David Emery OnlineWeb Design+
Welcome to Web Design+. This is, in no particular order, an amalgamation of web-standards solutions for common web development issues and problems — a way to tackle development in the cleanest, most accessible and semantic way possible. By using Web Design+, the aim is to standardise practices throughout an organisation; from accessibility to hacks, Web Design+ covers the best ways to tackle a variety of dev problems.
A great idea in theory, and not massively different from a internal document I wrote a while back, but you’ve got to laugh at something like this that has a section on semantics almost directly followed by a bit on generic classes like ‘clear’, ‘left’, ‘right’ and so on being extremely handy…
Visit ➔Record labels pressure Spotify to restrict service
In a blog post yesterday the startup outlined how it will be removing a number of songs from its catalogue and adding country restrictions to some tracks, which may make them unplayable for many users. The changes are being made because record labels have slapped restrictions on Spotify’s service. It’s a bizarre situation to think of in 2009 but it means that a user could share a track with a friend in another country, but that friend wouldn’t be able to play the track.
It irks me somewhat that people don’t seem to grasp how complicated territory rights are for music. Basically, most releases are dealt with by different labels in different territories, so there’s no way to simply use a track or release worldwide – you have to get agreements with all the appropriate labels involved.
It would be great – and solve so many headaches – if most recorded music was licensed for distribution globally, but it’s just not the case.
Visit ➔2009 NME Awards Shortlist
And while it’s nice to see a ‘best website’ award, isn’t the shortlist an indication of the weakness of the category? Bebo versus Facebook? If you’re going to throw it open to such wide consideration, shouldn’t Google at least be in the line-up?
The lack of a best DJ (as in radio) award seems to be a bit of an oversight, as well: who cares if NME readers like the Mighty Boosh; isn’t the person who slips them fresh music into their ears more, you know, significant?
The best website category is pretty laughable – seriously, who cares which is better out of sites like Facebook and MySpace? Of course, it’s not ‘Best Band Website’ as their are hardly any good ones but that’s a post for another day…
Visit ➔Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 RC1
Microsoft today announced the first (and probably only) release candidate of Internet Explorer 8. In terms of its look and feel, IE8 feels a lot like IE7, though Microsoft has made a lot of changes under the hood. IE8 features a new rendering engine, support for CSS 2.1, and a ‘smart address bar’ that is very similar to Firefox’s ‘awesome bar.’ IE8 has also taken a page from Chrome’s playbook and now opens a separate process for every tab.
Anyone else slightly fed up with all the browsers we have to test in now? We’re pretty much now in the lovely situation of having three versions of IE to test in, each rendering differently to each other and each not rendering in the same way either Firefox or Safari do.
The new version of this site isn’t tested in any form of IE yet, by the way – I guess I’ll test in 7 at some point but there’s no way I’m testing in 6 for anything of mine every again… sadly on the public sites I maintain IE6 is still hovering around 10% which is still a little high to abandon quite yet (although well low enough to feed a more lo-fi experience).
Visit ➔Knotty Pine - Dirty Projectors + David Byrne
From the brilliant compilation 'Dark Was The Night' out on 4AD next month.
Knotty Pine - Dirty Projectors + David Byrne
Visit ➔Voice Of The Fans survey
How are fans keeping informed about fave artists? 68% artist websites and 64% artist email updates. 51% MySpace, almost double Facebook’s 28%. 40% use Google to find info about their favourite artists…YouTube is 39%, artist blogs are 10%, ‘via my mobile phone’ is 5% and Bebo is 4%, with Others at 15%.
Lots of interesting stats – also interesting to see a general disinterest with subscription based models (whether they’re an single artist subscription or overall subscription).
Visit ➔