Meet Jack the Lumberjack. He’s the new mascot for Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS . When working on the e-book, I wanted to have something that could provide an identity for the book and for the project. The idea of it being a lumberjack quickly came to mind. I liked the idea of a lumberjack for a number of reasons. For those that aren’t aware, I live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada… Read the rest here
Take it with the usual grain of salt that should accompany any news of global browser trends, but, extrapolating out from the 2011 trend in StatCounter’s Global Stats Chrome appears set to surpass IE as the most-used desktop browser some time next summer. And that will finally end the 13 year domination of the market by Internet Explorer. Though, I’m a little sad that Chrome’s market share is also coming at the expense of Firefox. … Read the rest here
I’m blessed to have remarkable parents who created opportunties for unforgettable experiences during my childhood. This is one of those experiences. Leading up to Christmas one year, my parents gathered the family together and announced that we would be helping another family in need. This wasn’t foreign to us, as we had not only done the same before, but we had also been the recipients of similar giving during lean Christmases as a family. The plan was simple: For 12 days leading up to Christmas, we would deliver a package with food, toys, and essential supplies. … Read the rest here
Recently I pulled this form letter out of storage. It’s one of my favorite mementos of Grandpa Moll. An independent contractor later in life, he probably sent this to companies in the surrounding area, most likely larger cities such as Reno, Nevada, as his quaint home town of Markleeville, California had only about 150 residents at the time. Back when I did client work as a freelancer, I would often describe myself as a pinch-hitter . In baseball, a pinch-hitter substitutes for another player when the coach feels the substitute player may perform a specific duty, such as bunting or base running, better than the player he replaces. Not that the pinch-hitter is better overall than the other player, just that he might have a better shot at succeeding in a specific scenario or critical play in a close game… Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
This year marks my site’s tenth birthday online, so I’m celebrating with a new design edition. This is number five! I noticed something with my last site a little while ago. The custom designed articles I was posting (and that I loved to post) were keeping me from writing more regularly. It had nothing to do with the time involved to design those article, I usually kept things simple and got to be pretty fast at it, but more the presentation that bugged me. In order to post something, I felt it couldn’t be short or just a quip on a topic, it had to be substantial. I fell into a design trap I unknowingly set for myself. … Read the rest here
Just a quick documentation of this interesting bug. This only happens in Internet Explorer 8 (but not 7 or 9), which was interesting. If you have an element with long text but it has white-space:nowrap to prevent text wrapping with a max-width and overflow:hidden to clip the overflowed text, then a floated container (which should collapse to the width of the content) will collapse to the width of the text as if it was not set to be clipped. The use of text-overflow:ellipsis has no effect on this. … Read the rest here
Plane Trails : A curated Flickr gallery. More please. /via @ bpotstra … Read the rest here
Codex : A Flickr photoset showing the cover and spreads of the upcoming Codex , “the journal of typography”. Stunning. … Read the rest here
Can CSS create art? That’s a question I set out to explore recently, and I like to think that the answer is yes. You can judge for yourself: Spinning the Web , a photo set on Flickr. To be clear, when I say “Can CSS create art?” I don’t mean that in the sense of wondering if art, or artful designs, can be accomplished with CSS. … Read the rest here
Activate : What a terrific idea (and site). Get geeks out of the office and into the outdoors. A full-day event for web designers and developers in Kent, England. I vote for holding the next one in Escalante, Utah . Anyone game? … Read the rest here
I mentioned a while back that while I’ve been enjoying the Globe for its comfortable, relaxed style, I’d been thinking of getting a proper road bike for weekend and sunny evening jaunts around the countryside. Not being able to justify the cost of a new bike just yet, and heavily inspired by Simon Clayson’s Peugeot 753 project , I spent a while watching items on ebay, looking for a suitable basis for a project bike. Ideally I was looking for something with a classic style frame with flat top tube that was rideable from the off without needing too much work. I knew that it would probably be something that would need a respray and work done further down the road, but it would allow me to find out if a road bike was ‘for me’, without spending too money up front. If it did work out, I could improve and upgrade it and spread the cost out over time, but if it didn’t, no big loss… Read the rest here
I’ve had a BlackBerry PlayBook for about 24 hours now, and I’m fairly impressed. If history is any precedent, I’ll probably not make time for a full review, so my review in a tweet will have to suffice. The PlayBook was purchased to round out the devices I use for testing , specifically adaptive/responsive web design in this round of testing. Capturing screenshots is critical for sharing the results of my testing with the developers who assist me. Thankfully, taking screenshots on a PlayBook is a snap… Read the rest here
I’d be the first to admit that the geekery of bike components appeals to me as much as the actual cycling. As the author Robert Penn says It’s all about the Bike . I’m currently fiddling away on a road bike project , using a 10 year old Peugeot picked up off ebay as the basis, and choosing replacement parts is great fun. My tastes started off retro, or ‘vintage’ as the cycling crowd would call it (retro to them means the ’80s), preferring steel, honey brown leather and highly polished metal. Recently though, I’ve been getting into the look of more contemporary parts just as much. … Read the rest here
One of the things I really enjoyed working on (and continue to enjoy working on) is keyboard access in the new Yahoo! Mail. As a fan of using the keyboard, I wanted to make sure that using Mail felt natural and was easy to move around the application. This is much harder than it looks because we have to establish a balance between a web page model and an application model. Todd Kloots, from the accessibility team at Yahoo!, and I had a number of discussions to establish a consistent pattern that could be applied to all widgets within a page and could be applied to all products that we were building. It was important to establish a consistency in design and a consistency in implementation… Read the rest here
Words are not enough to express how much I want this figure. Or… to be this figure for that matter! Now available for pre-order from Crazylabel . Tagged: pipes , toys , vinyl … Read the rest here
Hiring: Top-Shelf Designer at Envy Labs : Envy Labs, a Ruby on Rails shop, is seeking a skilled UI designer for their Orlando offices (just a couple hours from my home). They’re a small shop that has grown from one to 16 employees over the past two years. You’ll find photos and even a walk-through video of their offices in the listing. Related, download a copy of their Rails 3 Cheat Sheet (PDF). … Read the rest here
How does a photo of a fruit fly breeding chamber lead to the discovery of one’s own lineage back to 14th century France? That’s not a question I’d ever have thought to ask, but this evening I found an answer after following the most fascinating click trail in, well, ever. It started with an idle perusal of recent Flickr photos from my contacts. Jeremy Keith is currently in Chicago for DrupalCon, and after a page of tantalizing food and architectural photos, I found myself back in Brighton looking at his photos from a laboratory-related exhibit at the Lighthouse Gallery. One especially mundane photo in particular caught my eye, his capture of a placard on a fruit fly breeding chamber . … Read the rest here
Pictogram Movie Posters by Viktor Hertz : These are just terrific. From the photoset page: These are currently not available as prints, but if enough people show interest, maybe we can sort it out. Viktor, let’s sort it out. … Read the rest here
Hiring: Web Designer at Hobie Cat Company : This is unique opportunity, as you’ll be the first in-house web designer at a company that’s been around since 1950. In Oceanside, CA no less. I owned a 14’ Hobie Cat sailboat until selling it about 5 years ago. Worst decision ever. … Read the rest here
