SkyRocket Design

30 Best Wordpress Plugins - Want an Unfair Advantage?

2011-10-03T19:55:00.002+11:00

Tripwire Magazine article: WordPress is an exceptional open source blog tool and the great variety of best WordPress plugins and themes makes it even more useful. Choosing the right extensions can make the difference between whether you succeed or not. Some great premium plugins here... Wordpress Plugins

Includes plugins for reviews, manage subscribers, events calendar, uber menus, uBillboard, shortcodes, auctions, slideshows, forms, more...

Responsive Web Design How-To, Useful frameworks, Showcase

2011-09-16T21:18:00.002+10:00

Useful article on Responsive Web Design: includes How-To's, useful frameworks and showcase... Responsive Web Design

25 High Quality Wordpress Themes

2011-08-08T19:52:00.003+10:00

This is a quality list... 25 Really Cool Wordpress Themes Tripwire Magazine

Subtle Patterns - high quality design patterns

2011-06-10T00:26:00.001+10:00

Subtle Patterns is a collection of 36 high quality design patterns for
you to use freely. New patterns added weekly. A project by Atle Mo.

50 Free Wood Textures

2011-04-08T02:37:00.001+10:00

Great collection of wood BG's from www.reencoded.com: link

Have you ever tried to find that perfect wooden texture for one of your design projects? We've put together a collection of some free textures representing different types of wood that could just be what you're looking for.

iPhone and iPad Development GUI Kits, Stencils and Icons

2011-02-12T09:21:00.002+11:00

If you're designing/building an iPhone or iPad app then this is the best link to go to... iphone/ipad GUI kits

"To help streamline your iPhone app design and development, we have put together a fairly comprehensive collection of iPhone & iPad GUI kits..."

Twitter background PSD (NEW Twitter)

2010-10-28T10:14:00.002+11:00

Just when you thought you'd sussed out Twitter backgrounds along comes NEW Twitter. Yes folks this really DOES change everything (again). Help is at hand all you Twitter-freaks... free New Twitter PSD background template here

JotForm - WYSIWYG form builder

2010-10-13T22:43:00.002+11:00

Just come across this very useful online tool - JotForm. Would be great for wireframes too...

There was a time once when creating web forms was a big pain for webmasters. Then came JotForm, first web-based WYSIWYG form builder. JotForm is a free web form builder. For basic usage, up to 100 submissions/month, you can use JotForm fully. No crippleware. No ads.

Mockingbird Online Wireframe Tool

2010-10-02T08:59:00.002+10:00

Very cool online wireframing tool... Mockingbird - powered by Cappucino in groovy HTML5 + lots of canvas mojo. Drag & drop UI elements to the page. Link mockups & preview. Share with colleagues or clients. Brilliant.

90 Beautifully Delicious Coffee Website Designs

2010-09-17T04:15:00.002+10:00

Inspirational post by Daniel Adams on instantShift 90 Beautifully Delicious Coffee Website Designs. Some truly outstanding designs there - but then when it comes to coffee I am a bit biased. No sign SkyRocket molto caffeinated design Roc Coffee though... :(

HTML5 Boilerplate

2010-09-03T09:08:00.001+10:00

Awesome rock-solid HTML5 boilerplate from Paul Irish and Divya Manian.

"HTML5 Boilerplate is the professional badass's base HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-proof site"

How To Make The Right Keyword Analysis For Your Website

2010-08-11T03:03:00.002+10:00

Fantastic article by Anastasia Miles 1stwebdesigner about how to choose the right keyword for your website and the impact of keywords. Selecting right keywords (eg: using the marvellous Google Wonder Wheel & AdWords tools) and using them effectively results in good conversation rate.

1. Define the keywords that people use to find your business

2. Find out how many people are actually using the keywords you have selected

3. Define your competition and make sure the keywords you have chosen are relevant

4. Finding the best keywords

5. Breaking keywords into pages

The Art of SEO

2010-08-09T05:51:00.002+10:00

[book] 'The Art of SEO' voted best SEO book for 2009. An O'Reilly book - authors Eric Enge, Jessie Stricchiola, Rand Fishkin & Stephan Spencer

"A well-designed, easy-to-navigate website is useless if no one can find it. If your company is going to succeed in the web economy, optimizing your site for search engine visibility is essential. In this book, four of the most noted experts in the field of search engine optimization (SEO) provide you with proven guidelines and cutting-edge techniques for planning and executing a comprehensive SEO strategy."

This book is definitely going on the SkyRocket 'must-have' list

How to Use Google to Improve Your SEO

2010-07-30T08:54:00.003+10:00

Tips on using a few of Google's free tools to help optimise your site for search engines. Google also offers plenty of free tools to help improve your SEO and get the most out of your site.

inc.com article by J J McCorvey

Joomla 1.5 SEO tip - how to change the title tag

2010-07-02T04:18:00.003+10:00

Had a client wanting the title tag changed to some juicy SEO-friendly keywords and I thought "easy job" - well, not quite.

Joomla 1.5 is based on a single page template. The title is inserted dynamically based on settings in the admin. It should be easy to change the title tag but is surprisingly well buried & not in the normal admin areas you'd first think so he's the tip...

