All in the <head>

– Ponderings & code by Drew McLellan –

– Live from The Internets since 2003 –

About

About Drew McLellan

Photo of Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan has been hacking on the web since around 1996 following an unfortunate incident with a margarine tub. Since then he’s spread himself between both front- and back-end development projects, and now is Director and Senior Web Developer at edgeofmyseat.com in Maidenhead, UK (GEO: 51.5217, -0.7177). Prior to this, Drew was a Web Developer for Yahoo!, and before that primarily worked as a technical lead within design and branding agencies for clients such as Nissan, Goodyear Dunlop, Siemens/Bosch, Caburys, ICI Dulux and Virgin.net. Somewhere along the way, Drew managed to get himself embroiled with Dreamweaver and was made an early Macromedia Evangelist for that product. This lead to book deals, public appearances, fame, glory, and his eventual downfall.

Picking himself up again, Drew is now a strong advocate for best practises, and is currently Group Lead for The Web Standards Project. He has had articles published by A List Apart, Adobe, and O’Reilly Media’s XML.com, mostly due to mistaken identity. Drew is a proponent of the lower-case semantic web, and is currently expending energies in the direction of the microformats movement, with particular interests in making parsers an off-the-shelf commodity and developing simple UI conventions. He writes here at all in the head and, with a little help from his friends, at 24 ways.

Recommended

From the archives

Here you will find a selection of tasty morsels in reverse chronological order. Feel free to peruse them at your leisure, although no guarantees as to quality or satisfaction are made. (Some of it stinks.)

