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it’s easy once you know how.

RSS. Bling or no Bling?

Posted by James - 28/05/07 at 05:05:23 pm

Times move fast on the web. RSS has been mainstream for quite a while. So long, in fact, that RSS readers are now built into the two major windows browsers, Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2. It’s been inbuilt for longer on the Mac, I hear.
So, in our busy little ‘Web 2.0′ designs, why does the staple ingredient of Blogs and Community websites need to be emblazoned in the design? I mean, what’s the point?

Continue reading RSS. Bling or no Bling?…

Flash Video – the Solution?

Posted by James - 28/05/07 at 04:05:31 pm

Working with a lot of Flash video (.flv) I’m acutely aware of the lack in decent, standalone FLV Players. Sure, there’s a few out there, but not many that are decent. I have used FLV Player 1.3.3, but it’s not up to much when you’re trying to preview or edit files. Adobe’s own Flash Video Encoder is worse than id’ve thought it would be. You can only encode once, and you can’t decode, edit or view the files afterwards. We have been promised the arrival of the Adobe Media Player, but that’s no comfort until it actually materializes.
Continue reading Flash Video – the Solution?…

Kuler Desktop released!

Posted by James - 28/05/07 at 02:05:54 pm

I noticed today that Kuler Desktop has arrived. Kuler, as I’ve mentioned before, is an awesome tool, and one which I first found out about through my research into Apollo. Kuler was always designed to be one of the first Apollo aps, a community colour-scheme orientated plugin for CS3. It was released early in Flex, probably to build up a following, with the promised that the Apollo one was on its’ way. And now it’s here. You can download the .air file from Kuler’s subdomain.

Figuring out WordPress

Posted by James - 26/05/07 at 12:05:01 pm

WordPress is very flexible, as I’m sure you’d guess. But how exactly can you get the best of it, from a coding point-of-view?

The danger with WordPress, of course, is that’d you’d just create yet-another WordPress Blog. Default settings, popular plugins, familiar layout. Undoubtably they all have their merits, but you’d be nievé to think there wasn’t room for improvement. So, here’s me, trying to improve on the WordPress standards. A little more thought into the information given on a per-page basis, for example. Or different layouts, that sort of thing.
Continue reading Figuring out WordPress…

Adobe CS3 Icons

Posted by James - 18/05/07 at 07:05:58 am

It’s so hard to find useful resources for Icons on the web. Especially product icons. If you’ve ever tried putting together a design, one that requires product attribution, you’ll know what I mean. Far as I’m concerned, companies should start including things like hi-res pngs of their icons with the product. C’mon, don’t make me Google ‘Adobe CS3 Product Icons’ just to get a decent (i.e. full transparency & larger than 32x32pixels) logo.

Regardless, I found a cool set of these Icons the other day, thanks to koregraphik. The icons aren’t exact rips of the ‘real’ icons, but they’re very close. (Scaled down to 32×32 the rounded corners are neglible, and actually make the icon look smoother) They look sweet at full scale, and that’s good enough for me.

Keeping your finger on the pulse with Smashing Magazine

Posted by James - 16/05/07 at 11:05:51 pm

Smashing magazine (‘we smash you with the information, which will make your life easier. really.’) is one of those pseudo-blogs, regurgitating content from other sites as a method of generating traffic. Well, at least that’s what I assume. Behind the ads* there’s a wealth of decent resources, and it’s updated at a furious rate. For example, there seems to be 100 links+ in each of their ‘Best of Month‘ articles. (and with that many links, there’s gotta be something good)

They don’t obviously write all this content, but seem to read and research everything that’s going on through digg, digital web and the like, and then prepare and serve it up in healthy doses every week (or more).

Head on over there, read their past articles and sign up to their RSS. You’ll thank me later on.

* remind me to do a post on how to remove them sometime…

Secret Weapon 1 : Kuler

Posted by James - 15/05/07 at 10:05:15 pm

Print Designers have it easy, you know. They get things like Pantone Books, and well, things like that. Time to even the score? I think so, and obviously so does Adobe.

Until recently, I’d touted ColorJack as the best place to gen-up on colour theory and match colours, and it’s still pretty good. But Kuler, from Adobe Labs, is awesome for matching up colour schemes. Even better than that, you can save your schemes and share them with others. If you’re stuck for inspiration, take it from someone else’s scheme. If you need a good match, you can use Kuler’s tools to pick a theoretical partner.

Go ahead, check it out.