This is very, very clever. The linked photo version is just genius.
Then I came across Richard Rutter’s CSS Image Fades page last week.
Cool, I thought. If I can fade from an image to a background, why stop there?
This is very, very clever. The linked photo version is just genius.
Then I came across Richard Rutter’s CSS Image Fades page last week.
Cool, I thought. If I can fade from an image to a background, why stop there?
Should design be simple? Not necessarily. Sometimes the correct design solution is very complex. What is complex in design though, can be simple in execution. Careful planning can keep a complex layout from turning into a design nightmare.
How do you make a difficult design into an elegantly executed piece of art?
I often have a good idea what my final product is going to be in advance of the final content. This allows me to work out the finer details of a design without having to worry about any time consuming fixes of original content. With placement or greek text I can work out the details of layout, carefully craft my styles so that everything is ready to place when the final content arrives. Using global styles, whether it’s in CSS on the web or character and paragraph styles in InDesign, my design is often finalized before the content arrives.
There are always minor adjustments, but while preparation can’t always account for everything, it is the key. Without planning a design’s execution can be haphazard and incomplete. Mistakes get made. The most complex design can be made simple, by simply planning ahead.
Designing a new site? Updating your old one? Here’s a very clever color palette generator. You enter the URL of a photo you like, and it creates a hexadecimal color palette.
RSS feeds are a simple way of allowing people to be notified of new content on your website. Using news aggregators like Newsgator and Bloglines, browsers with built in feed capability, or add-ons like Firefox’s Sage, your visitors can be notified whenever you post new content. Most blogging software like Blogger and WordPress creates these feeds for you. All you need to do is make sure that your feeds are visible and functioning. Are your feeds working?
Try subscribing, can you read them? If you’re having a problem subscribing, check your site source code. There should be a little bit of code in your head section that allows browsers and feed readers to identify your feed. It probably looks something like this:
<link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/HighDesertWanderer" />
In both Firefox and IE7 you should also be able to identify a site with an RSS feed by the small icon 
displayed in the URL bar. If you don’t see that icon, your site might not be allowing your viewers to see your RSS feeds.
If your RSS feed is visible, but not readable, your problem likely originated with your blogging software. Try writing another post. It sounds like a stupid solution, but this will prompt the creation of a new RSS item and might also clean up any errors in the existing feed. If this doesn’t work, check your last 10-15 posts. Did you use any odd HTML, or special characters? Since your feed is created from your blog posts, removing any garbled code from your posts might fix your RSS. If the problem persists for more than 10-15 posts, consulting an expert would likely be your next option.
Verifying that your RSS feeds are working properly and visible to your readers is important. The people who subscribe to your site are people who have come to your site before, and want to visit again. You just need to let them know when!
I’ve been playing with a new WordPress theme for this site for a while. It’s seems to be ready, so I’ll put it up shortly. Please forgive any chaos that ensues when it first goes up. No matter how much you test a theme, when it first goes live there always seems to be some little quirk. More often than not it’s a browser not wanting to refresh properly, but I’ve been known to make an error once in a while.
The resonant sound of me beating my head against my desk. If you require the services of a graphic designer, here’s how it should go:
Doesn’t that work nicely. A beginning (defining project), a middle (design project), and an end (approve and complete project). Projects seem to work best this way. The way they sometimes go is more along the lines of:
What an annoying mess. In the end, the project will be completed, I’ll get paid (well), and I’ll move on to something else. I really should stop dealing with this client, but they’ve been good to me in the past and it’s hard to break out of a relationship like that, dysfunctional as it may be. Their last two projects have gone this way. Both times they’ve supplied me with complete and thoroughly detailed plans for projects, only to scrap that plan midway through the project.
Thud. Thud. Thud…
The Dangers of Modern Automotive Conveniences - Popular Mechanics
And I thought how much safer I was, driving in my 50-year-old Jaguar XK120–with no side windows, no radio, no distractions–than these women were in their new truck with its ABS, airbags and other modern tech.
Why? Because I was paying attention. - Jay Leno, Contributing Editor
Yes, that Jay Leno.
I see this sort of driver on the road every day. They are no longer in control of the technology, but the technology is in control of them.
I also see this sort of thing in design. I see an advertisement and I can identify the software used to lay it out because the designer used default settings or the free clip art that came with it. The designer is no longer in control, they are letting the software control the design. Now most people wouldn’t be in a position to recognize software, but that’s not the point. If you’re letting your software make your decisions for you, that is a problem. While the chances of a tragically fatal graphic design accident are slim, the chances your career will be mangled are much higher. Take control, make the software work for you. Then when somebody sees one of your designs and says, “How did you know to do that?” You can honestly say, “Because I was paying attention.”
IE6 is giving me fits today. Something that seems to have been included in an automatic update last week is causing IE6 to fail on a site that I work on. Pages not loading, forms not loading, freezing up after loading, a whole list of problems. Driving me nuts. It only effects IE6, and not every computer seems to be effected. No idea what’s going on here. If I don’t see a solution soon, something is going out a window.
Sidenote: If you’re less than 150 lbs., and would in some way fit out of a 2′ x 3′ window, you might not want to walk into my office right now.
