Webdesigninformer.com

Cameron Moll Go to the source

A Real Web Design Application : This is a very thorough overview by Jason Santa Maria of the current tools available to web designers, their shortcomings, and the friction and waste created by transferring work from tool to browser. Jason’s argument toward the end of his article will certainly continue a debate that’s already raging: A web designer jumping into the browser before tackling the creative and messaging problems is akin to an architect hammering pieces of wood together and then measuring afterwards. The imaginative process is cut short by the tools at hand; and it’s that imagination—or spark—at the beginning of a design that lays the path for everything that follows. Without it, you’re at best able to make a website that looks like a website—rather than a design that tells a story in the form of a website. To read only the above quote on its own would be to take Jason’s remarks out of context. The paragraphs that follow demonstrate he favors designing in the browser if the tools to do so can be improved. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

iFontMaker for iPad : Create your own handwriting font in TTF format. Check the gallery for samples. /via @wTyeRogers … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Camera+ for iPhone: $253,000 in First-Month Sales : tap tap tap’s Camera+ , which sells for $1.99 in the App Store, sold 217,000 copies in its first month. That’s a quarter-million dollars in one month of sales for an app that sells for two bucks. Is it surprising to anyone that, right now, any mobile platform other than iOS is “ largely out of the consciousness of your average developer ”? BTW, the article, written by founder John Casasanta, contains lots of good advice for those hoping to accomplish the same as tap tap tap. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

I’ve finally been through the entire site, and kicked out any legacy stuff (some of which went back to 2003!) and implemented the new responsive design. Originally, I’d intended to change the layout in the various sections, but in the end I’ve used the same one. After trying the other options, it just felt right. Wallpapers One of things I’ve changed is a new Goodies section. With the exception of the Hill House font (download link now works!), everything is new, including brand new desktop and iphone(4)/mobile wallpapers. Icon Reference Chart Another new goodie is a little labour of love: The Icon Reference Chart . … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Tapworthy Book: Designing Great iPhone Apps : Josh Clark’s Tapworthy is now available from O’Reilly Books: Tapworthy takes you from concept to polished interface design with plain-spoken principles and a rich collection of visual examples for designing exceptional interfaces for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The ebook version, which is available in the ePub, mobi (Kindle), Android, and PDF formats, is on sale for $9.99 today only (normally $31.99). Use code DDTAP. The print version is also available on Amazon . … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

One of Textpattern’s drawbacks has always been that page templates are saved in the database. Editing them means using the textarea in the TXP admin interface, but I’m sure most people would prefer to use their favourite text editor. Here’s a workaround that works in TXP 4.2.0 (I haven’t tried other versions). Once you’ve enabled ‘Allow PHP in pages?’ in Advanced Preferences and set up your sections and page templates, put everything in your page template into a file (such as ‘pagetemplate.php’), and replace it with a PHP include: <txp:php>$docRoot = getenv("DOCUMENT_ROOT");include($docRoot.'/pagetemplate.php');</txp:php> You still need to setup your templates in TXP admin, but from there on in, you can edit the templates in a text editor and upload them. There may be a performance hit doing this, but all TXP tags work. Much easier! Update : Thanks to Sam Brown for this much neater version: <txp:php>include(txpath.'/pages/default.php');</txp:php> This is much shorter, but be aware that the ‘txpath’ value takes you to the textpattern folder rather than the site root… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

With the iPad and iPhone 4, there are as many, if not more, different size icons to create for iOS than there are for desktop apps. While there are plenty of templates and reference sheets for Photoshop users (see Cocoia ) I prefer to use Illustrator CS5 to create mine. So I’ve made my own template, and it’s available here if you find it useful too! Download the iOS icon template for Illustrator CS5 The top layer of the file contains labels and a mask to add the rounded corners of the icon. Don’t forget to hide these before you export. Corner Radius Something that Apple doesn’t include in it’s documentation are the various corner radius dimensions for all the icon sizes… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Fruit Memory for iPad : A fun and well-designed memory game for kids by good friend Paul Mayne. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

I recently undertook a refresh of the Shopify shopping bag logo. An interesting one for me, as the concept was already in place, it just needed a rendering clean up, sort out the perspective and make it more dynamic. Here’s a side by side, old and new: Sketches of initial ideas, looking for the right perspective: Followed by early ‘vector roughs’, getting the shape and colours mocked up (the idea of making the bag handles form a cutesy smile was shelved early on!): Final Artwork with green and black/white variations: Tagged: logos , work … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

