My newest website
Over the past few months I have been working on a new project. I really wanted to try something different, something I personally enjoy. I find writing about anything you are not actually passionate about can be a real drag, so with that in mind, I picked a topic I knew I could write well for, get excited about and stay motivated for. With that said it’s time to reveal my newest website ThemePassion.
IE6 is dead! … No really, I mean it this time!
How many times have we heard that IE6 is dead or even it’s funeral announced? The fact of the matter is that IE6 is not dead until your clients say so, or you just stop taking on clients who demand support for it. As with so many web projects, it’s often not your choice anyway, but we can still try and nudge them along with a decision to axe IE6. Charging more money, removing fantastic features from your mockups, or showing clients web stats are some methods that can be used to steer people away from this ancient browser. Google has also added one more tool to our arsenal and I recently got to use it on a project that was self destructing in IE6.
Philanthropy in Kenya
The company I work for, Ariad, is currently undertaking something fantastic that I feel deserves attention. Ariad has always given a lot to philanthropic causes in the past, but this is probably one of the biggest contributions we’ve made to date. Two years ago Ariad formed a partnership with Free the Children and donated $40,000 to support infrastructure development in rural Kenya. This is amazing on it’s own, but this year the company helped send 10 employees to visit Kenya to see first-hand our donations at work. While they are there, they will help build a school, visit local communities and end with a safari in the Maasai Mara.
Before they left I was pretty excited to help set up a blog so they could document their adventures in Kenya while they were actually there, and the experience still fresh in their minds. So far the stories have been nothing short of amazing and I’m proud to work for a company involved in this kind of philanthropic work. You can find out more, and follow their adventures on our Kenya Blog.
Clearing the jQuery animation queue
Ever see sites where a jQuery animation happens over and over when you rollover or click it multiple times. It’s almost as if the animations are stacking on top of one another in a queue and executing one by one, and guess what? That’s exactly what’s happening. Not to worry though, there is a simple and easy way to fix this.
3 easy methods to create dotted or dashed lines in Photoshop
Dotted or dashed lines can be a great design element and easy to achieve with a bit of CSS, but creating a lot of them in Photoshop mockups can be time consuming and frustrating. There are 3 simple ways to create dotted or dashed lines in Photoshop. The first one is the way a lot of people probably do it and that’s by doing it with the pencil tool dot by dot and then duplicating the layer. This is slow but there are ways to speed up the process. The 2nd method is achieved by using the brush palette spacing settings. The 3rd method is uses custom patterns. This tutorial will cover all three methods with the Mac/Windows shortcut keys needed to speed up the process.
Firebug for IE
Tonight I stumbled across Firebug Lite and was ecstatic to find that all the features I use the most are available not just for IE, but pretty much any modern browser. There are other debuggers out there, but I know a lot of people really love Firebug. This fantastic tool really lets you get under the hood and see what’s going on, it’s saved me countless hours, but what would save me even more time and effort is if it was available for the browser where 95% my problems occur; Internet Explorer. Firebug was also number one on my post “14 killer web design and development tools for the Mac“.
When Mac OS X Exposé and screenshot capture stop working!
You may have experience this before, you are working away and suddenly Exposé, screen shot capture or hot corners stops working! It is an extremely frustrating bug I have experience for some time on Mac OS X, and up until recently only a reboot would remedy it. This is not something I have experienced on all Macs either, and unfortunately I don’t know what is causing it, but I have found a fix that’s made life a little easier.
Using custom CSS and Javascript in WordPress posts
Today while writing The secrets to using custom web fonts I ran into a bit of a snag. I wanted to show several CSS driven examples within the post, but the WordPress editor would remove anything I added. I have dealt with this issue in the past, usually in a clunky manner or even hosted separate example pages. This time though I really wanted the font examples to show up within the actual page content and I didn’t want to add more styles to my WordPress theme. The method I used is remarkably easy and can be implemented in about two or three minutes.
The secrets to using custom web fonts
If you are a web designer then you’re already fully aware of the limitations surrounding the usage of fonts on the web. For years we have basically had two reliable options, use a standard web based font that is included on most operating systems with a few fall back fonts, or images. For headlines, custom fonts and anything fancy images were the only way to go, but that’s all about to change.
Creating email newsletter margins with tables
This may seem painfully obvious to some, especially the more seasoned old school table based web designers out there, but I’m still amazed at how many email newsletters don’t render properly in my inbox. Remember when it comes to email newsletters tables are king and web standards go out the window! It sucks, but that’s the way it is, so lets move on.