  1. Web Standards and Accessibility with Adobe Spry 10 May 2008
  2. London Web Week 05 April 2008
  3. Don't Import, Subscribe 28 March 2008
  4. Project Management Doesn't Have To Be Hard 26 March 2008
  5. Armadillo v3 24 March 2008
  6. Version Targeting and JavaScript Libraries 24 January 2008
  7. How To Set an Apple Touch Icon for Any Site 17 January 2008
  8. Moving hkit Forward 16 January 2008
  9. hKit now on Google Code 07 January 2008
  10. Preparing for 24ways 23 November 2007
  11. PHP mail() and The Path of No Return 02 November 2007
  12. Time to Take Stock 13 August 2007
  13. PHP Build Systems 03 August 2007
  14. IWMW, Amazon Web Services and hKit 17 July 2007
  15. hAtom and Last.fm Shoutboxes 26 June 2007
  16. The State of Textpattern 14 May 2007
  17. Why Your Forum Software Needs OpenID 21 March 2007
  18. Impressions of The New AirPort Extreme 26 February 2007
  19. Machine Tags: Tagging Revisited 24 January 2007
  20. UK Geek Events 23 January 2007
  21. Changes Afoot at WaSP 22 December 2006
  22. 24ways Returns For 2006 01 December 2006
  23. Textpattern and the Technorati Link Count Widget 23 November 2006
  24. Can Microformats be Validated? 26 October 2006
  25. Can Your Website be Your API? 22 October 2006
  26. From BarCamp to d.Construct 04 September 2006
  27. Microformats Tools and Upcoming Events 22 August 2006
  28. JSON All The Way 10 August 2006
  29. Joining Yahoo! 05 August 2006
  30. hKit version 0.5 22 July 2006
  31. The Biggest Unsolved Problems of Web Design 05 July 2006
  32. hKit version 0.4 23 June 2006
  33. hKit version 0.3 22 June 2006
  34. hKit Microformats Toolkit for PHP 21 June 2006
  35. Maps, Microformats and LPG 13 June 2006
  36. Sleight Update: Alpha PNG Backgrounds in IE 31 May 2006
  37. hCalendar in Endo 23 May 2006
  38. The Dangers of Automatically Generating hCards 11 May 2006
  39. Jumping Off Points 03 May 2006
  40. Adding hCard to Vitamin 26 April 2006
  41. The Term 'Subscribe' Can Mislead 21 April 2006
  42. Five Most Important Considerations 21 April 2006
  43. Microformats in Dreamweaver 23 March 2006
  44. Google Page Creator 23 February 2006
  45. The Future of Web Apps Summit 10 February 2006
  46. Site Maps for Web Applications 30 January 2006
  47. Four Things 24 January 2006
  48. So That Was 24ways 05 January 2006
  49. 24 Ways in 24 Days 01 December 2005
  50. d.Construct Podcasts 15 November 2005
  51. Web Development on a Microsoft Platform 01 November 2005
  52. More After The Jump 19 October 2005
  53. Writeboard Document Locking 04 October 2005
  54. Web-based Collaboration Round-up 03 October 2005
  55. iWork Installation Nightmares 17 September 2005
  56. Bigger Than My Telly 15 September 2005
  57. European Parliament: Nil Point 13 September 2005
  58. eBay To Buy Skype 12 September 2005
  59. Upgraded to Textpattern 4.0.1 11 September 2005
  60. Local Textile 09 September 2005
  61. Taking it Personally 03 September 2005
  62. Textpattern 4.0 15 August 2005
  63. Call For Hackers 03 August 2005
  64. Paging Large Datasets in SQL Server 11 July 2005
  65. The Office 07 July 2005
  66. New Camera 22 June 2005
  67. Theft by Blogging 12 June 2005
  68. On Windows Server 2003 Web Edition 10 June 2005
  69. LUGRadio Live 2005 02 June 2005
  70. Tigers and Penguins 18 May 2005
  71. End of The Road for Fireworks? 18 April 2005
  72. Acid2 Let Loose 13 April 2005
  73. Everyone Has a Clock 10 April 2005
  74. Emerging from the Shower 05 April 2005
  75. Podcast Aggregators Should Support Cookies 08 March 2005
  76. User Defined Functions Considered Harmful 03 March 2005
  77. Getting Very Dynamic at XML.com 10 February 2005
  78. Designing URIs 07 February 2005
  79. Podcasting 18 January 2005
  80. Seeking New Opportunities 05 January 2005
  81. Predictions for 2005 30 December 2004
  82. XMLHttpRequest for The Masses 12 December 2004
  83. Mental Clarity 07 December 2004
  84. Developing Web apps for IE Only 25 November 2004
  85. A Question of Title 20 November 2004
  86. Supermarket Usability 18 November 2004
  87. CSS Anthology 15 November 2004
  88. Web Applications are Easy 11 November 2004
  89. Embedding Macromedia Flash in XHTML 26 October 2004
  90. To Apple Care or Not To Apple Care 22 October 2004
  91. When Vendor Tie-In Bites Back 16 October 2004
  92. The Joel Test for Web Development - Conclusions 04 October 2004
  93. The Joel Test for Web Development - Part 3 26 September 2004
  94. The Joel Test for Web Development - Part 2 22 September 2004
  95. The Joel Test for Web Development 21 September 2004
