The Web Dev Notes Blog Presents:

Blue Beanie Day Comes But Once A Year

Article Continues Below

Blue Beanie Day is nearly here! On Saturday, November 30, web designers around the world will once again don a blue beanie (toque, cap) to show their support for web standards. Join us!

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Accessibility. Progressive enhancement. (Structured) content first. The more our industry and the technology we’re asked to support changes each year, the more these basics of the web standards movement remain the same. Which is why, each year, we set aside a day to celebrate web standards and the best practices they encourage.

As for the beanie, “the … blue hat is a nod to the bible-like Designing With Web Standards author Jeffrey Zeldman, who famously donned a blue knit hat in his author photo for the book” says Fast Company. But of course Blue Beanie Day is not about me, it’s about we. We, the people who make websites. We who value the open web. Who believe the web is a medium capable of sharing every human experience. And who work each day to make great web content and great web experiences accessible to all.

Apartniks who wish to show their support for web standards may do so my uploading a blue-beanie-wearing selfie to the Blue Beanie Day Tumblr. You can also post your BBD self-portraits to Instagram (hashtag #bbd13) and to the Seventh International Blue Beanie Day 2013 pool on Flickr. There’s no need to wait ’til November 30th to post your pics to Tumblr and Flickr. Do it today!

Web Dev Notes Proxy © 2026 | Powered by Cloudflare Worker

2 Reader Comments

  1. Web Dev Notes Proxy © 2026 | Powered by Cloudflare Worker

    Bringing the web to the world! It would be fun to tie-in an “update your browser” message for family, friends, and clients.

  2. Web Dev Notes Proxy © 2026 | Powered by Cloudflare Worker

    @bberkner, not sure “update your browser” is the message we’d want to send (except maybe as a joke?).

Got something to say?

We have turned off comments, but you can see what folks had to say before we did so.

More from ALA

Designed for a Dead Language

Every language app in your pocket inherited a teaching method built for Latin. Understanding why that happened is a more useful design lesson than anything the apps themselves can teach you.
Web Dev Notes Proxy © 2026 | Powered by Cloudflare Worker

Good designers, bad websites: a proposal

Designers are good people. Some designs exclude people anyway. Alan Dalton offers a practical fix: accessibility personas that help you recognize problems while you're designing, not after. Homework included.
Web Dev Notes Proxy © 2026 | Powered by Cloudflare Worker

Design for Amiability: Lessons from Vienna

Computing was born in a Viennese café. Between 1928 and 1934, while Hitler plotted and Europe crumbled, a motley crew of mathematicians, philosophers, architects, and economists gathered weekly to puzzle out the limits of reason—and invented Computer Science in the process. What made their collaboration possible wasn't just brilliance (though they had plenty). It was amiability: the careful design of a social space where difficult people could disagree without destroying each other. Longtime Web Dev Notes contributing author Mark Bernstein mines this forgotten history for lessons that might just save today's embattled web from its worst impulses. Spoiler: it involves better coffee service and the looming threat of public humiliation.
Web Dev Notes Proxy © 2026 | Powered by Cloudflare Worker

Design Dialects: Breaking the Rules, Not the System

Design systems aren't component libraries—they’re living languages. Rigid adherence to visual rules creates brittle systems that break under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend without breaking.
Web Dev Notes Proxy © 2026 | Powered by Cloudflare Worker

Discover more from Web Dev Notes

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading