Lolita inspiration, css trick and web tips
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Oooo I like this article/tutorial on dynamic buttons using CSS.The technique is very simple. If we want to have a dynamic-width button, we have to find a way to stretch it horizontally. We will accomplish this if we create two background images that will define the button: one for the left side and one for the right side.
Click through to Janko At Warp Speed for he complete tutorial >>
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I recently read yet another article about web design mistakes. I think it is important to at least look at these articles because sometimes I do learn something and with web development constantly changing it doesn't hurt to keep informed.
One mistake mentioned is not having a good page title. This is something I know and yet even still continue to forget from time to time when building new sites.
"A good title is critical for getting good search engine positions and the most vital thing - the click-through. With the title, you are always walking a tightrope. You need a title with your most important keyword near the beginning but it should still appeal to the human reading the results."
For the rest of the article head to ThaidoWeb >>
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Lolita is a visual inspiration-bank, full of fantasies, dreams - a filter of colors and shadows, a silhouette in the dark. Hopefully making your pulse beat, body shiver.. The hand-picked images put together are also the basis of the story about a young Lolita, living in Stockholm, Sweden - inviting you to take a walk with her, in silence..
Initially I stumbled across Lolita under a graphic design pretense. I found their "the process" animated graphic which had me cracking up.
But there is a fount of inspiration at this website which goes way beyond graphics. Some of the photography on here is just so thoughtfully amazing that I have spent a great deal of time looking through their archives.
So check out Lolita >>
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And have you seen photos of Britney Spears' new home? It is beautiful and elegant in every respect. There is a library I literally spent time drooling over.
The 7,500 square feet home sports a pool, spa, three garages, 10 bedroom, 10 bathrooms, a bar, cinema and a library.
In terms of architecture and home design this one is 5 stars!
Labels: architecture, css, home, inspiration, lolita, photography, web design
Color palettes, interior designs and fun stuff
Friday, February 27, 2009
CSS Drive has launched the new Image to Colors Palette Generator! To get start you'll need to upload an image or submit an image URL to generate a color palette based on the image's primary colors.The extra benefits you can get from this handy Image to Colors Palette Generator:
- It supports various image file format: .PNG, .GIF, .JPG and JPEG
- Instantly generates Photoshop swatches (.ACO) and CSS stylesheet (.CSS) as you can download these files for further design process.
- Click on one of the color on the palette will show you the Hex code of that related color. You can compare between the Selected color and the Current color, as the Current color swatch will dynamically changes the color and hexa when your cursor is moving on the color palette.
- It produces 4 different palettes for efficient use of extracted colors, which are: Light Color Palette, Medium Color Palette, Dark Color Palette and Complete Color Palette.
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The new Chicago-based interior design business Kelly + Olive is offering a giveaway to How About Orange readers! (You don't have to live in Chicago to take advantage.) If you've been helplessly wondering what to do with that blah room in your house or apartment, the "young, professional, modern, whimsical, pragmatic, ecclectic, and thrifty" pair from Kelly + Olive will help you solve your decorating dilemma.
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Could these be the 20 Most Interesting jQuery plugins? AjaxLine.com seems to think they've got a great collection of plugins, including the Ajax Fancy Captcha that helps you protect your web pages from boys and spammers.
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And I simply love this little chair. Covered down to the legs with fabric, the chair appears to be dressed in a pantskirt.
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Twelve-year-old Max Wallack of Natick spent a day last week being followed around by television cameras, hanging out with engineers and building a model of his latest invention: A shelter for the homeless made from plastic, wire and packing peanuts.
The folks at the WGBH show "Design Squad" selected Wallack's idea from more than 1,000 entries for their Trash to Treasure contest. As the grand prize winner, he will receive $10,000 from the Intel Foundation and a laptop computer.
Labels: chairs, color theory, concepts, css, interior design, jquery
Inventor of Playmobil dies
Wednesday, February 4, 2009Would you like the "Ultimate List Of 50 Quality Photoshop Tutorials For Your Inner Designer?" Good, because The Theme Blog has them all in one place at the previous link.
The tutorials include Giving A Mafia-Look To A Business Photo, Creating A Rocking Silhouette in Photoshop and Creating A Stunning Digital Smoke Effect, to name a few.
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Speckboy.com has a post with "16 Usable CSS Graph and Bar Chart Tutorials and Techniques" complete with directions and demos.
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There is sad news in the world of toys: Hans Beck, the inventor of the Playmobil line of toys, died Friday in his native Germany, at the age of 79. Beck created the first Playmobil figures in 1974, and since then helped steer the toy line's development of a huge number of sets and figures based on numerous themes.
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Here is your chance to choose top ten finalists of the current Greener Gadgets Design Competition on Core77. Vote for any of the 50 short listed finalists and help to pick the Top 10 to be judged live at the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City on February 27th. Since the competition aims at generating outstanding design innovations for greener electronics, please vote for entries that focus on designs that promise to minimize the environmental impact of consumer electronic devices at any stage in the product life cycle.
