Post Archive

› January 31, 2002

useable flash

Two resources on flash usability, one is a Digital Web Magazine tutorial, the other called flash99good. (both via flazoom)

› January 30, 2002

i know where bruce lee lives

So many flash pieces, or potential flash pieces go through a sort of flowchart in my head - can this be achieved without a plugin?, how about static gif or jpg? does what this flash does warrant the plug-in loadtime and filesize/loader animation? does this being in flash cause any information to be less accessible? Is the value of this a first-time only value, or will folks want to revisit? Don't get me wrong, I really love well designed and thought out flash work, and there's lots out there to admire.

But then again, I throw all of my questions out the window when hit with something like this kungfu-remixer from the berlin based skop (via Beth)

Applescript saves the day

Lovely story for all you Mac fans: "how AppleScript helped keep sensitive data from the prying eyes of a thief and helped recover a stolen iMac."

A tale of hacker intrigue comparable with last year's grc.com DOS attack.

› January 29, 2002

Remote Scripting with IFRAME

Apple's Developer Connection has posted a tutorial showing how to create remote scripting with IFRAME using JavaScript -- allowing a client's browser to exchange data with a server without reloading the page.

Forms accessibility: FIELDSET

Reading up on making forms accessible -- TABINDEX, LABEL, ACCESSKEY, etc. -- I came across the HTML4.0 tag FIELDSET that I've never heard of before. It is used to semantically group a number of fields together under a single caption, but also visually renders this using a border interrupted by the caption familiar to all from Windows dialog boxes. Before I start using it, does anyone know of any serious browser incompatibilities?

› January 27, 2002

Uzilla

Andy has announced Uzilla, a usability testing tool, a very interesting development worth checking out - alpha testing starts tomorrow.

MT-Search

Ah, this looks like an easy and worthwile addition: MT Search, for quick and easy searching of blog entries made here on this site with moveabletype.

mac or win?

antenna has an interesting take on the win/mac choice, I completely agree. I also think that the amount of time one spends with either system (because of professional requirement or just by deafult) has a big impression on what one finds comfortable. Having used both OSes almost equally, but win more recently I'm eager to get re-accustomed to the more appealing mac interface, but behind the loop in key details that make a difference in efficient usage. (written via ibook)

IrfranView

Harold Goldstein sent an email to the wd-list which reminded me about IrfanView, a windo$e free image viewer/manager. Wow, this fast little freeware program has had some major upgrades since my original download of it. I'm thinking that it's going to replace my acdsee image viewer/manager because acdsee, while reasonably priced, has gotten quite bloated and doesnt open up in the fraction of a millisecond that IfranView does. For me, I'd rather have just enough features but a super quick load/unload time and small footprint for my applications. Why rent a heavy chainsaw for a task that can be accomplished just as quickly with a pocket knife? Then again, behemoths like photoshop and illustrator are essential to me, so I just leave them open all the time. Then again, I only have a 350mhz intel processor, if it not for screen resolution and memory I might be better off using the old ibook (clamshell type). Actually, maybe I'm better off using it anyways. Ok, a personal experiment - for the rest of this week, I'll only use my wingross desktop for email and browser testing - everything else will be via ibook.

› January 26, 2002

hornbuckle

Hornbuckle reveals a great eye for photography: hornbuckle.org : version 8 : audio/visual. The short period of time that I knew david I thought he was secretly brilliant.

› January 25, 2002

Javascript Color Manipulation

This is likely old news to some, but dithered.com offers a javascript library for manipulating color programmatically. The demo is not quite functional, but the code works just fine and uses that fancy prototype stuff. A quick solution to a need for dynamic color ranges for a visualization project I'm working on.

› January 24, 2002

New CSS List

Eric announced that a new css oriented email list has been created, but apparently I left the email unread at work, and it's so new that a search on google was completely unusefull. If no one adds a comment with more info about the list, I'll post the info tomorrow.

› January 23, 2002

Mr. Show fans rejoice!

Mr. Show is coming to DVD! I now have a reason to buy a DVD player. See!

› January 22, 2002

web copy style

Yet another valuable discovery from glish, it's a web copy style guide.

streetmaps

An interesting use of street map photos by francois, it seems so logical, yet I'm hesitant to discover how much time I've wasted getting around atlanta without much sense of direction. Still, a much better idea than simply creating an "i am here" picture and sending it to the easily-freaked-out and non-web-savvy.

› January 21, 2002

space

ahh, a little more space to breath here, as per Pepe's request. Now I'm starting an e-corpse. It sounds gross, but it's not - or at least it doesnt have to be.

Illustrator 10 demo available.

A 30 day demo of Illustrator 10 is available to the public as a portly 135M download. Since my T1 is only returning 4k per second, it will be several hours before I can share any details.

