• http://domain.tld/mobi
• http://domain.tld/m

So some bot comes along, assumes that your site includes a mobile version, and then tries its hand at guessing the location. In the common request-set listed above, we see the bot looking first for an “apple-touch icon,” and then for mobile content in various directories. If this only happens once in awhile, it’s no big deal. But these days I’ve been seeing many different bots requesting these nonexistent resources.

Even worse, these mobile-hungry bots can’t seem to remember where they’ve been – they typically request the same resources repeatedly, and in multiple locations within the directory structure. I frequently see hundreds of these types of requests in my weekly error-log analyses. Needless to say, this is an incredible waste of time, bandwidth, and server resources.

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In my previous post on Quick and Easy CSS @font-face Code, I provide a choice set of CSS rules for embedding custom fonts into your web pages. It’s a solid, cross-browser technique that works great, but as Marty Thornley pointed out, it would be useful to have a more thorough explanation of how the code actually works. So, rather than going back and adding a bunch of additional information to the original post, I’m following up with a visual walkthrough of the @font-face code.

In step-by-step visual format, this article will show you what the code is doing and how to use it with your own custom fonts.

Step 1: Declaring the @font-face rules

The first thing we want to do is copy & paste the quick and easy @font-face code into our stylesheet:

@font-face { /* declare fonts */
	font-family: "MuseoLight";
	src: url("fonts/Museo300-Regular.eot");
	src: local("Museo 300"), local("Museo-300"),
		url("fonts/Museo300-Regular.woff") format("woff"),
		url("fonts/Museo300-Regular.otf") format("opentype"),
		url("fonts/Museo300-Regular.svg#Museo-300") format("svg");
		}

Yes, it’s a hideous-looking chunk of CSS, but that’s not going to stop us from using it to embed our own custom fonts. Let’s break it down and see how the different parts fit together..

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I’ve been using custom fonts in my designs for quite a few sites now, and have refined what seems to be an ideal chunk of CSS code for implementing the @font-face rules. Some of the sites that include these rules include Perishable Press and Digging into WordPress, which look more stylish and refined with the custom fonts in effect. I’ve tested this code on quite a few browsers, including the following:

• Safari 3.1+
• Opera 10+
• Firefox 3.5+
• Chrome 4.0+
• Internet Explorer 6+

This technique delivers your custom fonts quite consistently to all of these browsers, and degrades gracefully for those that don’t support it. Of course, there are always weird exceptions contingent in particular scenarios, but overall it’s a solid chunk of code put together from much research, experimentation, and testing. I share it here hoping it will help others implement custom @font-face fonts quickly and easily. Let’s step to it..

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Whenever I find myself working with PHP or messing around with server settings, I nearly always create a phpinfo.php file and place it in the root directory of whatever domain I happen to be working on. These types of informational files employ PHP’s handy phpinfo() function to display a concise summary of all of your server’s variables, which may then be referenced for debugging purposes, bragging rights, and so on.

While this sort of thing is normally okay, I frequently forget to remove the file and just leave it sitting there for the entire world to look at. This of course is a big “no-no” for site security, because the phpinfo.php file contains a hefty amount of information about my server, including stuff like:

• The web server version
• The IP address of the host
• The version of the operating system
• The root directory of the web server
• Configuration information about the remote PHP installation
• The username of the user who installed php and if they are a SUDO user

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Even before CSS3 introduced a cornucopia of new border properties, CSS2.1 provided plenty of great functionality, enabling designers to style and enhance borders in many different ways. But now with the many new border properties available with CSS3, much more is possible, including everything from background border images, asymmetrical border radii, border transformations, custom fitting, and much more. While not every browser fully supports all of these new stylistic possibilities, we can practice progressive enhancement to create beautiful, well-styled borders for modern browsers while supporting the dinosaurs with suitable fallback styles.

Many of us know how easy it is to use CSS border properties to do cool stuff like image-free, cross-browser rounded corners, but there is so much more that is possible with all of the new CSS3 properties. In this article, we’ll explore the CSS3 and CSS2.1 border properties while keeping a keen eye out for obvious patterns and taking note of key points along the way. When it’s all said and done, hopefully we’ll have a better understanding of the “big picture” concerning the functional and syntactical mechanism behind the magical world of CSS border properties.

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I mean, basically anything except for Internet Explorer, which is a debate in and of itself. Here I’m referring to old versions of good browsers, like Firefox 2, Safari 2, Opera 8, and so on. It seems that older versions of these browsers are not as common as older versions of IE, so should we bother supporting them when designing our websites?

