I recently started a Twitter discussion with Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks on the relevance and usefulness of the <small> tag. I’ve had this same debate with co-workers on why one would still use <small> over just using a <p> or <span> with an appropriate <class> or <id> to define the “smallness” of the tag. The one thing we both noticed is that no one uses the <big> tag anymore, so why should anyone use the <small> tag? This seems to be only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to determining which element to use for an intended result. Let’s look at a few more instances of controversy in the realm of standards and semantics on the web.

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Ever wished you had one place to test your web designs in all browsers easily? Well thanks to IETester, it’s now possible to check your work in IE 6, IE 7, IE 8 Beta (and even IE 5.5 for anyone still living in the year 2000). It’s still in alpha, so it has occasional crashes, hiccups, and limited browsing functions. In spite of this, the app in its current release is already incredibly useful. The developer has a forum set up for feedback and bug reporting as well which should hopefully keep the project moving forward.

With IETester combined with VMWare Fusion, I can now test my work on my Intel Mac in Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox without having to resort to remoting to other machines, using slower web-based visual checks, or using Virtual PC to test multiple IE versions anymore. It’s a fantastic setup.

Now if only there were conditional comments, and a version of Firebug for IE and Safari… Hey, a web designer can dream, right?

credit: CATR

Twitter is now all the rage. Your friends are doing it. Your mom is doing it. Even educated fleas are doing it. Microblogging is here to stay, and it’s caught on in a big way. According to Wikipedia, there are over 111 different ways to let everyone know what you had for breakfast online! Now the question is - how do we update them all at the same time?

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Thanks to twitter, I was able to keep a detailed record of the entire trip my wife and I took this year as we went, rather than try to recall it all after we got back home. It offered my friends and family up-to-the-minute news of our vacation, which made for a great way to let everyone know what a grand time we were having. It also had the interesting side effect of not having to tell my twitter followers and avid facebook friends about my trip at all - as they already knew everything we did! So for those that didn’t fall into one of those camps, here’s a breakdown of how it went:

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I’ve now completed the arduous task of migrating all of my old blogs into a single, new, and sexy WordPress blog . I had posts all the way back to December 2003, using both “Old” Blogger, and LiveJournal. This involved backing up my LiveJournal, and exporting to XML, and then using the WordPress importer. Then for Blogger, I had to temporarily switch my hosting to blogspot instead of my ftp, and then use WordPress’s importer for Blogger. With all of those posts and comments finally in one place, I was then able to work on styling things up, and putting together a new look for the site. So other than going back and giving some of my old posts proper titles, and doing a little tagging, I should be all set. If anyone sees anything awry, let me know. For anyone else that may have to accomplish the same task, I couldn’t have done it without:

• Moving Blogger To Wordpress
  
• LJArchive

Now time to finish packing for my vacation to San Francisco - Krissy’s already there, ready to make her presentation tomorrow at the SIOP Conference. After her sessions are over, our trip will take us around the city, to a night excursion to Alcatraz, a tour to Muir Woods, and then we’ll be renting a convertible to drive down the Pacific Coast Highway down to Los Angeles. It should be a fantastic time.