  96. Web Development is Software Development 17 September 2004
  97. The Importance of Good Client Liaison 08 September 2004
  98. The Dangers of Redesigning a Web Application 01 September 2004
  99. Curl for HTTP Debugging 25 August 2004
  100. Armadillo v2 21 August 2004
  101. Browse Happy 20 August 2004
  102. A Font for Programming 18 August 2004
  103. Geekend 17 August 2004
  104. Rested 08 August 2004
  105. Accessing a Windows 2003 Share from OS X 29 July 2004
  106. Firefox and The IEAK 28 July 2004
  107. Referrer Log Spam 21 July 2004
  108. Locate on OS X 13 July 2004
  109. Authentication Required 08 July 2004
  110. Scalability vs Performance 05 July 2004
  111. And Breathe Out 30 June 2004
  112. Interview with ... Me 24 June 2004
  113. Colour me Spammy 16 June 2004
  114. By the way of an example 15 June 2004
  115. Take the Weather With You 14 June 2004
  116. Who Cares Anyway? 08 June 2004
  117. The Slippery Slope 01 June 2004
  118. Collaborative Document Editing 28 May 2004
  119. Experience is More Important than Knowledge Of Syntax 21 May 2004
  120. Writing The Code is the Easy Bit 18 May 2004
  121. Page Manipulation with W3C DOM 14 May 2004
  122. CSS Editors 06 May 2004
  123. Running a Development Server 04 May 2004
  124. Subversion 27 April 2004
  125. Comments on Comments 26 April 2004
  126. Kittens and Letters 22 April 2004
  127. Geocaching 20 April 2004
  128. Page 23 15 April 2004
  129. Central Email Signatures 15 April 2004
  130. Icons for Web Applications 10 April 2004
  131. Textpattern Plugins 06 April 2004
  132. Someone who once wrote a book 03 April 2004
  133. My Car 30 March 2004
  134. Defensive Design for the Web 25 March 2004
  135. Preventing Comment Spam 22 March 2004
  136. Centralised Authentication 22 March 2004
  137. Take-out Interfaces 17 March 2004
  138. Processing Words 15 March 2004
  139. Blog Anniversaire 11 March 2004
  140. Web Standards Solutions 09 March 2004
  141. Natural Order 04 March 2004
  142. Blog Data Exchange 02 March 2004
  143. ASP Web Development 02 March 2004
  144. The Gas Man Cometh 26 February 2004
  145. Textpattern Public Gamma Release 24 February 2004
  146. iSight and Housekeeping 22 February 2004
  147. Search Engine Near Misses 20 February 2004
  148. Selling Software Online 17 February 2004
  149. Form Elements in Firefox 12 February 2004
  150. About 11 February 2004
  151. Elegance 10 February 2004
  152. Installing OS X Developer Tools from DVD 07 February 2004
  153. Site Upgrades 05 February 2004
  154. Bluetooth KVM 01 February 2004
  155. iDesk 01 February 2004
  156. Inner Demon 29 January 2004
  157. Using BBEdit with SMB Shares 25 January 2004
  158. MySQL and GarageBand (unrelated) 24 January 2004
  159. As a Parrot 23 January 2004
  160. First Impressions 19 January 2004
  161. The Waiting Game 15 January 2004
  162. PowerBook 13 January 2004
  163. On Spam 10 January 2004
  164. Social Networking Technology 08 January 2004
  165. Mailio 03 January 2004
  166. Favourite PHP Tricks 02 January 2004
  167. PHP Duplicate Names 01 January 2004
  168. Alternative and Punk 31 December 2003
  169. Sir TBL 31 December 2003
  170. iPod 28 December 2003
  171. Tis the Season 24 December 2003
  172. Data Protection 22 December 2003
  173. Recovering a Windows Profile 19 December 2003
  174. CSS Underscore Hack 17 December 2003
  175. Windows is a bitch ... and then it dies 17 December 2003
  176. Delivery Failure 14 December 2003
  177. From T68i to T610 11 December 2003
  178. Old Dog New Tricks 08 December 2003
  179. Rock the Taskbar 06 December 2003
  180. PHP Sessions Update 05 December 2003
  181. Sessions, hah! What are they good for? 03 December 2003
  182. 70% Spam 30 November 2003
  183. PHP on OS X 26 November 2003
  184. Panther 23 November 2003
  185. Drawing networks 20 November 2003
  186. Class structure 18 November 2003
  187. Creating and Designing Your Own Personal Disaster 17 November 2003
  188. Application Interface Design 17 November 2003
  189. We have a winner 14 November 2003
  190. My Goodness, My Guinness, MySQL 13 November 2003
  191. Search me 12 November 2003
  192. Dir vs ls 10 November 2003
  193. Paper-centric authoring environments 10 November 2003
  194. New job 05 November 2003
  195. ReUSEIT judging underway 03 November 2003
  196. The Damned Key 31 October 2003
  197. XML, DTD, Radio Silence 30 October 2003
  198. What shape is your phone book? 28 October 2003
  199. PHP class properties 26 October 2003
  200. Tabbed browsing in Safari 25 October 2003
  201. ALA Returns 22 October 2003
  202. Making Progress 20 October 2003
  203. More on XML 16 October 2003
  204. It\'s just this damn XML 14 October 2003
  205. VNC 12 October 2003
  206. Caveat Emptor 09 October 2003
  207. Important acronyms 08 October 2003
  208. Eolas Patent Workarounds 08 October 2003
  209. Changes to IE 07 October 2003
  210. Mail 06 October 2003
  211. Tart\'s Knickers 03 October 2003
  212. Building a Wall 30 September 2003
  213. Talking Web Standards 29 September 2003
  214. I gots me a Favicon 25 September 2003
  215. Firebird Favicons 24 September 2003
  216. The IC-Style 22 September 2003
  217. More on IIS Lockdown 19 September 2003
  218. 404 - Error Badly Assigned 18 September 2003
  219. Dear Apple Computer 16 September 2003
  220. XHTML 2.0 again 14 September 2003
  221. The times they are onchanging 11 September 2003
  222. CSS in Dreamweaver 10 September 2003
  223. I'm an idiot 09 September 2003
  224. Too good to be true 09 September 2003
  225. ClearType anything but 08 September 2003
  226. Welcome to Teletubbie Land 07 September 2003
  227. Flash Satay resurgence 04 September 2003
  228. Firebird bookmarks 03 September 2003
  229. So near, and yet 02 September 2003
  230. Milestones / Millstones 27 August 2003
  231. Flash Satay Poll 20 August 2003
  232. Treading the past 19 August 2003
  233. Re-Useit Design Contest 15 August 2003
  234. Attention Fireworks and Photoshop users 13 August 2003
  235. This man must be stopped 10 August 2003
  236. Alone 08 August 2003
  237. The dot.com chair 05 August 2003
  238. Employment 04 August 2003
  239. Brief encounters 30 July 2003
  240. Advertising 29 July 2003
  241. Usability on the cheap 29 July 2003
  242. Blogathon 26 July 2003
  243. Duplicate, Offset, Rotate 26 July 2003
  244. Oh look ... 24 July 2003
  245. Mozilla 1.5 alpha 24 July 2003
  246. Greatest Cars 21 July 2003
  247. “Javacode” 19 July 2003
  248. Optimizing ASP 17 July 2003
  249. Scrubbin' and soapin' 16 July 2003
  250. Textpattern Users 15 July 2003
  251. Hot 15 July 2003
  252. Flirtations with Windows XP 13 July 2003
  253. Sleight of hand 08 July 2003
  254. Echo, Charlie, Bravo 07 July 2003
  255. Ti Waits for No Man 05 July 2003
  256. Yes! 05 July 2003
  257. Object, Echo, Tango 04 July 2003
  258. Adobe, what have you done? 02 July 2003
  259. Bandwidth: big issue? 30 June 2003
  260. Popup blocking for IE 26 June 2003
  261. Safari goes gold 23 June 2003
  262. Email 'more important' than phone 21 June 2003
  263. Blurred 18 June 2003
  264. Bye bye IE, IE goodbye 14 June 2003
  265. GIF patent 12 June 2003
  266. Deja Fruit 12 June 2003
  267. Odd(ie) evening 10 June 2003
  268. Cheap accommodation 02 June 2003
  269. No future stand-alone IE? 31 May 2003
  270. Comments bug fix 28 May 2003
  271. Why the Internet is a cloud 23 May 2003
  272. The people's web 20 May 2003
  273. Struggle 18 May 2003
  274. Drab 15 May 2003
  275. Textile bookmarklet 13 May 2003
  276. Switching on the LAMP 09 May 2003
  277. Greetings from Planet Cotton Wool 04 May 2003
  278. An Inspector Calls 28 April 2003
  279. On the subject of RSS 23 April 2003
  280. No upgrade yet 21 April 2003
  281. Web users don't read 17 April 2003
  282. RSS problems 17 April 2003
  283. DIY-related injuries 13 April 2003
  284. Upgrades immanent 10 April 2003
  285. The Matrix: Re-wotnot'd 09 April 2003
  286. Blogdaq 09 April 2003
  287. Mozilla 1.4a 03 April 2003
  288. Hardware and headaches 02 April 2003
  289. They call it progress 31 March 2003
  290. Screen everywhere I look 27 March 2003
  291. Microsoft quits W3C panel 26 March 2003
  292. Calling all Dreamweaver extension developers 25 March 2003
  293. I find this guy to be profoundly unnecessary 23 March 2003
  294. I'm a big OS X fan 21 March 2003
  295. I want one of these 21 March 2003
  296. Alcohol inside 20 March 2003
  297. CVS: Considerably Vexing System 18 March 2003
  298. New rhino on the block 16 March 2003
  299. Feeling the neighbors 15 March 2003
  300. Who threw the final stone? 14 March 2003
  301. Internet Fridge 13 March 2003
  302. Can-do 13 March 2003
  303. IT & IE 12 March 2003
  304. Nightmare on App Street 12 March 2003
  305. I have to start sometime 11 March 2003

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At edgeofmyseat.com we build custom content management systems, ecommerce solutions and develop web apps.

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Affiliation

  • Web Standards Project
  • Britpack
  • 24 ways