FAQs Archives
What Web Development Tools Do You Use?
May 17, 2004
Recently (re-)learning web design/web standards skills (started working on web in late 1993 - ran web management company until 1999 but have not done any hands on work for 5 years) I have been reading your site for the past 2 months and it has provided a great deal of guidance, as well as direction to many other excellent resources. My question - what tools do you rely upon for (X)HTML and CSS? (ie homesite, topstyle etc). Recently picked up a copy of DreamweaverMX but find it unecessarily complex. Thank you.Continue reading this entry...
How do your categories work?
April 05, 2004
I am currently using TypePad and want to switch to MT to have more control over my site. Do you use different “blogs” for different sections of content or do you segement the site by “Category?”Continue reading this entry...
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How does the "playing in iTunes" feature work?
March 05, 2004
From lots of people, most recently Jeremy Flint. I use a little program called Kung Tunes to achieve this. It’s pretty simple really. Kung-Tunes uploads a small php file to my site every-time a track changes in iTunes. I’ve got…Continue reading this entry...
Do you use blog tools for knowledge management?
February 21, 2004
Keith, are you using weblogging tools for knowledge management at your place of work? I’ve enjoyed reading your summaries of how you use MT for your company’s Intranet, but I wondered if you have been doing “corporate blogging” too? (ie employees or a group of employees who actually run a blog inhouse).Continue reading this entry...
How are your Quicklinks done?
February 21, 2004
I love your quicklinks feature, and I’ve seen something like it on quite a few other sites. How did you go about setting that up? Looks like you made a separate category in MT for that, but where do you go from there?Continue reading this entry...
Would you mind sharing your thoughts about Microsoft's Internet Explorer?
December 24, 2003
From Boris ‘pi’ Piwinger Well I suppose I could. In the main I find it a far inferior browser to just about everything else out there. My browser of choice is Mozilla and I often use Safari as well. For…Continue reading this entry...
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How do you like Google AdWords?
December 24, 2003
From Andy Budd So far I think I like them very well. I think I devised a way to present them that is pretty unobtrusive and doesn’t take too much away from the look and feel or the user experience…Continue reading this entry...
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Where do you get your backgrounds?
December 11, 2003
Hey, I’m a fellow Seattlitte web designer, and I like all your stuff. I’m wondering though, where do you get all your nice tiled backgrounds? Do you have a collection on CD or something, or do you make them yourself with Photoshop? When I search for “website backgrounds” all I can ever come up with are lame looking marble swatches that look so 1996.Continue reading this entry...
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Why is your site not valid XHTML?
December 10, 2003
From E. Hummel Is this a test smartguy? :0) I should ask you why you care, but I do think it’s a valid (pardon the pun) question. Short answer: I’ve got better things to do than pleasing the W3C validator…Continue reading this entry...
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Where is the personal stuff?
December 05, 2003
This is your personal blog, you use it to tell a lot of stories about your experiences as a web developer, but I have yet to see any stories about your own personal life… maybe your childhood or what you did over the weekend. I also can’t find your resume posted anywhere on the site. Are you deliberately keeping that level of personal information off of the site?Continue reading this entry...
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How does the CSS of the sidebar work?
December 04, 2003
How did you get the nav on the right side to extend all the way down on every page rather than just stopping when the content (of the right side) did?Continue reading this entry...
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Have you finished Jak II yet?
December 04, 2003
From Anton I did finish it, finally. It was a tough one. It’s one of those games that you’re cruising right along, things are mildly challenging and then “wham!” you hit a spot that takes forever to get past. I…Continue reading this entry...
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What font are you using in the header?
December 04, 2003
From Ste It’s Minion Regular from Linotype….Continue reading this entry...
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Where can I find the specs on your site?
December 04, 2003
Where can I find the specs on your site? You know, what tools you used to build it, what type of web server the site runs on, what version of markup you use, what browsers you are aiming to support, what accessibility level the design meets, etc.?Continue reading this entry...
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Song of The Week and syndication?