(yawn) IE 7 has officially been released. According to a previous post at the IE blog, this will be followed by having IE7 included in an automatic update within a few weeks. I thought I’d be dreading this, but having tested several of the beta versions I’m somewhat ambivalent on the subject. Sure it’s an improvement (yawn), but with Microsoft’s long history of security issues, I won’t be switching away from Firefox any time soon.
How many of you have tested your sites to make sure everything is working in IE7? The clock has started, now would be the time work out any final problems. I’ve tested all of the sites I work on, and so far I’ve only found a few minor bugs that I had to work out. Good luck.
The The Dilbert Blog had an interesting point a couple of days ago. I missed it the first time I read it, but I was reminded of the post again today.
If everyone exposed to a product likes it, the product will not succeed.
The reason that a product “everyone likes†will fail is because no one “loves†it. The only thing that predicts success is passion, even if only 10% of the consumers have it.
That’s a great description of something I’ve thought about before:
Too many people these days try for the middle ground. They try to have consensus. They want everyone to think they are OK. I don’t want everyone to think I’m just OK. I’d rather have a few people think I’m damn good, even if a few think I’m a little nuts in exchange. To me the biggest regret I could have in my life wouldn’t be looking back and saying “I failedâ€. My biggest regret would be not to have tried.
Aiming for mediocre doesn’t work. It’s virtually impossible to hit a middle ground with anything. Don’t try to please everyone. Strive for passion in whatever you do, and you’ll have success. Not everyone will like what you do. Some though, maybe only a few, will love it!
I found a fascinating tool for analyzing the loading speed of websites. The Web Page Analyzer gives you a fairly thorough report on how fast your site will load, and why. Breaks it sown to individual components, scripts, images, CSS, and so forth. A great tool for a developer.
There’s an interesting idea for making a online shopping site out of a WordPress installation over at serialdeviant.org(y). If I had anything to sell, I’d be trying that out. Not much market for High Desert Wanderer memorabilia at the moment.
h/t problogger
I’ve been working in circles for the last few days. Work best described as herding cats. Working hard, little progress, not all progress is forward. The CSS on a site I’m building has been giving me fits. Turns out most of my problem was caused by Margin Collapse. Fortunately that annoying problem is fixed now and I can move on to something interesting.
It’s sad when the most productive thing you’ve done all day is spend a few minutes fixing a CSS problem for someone else. A designer from England e-mailed me a CSS problem that was bugging him. The link styles on a site he’s building were a little off. He had styles that weren’t defined quite narrow enough. Made for an interesting now you see it, now you don’t problem. It’s nice to know that one thing is working that wasn’t before. It didn’t help my own productivity any, but you take what you can get.
Seth’s Blog: Where are the tweakers?
If I want my car to go a bit faster, there’s a garage in town that will tweak it for me.
If I want my stereo to sound a little better, there’s a guy who will install cables and such and upgrade it.
There are more than a billion websites. Where are the tweakers?
Another great post by Seth Godin. Tweakers, a favorite subject of mine. A job that requires an odd mix of talent, organization, and inspiration. The one common theme in my rather eclectic employment history is probably my penchant for tweaking the design departments I’ve worked in. Every design job I’ve had, save one, has included a significant amount of transition. Upgrading software and hardware, streamlining procedures, restructuring of the department in some way. Transition is somewhat in the nature of the profession, but I seem to be attracted to companies that need help getting their design departments back on track. It’s very rewarding to look back and see the changes you’ve made.
I don’t think I exactly qualify as one of Mr. Godin’s Website Tweakers, but in the last few months especially I’ve been doing a lot of that sort of thing. I’m really looking forward to see where this goes.
Another way developers act like computers is they thrash. You have seen your computer do this. You try to run too many things at once. The computer runs out of memory and starts swapping to and from disk. You hear the disk grinding and performance grinds to a halt as the computer is stuck constantly swapping back and forth to disk. Nothing gets done.
A clever post, and very true. Nothing ruins productivity like adding the one extra job that you didn’t have time for.
Silly me, I keep giving people what they ask for rather than what they want.
Instance number one:
I am working with another web developer who recently asked me for a template for a series of webpages that need to look like simplified versions of a site that I maintain. His content will be placed within that as a resourse for our mutual clients. I need a template. I supply the template. No, no, I just need the images. I supply him with the images. (which are readily available on the site, but that’s another story) I don’t know how to place these so that they align properly. Hmmm, maybe I should send him a template, so he can see how I aligned them…
Instance number two:
Another professional I work with: I need a screen shot of Site X. Sure, give me a second and I’ll take one and crop off everything you don’t need. No, just take the shot and send me the file. I send the file. What the hell all this extra stuff? I remind him that I suggested that I crop off everything extraneous. I just want a full screen image. I remind him that Site X is 760 pixels wide in a fixed width layout, while my screen resolution is 2304 x 1280. At “full screen” there’s a little extra left over. We’ve had this conversation before… repeatedly. He admires my dual monitor setup whenever he’s here, but yet I always get “What the hell all this extra stuff?“. Is it time to go home yet?