the german friday

This is exciting news. I didn’t think there was anywhere else for HTML to go. I had read a while back that HTML would be developed no further. XHTML came along several years ago and solved some of the oddball, dead end issues with HTML. And then this. This answers a big question that I have. What is right and wrong when it comes to semantic markup. I didn’t know. Now I guess we do accepted semantic conventions will be put in place for everyone to follow. Also the functional placement tags will be much simpler. This is years off, but it gives the front end developers of the world something to look forward to. Yay!

I recently designed and built a site for an alternative Energy company in Texas. Element Markets helps companies abide by current emissions legislation, as well as manage the development of private land to produce alternative energy. Really interesting business once I got my head around how broad their footprint is in this area. It opened my eyes to what legislation exists to protect the environment and how loosely the system that controls this legislation is. Anyway, I am especially proud of this site because since I started building websites with standards, this is the first one I built with the XHTML 1.0 Strict Doctype. Riveting.

Although the Harley-Davidson Museum has been in development for nearly a year, I’ve only just come across this webcam site that continuously updates. This is cool on so many levels I can’t begin to explain.

I’ve been extremely busy at work lately with the company change. Also the fact that I was trying to push 3 big projects out the door at once. All three have been published. 2 of which were the first sites I’ve published using standard and semantic building methods. Client intervention aside, I feel that all 3 of them came out pretty nice.

Ford College Student Purchase Program

Tepel Brothers Printing Company

Mars Industries

As is becoming our pattern, Nikki and I decided to take on a major house project this past winter. This time it was the master bathroom. Once again I called on the wealth of knowledge and ability that is my dad, Roger Freitag. We started out wanting to preserve as much of the existing elements and just replace the tile. But as with most projects, once you start the demo, you decide that if you are going to do something, you may as well do it right.

What we ended up doing was a little more than tile, but stopped short of going all the way down to the studs. We did the shower tile, door and fixtures. Also the floor tile, bathtub, toilet, and a couple new mirrors, etc. The bathroom was all that remained original to the 1979 construction of the house, so it was a needed update, and one that we had planned since buying the house in March 2004.

We are set to start remodeling Roger and Kathey’s bathroom on 4.9. They are updating a mid-50’s bath that is long overdue. I’ll post photos once it’s finished.