December 04, 2003
Does the Song of The Week player contain syndicated music or do you require special permission to use it in your player?Continue reading this entry...
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How does the Song Of The Week feature work?
December 04, 2003
How did you develop the Song of the Week Flash Bar? I find it similar to the TMBG Radio.Continue reading this entry...
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Why does 7nights.com redirect?
December 04, 2003
Ok, this may be a silly question but I want to know why when I type in 7nights.com it redirects me to your Asterisk* blog, why not make the blog your home page without any redirects?Continue reading this entry...
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For screen readability, what contrast do you prefer?
December 04, 2003
For screen readability, do you prefer dark text on light background, or light text on a dark background? I’m about to make a post on the subject and wanted to hear your thoughts.Continue reading this entry...
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What's your day job?
December 04, 2003
Keith, I read your site all the time, how come I can’t find any information about where you work and what you do.. you know… your day job?Continue reading this entry...
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Song of The Week and license fees?
December 04, 2003
Keith, I enjoy your ‘song of the week’ feature and decided to have a go at my own (we have very different musical tastes so I wouldn’t be treading on your toes ;). Unfortunately, the Performing Rights Society here in the UK have a rather prohibitive pricing structure as far as licensing is concerned, which meant I had to knock the idea on the head. I have been wondering whether you have to pay a similar license fee? If so, how is it organized, do you pay by song or pay a quarterly fee etc. etc. ?Continue reading this entry...
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What was the inspiration behind the domain name 7nights.com?
December 03, 2003
From Bob Sawyer Well, to be honest, it wasn’t that well thought-out. It was back in the mid-90’s, say 1995 or so, when I started brainstorming a name for my Web site and freelance design business. This was before I…Continue reading this entry...
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What skill would you like to improve and why?
December 03, 2003
From Scrivs I’m going to assume this question is work related. I mean if it wasn’t I’d want to improve my x-ray vision. I guess I’d have to say the skill I’d like to improve would be my writing. I’d…Continue reading this entry...
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Boxers or briefs?
December 03, 2003
From Scrivs and JMBR Boxers of course. Well, except when I’m playing Soccer or Basketball, then it’s boxer-briefs. Oh, and when I’m skiing or snow-boarding it’s really warm longjons. :) I guess I should have expected this one at some…Continue reading this entry...
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Is 800 x 600 OK?
December 03, 2003
I’m designing a web site as a favour to a friend. (I’m an experienced amateur.) Early on we need to settle on the size of the page — the resolution, if you will — because he wants some relatively inflexible stuff that won’t “liquid” easily. If the audience for the site is a very general audience, what size do you think I should fix on. I’m saying 800 x 600 (with the small qualification for Mac). Am I right?Continue reading this entry...
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How do you build a weblog?
December 03, 2003
From Egor Kloos This is a complicated question, one which I think Egor has his own answer to, but for the benefit of others (as well as to entertain y’all with my feeble attempt at answering such an open ended…Continue reading this entry...
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What's your opinion of dynamic style sheet switching?
December 03, 2003
From Brian Casey I really guess it depends on how they are done. For the most part I think they’re fun and can be very useful depending on the implementation. On the lower end at the very least they won’t…Continue reading this entry...
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Do you think you will ever get bored of designing Web Sites?
December 03, 2003
From The Scholar The short answer is no, I don’t, but “ever” as in “forever” is a long, long time. I love to design and create and that is not limited to Web sites, but you never know, there may…Continue reading this entry...
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Why the name Asterisk*?
December 02, 2003
Why the name Asterisk? Also, why do you include an asterisk after the name of your website? For example, one of the titles in the side bar is “Asterisk* Q & A and FAQs”. Is the asterisk a real part of the name?Continue reading this entry...
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What Does The "D" Stand For?
December 02, 2003
It stands for David. There are quite a few times when people misread it as “Dr.” If they only knew how wrong they are. When I was born my parents had a bit of a conflict as to what they…Continue reading this entry...
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