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Eric Meyer Go to the source

The fact that this: h1 {color: red;} h1 {color: green;} …results in green h1 text, but this: h1 {background: url(red-wave.gif) repeat, url(green-wave.gif) repeat;} …results in a red wavy h1 background does my head in every single time . And it’s the same with text and box shadows, too! In cases where backgrounds or shadows overlap, the first one you write “wins”, by virtue of being “in front of” the background images that are listed after it. I know that font stacks are also done in order of most-to-least preferred, but I don’t see them as being equivalent. The reason is that a font stack is a list of fallbacks—use this face unless it can’t render the glyph or doesn’t exist, in which case try the next one in the list, etc., etc. Multiple background images and multiple shadows, on the other hand, are not a series of fallbacks… Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Hillman Curtis, artist, designer, filmmaker, Brooklynite, bicyclist, friend, and explorer passed away last week at the young age of 51. I put off writing about him because I couldn’t find the words. Everything I would try to write felt so insignificant for such a significant man. Thankfully, as is usually the case, I found my words among friends. The folks over at Happy Cog have collected some thoughts on Hillman and invited a few of us staff alumni to share too. Below is my contribution: I followed Hillman’s work when I was first getting started in design. … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

I recently stumbled over a subtle interaction between cookie policies and localStorage in Firefox. Herewith, I document it for anyone who might run into the same problem (all four of you) as well as for you JS developers who are using, or thinking about using, locally stored data. Also, there’s a Bugzilla report , so either it’ll get fixed and then this won’t be a problem or else it will get resolved WONTFIX and I’ll have to figure out what to do next. The basic problem is, every newfangled “try code out for yourself” site I hit is just failing in Firefox 11 and 12. Dabblet , for example, just returns a big blank page with the toolbar across the top, and none of the top-right buttons work except for the Help (“?”) button. … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

A couple of weeks back I wrote about customizing your markup , but I got an important bit wrong and while I’ve corrected the post, I wanted to clear up the error in detail. I said that you wrap portions of your document (or the whole thing) in an element element and use the customized element inside. This is incorrect , and actually a very bad idea. In fact, you define your customized elements using an element element and then use the customized elements later in the document. Something like this: <element extends="h1" name="x-superh1"> </element> <h1 is="superh1">UltraMegaPower!!!</h1> <h1>Regular Old Power</h1> The line break inside the element element isn’t required—I just threw it in for clarity. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

‘Paper’ for iPad : There are so many things right about this app. The lovely watercolor, miniature sketchbook icon. The marketing site. The “take this everywhere life takes you” video above. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. –W. Somerset Maugham Pressing ‘Pause’ on this site for a while has afforded me time and distance to realign my writing objectives. An invitation from Chris Shiflett to join today’s “ Ideas of March ” has afforded me an opportunity to break the silence… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

When I was writing The Icon Handbook, I had my list of first choices for people I wanted to work with. Chris Mills and Owen Gregory for Project Manager and Copy Editor, Gedeon Maheux from the Iconfactory for Technical Editor, and for the foreword… The Noun Project. All of which said yes! I absolutely love what The Noun Project are doing, there isn’t a comparable site for the quality of it’s curated collection of pictograms. So when I was asked to write a guest post for The Noun Project blog, I was chuffed to bits! The post I’ve written, ‘Insights on Symbol Design’ contains portions from The Icon Handbook (and as such It’s another taster for the book), but was still written more or less from scratch, looking at considerations of pictogram design in particular. Comment on this … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

After the blackout on Wednesday, it seems that the political tides are shifting against SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act—as of this writing, there are now more members of Congress in opposition to the bills than in favor. That’s good news. I wil reiterate something I said on Twitter, though: the members of tech community, particularly those who are intimately familiar with the basic protocols of the Internet, need to keep working on ways to counteract SOPA/PIPA. What form that would take, I’m not sure. Maybe a truly distributed DNS system, one that can’t be selectively filtered by any one government or other entity. I’m not an expert in the area, so I don’t actually know if that’s feasible… Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

