Post Archive

› March 31, 2002

Flash Blog

All the Flash MX news that's fit to print, via another flash blog flazoom.

› March 27, 2002

View Style Sheets Bookmarklet v2

With Leorean's permission I'm providing an alternate link to her latest bookmarklet:

View Stylesheets Sources

The code has been upgraded and the features are invaluable. To use it, simply bookmark the link (ie 6 and moz) above and activate it on any page you wish to view the css for. The bookmarklet supports multiple stylesheets and various linkage types, it provides access to the code of each style sheet (toggle on/off the viewing even!), the linkage method, a link to the css file itself, and the header codes are all available. All of this information is contained in an easy to use popup window [screenshot].

› March 26, 2002

View Stylesheet Sources Bookmarklet

A fantastic bookmarklet from Liorean's Weblog allows the viewing of stylesheet sources. This one is a definite keeper. In case it's relevent for anyone else, it seems like my winIe for 2k prefers the original version under the entry title "Bookmarklet Toy".

› March 24, 2002

ImageTagger

Got a folder full of images for the web, but don't feel like typing up img tags for each and every one? Check out ImageTagger for Mac OSX and 9. A little useless for one or two images, but priceless for more than a handful. The app automatically generates tags for each image, including properties like height, width, alt, border, etc. And hey, it's free.

› March 22, 2002

Call for MX Coder

A few months back, I hacked up a RSS reader in Flash with a nifty little UI. I had difficulty due to the primitive nature of event handling (coming from a DOM hacker) and some issues in XML parsing.

Flash MX seems to have addressed both of these issue... Anyone wanna update my RSS Reader? Get thesrc.

› March 21, 2002

Online cross-platform website testing

Musing yesterday: Wouldn’t it be great if someone was to set up a website that’ll provide snapshots of a given URL on any browser on any platform? I put down my thoughts here. Would have been very useful with our recent debate on font sizes on this site.

Anyone care to speculate on the feasibility of something like this?

› March 20, 2002

Daily CSS Lessons

Chris Casciano's month of Daily CSS Fun is complete, and what we are left with is 20 examples of how flexible css can be for one structurally valid document. The explinations of each style sheet, raw code, and screenshots make the resource that much more valuable.

DHTML Focus Newsletter

Eddie Traversa has published the 2nd issue of the dhtml.focus() newsletter. The newsletter is joint publication between Eddie and Jeff Rouyer and the current issue includes Internet Business Demographics and an article on Flash Vs. SVG. [Link Digital Web]

› March 19, 2002

New Font Settings

I know that reading a site's blathering on about it's own development can get a bit tiring, but since we've had two threads (1, 2) going on about how to best deal with font sizing, I thought I'd mention the latest experiment. I've switched the sizing over to percentages. The body tag gets font size of 80% and line height of 120%, and the h's get 100%. Is it perfect - nope, but I'm hoping that fewer browser setups will default to unreadable, and all will allow text zooming. I'm also thinking that an alternate "large print" css version should be available, and will work on that in the near future.

FlashMX and Components

Via the atlanta design list, a couple sites offering flash mx components: flashcomponents.net and http://www.waxpraxis.org. More information about what flash components are, as well as a download of the "Macromedia Flash UI Components Set 2 " is available from macromedia. The Macromedia flash dev center has an article about creating components. And here are a couple more mx specific tutorials.

Gazingus Redux

Dave sent a nice email to report that gazingus has been updated. Find scripts, tips and other goodies and don't forget to pester dave till he adds more.

AOL Making MS-Style Move?

The irony. MSNBC, a Microsoft venture, reports that AOL is testing a software version minus the IE browser by using Netscape's Web browser instead. If they indeed make the switch, then the browser wars may be on again. Link from Digital Web.

› March 18, 2002

We Should NOT Be Ashamed

Updated CSS for this site to try using EMs. A limited browser test looks hopeful, although mozilla doesnt seem to want to increase the lineheight. I also updated to the high pass filter, which prevents mac ie 4.5 from trying to render the css here. If no one mentions any problems on untested platforms/browsers then the next step will be to provide an alternate stylesheet for those that want to read this site with larger text but don't want to adjust their browser font size settings. Although I like the small fonts here, I certainly wouldn't bother upping the font size on each visit, this way folks can have prefered stylings saved in a cookie - much like the old font resizer, but without all the looping dom change baggage. Leave a comment if you like/dislike how the EMs are working.

Posts eaten

I'm not exactly sure, but some sort of black whole seems to have eaten todays posts. Meryl's note was simillar to this one.

› March 17, 2002

Obligitory Photos

I'm obviously back from the beach, where wedding occured. Today we stopped by one more time to enjoy the fresh air and were visited by this 3 foot tall bird.

We Should Be Ashamed

This comment is harsh but true, and with no good excuse on our part. Will change coding in css so that resizing is possible in very near future.

Bitten by Monkey

DCe pointed out that the show divs bookmarklet has become a monkey bite, although if you're looking at this starting tomorrow it will probably be here.

OSX File Explorer

The file system is something of a holy grail in software design. The web has taken a different slant on this with it's popular Information Architecture rubric where the approach is generally to expand the organization beyond a simple hierarchy, rather than extend the methods for exploring the hierarchy (with a couple of notable exceptions) .


The Eazel project made the quest high profile in the dot-com glory days, and the file system is one of the more noticable areas of change in WinXP. Neither of these efforts rival the 3DOSX's potential for redefining this interaction. An OpenGL implementation for Max OSX, 3DOSX combines transparency, fore/backgrounding, and a seemingly more usable spinning platter approach than the dock.

