July 25, 2008
My good friend Nancy is an paramount Stumbler, she sends me so many links like every day I barely have time to check them all out. This one struck me as quite nice, and a simple little Firefox addition that will force you to pay a little more attention to the world around you. It is a simple add-on for Firefox that randomly plays a nice Tibetan chime. Take a break and live in the moment.
Consciousness- Firefox Add-on
July 24, 2008
When I was redesigning this site using WordPress I noticed those sneaky developers had added a class to the current page. If you notice the current page list item tag now has “current_page_item” as an additional class definition, which turns out to be really helpful when using WordPress as a CMS. What’s so cool about that you might ask? Well it allows you to target the navigation class to apply different style to it without adding your own php to the mix, so your visitor can see which page or section of your website they are on. Excellent!
So I have been approached by a few clients to re-design their sites for a better iPhone experience. The launch of the new 3g version has really generated a lot of excitement for the mobile platform, both for website design, and video delivery. I was doing some research this morning and discovered this great little open source app called iphoney. While it doesn’t exactly function like an iPhone (you can’t do the pinch enlarge trick) it gives you a “pixel-accurate web browsing environment” to quickly view what your site or app will look like when viewed on an iPhone.
Marketcircle- iPhoney
July 23, 2008
So I am attempting a post from the iPhone using the WordPress app. Posting without the usual interface is tedious, however this will be extremely useful for quick posts. The ability to add pictures directly from the phone is also key. I will add one of our extremely lazy cat Kingston. He knows how to sprawl!
July 22, 2008
I feel like such a nerd even posting this, but there are a ton of new apps coming out on the iPhone ever since they released the new version 2.0 upgrade, and here is one that even comes with a slick promotional video. The nifty app allows you to blog to your WordPress powered website directly from the iPhone! You can write a post, upload pictures from the phone, and it even lets you edit existing posts! Now I am going to go hit myself in the face with my geek punishment stick.
WordPress for iPhone promotional video-
WordPress for iPhone- Official site (with link to iTunes for download)
July 21, 2008
So this has been a problem we’ve all encountered when coding out sites with CSS tableless layouts. When you have divs floated left and right it takes them out of the flow of the page and basically they don’t read as content within a container div. Traditionally I’d been using another div with “clear:both” in one way or another after the floats, or *gasp* a defined height. I was searching for an alternative method when I discovered this article on the Sitepoint blog, which claims simply using “overflow:auto” on the container div will force it to behave. Initially I was skeptical, but I have been using this method for a few weeks in production, and holy smokes, it works! Additionally my comrade Mark Wyner states that “overflow:auto” does not work in ie6, however using “overflow:hidden” will work. So give it a try, you will be amazed…I was. Some report this doesn’t work in ie5 on Mac…but c’mon if you’re on a mac you SHOULD be using Safari at this point!
*update*
Mark discovered another thing about this which seems only true in Safari. If you have floats below floats this will not work, you should try additionally adding “clear:both” on your floats below.
July 19, 2008
Since moving our design studio up here to Portland Oregon, we have been overwhelmed by all the lush greenery. We did come from the desert after all where everything is a dry dusty brown most of the year. Don’t get me wrong, there is some spectacular natural beauty in the AZ desert, it’s just not green! I thought I would redo our website to reflect the new surroundings, and I also decided to go all the way with WordPress. The site is now using WordPress as a CMS, and I will post next on a few of the great plugins I used to make this happen. The latest release of WordPress was a big help in this as they have added numerous features both under the hood, and to the admin section that were holding me back from doing this overal design change. WordPress is open source software and has a thriving community of developers, it’s amazing all the great work that has gone into this product, the results speak for themselves. Stay tuned as I will highlight some of my favorite plugins that I am using to run this new design.
Here is a small picture gallery of Portland pictures-
June 22, 2008
Get with the program! If you’re not using Firefox, I’d suggest now is a good time to switch. The newest release Firefox 3 is an excellent upgrade packed full of new features. In addition to a host of cosmetic features, I’ve been using it for almost a week, and the speed improvement is noteworthy. As a web designer/developer…I implore you to switch from IE! Although, as much as I bitch about IE I can say this…it has kept me employed, fixing cross platform issues etc etc., but honestly folks, we’d all rather be spending our time on design, interface improvements, and improving user experience. Check out all the newest features of Firefox here, personally I really like the tagging and the new “native platform look and feel”, but the speed improvements were most impressive. It’s still not quite as clean looking as safari, but you can’t compete with Apple on design. Join the over 8 million other people today!
March 17, 2008
Here is a cool site for all of us who are lucky enough to work with a two monitor set up! The site updates occasionally with background sets designed to fit both monitors.
Mandolux!
August 30, 2007
This is some very interesting stuff. A new way to resize images using similar paths of color through the image in order to remove small sections or add space based on the similar colors. Watch the video and be stunned by how simple (with the use of a computer of course) it really is, and how great the results are. I sure hope to see a Seam Carving tool in the next release fo Adobe Photoshop! *Update- Apparently Ariel was snapped up by Adobe rather quickly already.*
More Info- Dr. Ariel Shamir
Bitclone is a small Portland, Oregon based Web Design Agency owned by these two nerds Eric Baldoni and Alex Carey (pictured above somewhere in the outdoors, clearly lost without their trusty computers).