Webdesigninformer.com

Mezzoblue Go to the source

Last week I put together an animated infographic that required some flexibility. Alpha transparency was essential, but the number of images I needed to pull it off meant that my typical way of creating PNGs wasn’t going to work. Let’s be honest; Photoshop is absolutely terrible at saving transparent PNGs for web use. Your choices are between an 8-bit with 1-bit transparency (better than a GIF in terms of file size, but no better in terms of transparency options) or a huge 32-bit PNG with alpha transparency. There’s no middle ground. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

In October 2009, the hashtag #lessconf began showing up repeatedly in my Twitter stream. The tweets were remarkably positive for something I’d heard nothing about previously. It turns out Steven Bristol and Allan Branch of Less Everything , the bright minds behind LessAccounting , were hosting a conference. Crush It! author Gary Vaynerchuk, Wufoo founder Kevin Hale and others spoke, and nearly 200 of you attended. This year’s LessConf 3010 resumes in Atlanta, Georgia, May 21–22… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Opera Mini vs. Mobile Safari, a Flickr Photoset : Screenshots I took this morning comparing Opera Mini for iPhone and Safari on iPhone, using Opera.com, NYTimes.com, Apple.com, and CameronMoll.com. First impressions after a few minutes of testing: Opera Mini is definitely snappy on iPhone. NYTimes.com loads quite fast compared to Safari. However, most text on non-mobilized sites is illegible without tapping to zoom in. This almost negates any speed gains vs. … Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

Let the games begin! Rich Thornett and I have been building Dribbble for what seems like years (oh wait, it has been that long). About a week ago, we quietly rolled back the curtain so the public could finally see what’s been happening in private beta. I’m pretty damned excited about this. Firstly, what is Dribbble? From the FAQ : Dribbble is show and tell for designers, developers and other creatives. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

What the iPad is Missing: Good Typography : Stephen Coles, FontShop’s self-described “Glyph Pusher” (and boy does he know glyphs): Apple has made some puzzling decisions over the last few years that leave one wondering if they really care about typography as much as they did in the 1980s when the Mac launched the desktop publishing revolution. As recently as 2005, Steve Jobs made typography a central theme of his commencement address to Stanford grads, but his actions as the almighty head of Apple haven’t followed suit. Sadly, I have to agree with Stephen’s thoughts. The Winnie the Pooh book that comes with iBooks is a shining (i.e. dull) example of illegible type. … Read the rest here

Clagnut Go to the source

In a special edition of the revived Friday Biscuit series, I am happy to honour the save BBC 6 Music campaign by revisiting “Joy Division Oven Gloves”: Well I’ve been here and I’ve been there In me Joy Division oven gloves I’ve been to a post punk postcard fair In me Joy Division ovengloves Talk to the hand Talk to the hand In me Joy Division oven gloves Dance, dance, dance Daaaaaaaaaaaaance! In me Joy Division oven gloves Why? Because the Save BBC 6 Music campaign is trying to get Joy Division Oven Gloves to number 6 in the singles charts this weekend. So whip out your credit card and fork out 49p on a great song, and see if we can get Half Man Half Biscuit to subvert the charts (channel your inner Malcolm Mclaren, RIP ). You have until the end of Saturday 10th April for your purchase to count . At the time of writing, Joy Division Oven Gloves is at number 2 in the Amazon mp3 chart and number 57 in the UK iTunes chart. What’s all this 6 Music kerfuffle about anyway… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Dribbble , masterfully crafted by Dan Cederholm and Rich Thornett , went live over the weekend. I don’t recall all the details, but probably sometime in 2008, Dan Cederholm and I had a conversation about an app he was considering building. Fundamentally, the idea was to build a community loosely based on the same concept as the “ Screen Grab Confab ” posts on my site. (Remember those?) The concept was simple, embracing the brevity and utility of Twitter and adding to it visuals: Share a snippet of what you’re currently designing, but only a snippet. Let others reply. Dan asked if I had any issues with the idea… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Relink: MEX Manifesto Predicts “Multi-Platform” Experiences : With the iPad arriving at many U.S. households tomorrow, it’s an appropriate time to revisit something I posted in November 2009: Each year, MEX, the Mobile User Experience conference, publishes a manifesto to frame the content and discussion for the year’s conference. Traditionally these manifestos have focused on mobile devices, operators/carriers, and the like. However, this year’s manifesto speaks repeatedly of “multi-platform” experiences. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

I’ve commented on this before but I have a protocol that I usually use when emailing someone. I like to finish my emails in a way that acknowledges that you have reached the end of the message. My first email tends to be on the more formal side. [Cheers | Best regards | All the best | Best of luck to you], Jonathan Once the formality is out of the way, I keep it short. The verbosity is unnecessary since you should already know my name and the goodbye greeting sounds odd in the middle of an ongoing conversation. In which case, I like to use my initial prefaced by a hyphen. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