Go to adobe.com for details.

› January 19, 2002

RPC Spellchecker

Sometimes you bump into something not super brandnew, but you wanna make a note of it for future reference: Speller Beta with RPC Interface via w3future's own interface for it.

› January 18, 2002

'nother colorpicker

Another colorpicker to add to the feature article that is getting dusty with cobwebs. I'm tickled that this one uses the visibone arrangement so well, a good showoff of dom power. Now if only it loaded a little faster.

readability for the visually impared

Catching up with chi-web mailing list I find William Hudson's response to a message regarding fonts for screen readability. The response points to the royal national institute for the blind, who have this list of handy hints for developing with consideration of screenreading applications - such as the following which I didn't realize:


If the image is essentially "eye candy" or is used for the purpose of visual layout (e.g. "spacer" images), the ALT text should be set to read "*". This will let the user know that the image contains no information and performs no relevant function - they are not left in the position of knowing the image exists but being unsure of what it might contain or do.

Lots more there too.
Also in his email he mentions tiresias a font created for tv sub-titles, and therefore a suitable screen-font.
I mention these things found by way of the chi-web mailing list not for redundancy, but because I believe it's important for those who design the web to pay close attention to how their works are being percieved, and this includes non-visual methods. I suppose there's a part of me which feels that visual perception isn't to be taken for granted, and if one day I were to loose my sight - the web would be a great resource for information and entertainment - if only those creating it keep accessibility in mind.

› January 16, 2002

rss feed

If you'd like an rss feed of this site - it's a natural by-product of using MoveableType - it's one of the default templates, webgraphics version can be found here: http://www.web-graphics.com/mtweblog/index.xml. Perhaps MT should have some sort of auto replacement or alert warning when entering chars like & rather than &, or for hrefs that aren't quoted - both of those will break the xml. Luckily the easy editing tools make for quick fixins.

gish and owen are busy

glish is posting volumes in prep for a book he and owen are writing re: css. This means 2ice the goodness, we can look forward to a great css book, and we can enjoy an increased volume of references as they research.

Mini, but mighty!

An interview with Joe Gillespie - creator of Mini 7

Mini 7 - one of the most widely used bitmap fonts on the web achieving an incredible balance of size and readability. A interesting article detailing some of the finer points of letterform design. The site itself is home to some active forums on type and logo design which are worth checking out.

Also related:
http://www.typography.com/

screen reader

One of the points of making things accessible is to provide doorways to information much like you would design a building with both stairways and a wheelchair ramp. This sort of general idea has been a suitable compairison for me until I found this screen reader simulation. Wow, that's tough. Here's some basic notes on graphics accesibility in particular.

› January 15, 2002

Macromedia & Adobe Tutorials

I've been working with Ledet & Assoc, the training vendors, and while I haven't taken the class yet, they've hung with several timing alterations with aplomb. Digging into their site a bit, I found free PDF tutorial materials on acrobat/ aftereffects/ framemaker/ golive/ illustrator/ indesign/ photoshop/ premiere/ sitespring/ .

› January 14, 2002

small improvements

things here have gotten kind of self centered due to the implementation and fixins of this new design. We are really looking to make it as clean and accessible as possible, and have taken all comments about it seriously. Tonight I've done the following: removed the font sizer and changed the font units to a combination of percentages for the main text and pixels for the headers. This means you can resize the text with your browser - win IE hold ctrl and use the scroll button on your mouse (or choose view/text size) mac IE choose apple and plus/minus, other browsers have text size changing tools too - try 'em out (hopefully they work). I've also removed the search box temporarily because I wanted to make the site XHTML strict compliant - and currently the homepage validates. I now have to figure out how to put the search form back in without placing in an inline element. There have been a couple other tweaks, but I'll try not to waste time/space blogging about site tweaks, I'll just comment on this posting. I just noticed that mozilla is a little line-spacey... back to our regularly scheduled programming I promise. BTW - many new sites to add to the resources and weblog list... tomorrow nite. Improvements or bugs or thoughts to share? please do.

Disclaimer

We're gonna work out some kinks in the new design tonight, please bear with us - and send your bugs, critisizm, and thoughts our way - we'd love to hear what ever's on your mind about it. We will be looking over all the feedback and making changes, so far the feedback has been super helpful. So you probably already noticed that I failed to rename the cookie which stores font size, changing the font size again (top right) will fix it - it's a result of both forgetting to rename and changing the measurement units from points to pixels. Honest, I'm not trying to ruin your eyesight.

spreading the word

Helped a buddy to transfer his site to a completely CSS layout. Meanwhile I've realized several things that need fixing here.. it will have to wait till after work.

