A high quality HTML/CSS framework needs to have four attributes: useful, universal, usable, and unobtrusive. The four U’s. “Meiert’s four U’s” if you like, says a son of marketing gurus.

Relational database management systems (RDMS) such as SQL Server, MySQL, Postgre SQL, and Oracle (just to name a few) have allowed web developers to create highly interactive and robust web applications that can save data.

Every OOP fan is almost by definition a fan of polymorphism. Lots of otherwise good books (e.g. Fowler's Refactoring) go so far as to say if you use runtime type checks, e.g. Java's "instanceof" operator, then you're probably an evil person who threatens little children with switch statements.

Google exclaims, and everyone gasps and bows before the cloud embracing visionaries. But where's the step back, the deep breath, the wiping away of the 'oh gosh it's Google, it's the future' haze to reveal the problems that lurk beneath the surface? I'm far from being a luddite, I was an internet evangelist 20 years ago and an early adopter of everything from virtual worlds to social networks.

Much abuzz on the Web, the first betas of Google’s Chrome OS are out. What does this operating system give you at this point? IT pro Rick Vanover walks through a Chrome OS beta.

Google quietly announced last week that its cloud will run nothing but open source software. This is a big deal, but let’s first admit why Google did it. As I have written many times, Google has a big cost advantage when it comes to delivering Internet resources.

Hearing the news of Google’s Chrome OS at the end of last week left me with an uneasy feeling about the future of operating systems and computer use. The general idea behind Chrome OS is that the operating system as you see it will be nothing more than a web browser with a few things plugged into it

Google’s two operating systems, mobile Android and desktop Chrome OS, will likely converge as a single OS in the future, said Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “Android and Chrome will likely converge over time,” Brin said in an informal discussion with reporters after the company’s Chrome OS presentation last Thursday.

To complement the new jQuery lesson series I thought I’d just write an article on what exactly jQuery is, and how it can really help your website without you needing to know too much about Javascript coding or anything like that

Linux has failed to win either mind share or market share on the desktop. Google’s Chrome OS will do little to change that. Learn why.

Imagine you manage the desktop support function for your company including the help desk. You have three outstanding technical support people, each with seven years of desktop experience in your company, the interpersonal skills of Jay Leno, and the work ethic of a West Virginia coal miner. Plus, you have three more people who are rising stars. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

I recently submitted the following experimental CSS layout to Smashing Magazine Typographic Layout Design Contest. I'm now publishing it here for my readers to play with. It's called the Exploring Web Typography CSS Hover Layout. It's pretty crazy but kind of cool too. Enjoy!

It could happen. Windows 7 makes adopting and converting very easy.

Paul asked me to review this, his first book, and my comment to him was that he had a pretty high bar to match; being of the same "series" as Release It!, Mike Nygard's take on building software ready for production (and, in my repeatedly stated opinion, the most important-to-read book of the decade), Debug It! had some pretty impressive shoes to fill. Paul's comment was pretty predictable: "Thanks for keeping the pressure to a minimum."

Microsoft .Net Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 screenshots

Learn how to handle rude interviewers in a job interview and why an interviewer might be pushing your buttons on purpose with expert interviewing tips in this free online career related video clip.

Everyone has had an interview that didn't go as well as it should have. Luckily, there are things you can do before, during and after an interview to ensure that your mistakes can be avoided or negated.

When we work on our goals, especially those life changing, long term goals, it often requires us to make fundamental changes in our behaviour and thought patterns. One way to speedite this type of transition is through building good habits that can really help us make these changes. Thus the reason we want to introduce this habits tracker/builder feature into GoalsOnTrack.

Wow, what a week of innovation for the Microsoft Web Platform. This week we released a ton of new software which, if you haven’t already, you’ve got to check out. Here is a quick overview:

I had the chance to take part of a multi people conversation on Google Wave.

A cheat sheet is a printable guide of a particular programming language, software or framework. A web designer spends most of his design time to move around different softwares environment and it becomes really hard to memorize the shortcuts and hot keys for each environment.

Larry Dignan: Google on Thursday revealed a bevy of noteworthy developments for its Chrome OS. The company released the Chrome OS to the open source community, laid out its security vision and promised to deliver a simple operating system. However, the success or failure of the Chrome OS will ride on whether users will give up desktop applications. Gallery tour: Chrome OS

CSS list is very useful and vital in web design. There are many uses of Unordered list (>) such as horizontal navigation, vertical navigation, creating a box or any kind of list. In this post we will show you some really useful CSS list methods that you can use to create horizontal, vertical list or CSS list box. You can download all the methods used in this post in single zipped file.

I picked this planning versus experience concept up from a Jim Coplien piece on InfoQ a few months ago. The idea was basically this; If you have 20 years experience doing roughly the same work you should acknowledge that the 20 years means you have a lot of your plan pre thought through before you even turn up.

Sometimes you have to take a step down to step up. That’s what Google should’ve done with its open source PC operating system Chrome OS, which the corporation demonstrated Thursday. Instead, Google is positioning Chrome OS against Microsoft with a lightweight OS shipping with netbooks next year. Chrome OS will function as a modified browser