Ziv Caspi explains that Radio UserLand's WYSIWYG editor automatically puts a non-breaking space in if you double space in Radio (and he also points out that this editor is made by Microsoft). Yet another reason I don't use the WYSIWYG editor. I want to have control over what codes get put into my writing.

Kuro5hin is covering Microsoft webloggers.

Ooooh, Don Park steps in the should-there-be-two-spaces-after-periods-or-only-one? debate. This is a pet peeve of mine. My take: professional typographers NEVER use more than one space anywhere if they are using proportionally-spaced fonts. The two-spaces rule was designed for monospaced fonts (like those on most typewriters) which is why typing teachers always taught you to double space after periods. This is WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. Here's a decent rundown of the debate. Can you tell I fell strongly about this issue? Oh, and who's the one who really knows this debate? Robin Williams (not the comic, the author). She wrote the "Mac is not a typewriter" book which ends this argument once and for all. Don Park should buy her book (it's since been PC-ized).

Back to Kottke. His site doesn't validate either. Hmm, should we "out" people who make sites that don't even have a doc type? I'm thinking that we should, especially when they are putting themselves out there as design gods.

Kuro5shin on port closures. Interesting discussion of unions and the West Coast port closures.

So, my angel asked me the other day "what's so good about you anyway?" Well, um, er... . Heh. At least my angel gets me after I've been housebroken. Think that's not important? Read the stuff over on this site. By the way, I think I'll start a site for husbands and I'll title it "Don't even think about taking me to the mall."

OK, I threw rocks yesterday at Dori Smith for having a small font size, but at least she gives her readers a choice (look over at the right side of her weblog -- you have two font choices). How come Kottke makes me stare at his small fonts without giving me any control over them? Yeah, I do like raising shit. This is all Microsoft's fault anyway.

NEC introduces a monitor that also is a speaker. I wanna see this.

Brian Jepson is blogging Chris Sells' Web Services/.NET conference.

Dive into Mark points out people who don't care about their RSS feeds. I'm guilty, sort of. Part of my redesign here was to make a better RSS feed. But, now I need to be unlazy and do my weblog in a format that makes more sense for RSS. Unfortunately I have diarrhea of the fingers. I write primarily for those of you reading my weblog in HTML format. I guess I'll have to spend a little more time thinking about my RSS feed from now on too.

Update: Chris Kinsman, in my comments, says that he likes my RSS feed and that he'd far rather read my crap in one long stream than in separate stories. Yeah, I'd far prefer writing like that.

Dan Shafer says I write too much for the RSS feed. Good point. I'll think about doing stories and linking to them. I just find that I write a lot very quickly and am a lazy sob to boot.

Oh, and GO GIANTS!

Zeldman today has more on the Wired redesign, including why many of its pages don't validate.

Hey, Wired got a redesign and is now standards-based. I see they are using the same font I picked here. Hmmm.

If you wanna play around with my template files (and compare them to what Bryan Bell did) here's the file that has my CSS style sheet and templates: template.zip. Note how much smaller my files are than the ones that Bryan Bell designed. Efficiency is good! Of course, I'm sure someone will have an argument for that position. There's a lot of people out there who like their HTML indented properly. Too bad Apache doesn't strip those things out before sending your HTML down the wire.

Another way my theme is more efficient is that I removed all indent code from my HTML. That makes it a little harder for a human to read (although not much) but it saves 10% to 15% in HTML file size. I also notice that I'm getting more visits from Google since doing the redesign. I wonder if Google's spiders like not having to parse style and indent crud. Look at my HTML, then look at the HTML from Sean. Pretend you're Google. Which HTML is easier to find the content in?

For those who weren't following my redesign a few weeks ago, I started out with one of Bryan Bell's themes (Sean Gallagher is using it here). Then I converted it to a CSS style sheet-based system and rewrote my templates to be as standards-based as possible (I still have a td tag in there that doesn't validate, but that's built automatically inside Radio and I haven't had time to figure out how to fix the calendar-generation code so that it validates). My site's HTML is now lighter weight than it was before (it loads faster and puts less strain on UserLand's servers). I belive that if UserLand moved to CSS-based templates that they'd see a 20% reduction in bandwidth useage across the board. Why? Because all the Radio weblogs that use the same theme could share a single CSS style sheet.

Dive into Mark has a page on fonts and accessibility that I've used here on my Weblog. Since following his rules I haven't had any complaints about my fonts (and they are resizeable in IE6/Win). His pages on accessibility should be read by every Web designer. Thanks Mark!

Good morning font geeks! Dori Smith answered my questions from yesterday. God, aren't fonts a pain in the ass?