Post Archive

› December 30, 2005

Bookmark: my Top 20 of 2005

We can't escape it: the end of the year is the time for lists, charts and so on... To honour the tradition, a few days ago over at blog.html.it I posted my top 20 bookmarks of 2005. I'll report them here in English: they're divided by category, in no particularar order.

› December 25, 2005

Printing CSS background images (sort of)

So you've made a standards compliant site for your client, nicely separating content from layout, and even provided a print stylesheet. The client likes the site's visuals a lot, and decides to print out the front page... Confusion ensues - where did the page banner go, and why is there text instead? He asks you about it, and you explain that browsers cannot do not print CSS background images by default, but render the title's text instead. Some clients leave it like that, others insist you "fix" the problem. The usual solution then is to do it the old-school way: include the image via the <img /> tag instead of using one of the many image replacement techniques.

I found another, non-HTML based solution (example) though, and list-style-image is the keyword. I explain.

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› December 14, 2005

Handy Color Palette

I must admit it: I've never had a good color sense. Having to prepare various examples, I felt the need to dispose of colors quickly, and have the possibility to build color palettes in an easy way.

So I started thinking about the development of a palette. The result that I'd like to share: here's my handy color palette, with 144 colors in. Feel free to get it and use it whenever you lack of color inspiration, just open it and use a color picker to grab its hex codes.

Introducing Dark Eye

A while ago I talked about inspirational sites. The number of showcase sites it's always growing, but if you've missed it, Dark Eye is a web2.0 webdesign showcase built by its visitors and users, with some very cool ajax features. Since two months I opened my own gallery which I've named Design Breakfasts that counts nearly 120 sites at the moment.

Best. Album. Ever

To round out or lineup of celebrity Say-So's, we end with a post by Ethan Marcotte, one of the nicest web designers you could meet at SXSW and co-author of the WROX Professional CSS book. Ethan wants to know who's at the top of your favorite music list, share your preference at his Say-So: Best. Album. Ever.

› December 13, 2005

Blue or Graphite?

Today's Celebrity Say-So comes from John Gruber, author of Daring Fireball. Gruber is perhaps the most discriminating writer on the web, anyone with an interest in the general categories of Mac or web should be reading Daring Fireball regularly.

John asks Mac OS X users: Blue or Graphite?

› December 12, 2005

The Forgotten Ponies

The celeb Say-So thing continues this week, starting off with Kevin Byrd's curiosity about band names, I'd bet more votes are tallied for The Forgotten Ponies but these things are very difficult to judge. While you're browsing, don't miss Kevin's blog and Lighroom where Kevin, William and Aaron make design and architecture happen.

A few bits and pieces...

I've been a bit quite of late so I thought it might be time to post four tiny tutorials. All of these came from questions on the Web Standards Group mailing list. Posted for those who may find them useful... or those who are bored...

› December 9, 2005

Where'd you come from?

To wrap-up this week's run of Celeb Say-So's, my friend and co-founder of Twinsparc, Arturo Rodriguez wonders about your back-story. How many of us are in the profession we imagined for ourselves early in life? I'd guess not many, given what a short time the internets has been around. So what did you think you'd become as a child? Learn Arturo's summarized story, and share yours at his Say-So post: Where'd you come from?.

The Website Development Process (with cute figurines)

Pingmag, one of my favorite online magazines, has a great visualization of "The Website Development Process". The text is sharp and to the point, the photos beautiful and full of wit. I love it.

And while you're at it, also check out their Dec 7 post about the recent Pingmag redesign.

› December 8, 2005

Film or Digital?

Thursday's celebrity Say-So is for everyone with a camera: Film or Digital?, and who better to pose a photography related question than Flickr community manager, Mirror Project originator, and JPG magazine co-editor Heather Powazek Champ? Hop on your soapbox, share a thought, or just cast your vote over at the Say-So post: Film or Digital?

› December 7, 2005

Wine?

Dan Cederholm is curious - do you prefer red or white wine? If you're racking your brains to figure out if this is some new cryptic web development lingo.. relax, it's just another day in the celebrity say-so series. After you've voiced your beverage preference, check out the cross-interview between Hicks & Cederholm in this month's Treehouse Magazine

UPDATE: Comments here are always welcome, but the red vs. white wine discussion is actually over here.

› December 6, 2005

Has Flash 8 lived up to the hype?

Today's Celebrity Say-So - Stefan Kjartansson, accomplished designer and creator of some fonts you'd recognize asks: Has Flash 8 lived up to the hype?.

› December 5, 2005

Keeping up with the Say-So

Two Say-So's have been posted in our series so far. Add your input to: What the hell is a weblog? (Redux) by Derek Powazek, and today Delivery is 99.9% of success by Michael Buzzard.

› December 4, 2005

Paper: mobile web development in Japan

Back in March, I wrote a paper about mobile webdev practices in Japan for a conference at Berkeley - my paper was accepted, but apparently, the publication process is delayed quite a bit. As I don't like waiting, I decided to go ahead and make my paper available online (under a CC license).

Note:
Instead of immediately diving into the mobile webdev topic, I felt is was necessary to start with some context: I first explain about device independence, and then compare 1990s webdev practices (i-mode started in 1999, when IE5 was a novelty) with web standards. Then, I focus on the current state of the Japanese web and explain what I believe should change. So, those who don't need all the contextual talk may want to start from section 4.

OK, there you go: Mobile Web Development in Japan: A Tag Soup Tale.

› December 1, 2005

Celebrity Say-So

About a month ago Twinsparc & Adair Systems launched Say-So. This week we are pleased to kickoff Celebrity Say-So.

We invited a group of notable web designers and developers to give Say-So a whirl for the first couple weeks of December. Each person will make one post on a scheduled day, and everyone is invited to participate in the resulting conversation. More info and the schedule is over here.

Looking for hard-hitting serious web design discussions? That's not what we're doing here, the topics are wide open and this is just for fun - enjoy!

Our inaugral lineup is... Derek Powazek, Mike Buzzard, Stefan Kjartansson, Dan Cederholm, Heather Powazek Champ, Arturo Rodriguez, Kevin Byrd, John Gruber, and Ethan Marcotte

Ruby on Rails on OS X Tiger

Dan is on a streak lately, now he's posted Building Ruby, Rails, LightTPD, and MySQL on Tiger, it's a complete step by step that leaves you with the ability to run any Ruby on Rails app, and won't get messed up when it's time for a system update or OS upgrade.

2006 webdesign trends forecast

Over at http://blog.html.it, the italian multi-author blog I write for, I just posted an entry about 2006 webdesign trends. I'm posting a translation here, but as the title says, please keep in mind that it's just a forecast. I don't have a crystal ball, yet...

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Welcome Chris Wilson

Let's welcome Chris Wilson to our list of authors here at Web-Graphics. He is a highly skilled applications developer and has helped Twinsparc out on numerous occasions. Expect posts from Chris regarding coding, PHP and OS X.