Category Archives: web design

Retro

As I peruse web site galleries and learn more about html5 and css3, I’m amazed at how certain design elements are back in style. Background images have been stylish for a while. Fixed navigation a la frames are back (wireframes magazine, simplebits, envato). And now that css3 allows rounded corners on buttons and divs, it appears that in order to showcase this new feature, sites need to use them ad nauseum (envato again, daniel, django stars, easytasker, futuretap – quick google search to find these…it wasn’t hard. they are everywhere.). I suppose it doesn’t help that the iPhone has rounded edges and all the apps have rounded edges…

I’m not the best designer in the world but I was designing with rounded buttons and rounded divs since the year 1999 (seriously, no Prince reference intended). How about we up the ante and show the world something they haven’t already seen?

Scrapbooking

Have I written about this before? I keep lots of journals. A journal for what I read, for what I bake, for what inspires me. Heck, I even started a web bookmark journal once. How prehistoric is that? I suppose I could’ve been the mastermind behind http://www.delicious.com/ or evernote. In fact, I could still probably come up with an app if I wanted to. But that is not why I’m writing.

I’m writing because now that I’ve lowered my standards and acquired a twitter account, should I also make the leap and join evernote and zootool and take my scrapbooking to the digital level? Do i sign up for a tumblr account, too? I bookmark and save web clips of all sorts of things and it shows in the number of “design ideas” directories I have all over my computer and the design ideas directory in my firefox bookmarks. Speaking of keeping track of one’s bookmarks and inspiration, I also use firefox sync so I can keep track of my bookmarks on every device where i might surf the web. Syncing my safari bookmarks to my various iDevices is probably easier but I use firefox because they had better web developer apps in the beginning and when I only used a PC (gasp!). In fact, Chris Pederick’s web developer toolbar still isn’t available for safari. Why is that? I digress…

Anyway, I have a blog so I can keep everything here. And I don’t want to integrate my web apps with my social networking apps – I don’t want to share or like or be friended or followed. I think facebook and twitter and foursquare and all of the aforementioned companies are probably getting together every month for drinks and golf and to discuss how they can take over the world. In the meantime, maybe I’ll think of and develop an app that makes digital scrapbooking on my blog easier. Or maybe not…

time for a change

playing around with new color scheme…may or may not look good if you are looking at it *right* now. there are so many color possibilities, it’s hard to know where to begin.

UPDATE: did you see that blue? no way. working on full blown redesign. the cerulean blue needs a modern design.

CSS gem

I designed a web site a while back that is no longer in use. It had a curved horizontal navigation menu. The rollover was achieved using CSS and moving the image on hover. There was one issue that concerned me, but I couldn’t find or, rather, didn’t look very hard for the solution: in the focus and active states, the image outline would show. It was distracting. I just discovered that if I had put the rule “outline:none;” on the focus and active states, the dotted lines would disappear. Perhaps I should reread my CSS book.

this is my life

“If you’re running a project where you mock up designs, get them approved, code them up, build a CMS, hook it all together, and then everyone looks around and says “Who’s got the content? Wait, this content doesn’t match the designs and it won’t fit in the CMS!” then you have a problem. A big problem.” – Karen McGrane

twitter

i still don’t really understand twitter. a whole bunch of comments taken out of context. i don’t understand the @ syntax. i don’t understand how to follow someone or find the relevant history to various tweets. i find texting much more satisfying to follow. and easier. (am i already showing my age? is this how my parents feel?) i find twitter a schizophrenic and multiple personality mess. even with ms. hische’s help, i have trouble. and i’m a freaking web designer…

good thing she has a mom who needs help with twitter, too.

i heart typography

(but not as much as i heart m…)

at jason santa maria’s suggestion, i decided to see if my local library has any of these books. indeed, it has a few. i started with The Elements of Typography (i am such a party animal) because of the similarity to the title of a strunk and white book and because i like the cover. at first, i thought mr. robert bringhurst was just a romantic typographer with his inflated, flowery language and use of many superlatives when discussing typography, but that was just chapter one. the subsequent chapters really are like strunk and white with all sorts of rules. i like this one the best:

Type design is an art practiced by few and mastered by fewer – but font-editing software makes it possible for anyone to alter in a moment the widths and shapes of letters to which an artist may have devoted decades of study, years of inspiration and a rare concentration of skill. The power to destroy such a type designer’s work should be used with caution…Typographic letters are made legible not only by their forms and by the color of the ink that prints them but also by the sculpted empty space between and around them…But in the world of digital type, it is very easy for a designer or compositor with no regard for letters to squish them into cattle trains and ship them to the slaughter…When letters are maltreated in this way, their reserve of legibility is sapped. They can do little in their turn except shortchange and brutalize the reader. Did he just anthropomorphize letters? Did he just liken them to cows? awesome.

menus

no, this isn’t about food. it’s about web design. i haven’t been asked to design a site that’s more than 2 or 3 levels deep so my information architecture skills haven’t really been flexed as much as they could be (i would like?). i enjoy puttering around on the web, looking for design ideas or color palettes. i’ve noticed a lot of sites use the javascript/dom drop down menu. (birds are chirping like craaaazzzyyy outside this morning!) is this really the best we can do? i’m no javascript expert, but i am always looking for ways to think outside the box. too bad monitors aren’t circular. might make this whole process more interesting.