Rikcat Industries

There have been a lot of XHTML/CSS services that have popped up recently. Seems like anyone with a text editor and a copy of Web Standards Solutions is setting up shop. I’ve seen a range of prices from $150-$300 per page, but I’m sure in this case the old adage is true: you get what you pay for. …

I haven’t seen much written on the subject of metadata, especially as it relates to information architecture and designing interactions with users. This post describes metadata and shows real world examples of advanced uses of metadata. Metadata is at the core of what makes mashups, a Web 2.0 staple, so popular.

Wikipedia describes metadata as data about data. So, for example, you might have this post’s content as the main data but the date published, date edited, author, category, tags, etc. would all be its metadata. …

When designing a user interface, be it for the web or an application, my core goals are always to eliminate redundancy and make the UI as intuitive as possible. Sounds fairly simple, but like with all subjective processes, keeping those core goals on track can be tough. By no means are the suggestions below written in stone; these are just things that I keep in mind when designing a user interface. I also use simplicity or the KISS principle as a guiding tenet when developing my user interfaces. …

A couple of weeks ago, someone posed the question “Does IMing make you more or less productive?” on Linkedin’s Answers forum. I thought it was a really good question and I can see how IMing can make you less productive, but I also know the value of using it in a team environment.

I find IMing to be an invaluable tool for working in a team. Email is a passive medium where response times are not immediate and can get lost in a rapidly filling inbox. …

Currently, there are no standards for HTML e-mail and coding HTML e-mail involves reverting to the coding practices from 1999. Tables are a must for structure and this is limited CSS support for most email clients. There are so many different e-mail clients and testing for all of them is a nightmare.

Recently, there was a post on the Campaign Monitor blog about the need for standards in HTML e-mail. Having toiled with HTML e-mail for years, it would be a huge step forward if e-mail clients would render HTML to some standard. Even if it isn’t the exact standard that is used for web browsers, anything would be better than the current state of HTML e-mail. …

Wow, I just read this article called “The Nature of Talent” over at Freelance Switch and I couldn’t agree more with its author. I’ve been feeling and saying this for years about how people perceive talent. It’s a great article on the subject and I’ve added my two cents below.

Talent and creativity is not some magic fairy dust, it’s hard work. I’ve had many people over the years say “you’re talented” and I’m always gracious and accept their compliment, …

Recently I worked on a project in WordPress that was going to have a lot of categories and I wanted to display the categories comma delimited. After fooling with WordPress’s wp_list_categories function to list categories, I realized that it only allowed you to display categories as a list or delimited by a <br>. So after looking around on Google to no avail, I decided to whip up a function that allows for different delimiters. The function is fairly simple with one argument for the string of the delimiter. …

Interesting debate going on over at Jeffrey Zeldman’s site about the state of web standards. Just last week Jeffrey was profiled in an article in BusinessWeek with the title “Jeffrey Zeldman: King of Web Standards. It’s a great article showing the grassroots effort he co-founded to get the browser companies to follow the W3C’s standards.

As for a crisis in web standards, there is none. Yes, there hasn’t been a ton of movement on CSS 3 …

About a month ago Facebook released Facebook Platform. It’s a way in which people and companies can build applications within the Facebook social network. It received a ton of buzz when it was released and a lot of misguided people anointing it as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, some of the hype is starting to run its course. I noticed two articles recently, one from Jason Calacinis and one on Wired.com that are starting to look at Facebook with a more critical eye. …

As a web designer, I have to deal with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) a lot. (between you and me, a lot more then I would like to). My opinion on SEO is that it is 99% best practices, good marketing and good content. The other 1% percent is the gray area that takes up a larger percentage of my time. SEO is important, but it’s not some magic elixir that is the answer to all your site’s problems. I try to design for human users and not for Googlebot. …