A little while back, Andy wrote : Even if you happen to be a genius in the waiting, there are no svengalis to pluck you from obscurity and put you on the pedestal you know you deserve. … So if you want to contribute to articles, write books and speak at conferences, you’re the only person in the way. You can contribute to A List Apart . You can write for Smashing Magazine . You can also put a resource written in HTML at your own URL that is retrievable via HTTP …write a blog post, in other words. If you prefer dead trees, you no longer need a publishing house. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

It is once again that time of year where I reflect on the year that has passed and contemplate the year the come. Professionally On a professional level, this has been a fantastic year but still not without its ups and downs. This year capped my second and final year with Yahoo!. Yahoo! has been a great experience for me and exposed me to an environment that I hadn’t worked in before. I was able to work with large teams on a large scale across multiple products. To know that I had a big part to play in the success of those projects is very rewarding. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

These upcoming Kafka covers by Peter Mendelsund are really lovely. These beautiful stark shapes and colors make them unexpected, but also totally on the mark. Also, they make use of FF Mister K , a typeface based on Kafka’s handwriting. That’s one of the few appropriate uses for a handwriting font, and it really works here. via Jacket Mechanical … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

It’s clear by now dust is gathering at this domain. I’ve been okay with that, and will continue to be okay with it, but only a little longer. I’ve been swamped with obligations on my current projects and have traveled much more than usual. I’ll visit NYC for the third time in a month starting next week, for example. More importantly, I’ve realized I need to realign the focus of this site. The tumblog, light-narrative format is definitely enjoyable, and it’s helped me blog more frequently, as well. … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

Every year in the run up to Halloween Jason asks some people to write short stories about candy. He then takes those words and turns them into beautifully-designed web pages: candygrams . I encourage you to revisit the wonderful tales from Jeffrey , Frank , Jim , Rob , Mandy , Erin and others . This year I was very honoured to be asked by Jason to contribute some words of my own. … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

For very little reason other than I was curious to see what resulted, I’ve compiled a list of various CSS modules’ version histories, and then used CSS to turn it into a set of timelines . It’s kind of a low-cost way to visualize the life cycle of and energy going into various CSS modules. I’ll warn you up front that as of this writing the user interaction is not ideal, and in some places the presentation suffers from too much content overlap. This happens in timelines where lots of drafts were released in a short period of time. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

With all my work at Yahoo!, I’d been thinking more and more about CSS architecture. I really sat down and took the time to analyze my process. What’s the most flexible but straightforward way to do it? How does this fit in with the team process and how does this work in comparison to how other people are doing it? I started making notes and eventually started writing up my thoughts… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Jason Santa Maria: Five & Ten : Jason Santa Maria, describing his site’s redesign (which launched on Friday): I decided to not let the design of my site become a barrier to writing here. The most important thing this site does for me is give me a creative outlet to play and write. Anything that gets in the way of that needs to get the boot. The result is a responsive, Tumblr-esque digest of things interesting to and written by Jason, with much more design sense than most Tumblr sites — including mine. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

About Face , a new article series I’m writing over at the Typekit Blog where we’ll look at the details behind a typeface and try to crack what makes it special. First up, some of my favorites, Joshua Darden’s rounded wonder Omnes , and Carol Twombly’s gorgeous slab hybrid Chaparral (the same serif in use here on my site). I have a serious crush on Chaparral. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about CSS architecture these days. One thing in particular that has crossed my mind is how to handle certain situations. For example, we want to hide content on the page and then reveal it (or vice versa). In JavaScript, this is relatively straightforward: get an element, and apply a class or remove a class to change the state of the element. … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

The word “awesome” is over-used. I’m about to over-use it some more. The internet is mostly awesome. Some human beings are also awesome. When you combine the two, you get awesome things… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Cosmonaut, a Wide-Grip Stylus for Touch Screens : Glif makers Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt are at it again with another Kickstarter project, this time for a wide-grip stylus that feels more like a dry erase marker rather than a pen: Writing or drawing on the iPad feels nothing like using a pen or pencil. For one, tablets are ideal for low fidelity sketching. Also, it is pretty awkward to rest your palm on the screen of the device because it throws off the capacitive detection. Writing on a tablet feels like writing on a dry erase board: fast, simple, low fidelity. … Read the rest here