Seriously, if you ever can get to an AEA event, I implore you to go. It’s an awesome experience being surrounded by like-minded web geeks getting leading edge advice and techniques for that thing we do with making the web.

Look, let’s drop the issue of tribe for the moment: IE9 is a better browser than IE8, period. I won’t make it my steady gal, but it’s helping push the web in the right direction by getting Microsoft’s behemoth back on track with everyone else. I’m glad someone at AEA decided to lead the crowd in acknowledging that fact.

The photo comes from John Morrison‘s Eric Meyer Word Caption Contest, and the comic itself is my entry into that fun little affair. Some of you may ask: “Kyle, why does the squirrel care if he’s not wearing pants? He never wears pants!”

Why does Donald Duck cover his crotch, which is always exposed, only after he loses his shirt? There’s a subtle mystery to the whole affair of comic characters and pants that we should probably not try to dig too far into for the sake of our own sanity. It’s right up there with wondering what goes in your grandmother’s meatloaf.

I’m sure I could have made a nut joke, but I chose the high road.

If, like me, you’re not at An Event Apart, you can follow along with the wisdom, humor, and community at A Feed Apart. Which. Is. Awesome. I’m enjoying several of the new features that the feed supports, including Flickr appearing in the stream, session-based archives, etc. It’s all very sweet. Check it out if you’ve got the chance.

It’s been a long journey to crank out these three comics, which highlight some very important points. First, continuity in a web-design commentary webcomic is difficult at best. Second, that cheese tidal waves represent the best of all possible worlds. Finally, that An Event Apart: Seattle was an awesome extravaganza and Janae and I are still trying to squeeze out all the drops of precious information we absorbed into Mindfly’s waiting arms.

One of my favorite presentations was Ethan’s Dao of Flexibility, which discussed adaptive layouts and fluid grids in detail, opening my eyes to the real power of the world of media queries. I’ve been tinkering away in my acorn-filled lair since the conference, working away at a new design for this site that harnesses these arcane techniques for my own dark purposes. From time to time, I have to pause and laugh with evil glee.

Thanks, AEA.

We’ll now return to my regular schedule of making fun of HTML5 politics and Opera.

It touches on what people may find hard to believe: Microsoft (like us) wants IE6 to die, already. In less than two hours after I post this, Pete LePage is going to get in front of the AEA audience and tell us that very thing.

I’ve got to get back to listening to more awesome speakers. Enjoy! (And if you’re at AEA, feel free to say hi to the guy in the CSSquirrel shirt. I don’t bite.)

The comic is also the creation of the winner of my Dribbble invite give-away/AEA-theme guest comic contest, Miro Keller! Congrats, Miro! In addition to his comic filling the #59 spot for all eternity (or at least a year after I die and my hosting goes offline), he will also receive an invitation to Dribbble and will appear in a CSSquirrel comic this April!

I’m sure when interviewed on his success, he’ll declare his intent to go to Disneyland.

His comic won for a couple reasons. First, it showed the squirrel’s skeleton, which is no easy task. Secondly, it feels like the sort of thing I’d make a comic about, and was funny to boot. HTML5 is going to be awesome, I’m sure, but it’s not exactly to the point where we’re throwing Flash install discs into burn barrels. IE9 will be a great boon towards adopting those features, not because they’re first, but because so many people use their product… but a lot of people are -still- using IE6, even after its funeral.

So let us all remember, we may need a fallback plan for that lovely <video> tag for a while yet.

In addition to Miro’s great victory, there’s two other winners today. #2 in the contest is the entry of Ryan Parr. Warning, parents, he uses swears. #3 is from Mihai Petica. Congrats to both of you as well. You’ll be receiving Dribbble invites as well as appearing in a future CSSquirrel comic this April.

Let’s celebrate these heroes with a round of applause.

P.S.: I don’t know exactly what’s going on in Morten Gresseth’s entry, but despite its failure to mention AEA it was so darn odd that I just had to link it here. Does anybody know what this is referencing? Morten?

I love it.

And I want to share.