New Design

Welcome to the new 3 column design for webgraphics. This design was created by Pepe, and affords the site a much higher level of flexibility. Like the last few designs, it's all CSS based, and is aiming to be xhtml valid. I have a few things left to do, such as style up the archives and the search results, but otherwise it should be nearly there. Please feel free to let us know what you think of it.

› January 12, 2002

re design

Big changes going on with the design tonight - please pardon any mess as incorporate the new layout over the next few hours.

› January 9, 2002

Image mapping tool of choice

Last may I wrote to Martin E. Haring, the maker of MapMaker - a small but valuable image mapping tool for windows. I told him how much I've enjoyed using the tool and how much time it's saved me over the last few years, but that I could not find an image mapping tool that allowed zooming (in his tool or any others). Today I've received an email from Martin letting me know that MapMakerPro has been updated, and that it now has a zoom tool! I tested it out, and am super pleased. If you would like to make image maps quickly with a handy program that both supports zoom and has a tiny footprint (compaired to imageready etc) - go and download this program, it's well worth the $19.95 and I'm quite certian you can try before you buy.

› January 8, 2002

css tips

Small, clean, clear, super-usefull css tips from sorehead. via glish. I'll be referencing this as I put together some code optimizations and impliment Pepe's new design for this site. Will be folding more of the site's code into the moveable type cms so that I can better take advantage of the system.

› January 7, 2002

new imac

Nice report about the new imac at What Do I Know

tintin

I learned to read faster and appreciate illustration by re-reading tintin comics many times over as a kid. I thought it would be worth sharing that the comic has a fantastic website to enjoy: Tintin.com

LiveMotion 2.0 - released today

Adobe's answer to Macromedia's Flash application now sports full ActionScript support as well as tighter integration with Photoshop and Illustrator.

view rest of article

› January 6, 2002

New iMac?

About 12 hours short of the MacWorld keynote, Time Canada has released a cover story which may sum up all the hype surrounding Apple's big event.

pocketmac for os x

If you've got a windows ce device, but prefer os x for your workstation, you can now synch up with PocketMac's new osx version.

› January 5, 2002

Design Not Found

Reacquaint yourself with one of the smartest interface critique sites out there -- 37signals' Design Not Found -- and appreciate too its intelligent organisation and functionality, and the elegant, uncomplicated layout that belies the great attention to detail. Snappy title, too. I think the secret to its success is short critiques of individual kernels of interface design, rather than a waffly shotgun approach. Submissions, I believe, are only by 37signals staff, but it allows commenting. Worth adding to "Developer Reference"?

Great reading for when you're in bed with a bad cold and a warm laptop.

a very bad cold

I have come down with one of the worst colds I've had in years. 3 bowls of chicken soup, medication and a difficult night's rest have not improved the situation much. The common cold centre website includes the following page: General Common Cold Information, I especially like this advice:


How to avoid catching a cold
Become a hermit. If you are in contact with other people you are likely to get a cold as the viruses are so common.

› January 4, 2002

_atlanta.design.list

thanks to Melanie for pointing out that there is a list of atlanta web designers with lots of good talent.

More bookmarklets!

Blogdex indexes and cross-correlates weblogs. Get bookmarklets to make blog-tracking easier from shellen.com.

design change

Pepe has been quietly working in his workshop, putting blocks of wood through the sander, turning posts on the lathe, and carefully handmixing delicate stains and varnishes. Soon his new design for webgraphics will be implimented (I haven't seen it yet). If you're willing to pester him, I'd be very greatful.. you can do so via the contact page.

digital-web

New issue of Digital Web Magazine is out, and as usual, it's great. Looks like Homesite 5 has some strong improvements, but for my 2 cents I prefer the even less intrusive interface of textpad.

› January 3, 2002

Web Accessories for IE

The indispensible IE add-on for "view partial source" in the context menu still works for IE6. Get it in the "Web Developer Accessories" package off the Microsoft site. The beauty of this tool is that it shows the page source as it currently, not as it was served, should the two differ.


You can also get this functionality and way more with the Document Inspector in Mozilla 9.7. Be sure to add the sidebar inspector too for quick access to underlying code.

› January 2, 2002

comforts of home

Back home in Atlanta area, only to find that a none too often snowfall has occured. A good opportunity to unpack, relax and finally make use of the fireplace. This site has been on a bit of a winter vacation, but todd has been busy with a great re-design of his blog.

› January 1, 2002

Big Holiday

Thanksgiving, Herself's Birthday, Hanukah, Christmas, and New Years - and now a new one: Anniversary. Herself and Nate enjoyed a fantastic wedding ceremony and lots of good family time on the 28th. Writing from step-mother-in-law's dialup aol account, but will be back in full gear starting tomorrow. Wishing all the best to our webgraphics readers.