Technical

IE7 only: float bug on elements with italic, background properties

IE7 only: float bug on elements with italic, background properties

Setting font-style:italic in your CSS for elements in the vicinity of a floated element can actually trigger a float bug in Internet Explorer 7. This is only a problem, so far as I …

  • Originally published: 13 Jul 2009 in Technical

Testing CSS for print media: we need a Print Preview for developers!

Testing CSS for print media: we need a Print Preview for developers!

Source: Wikimedia Commons The virtues of @media print have been explained elsewhere, best of all by Eric Meyer in his seminal A List Apart article Going to Print, whose original publish date (May …

  • Originally published: 15 Jun 2009 in Technical

Typekit: when will web fonts flow freely?

Typekit: when will web fonts flow freely?

Proper font embedding in a browser is long overdue. We’ve had to put up with the same old Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Helvetica, Times New Roman for years. Now that browsers have to some …

  • Originally published: 1 Jun 2009 in Technical

RUP for user experience professionals

RUP for user experience professionals

Here’s a quick introduction to the Rational Unified Process (RUP) – IBM’s software development process framework – and what’s in it for user experience professionals. Comments are welcome and encouraged. An overview of …

  • Originally published: 13 Apr 2009 in Technical

Progressive enhancement and Flash: no longer a pact with the Devil

Progressive enhancement and Flash: no longer a pact with the Devil

For me, Flash development pretty much dropped off the radar in 2004. Jakob Nielsen famously killed the idea of Flash as the be-all and end-all of websites and suddenly, like the stock …

  • Originally published: 17 Feb 2009 in Technical

jQuery .html() returns strange results in IE after other bindings

jQuery .html() returns strange results in IE after other bindings

This article originally addressed jQuery 1.3.1. See below for results in jQuery 1.4 (18 January 2010) When I’m testing work done with jQuery in Internet Explorer, I’m normally a karmic cow. I wonder …

  • Originally published: 17 Feb 2009 in Technical

Belgium Usability Day

Belgium Usability Day

I attended a seminar last night that represented the Belgian contribution to World Usability Day. The conference was hosted by interactive agency Emakina and the theme set by the global organisers Usability Professionals …

  • Originally published: 14 Nov 2008 in Technical

The forced downgrade: going back to Visio for web prototyping

The forced downgrade: going back to Visio for web prototyping

When designing prototypes you could do a lot worse than Visio. But you could also do a lot better. Axure, for example, should make this article irrelevant, as should the fact that …

  • Originally published: 8 Nov 2008 in Technical

CmapTools for concept mapping and OWL authoring

CmapTools for concept mapping and OWL authoring

I’d be among the first to admit that, despite being a stickler for standards, sometimes I like to do things my own way. For use cases, I should be using UML but I …

  • Originally published: 25 Apr 2008 in Technical

Dreamweaver CS3 crashes and won't start up again

Dreamweaver CS3 crashes and won’t start up again

Hey kids, this is definitely one of the weirdest bugs I have ever clapped eyes on. Not for the first time, I was happily authoring CSS and Dreamweaver CS3 crashed. Turns out, it …

  • Originally published: 1 Feb 2008 in Technical

Elsewhere on MikePadgett.com …

Cairo and Giza

As our guide Abdul informed us, the City of Cairo now includes Giza, which some sources foolishly describe as a town. Giza was fashionable per se with colonials way back when in the …

Down By Law

Director: Jim Jarmusch US/Germany, 1986 This film ought to be naff: three unlikely cellmates stage a jailbreak only to find themselves lost in the swamps of Louisiana. For almost two hours in black and …

  • Originally published: 28 Dec 2006 in Film

Cononley

Cononley is a small village on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park near Skipton in the UK. It’s also the village where I grew up. This was a very short, post-Christmas …

  • Originally published: 31 Dec 2009 in Walking

Alsace

Squeezed between the Vosges and the Rhine the Alsace region stretches narrowly along France’s spine, flanked by Germany to the north and east and by Switzerland to the south. To the west Alsace …

  • Originally published: 11 Nov 2009 in Europe

The End of the Affair

Graham Greene Vintage (first published 1951) Greene was in his writing prime when The End of the Affair was published. The book can nonetheless be considered a transitional piece: it’s an early prospect of …

  • Originally published: 17 Jan 2010 in Books

Who is that guy?

Photo of Mike Padgett

Hello you. I'm Mike Padgett and I work in the technology sector as an Information Designer.

I also enjoy travel, concerts, films and walking.

I'm based in Brussels, Belgium. My current favourite Belgian beer is St Feuillien Brune.

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