Psyked*

it’s easy once you know how.

Displaying Link locations with CSS

Posted by James - 27/11/07 at 09:11:15 am

Why would you want too?

How often is it the case that you’re not quite sure where a link is going to take you? Ok, so it’s not a major issue for mainstream browsers - after all, that’s what the “Status bar” is for. But beyond your normal browser operation - say on an unusual machine or if you’re looking at a print-off - just how can you tell where a link should be going? If the link text is good, you might be able to track down the target page, but that’s nothing compared to the usefullness of a full URL.

Luckily with a smidgen of CSS and an up-to-date browser, you can solve at least a few of these problems in a nice, clever way. A List Apart covered this in the misty old era of 2002, back when I was still making HTML pages with notepad and cobbling together images with Trial versions of Paint Shop Pro. In the article, CSS Design: Going to Print, they Eric Meyer covers - amongst other things - the issue of displaying ‘Printed links’, making links that are as useful in print as they are functional onscreen. Continue reading Displaying Link locations with CSS…

3 Snazzy Photoshop tutorials to check out…

Posted by James - 26/11/07 at 09:11:43 am

There’s nothing like a good round of tutorials to help your Monday morning procrastination inspiration. If you haven’t already seen them, I’d suggest having a look at the following three Photoshop tutorials;

• Creating an Old-Collage effect poster
• Using Light & Shade to Bring Text to Life
• Vector Polishing Techniques

And then have a look at this article / tutorial on ‘the Polish’ (aka. finishing touches)

• Elements of Great Web Design: The Polish

Design Trends: Tabloid Pages

Posted by James - 25/11/07 at 01:11:43 pm

Introduction

Web design enevitably has some hangovers from the early days. The web is, and always has been, really nothing more than a network of documents. Ok so the documents are often cleverly generated on-the-fly by computer systems, but they’re still documents. That’s one thing a lot of people don’t seem to realise, one of the obsticles to understanding ‘how it all works’. The only unique thing about documents on the web is the hyperlink and by extension, the concept of navigation.

Backstory

With no precident set for navigations, and tables being such a dominant aspect of page construction, they more-or-less defined what the web could look like. From this came the standard 3-area division of the page, with side-navigation, top-navigation and content. Perhaps because of browser behaviour - like the default 10 pixel page padding - or more likely because fluid-width designs were a real pain in the rear, fixed-width layouts were predominent, and this led to the standard ‘boxed’ page idea. Or, the idea that a webpage should have a visibly limited width, enclosed within a box and surrounded by a different coloured background.
Continue reading Design Trends: Tabloid Pages…

More development peeky-sneaks…

Posted by James - 18/11/07 at 01:11:43 am

Perhaps not as exciting as yesterdays’ post, but at least this time I’m showing off my own experiaments! This time, we’re looking at sound visualization with ActionScript 3. And playing around with Zinc to get a transparent-desktop application version. Neat, huh?

Development sneaky-peek

Posted by James - 17/11/07 at 12:11:31 pm

I just had to show off one of Marks’ little prototypes.

Continue reading Development sneaky-peek…

Vector Magic

Posted by James - 12/11/07 at 12:11:08 am

Vector Magic was recently introduced to me by Spreadshirt.  Essentially, it’s an online vector tracing tool, kinda like those bundled with packages like the Adobe suite or other design programs.  It relies on Flex, although I can’t quite figure out whether it’s Flex or the Vector Magic servers that are doing the heavy lifting - probably a bit of both.  I’m quite interested in this though, and their claims about the awesomeness of their service vs. others are certainly impressive.

Interface-wise it’s functional, pretty standard flex interfaces, which actually inspires confidence that the back-end programming must be pretty hot.  Sofar I’ve only tested this with simple and unimportant images, but it’s real strength is going to be in Vectorisation of things like corporate logos - I just haven’t given this a test yet.  But I’d certainly say that it’s worth a visit.

Recent Posts Range Widget

Posted by James - 11/11/07 at 01:11:51 am

‘Recent Posts Range’ is an expansion of the functionality offered by the built-in Wordpress Widget, ‘Recent Posts’ and allows you to specifiy a starting index for your ‘Recent Posts’ display. Why would we need this? Well, when you have a few post summaries on your homepage, it seems futile to be displaying the same links again in the sidebar, wouldn’t you agree?

With this widget, you can display some more of your older posts, without cluttering things up too much. Heck, you could even use it with the standard ‘Recent Posts’ widget to get ‘Older posts’.

Download Recent Posts Range now!

Customizable widget Features:

• Wordpress 2.3 Compatable!
• Name
• Start index
• Number of posts
• Optional (on/off) Post date display
• Optional (on/off) Post exerpt display

Doesn’t feature (i.e. I can’t figure it out) :

• Post category / tag exclusions

Download Recent Posts Range now!

It’s funny where a caffeine-fuelled night will ends up.