Have you heard of Hundred Pushups ? It’s a simple six-week program to build up your strength by slowly increasing the number of pushups you can complete. By the end of six weeks, you should be able to complete 100 and along the way you’ve gotten a short workout working multiple muscle groups. Since I’m still trying to lose weight , I figured I’d get started on the program (yesterday was my first day and managed to do 12 pushups at the end of my first set). However, being the geek that I am, I thought, "I should track my progress with a cool iPhone app." There is one available for $1.99 from the Hundred Pushups web site. … Read the rest here

Clagnut Go to the source

As Jon Hicks wrote a few days ago, the House of Lords recently passed the Digital Economy Bill . The bill panders to big players in the music industry is being hurried through without due democratic process, clearly intended to be made law before the election. Unsurprisingly the driving force behind it is Lord ‘Mandy’ Mandelson, the Business Secretary; a powerful but unelected passive-aggressive imposition. Through the partly Clearleft designed 38 Degrees , I wrote to my local MP , the retiring Des Turner , to present my objections, and to urge him to speak out against rushing through the Digital Economy Bill without due debate and process. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Last October, I wrote about my frustrations with Fireworks CS4 , and the search for decent competitors to Adobe Software. Photoshop has many alternatives, and Illustrator has a handful, but nothing else seemed to cater for the mix of vector and bitmap editing that is Fireworks. I recently tried both Photoshop and Illustrator again for icon creation, and Illustrator in particular irritated the hell out of me with it’s pixel preview artefacts ( still not fixed from CS3). Before I get a sackful of comments from diehard Photoshop fans, please believe me when I say that Photoshop is not the right tool. That post did point to 3 possibilities however: Acorn , Drawit and Opacity … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

Leave it to PPK to come out with a bold statement like, " CSS vendor prefixes considered harmful ". Moreso, It’s time to abolish all vendor prefixes. They’ve become solutions for which there is no problem, and they are actively harming web standards. The problem is that they are necessary. Look at Safari’s implementation of border-radius compared to the rest. I still can’t remember if it’s border-radius-topleft or border-top-left-radius . … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

EOS DLSR Video Review : New to DSLR video? This is a good primer for Canon EOS models (currently 500D, 550D, 7D, 5D Mark II and 1D Mark IV). Also note that the site to which this was posted, VideoDSLR.tv , was just launched over the weekend. Looking forward to seeing what other content it leads to. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

“Pre’s Hardware is the Xbox 360 of Smartphones (in a Bad Way)” : ArsTechnica’s Jon Stokes on the unfortunate demise of Palm: I’ve only met one Pre owner in-person who hasn’t sent at least one phone back, but I’ve met many people who have sent multiple Pres back. When you pull out your Pre somewhere and another Pre user spots it, the odds are close to certain (in my experience) that that person has sent at least one unit back because of some kind of issue. Every single reviewer that I know of sent at least one Pre back in the beginning. Sadly, this is only one of several reasons for the demise that Jon mentions. I’ve been rooting for Pre to become a formidable iPhone competitor since the announcement in January 2009, and it’s clear those days are over… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Bicycling Magazine Gear & Bike Reviews : Especially helpful for those of us (soon to be) road bike newbies . … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

IE9 Preview Available for Download : Or, in Microsoft speak, the “Internet Explorer Platform Preview” is available for download. Microsoft has been touting HTML5, CSS3 (partial), and SVG support with the upcoming overhaul of its browser. But not without controversial feedback from the developer community, including this observation from Jeffrey Zeldman: By torturing the IE rendering engine every couple of years instead of putting it out of its misery [by switching to Webkit], Microsoft contributes to the withering away of its own monopoly. That might not be good for the shareholders, but it is great for everyone else. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Beyond the Still: An HD Video Contest by Canon : The idea is simple: Vimeo/Canon supply a still photograph, and contestants then submit short films based on the still. The contest comprises 7 chapters, with each chapter building on the previous one. Kind of like Layer Tennis , only with film. The inaugural short film, “ The Cabbie ”, was filmed by Vincent Laforet with—you guessed it—a Canon 7D. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Mike Davidson: A House by the Park : The venerable Mike Davidson is blogging about his homebuilding experience, complete with photos, product links, and total accumulated cost with each post. (Clicking the link in the sidebar to reveal pricing details will cookie your visit with pricing info.) … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

5 Years ago somebody wrote something stupid on the Internet that annoyed a bunch of bloggers enough to write about it, including myself. Yesterday I received a contrite email from this person saying that the incident had ruined their life and asking if I’d remove the post. It turns out that my blog post ranked in the top 20 results for this guys name and he was wondering if I’d remove the article. I considered it, as to be honest I’d completely forgotten about the event (as had most people 2 weeks after it happen) and I didn’t really care that much anyway. However it got me thinking about two different things. On the one hand, the Internet can freeze youthful folly and a small transgressions can stick with you for life. … Read the rest here