Simon Langley 2.0

Just discovered an awesome new website. It is a very simple idea, brilliantly done. Basically you are allowed to add 5 feet* of books, movies and music to your shelf. Each item you add has a width associated with it, so you have plenty of space to play around with. Once you have added all your stuff you can receive custom recommendations based on what other users have read/added etc. There are also most popular lists, mini shelves for specific types of books and the best part is, from a usability perspective it is an absolute pleasure to use.

Take a look: www.5ftshelf.com.

* This is because (as the site will tell you) in 1909 Dr Eliot, then President of Harvard University, claimed a liberal education could be achieved by reading a collection of books that would total no more than 5ft in width. A local publisher challenged him to name them and he responded with what became known as the Harvard Classics.

Is there anyone in the whole world that likes IE6? I doubt it! Why? Because it is the most annoying piece of software in the whole world, especially from a web design perspective.

Tables behave very oddly in IE6, especially if you use align=left/right within the <table> tag. If you do choose to do this then be advised that text will wrap around the table like it would do on an image. This can be especially troublesome if you have various tables on top of each-other as they all sit side to side, which will completely destroy page layouts.

Moral of the story, don’t bother with align=left/right/centre, it’s more trouble than it’s worth, use CSS instead.