"The Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) is a worldwide association of professional organisations, web designers and developers working together to promote the use and preservation of accessible design standards.

Promoting a vision of the future that assumes accessible web design to be, relevant, obtainable, and not at odds with successful business practice or good visual and usable design."

This article outlines the steps I had to take to become a member, and also some useful tips in terms of web development and accessibility. WIN.

Although I know the basics about designing for mobile, things change fast online (as we all know), especially when considering the dramatic rise in iPhone use amongst those wobbly pink things I've seen flinging themselves about outside (people).

This article looks at the current statistics of mobile web browsers and the layout engines that power them, and, therefore, the repercussions these have on the decisions for designing and developing for mobile web browsers.

You're intrigued aren't you? Go on. Read the words ...

So, Firefox 3.5 is here with a whole host of CSS3 goodness, ripe and ready to be unleashed into the eyes of the web viewing public. If you're not using the browser yet then a) Why not? Are you crazy in the coconut? And b) get it now from the Mozilla FireFox website. It's very much of a nice-nus-indeedy-poos.

To celebrate the release of - what continues to be - a thoroughly decent browser, I have added a few CSS3 enhancements that can only be seen on FF3.5 (and other equivalently up-to-date browseroos).

"Oo. Nice. So what yer done?"

Well, I will tell thee ...

Over the many years of me doing stuff for other people for money, I have worked with - and continue to work with - a great number of super-duper clients.

I always ask for feedback so I can improve the things I do, and I have also received some blush-tacular testimonials and endorsements. Yes. Have some.

I plan on scanning / photographing a number of my best / most interesting pieces of work to add as bonus material on a semi-hidden area of my online portfolio on this website.

This material will only be accessible via my RSS feed, and also via links associated with blog articles that I may decide to write about the work.

To get back on point: the process of going through this stuff really sent my mind wandering back in time to some of the experiences and wisdom that I gained during my time studying. There are a number of useful things that I learnt back then that I still apply to my professi0nal practice today. One area that stands out is in regard to criticism.

Read onwards. Well. Downwards ...

I am often asked the process by which I take a traditional line drawing, and then add colour, texture and compositional treatment to it.

This post goes through basic scanning and line preparation for a 'print-ready' illustration. It's quite basic stuff but hopefully a few of you may find it useful.

Basically, the twitter people have taken away the option for users to see all @replies - having them hidden by default. See: Twitter puts a muzzle on your friends.

Folk went mental! And it didn't take long for a #fixreplies hashtag to get thrown in the mix for users to show their anger.

But now it seems the people at twitter are (kind of) back-tracking by making all @replies display by default (well, sort of I think?). See: We learned a lot.

Now. I had replies turned off by default when the replies were directed at people I don't follow, so this is going to be a pain in the bottom for me now. Meh!

But, my little beaky friends, I have an answer ...

Some pretty large sites have already got the ball rolling - possibly one of the biggest being FaceBook.

There is also a trend of developers, not dropping support entirely, but only providing it if their client specifically requests and pays for the work necessary to accommodate the browser.

So, where do I stand on IE6 support?

Well, I'm not telling you. Nah, only joking. Read on my little chickens ...

Yes, it is an awful browser - full and stupid bugs, limitations, poor standards support, yadda yadda. We all know this. We've all beaten our fists on our keyboards in frustration when trying to get things 'working' in it. We've hacked it, and metaphorically smacked it, since the day it first launched back in 1507 (or around that time).

I have hated it. I have wanted it to die. It has often cost me money in extra development time on projects, and held me back on certain interesting ideas I've wanted to implement on commercial work.

"Yes. That's right. So why in the name of Jiminy Christmas will you miss it?!"

Well, give it some 'click' and I'll tell yer ...

Nah. "Tweeting". That's what everybody is doing.

Twitter.com has been big for quite a long time, especially within the geek community, and now it's gone well and truly "main-stream". You can't move for tweets from Dave Grohl telling you he's 'just had some toast', or Gorden brown announcing that 'the downstairs loo is blocked' (made them up btw :P).

I will be warbling on about what it is that makes it fly, and what about it makes me spit feathers (you can't beat a good pun or two :P) ...