You may call it Ambient, Drone, Minimalism or Modern Classical, but I always think of this sort of music as being like bat detectors. In the same way that they change the frequency of the bat sounds so that we can hear them, it’s as if this is what nature sounds like once converted for our ears. Whatever the pigeonhole, it’s a form of music I adore and Kyle Bobby Dunn’s A Young Person’s Guide To Kyle Bobby Dunn is in it. It’s a 2 disc collection of beautiful, atmospheric music. His site even has one of those mediaplayer widget thingies, so pop along and have a listen! Start with my favourite ‘Empty Gazing’ and go from there! Tagged: ambient , music … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

St Marie, a Free OpenType + Webfont Typeface : St Marie is a lovely typeface by Stereotypes , available under the terms of a Creative Commons License . The download package includes the .otf file for offline designing, as well as the .eot, .svg, and .woff formats for font embedding ( demo ). … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Coding Cheat Sheets by Dave Child : A collection of free, printable quick references for a variety of languages and web technologies—PHP, CSS, Subversion, Ruby on Rails, Microformats, etc. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

I’ll be doing a 5 minute microslot on CSS filters at the next Oxford Geek Night on July 21st. CSS filters is the practice of linking to your stylesheets in different ways in order to control how different browsers and their versions get your CSS . It’s something I get quite a lot of questions about when people look at my source code, so I thought I’d explain it via a presentation! The OGN microslot is the ideal format for it. If you live nearish to Oxford, and haven’t been to Geek Night yet, do come and see what you’re missing. It’s a free event (sponsored by local gents/superstars Torchbox ) in the Jericho Tavern in Oxford… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

DSLR Slate for iPad : Discussion in the DSLR video space is picking up as it pertains to using a slate (also known as a clapperboard ) in digital format, especially on iPad. Once video-capable DSLR cameras integrate time encoding (most currently do not), the discussion will only increase given the ability to download slate history or even sync the camera and slate wirelessly. This iPad slate app, developed by Chris Boyol, seems like a reasonable $5 expense for indie filmmakers. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Web Design Concepts for Non-Web Designers : These slides are from a HOW presentation given by Matthew Richmond, aka Chopping Block . The slide format uses HTML5 and is based on the HTML5 Slideshow by Marcin Wichary, Ernest Delgado, Alex Russell, and Brad Neuberg. What’s significant about this presentation is that Matthew’s shop has been a Flash development shop almost since its inception. Although Matthew firmly believes that there are experiences Flash provides that HTML5 cannot replicate, he’s very aware of the heated zealous crazy current debate between the two technologies. Matthew and I, along with Patrick McNeil , had the pleasure of sitting on a panel together at HOW. Matthew and Patrick are both sharp individuals, and it was a pleasure to field questions from the audience together. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

The Evolution of the World Cup Ball : Photographs by Jens Heilmann. Click each to enlarge. What may be really interesting to some of us is that these photographs were taken with a vintage-style, large-format analog camera. Fast-forward to 3:40 in this video to see it in action. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

The Evolution of the World Cup Ball : Photographs by Jens Heilmann. Click each to enlarge. What may be really interesting to some of us is that these photographs were taken with a vintage-style, large-format analog camera. Fast-forward to 3:40 in this video to see it in action. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online? : This infographic really puts things into perspective, based on a solo artist making minimum wage (U.S.) each month. The royalties for authors of most tech books aren’t any better. /via @ stop … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

While I agree with Neven Mrgan’s Walled Gardens , I feel like the whole imagery of walled gardens is a bit of a metaphorical stretch—not because it’s inaccurate, but because it’s fundamentally unnecessary. We don’t need metaphors here. That’s because the iTunes App Store is just what its name states: it is a store. That has a fairly specific and intentional meaning in the world of commerce. It means that the stock is not infinite and that someone has screened it. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Wired on iPad: Just like a Paper Tiger : Oliver Reichenstein’s review of the Wired iPad app is anything but positive. Concluding with a quote from Adobe that “the future of magazines is now” comes Oliver’s closing remarks: No, it’s not. The future is never now. And the future of journalism is definitely not a stack of banners spiced with videos, exported from a paper layout program. You need to try harder. … Read the rest here