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.
Outlook email newsletters and the AutoPreview pane
Cranking out email newsletters for Microsoft Outlook can be a pain, but if you are in the web business you may have to crank out the occasional email newsletter, and of course Outlook has a major market share. If you use Outlook you may know of the AutoPreview feature. This is a preview pane below the actual title that gives you the first few lines of content within the email. In many email newsletters you will get something like “View the online version of our newsletter”. This is probably not what you want to show up in the Outlook AutoPreview, and the way around it is quite simple. It’s also another chance to entice your audience into opening your email newsletter.
Creating OFT templates for Outlook 2010
I wrote an article a few years ago on creating OFT files for Outlook. This was written for Outlook 2007, and since then, Outlook 2010 has been released and things have changed. The ability to view web pages within Outlook 2010 has been removed and the UI has also been redone, but fear not, the ability to make OFT files still exists, although it’s not as straight forward as it used to be.
14 killer web design and development tools for the Mac
Here are 14 must have web design and development tools for the Mac that I use on a daily bases. Many of these applications are also available on windows, and the ones that are not have alternatives. These tools can make your life easier and optimize your workflow. Unless the word “demo” is included in the download link, most of these apps are Open Source or just plain free.
Email newsletters in Lotus Notes and table width
Lotus Notes, or Locust Notes as some of my colleagues like to call it is probably the hardest email client in wide use to code for. Depending on which version you are trying to support, you may be in for a real nightmare. I recently marked up a very basic email newsletter that had to work in Lotus Notes 6.5 and I still had a lot of trouble getting it to work. The same rules apply to Lotus as that of Outlook 2007, build your emails with a slew of tables and spacer gifs and use as little CSS as possible, this is especially true for older versions of Lotus notes. I wanted to share one particularly nasty bug that I squashed, and that is how Lotus deals with table widths.
Blurry Guides in Photoshop CS5
I just started using Adobe’s CS5 this week at work. When ever I install a new version of any software I usually run into a lot of bug and configuration issues, and Photoshop is no exception. If you are a web designer and use Photoshop then pixel perfect precision is a must. When you first use CS5 on your next web mockup you may notice that the guides you set up are blurry. They are about 2 pixels wide and pretty much useless for web layouts.
How to use Drush with Drupal
I was recently at Drupal Camp Toronto which is a conference on Drupal. It was a fantastic place to learn about what other modules and strategies people are using with Drupal. Having only created a couple of Drupal sites myself, it was great to be around so many people that build Drupal sites for a living. Out of everything I learned at Drupal Camp the single most amazing tool had to be Drush. I still have a lot other modules to research that I learned about from the conference and Drush isn’t even really a module, but it’s still a lot of awesome.