Most agree that we shouldn’t support old versions of crappy browsers like IE, but what about older versions of good browsers like Firefox, Opera, and Safari?

Backwards Compatibility

One of the cool things about adhering to Web Standards during web development is that, theoretically at least, your designs should look similar on all standards-compliant browsers. This is one of the reasons why we exclude IE from the conversation — it doesn’t speak the language, and requires a whole realm of special support in and of itself. But even for modern browsers like Firefox and Safari, a standards-based design does not always translate to presentational fidelity in older versions. So how far back should we go? Obviously there’s no reason to go out of our way to support, say, Firefox 1, but what about more recent versions such as 2 or even 3.0?

Rendering Differences

For many modern browsers, the older the version, the more inconsistencies you’ll find. Older versions of Opera are notorious for borking an otherwise perfect design, and the further back you go, the more borked your design is going to get. And for anyone who does support older Opera, you know how frustrating it can be to target and filter specific versions with CSS. The same is generally true for other modern browsers: supporting older versions can get messy, costing endless amounts of time and energy. There’s no reason to have your designs look identical across browsers, but they should at least be usable. Right?

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Many bloggers, designers, and developers take advantage of Google’s free Analytics service to track and monitor their site’s statistics. Along with a Google account, all that’s needed to use Google Analytics is the addition of a small slice of JavaScript into your web pages. For a long time, there was only one way of doing this, and then in 2007 Google improved their GATC code and established a new way for including it in your web pages. Many people switched over to the newer optimized method, but may not realize that there are now three different ways to track your pages with Google Analytics. The latest method uses asynchronous tracking to minimize negative impact on user experience. Let’s take a look at each of these three methods for tracking your web pages with Google Analytics..

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Progressive enhancement is a good thing, and CSS3 is even better. Combined, they enable designers to create lighter, cleaner websites faster and easier than ever before..

CSS3 can do some pretty amazing stuff: text shadows, rgba transparency, multiple background images, embedded fonts, and tons more. It’s awesome, but not all browsers are up to snuff. As designers, it’s up to us to decide which browsers to support for our projects. While everyone has their own particular strategy, there seem to be three general approaches:

• Support all browsers with perfect fidelity – not realistic for most budgets, requires many elaborate workarounds, hacks, etc., also difficult to maintain, upgrade, and extend.
• Support all browsers to some degree – focus first on the latest and greatest browsers, and then go back and make sure that older browsers look and work reasonably well.
• Support newer browsers, forget about the older stuff – make your sites look pixel-perfect on the newest versions of modern browsers and don’t worry about anything else.

Among these generalized strategies, the second approach comes closest to the concept of progressive enhancement. In practice, progressive enhancement enables designers to design websites according to some predetermined support baseline and then gradually improve and optimize appearance and functionality to accommodate the most advanced browsers. Closely related to this idea is the principle of graceful degradation, which is what should happen when newer design methods aren’t understood or supported by certain browsers. Consider the following example..

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I recently added to my growing library of image-preloading methods with a few new-&-improved techniques. After posting that recent preloading article, an even better way of preloading images using pure CSS3 hit me:

.preload-images {
	background: url(image-01.png) no-repeat -9999px -9999px;
	background: url(image-01.png) no-repeat -9999px -9999px,
		    url(image-02.png) no-repeat -9999px -9999px,
		    url(image-03.png) no-repeat -9999px -9999px,
		    url(image-04.png) no-repeat -9999px -9999px,
		    url(image-05.png) no-repeat -9999px -9999px;
	}

Using CSS3’s new support for multiple background images, we can use a single, existing element to preload all of the required images. Compare this method with the old way of using CSS to preload images:

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Preloading images is a great way to improve the user experience. When images are preloaded in the browser, the visitor can surf around your site and enjoy extremely faster loading times. This is especially beneficial for photo galleries and other image-heavy sites where you want to deliver the goods as quickly and seamlessly as possible. Preloading images definitely helps users without broadband enjoy a better experience when viewing your content. In this article, we’ll explore three different preloading techniques to enhance the performance and usability of your site.