High Pass Filter

Tantek Celik has written instructions for creating a High Pass Filter. The only hack would be the filter itself. Thanks to diveintomark for posting it.

› March 16, 2002

SVG approaching critical mass.

Scalable Vector Graphics is approaching critical mass. Check out the SVG notebook for a guide to the specification components and pubs at xml.com.


For more info on the Mozilla SVG implementation (not in main distributions), visit the project for adding graphing tags to Mozilla.

› March 15, 2002

Travel

Off to a wedding in Florida for the weekend, perhaps our other authors will step up to the plate. Cheers!

Another bmark variation

Because it's buried in the archives now, I wanted to let readers know that "DCe" has posted a new bookmarklet that works like the show divs one we worked on previously but for tables and cells. The interesting thing about this one as apposed to other show table bookmarklets is the use of red outlines for tables and dashed grey lines for cells - just seems to make more sense when looking at complicated nested tables. Unfortunately it doesnt toggle yet, but if anyone is up for posting more variations, or other bookmarklets - we'd all be greatful! Here's the post where DCe added his bookmarklet (near bottom of page).

› March 14, 2002

css links

Thanks to Meryl for finding this huge list of css related stuff from the University of Minnesota at Duluth.

High Pass Filter

Ah cool CSS filtering from tantek, as zeldman pointed out, tantek's site now has links to this highpass filter and other goodies.

13 Parallel Group Interview

Interesting question/answer session over at 13parallel, via glish one of the interviewed.

Bad MM

Simon St. Laurent shares thoughts about why the new flash and MM's marketing of same isn't worthy his "five cowboy hats" rating: Macromedia reinvents the Web. I'm left thinking this is a bit whiney, big company does what big companies naturally do. Then again I'm probably just cranky from not having enough coffee yet. Sorry about the 5 cowboy hats thing, getting more coffe now. Oh, and this article is via flazoom.

› March 13, 2002

What Are We Doing?

Things have gotten a bit quiet here due to a new level of busy-ness on my part. So I thought I'd use the opportunity to pose a question, not as filler, but because my link gathering hours have been cut short lately and it's on my mind:
When I was just starting to learn html, trying to wrap my head around table coding, and getting frustrated with the differences between various browser versions, I do remember a distinct frustration. It was a learning challenge, obviously new browser versions brought more challenge/frustrations. It seemed though that after a while a core base of techniques (not proper markup) worked well for different purposes and across the board.
Now with the new learning challenge of css based design, I'm wondering if my somewhat older brain (well a few years older anyway) is getting less flexible, or if the challenges are much more numerous.
I like the idea of learning the "right" way to do things intimately well, so that as new projects crop up, each one is an excersize on solid foundations - but css based layouts seem to be evading a deep understanding.
Certainly a page constructed with valid markup can be styled many ways, especially if pre-version 5 browsers are aesthetically abandoned, but the visual landscape one can create around a properly structured document seem to be limited by the very fact that it's a style-ization of a properly structured document.
I suppose the question might be better asked about the content of the web (if such a generalization could be made) - is it nessessarily better that web content is thought of as primarily text documents? Yes of course there's huge chunk of the web that is and should be just that, but it seems that css/valid document structuring abandons other interface potentials.
And yet there is definitely something beautiful about a document following clean markup structure, reading perfectly sharp and vanilla on old browsers and otherwise following your visual styling rules with an efficient perfection.
So, are we simply missing more structuring markup rules for different non-document oriented interfaces? Should non document based interfaces all be constructed in flash to avoid the issue and afford more potential?

› March 12, 2002

Please Think Inside the Box

Boxes and Arrows is now live with lots to read through.

› March 11, 2002

php intro

a handy intro/reference to php via kumo

› March 9, 2002

pdf and php

Want to create dynamic pdf documents with PHP, but don't want to (or can't) install any of those required modules? R&OS pdf from PHP class

› March 8, 2002

It ain't multimedia till it smells.

I found this sillyness two years ago by accident, and it's still there: Odoriferous Style Sheets.

scottandrew and mirror project

Ah, some fresh javascript xml-rpc action going on at scottandrew.com, this one calls random mirror project items.

› March 5, 2002

Flash 99 Percent Good

I asked Kevin of the flash usability resource flash99good for an update on their resources given the new version of flash, Kevin says:
"When Flash MX launches I will be posting new tutorials on how to take advantage of the new usability code in MX. I will also be changing the underlying code of site source to MX so it will function better with Macintosh browsers. Users will have the option to download either the older 5.0 FLA's or the MX FLA's depending on what meets their needs."


› March 4, 2002

Flash MX

A major update to Flash is schedule to be released in a few weeks. New features include common UI widgets, video, more ECMAScript, and a general workflow/UI overhaul. Looks to be right on.

Nice job 37Signals

Nice re-design 37!

On-line OS UI guidelines

I just discovered the very useful Macintosh Human Interface guidelines are available online (via the excellent saila.com), as well as the OS 8 and Aqua guidelines. Then, doing a quick search for the Windows equivalent, I discovered the Interface Mafia already put these links together on a page. I can add one, though, having recently come across the KDE UI guidelines as well.

Now I feel somewhat bad at not having read through all these yet. Not that they're necessarily gospel, but all interface designers (even for the web) have a responsibility to respect existing OS-level interface standards. Or at least learn from them. The most meaningful innovation is that which is the result of transcending what you've learned, and not merely the result of ignorance.

Now, Apple Records seething...

Apple wins 2002 Technical GRAMMY for their contribution to the music industry. This is the first Technical GRAMMY ever awarded to a PC company.

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