Labels: css, designer, photoshop, tutorials, web design
When it comes to design, size does matter
Monday, January 26, 2009Heading Hierarchy, it's something I've always talked about and known about since I started designing web sites. Heading hierarchy is very important. You'll never see a magazine or newspaper where all the type is written in the same size. It's just not how the mind works. Items bigger or bolder always means something, they have emphasis and that's what tells you more about the rest of what is typed.
456 Berea Street has an article about this, "Headings, heading hierarchy, and document outlines."
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CSS Tricks has yet another fascinating trick up their design sleeves. Set Font Size Based On Word Count shows how you can do this using MooTools or JQuery. I'm imagining this will end up spurring a discussion on easier ways to script a changing font-size based on word count using CMS platforms. We'll see what comes from it all.
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Purple Lemon Designs has some new things to check out if you like paper goods and stationery like I do. There are new rubber stamp designs as well, which are address label stamps with flair.
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Apartment Therapy has a post today called "BlondeinBrooklyn on a Budget." The photographs accompanying the post are all so great and make you wish you could spruce up a room or two in your own home. But I always wonder what they do with all their stuff. The rooms look so spacious and organized, so where's all their "life clutter," you know what I mean?
Labels: apartment therapy, css, design, purplelemondesigns, typography
The Office Design a t-shirt contest and more
Monday, December 22, 2008
Dzine Blog has a list of 20 Beautiful Christmas Icon Sets. I for one love the Polar Express inspired set and am trying to think of something fun to use them with. Any ideas?*~*~*
BittBox re-released 18-high resolution Photoshop brushes for download today.
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In case you still need gift tags and packaging ideas, you can find a mother lode of options over at Tipnut, including a link to even more from Sugarloop.
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Get your creative juices flowing and create a one of a kind t-shirt design with The Office as its theme and submit this to NBC's The Office T-Shirt Design Contest.
The winner will be picked by the show's producers, but visitors of the site can help them narrow it down by voting for their favorites design. The top three most popular artwork will be shortlisted as "finalists" from which the producers can pick the best. The chosen design will be sold at the NBC Store.
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Tell me you have always wanted to know how to enhance a to-do-list... Well if you have then Query7 has a tutorial for you.
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And here is a fun link on making blurry background effects using CSS.
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I think you'll find this list interesting as well, 2008 Most Popular Design posts, Tutorials and Resources. In their showcase, you'll find a variety of articles and posts from the most interesting web-design/development-related web-sites published in 2008.
Labels: contest, css, icons, links, paper, t-shirt
Thrilling Thursday Designish Links
Thursday, October 16, 2008Have you ever wanted to show off your design talents and participate in the making of a premium WordPress theme? Thanks to the team over at Woo Themes, it looks like that is now a possibility with their new Woo Contest.
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Whoever is behind BustAName.com deserves a small shiny statue made of precious metals. BustAName makes you feel like you are always making progress towards an available name, which almost makes the process fun. Web usability guru Steve Krug once observed that we humans tend to "muddle through" the web - and we actually don't mind doing so - so long as we feel we are making progress towards our intended goal. BustAName will quickly give you that sense of moving forward towards a decent and available domain name as you creatively muddle through all the ones that are already taken.
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CSSCount list of Vintage, Retro and Modern Website Designs for web designers inspiration in no particular order.
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Diana Nock has been collecting sketches of The X-Men's Nightcrawler, and with nearly 200, has put the entire collection online: The Nightcrawler Sketchbooks. Here's one by Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.*~*~*
Fifteen students from The Art Institutes have been chosen to represent their school in The Humane Society of the United States' fourth annual Cool vs. Cruel fashion competition. The Cool vs. Cruel competition inspires design students enrolled in The Art Institutes' fashion design programs in its schools across North America to produce fur-free, animal-friendly fashions by using their own creativity to replace animal fur.
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From 16 October 2008 to 31 March 2009, London Transport Museum will be hosting a retrospective of a hundred years of outstanding posters design for London’s transport system.
Entitled "The Art of the Poster - A Century of Design", the exhibition will bring together 60 original posters along with photographs, letters, concept sketches and artist's materials to trace the history of London Underground's championing of design from the first poster commission in 1908.
Labels: comics, contest, css, domain, fashion, links, themes, wordpress
CSS Tips
Friday, November 30, 2007I came across this page of best CSS practices and thought I'd share because it really does have useful information.
50+ CSS Best Practices and Coding Guidelines
One important tip is to "Build and test your CSS in the most advanced browser available before testing in others, not after." And I cannot say that better unless I use the world Firefox. Seriously, check your work in Firefox first because it is the strictest of browsers. If your site looks good there then it should render correctly in IE. IE is far too forgiving of code mishaps.
I also agree with the tip to name IDs or classes based on their function and not their look because they'll be easier for other people to dissect that way. Also it will help you to know where they are visually on the page if you have them named in a functional matter in the code.
Any tips you might have would be appreciated, add them in the comments. =o)
Labels: css
Son of a suckerfish
Friday, February 2, 2007Oh, I didn't make it up. There is a vertical css menu extension that words with the CMS Joomla and it is called "Son of a suckerfish - vertical menu." Seriously, Toby and Keane and I got a little chuckle out of it today. Because you know me, as soon as I saw it I immediately had to say it out loud a couple hundred times.
Hahaha!
The Strange
Name: Christy Mannering
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