May 18
Family photos, vacation snapshots or creative artistic works: whatever images you have to present, you can present them in a variety of ways. On a big screen, in slide shows or in a thumbnails gallery. However, to convey the message of presented data effectively, it’s important to offer it in an attractive and intuitive way. Furthermore, the presentation itself can make images more valuable and simplify the browsing through hundreds of slides.
There are literally hundreds of solutions for web-based galleries out there. We’ve selected 30 scripts of impressive slideshows, lightboxes and galleries you can use for effective presentations of your images. Most of them don’t have any technical requirements, so you can use them right away. Let’s take a look.
[via Smashing Magazine]
May 15
In all the years people have been creating websites, nobody has bothered to gather statistics about who does this work, using what skills, under what conditions, and for what kinds of compensation. It's time for a change. Presenting The Web Design Survey, 2007. Also in this issue of A List Apart: Jonathan Follett on "The Long Hallway"—learn how to work the virtual conference room—and Andy Rutledge on how contrast creates meaning in design.
[via Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report]
Apr 06
A nice collection of css-based navigations.
[via del.icio.us/webdesign]
Mar 19
One of the many presentations I meant to see but didn't at SXSW this year. By Richard Rutter and Mark Boulton. #
[via SimpleBits]
Mar 01
This morning, AIGA (the professional association for design) relaunched with a shiny new design by Happy Cog. I had the pleasure of taking Jason Santa Maria’s brilliant designs and turning them into semantic XHTML and CSS templates that could be plugged into a custom CMS built by Thirdwave (AIGA’s technical partner). Magic and fun ensued.
Every project is a learning experience. But working with Jeffrey and Jason for a client like AIGA, well that’s a whole new level of awesomeness. One could (and should) study Jason’s molecule-level of detail in typography (using just two web fonts and a splash of Interstate via the venerable sIFR). It was a fun challenge getting things right using CSS. I hope I’ve come close.
Congrats to AIGA for renewing their digs with a smart, readable, beautiful design — and a big thank you to Jeffrey, Jason and Happy Cog for allowing me to pitch in and help with this.
Read more about the redesign:
And a special geek note: events listed on AIGA’s homepage are marked up with hCalendar. Microformats
[via SimpleBits]
Feb 22
Gradients: a nutritious part of your Web 2.0 breakfast. Wouldn't it be swell if you could get all that goodness without opening Photoshop every time you needed a little gradient bliss? Matthew O'Neill explains how you can.
[via A List Apart]
Feb 21
I've been thinking a lot about icon design lately. As a way to get the hang of writing on this site again after the post-WDN lull, I figure it might be interesting to share some of the things I've been discovering. All going well, I've got two or three more similar posts in mind.
One of the more deceptively time-consuming things you'll do when creating an icon is producing out size variations. If you require a single icon in more than one size, the time you spend designing the first size is only about two thirds of the work you'll end up doing; the other third lies in tweaking it for different dimensions.
Aha, you might say — that's what vector graphics are good for. Why not just produce the icon in Illustrator or Fireworks and resize it the quick and painless way? Because vector graphics work best with sufficiently large resolutions; scaling between 20cm and 1m at 300dpi doesn't really require much thought. When designing for the low-res pixel grid, it's a whole different ball game. Vector doesn't scale down to lower resolutions as gracefully as one might wish.
Read the rest of this entry »
Feb 21
In a little less than two months, I’ll be heading to Vancouver to speak about “microformats for designers” at Web Directions North. It’ll be a fun topic, and I’m starting to put together the material. I’m looking forward to talking about microformats from a designer’s perspective, including a little bit about the logo development, the implementations over at Cork’d (and the unexpected cool things that came out of that), as well as applying CSS to microformats.
But I’m also looking for help. What are some interesting things happening with microformats and design? Know of any great examples, visual experiments, etc.? Here are a few to get started:
I know there’s a lot happening out there, so let’s hear about it. And thanks!
[via SimpleBits]
Feb 21
Firebug is one of the most useful addons available for Firefox…
All the stuff I said about Xylescope a while ago? Throw in Javascript debugging and live server editing, and you get a sense of what Firebug can do.
In the past two days since installing it, it's helped me track down a half-dozen CSS headaches and some DOM issues that were driving me crazy. It's getting a lot of buzz, but that appears entirely justified; Firebug may just be the web developer tool of the year.
Check out the screencast for a better-than-text explanation of how you might use it. Great stuff, and definitely the prodding I needed to switch back to Firefox for development.
[via Dave Shea's mezzoblue]
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