Method 1: Preloading with CSS and JavaScript

There are many ways to preload images, including methods that rely on CSS, JavaScript, and various combinations thereof. As one of my favorite topics here at Perishable Press, I have covered image preloading numerous times:

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For my Serious redesign, I push the envelope in terms of CSS’ advanced selector functionality. Stuff like:

• p:first-child
• p:first-child:first-letter
• p:first-child:after
• p:first-child:first-line

Plus lots of other stylistic tricks that require CSS3 support in order to display as intended. Fortunately, most of the browsers to which I am catering with this new design have no problems with most of the advanced stuff. Of course, Internet Explorer chokes on just about everything, but fortunately IE’s proprietary conditional comments make it easy to fix things up with some “special” styles:

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Say goodbye to the age-old clearfix hack and hello to the new and improved clearfix method..

The clearfix hack, or “easy-clearing” hack, is a useful method of clearing floats. I have written about the original method and even suggested a few improvements. The original clearfix hack works great, but the browsers that it targets are either obsolete or well on their way. Specifically, Internet Explorer 5 for Mac is now history, so there is no reason to bother with it when using the clearfix method of clearing floats.

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If you operate a website that features lots of code examples, you know how important it is to spend some quality time styling the <pre> element. When left unstyled, wild <pre> tags will mangle your preformatted content and destroy your site’s layout. Different browsers treat the <pre> tag quite differently, varying greatly in their default handling of font-sizing, scrollbar-rendering, and word-wrapping. Indeed, getting your preformatted code to look consistent, usable, and stylish across browsers is no easy task, but it certainly can be done. In this article, I’ll show you everything you need to create perfect <pre> tags.

First thangs first

Before getting into it, let’s take a moment to ensure we’re all on the same page. The (X)HTML <pre> element is used to display preformatted text, code, or just about anything else. pre tags are ideal for multiple lines of code or text that need to retain character spacing, display unformatted characters, keep inherent line breaks, and so on.

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I have been wanting to write about 404 error pages for quite awhile now. They have always been very important to me, with customized error pages playing a integral part of every well-rounded web-design strategy. Rather than try to re-invent the wheel with this, I think I will just go through and discuss some thoughts about 404 error pages, share some useful code snippets, and highlight some suggested resources along the way. In a sense, this post is nothing more than a giant “brain-dump” of all things 404 for future reference. Hopefully you will find it useful in pimping your own 404.

When requested page is not found by server, error message is returned; this is the essence of the 404 — Ancient Chinese proverb

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Running a private site is all about preventing unwanted visitors. Here is a quick and easy way to allow access to multiple IP addresses while redirecting everyone else to a custom message page.

To do this, all you need is an HTAccess file and a list of IPs for which you would like to allow access.

Edit the following code according to the proceeding instructions and place into the root HTAccess file of your domain:

# ALLOW ONLY MULTIPLE IPs
<Limit GET POST PUT>
 Order Deny,Allow
 Deny from all
 Allow from 123.456.789
 Allow from 456.789.123
 Allow from 789.123.456
</Limit>
ErrorDocument 403 path/custom-message.html
<Files path/custom-message.html>
 Order Allow,Deny
 Allow from all
</Files>

To prepare this code for use on your site, do these three things:

1. Edit the three IP addresses to suit your needs. Feel free to add more IPs or remove any that aren’t needed.
2. Edit both instances of “path/custom-message.html” to match the path and file name of the file that will contain your custom message. This may be anything, anywhere, with any functionality you desire.
3. That’s it. Copy/paste into your site’s root htaccess file, upload, test, and get out!

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While browsing the internet these days, I see a lot of this:

<body>
...
<a name="top"></a>
...
<a href="#top">- Back to Top -</a>
...
</body>

There’s an easier, better and prettier way. CSS Signatures are all the rage these days. If you’re not familiar with a CSS Signature, it’s basically nothing more than an ID on your body tag, like this:

<body id="www-domain-tld">

The fundamental purpose of the CSS Signature is to allow a user to specify style adjustments to your site in their own user style sheets. Whether or not users are actually capitalizing on this is a discussion for another day, but doing this has other benefits like having an extra id to use when dealing with CSS specificity.

Additionally, we can use this to capitalize on a little known fact about HTML and anchors: you can use anchors to jump to any element on your page with an ID attribute.

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The shared server on which I host Perishable Press was recently scanned by security software that revealed a significant security risk. Namely, the HTTP request methods TRACE and TRACK were found to be enabled on my webserver. The TRACE and TRACK protocols are HTTP methods used in the debugging of webserver connections.

Although these methods are useful for legitimate purposes, they may compromise the security of your server by enabling cross-site scripting attacks (XST). By exploiting certain browser vulnerabilities, an attacker may manipulate the TRACE and TRACK methods to intercept your visitors’ sensitive data. The solution, of course, is disable these methods on your webserver.

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