To that end, I’ve devised a contest. One of the features of Dribbble is the “rebound”, using a basketball metaphor to describe making a shot (aka, image) that is a remix or inspired by a previous shot. There’s been a few really neat contests inside Dribbble to test this feature, with awesome results. In that spirit, I’ve created an incomplete comic that you can download here. Take this comic, mix it up and complete it. Alter it however you see fit, within the following guidelines:

1. Some of the original art must be present.

2. The three panels must still exist (aka, it fits the standard CSSquirrel strip frame).

3. The comic must involve An Event Apart: Seattle in some way. I’m heading to this awesome event soon, so the Squirrel should get his moment to enjoy the experience.

4. The Squirrel must be in the final product.

That’s it. Those are the only rules. Add in characters, alter backgrounds, create speech bubbles, do interpretive dance, whatever. Go, mix it up, then post it online somewhere (where I can get to it) and send a tweet to @cssquirrel or leave a comment to the post that links to the image. On Monday morning, I’ll review the submissions (along perhaps with fellow Mindfly peeps) and choose the top three comics. All three will receive Dribbble invites, and the #1 comic will appear as CSSquirrel #59! The top three will also appear in an April comic. I know, I know, I’m too generous.

Now, off you go! Your deadline is 8:00 am (PST) Monday, March 29.

My very first web design conference, Web Directions North 2008, featured a lot of speakers. One, who’s listed topic of usability seemed boring to my new to professional web development mind, was Jared Spool. I had no intention of sitting in on the seminar, but the Javascript one next door completely failed to engage me, so I snuck in to see what was up.

Let me say now, Jared, I was sorry I ever doubted you. Your showmanship is stellar, and the topic suddenly became relevant to my interests.

I’ve not heard Luke speak, but I’m currently reading his book Web Form Design. Its first sentence: “Forms suck,” engaged me with the honesty and humor implicit in that statement. Starting a book about forms with such a pair of words is perhaps ballsy, but it’s exactly what I think, so it drew me in. I can only hope by the time that I’m at the end of his book, my forms suck less.

Like many others, I’m not at AEA this time. As such, I can’t hear these gents eloquently expounding on their subjects of interest. But thanks to A Feed Apart, I’ll be listening into the Twitter stream. So to those of you attendees out there, please be charitable and tweet up the good bits.

Yes, there’s a bit of an homage from this to the very first CSSquirrel comic, which portrayed Andy in an underwear-related situation at AEA: New Orleans in 2008. (I swear I’m not a stalker.)

Andrew’s entry into the CSSquirrel contest did not include an AEA presenter as requested, but (a) it was funny and (b) it was the only entry. Note to self: one-day contests on the weekend don’t get much results.

I’m not at An Event Apart: Chicago, which is currently going as I type these very words. Yes, this makes me very sad. I can only dream of the pizza bar, or the MT party, or more importantly, the loads of awesome web peeps coming together for some sort of geek gesalt where good ideas are spawned.

Good ideas like A Feed Apart. I’m really grateful this thing exists, as it lets me live by proxy as if I were somewhere in one of the rows of the conference, freezing in the morning sessions and digesting lunch in the later ones. As a public request to the AFA gents: Any chance at blending in some sort of Flickr feed to this? I’m sure there’s plenty of iPhone pictures cropping up, and it’d help enhance the experience for those of us visiting by proxy.

To those of you at AEA: Chicago, continue to enjoy. And if any one of you did happen to slip into Mr. Clarke’s water closet…

This turn of events was so abnormal to my existence that I repeatedly pinched myself to ascertain that I was in fact, still alive. It was, in a word, freaking amazing, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity. For a guy that I’ve compared to a Romulan, planned to abduct, and confused with Rupert Gint, Eric Meyer seemed to be all too friendly to yours truly. Suspiciously so. You might find the fact that he’d choose to interview me at all quite an odd choice.

I’d agree, but then, maybe it wasn’t so innocent as that. Maybe, as today’s comic implies, it was a kung fu death trap.

Ok, ok. It wasn’t. There were no wuxia battles or bicycle kicks. It was simply awesome.

I’m sure if you visit my website you’re in one of three camps: Either you thought you were learning about squirrels (sorry), you’re my parents (hi!) or you’re already into web design. If you’re in the latter group, you probably have already heard of An Event Apart. If you haven’t, go check it out. Not only is it an awesome two-day conference about standards-based design (which is so important in our ever-growing modern web), it’s a social network of good men and women who are obsessed with the same geeky stuff you are.

Which, I think you’ll agree, is pretty dang cool.

In particular, though, I’m sad that I missed Andy Clarke’s “Walls Come Tumbling Down” presentation (warning, link goes to a very long presentation transcript.) He expressed a good deal of nervousness about how the topic would be received, which implied it was going to be pretty eye-opening considering his usual bravado. It’s something I just had to see… if I had the funds for traveling, attending, and food and board.

As I don’t, I didn’t see it. Which is sad. Fortunately for me, he posted the transcript and slides online (see link in prior paragraph.) It’s a long read, but it’s worth it for every single one of you to go take the time and check it out. It’s good. It’s great. It pushes on a lot on updating the web design process to reflect not only the state of the modern web, but also the state of the modern economy. It’s so good I wish I could build a time machine, go back to earlier this year, and do the presentation myself to sound as clever as he does.

My short-lived attempt at building a time machine ended when I discovered that DeLoreans are slightly beyond my means to purchase. So instead, I had to content myself with creating a 80′s themed comic that portrayed my agreement with what Andy is preaching. I think today’s comic proves two things: 1. Andy Clarke would probably fit in quite well with the pastels and whites of undercover Miami cops and 2. Some things can’t be built with just a picture.

Let me focus on that last one in more detail, because it’s something I’ve encountered in my own career and talked about before, but keep encountering.

In the example listed in the comic, you can’t expect a speedboat to be built from just a drawing. By the same token, there’s a vast majority of products that require a design that is more than just an image. This is something we accept as common sense in our everyday lives. Have you ever had a home built based only on a picture some guy drew, rather than blueprints from a contractor? No, of course not!

So why do we expect modern web sites (which are more often than not actually applications) to be something your developer can make or your client can easily grasp with a static visual proof/comp? Yet, all too often, this is exactly what we show clients. We finish making a pretty picture in Photoshop set to just the right width, then get our clients to sign off on that. It’s then handed over to your developer (or whatever you’re calling the guy making the code) with little to no cues for how the site responds to a changing browser resolution, how it interacts with the user, etc.

As a result, an iterative process begins. The developer interprets the designer’s vision. It goes to the designer, who naturally will find issues caused by a disparity of vision on how the site interacts, or whether it has a fixed width, or whatnot. Then they mark up their preferred changes, and send it back. This goes on until the designer is happy enough to show the fledgling site to the client, who almost invariably will have a problem with it because it wasn’t what they imagined when they looked at the static picture they were shown!

So it gets revised… again.

Finally, it all seems well, until the client’s mother sees the site on their old e-machine running IE6, and they want to know why it looks different. Where are the rounded colors, the transparencies?

Time and again I’ve heard of this happening or experienced it myself. Why is it still occurring? The web is interactive. The web is different from browser to browser. The web is sometimes seen on a screen slightly larger than a postage stamp. We know this. In order to properly design for it, we need to move beyond habits we inherited from print.

Andy proposes designing in the browser, showing the client how it changes depending on a browser’s support, and how it might interact with different widths, etc. For some designers this could be a pretty radical step, as accustomed as we’ve become to using Photoshop’s powerful toolset. But on tighter budgets in an increasingly complex Web, we don’t have a lot of choices in the matter.

I could repeat Andy point for point, but let me just play the role of fan boy and tell you that he’s brilliant. He’s saying what we all understand: We have to change how we design for the Web. It’s even more crucial in this economy than it was a couple years back. Go read Walls Come Tumbling Down. Even if you’re not in a position to adopt all of his suggestions (or even if you disagree) you’ll come away from it improved.