1. Log in to the Joomla backend (www.yoursite.com/administrator).

2. Go to Menus -> Main Menu -> click on Home

3. In the right col accordion menu choose Parameters - System -> Page Title.

4. Change the Page Title field with your own juicy keywords

5. SAVE

Onbile - free mobile version of your website

2010-06-27T07:31:00.001+10:00

Create a free mobile version for your website in 3 steps... Onbile is a free platform for creating and managing your Mobile Website version for iPhone, Android and Blackberry users

Best Icon Sets on the Web?

2010-06-12T02:24:00.002+10:00

Fantastic resource article from Design Informer - My Favourite Icon Sets. This one is different because they are actually class icons. Thanks to Jad Limcaco for posting them up.

2010-06-01T22:55:00.001+10:00

HTML 5 Starter Pack is a sick freebie from Radu Chelariu is "a bit different than a template. I built it with one guiding principle: scalability". Cross browser (even IE6), valid HTML5, Tablet/Notebook ready, jQuery from Google CDN, Cufon ready & structural reusable classes...

http://sickdesigner.com/index.php/2010/html-css/html5-starter-pack-a-sick-freebie/

CSS Image Maps - Beginners Guide

2010-05-18T02:37:00.002+10:00

Good tutorial on CSS Image Maps using CSS by Jarod Taylor from Noobcube... Single image, adds hover states using CSS background sprites, creates tooltip popup when hovering hotspots. Leaner code, easier to manage and much more semantic than table-based old-fashioned sliced image maps.

HTML5 Unleashed...

2010-05-11T03:28:00.001+10:00

Good article by Saud Khan on W3avenue...

HTML5 unleashed tips tricks and techniques

Can we use HTML5 today? What can we do with it? Is it really going to kill Flash? The whole purpose of this article is to help you get started with some basic guidelines and easy to follow code templates.

CSS Desk

2010-04-21T01:47:00.002+10:00

CSSdesk - Real time development tool for trying out CSS changes...

Snazzy Hover Effects Using CSS

2010-04-16T04:32:00.002+10:00

Fab tutorial by Ryan Seddon creating flexible advanced hover techniques using CSS2.1 properties to create captions over images ("snazzy hover CSS")

2010-04-15T01:51:00.001+10:00

zurb.com playground adventure - uses awesome CSS2 and CSS3 to turn an otherwise unassuming list of images into a full-blown set of polaroid pictures

Yahoo! Design Stencil Kit - Wireframe Tool

2010-03-04T03:06:00.001+11:00

Yahoo! Design Stencil Kit version 1.0 is available for OmniGraffle, Visio (XML), Adobe Illustrator (PDF and SVG), and Adobe Photoshop (PNG), and covers the following topics:

Ad Units

Calendars

Carousels

Charts and Tables

UI Controls

Form Elements

Grids

Menus and Buttons

Mobile - General

Mobile - iPhone

Navigation and Pagination

OS Elements

Nibbler - testing website

2009-12-31T23:11:00.001+11:00

Nibbler is a free tool for testing websites (still in alpha at time of writing). It takes a web address you provide, tries to find up to 5 pages from inside it, and tests them for a range of criteria. At the end you get a free report scoring the website out of 10 for various tests, and awarding a 'Summary score' for all the tests.

CSS3 Sandbox

2009-12-24T03:20:00.001+11:00

CSS3 Sandbox - an outstanding tool for using CSS3 features such as rounded corners, linear & radial gradients, drop shadows etc

"Here's a collection of tools for web developers he's put together to help you analyse and debug your sites (and other people's sites as well), play with CSS3 features (bleeding edge browsers recommended) and more..."

Thanks to John at StyleMaster

Highcharts - interactive JS charts for web pages

2009-12-10T04:17:00.000+11:00

Highcharts is a JavaScript charting library for creating interactive charts in various types (line, spline, area, areaspline, column, bar, pie & scatter)

Best IE6 Denial Message

2009-08-09T21:43:00.004+10:00

Did I ever mention that I hate IE6? Seems I spend half my blog life posting about how completely ****ed this piece of **** calling itself a browser is. See, it's making me angry just writing about it. Where's the phone number for my psychoanalyst...? So, here's a bit of fun courtesy of John Martz from RobotJohnny... IE6 Denial Message for Momentile

Full size pic on Flikr

You have to laugh or else you'd cry
Do us a favour IE6 and just DIE...

(that's almost poetry)

Milkbox

2009-08-08T23:17:00.002+10:00

Milkbox (expanded lightbox for Mootools 1.2.x) from Luca Reghellin. Not quite as insanely optimised as Slimbox but has great features eg: adding Flash...

Swf support. You can add swf links to your galleries as well as images.
Use the rev attribute to tell width and height of the swf file.
AutoSize and maxHeight options. AutoSize is enabled by default; if needed, it makes photos smaller, so they'll fit the browser window. If you want them not to be higher then a certain height, just set the maxHeight option.
AutoPlay and autoPlayDelay options. You can set them globally or on a per-gallery basis, as well as in JavaScript calls.
XML galleries. Instead of writing HTML links and let Milkbox to automatically collect them, you can write one or more galleries via XML and load them with the addGalleries() method. You can then show any file of any gallery with a single JavaScript or ActionScript (Using ExternalInterface) call, and with custom auto-play options.
Launch from JavaScript. You can use showGallery() to launch any gallery item with custom autoplay options from JavaScript and therefore, even from Flash via ExternalInterface.
Milkbox hides select and textarea tags while playing; also, there's a option (removeTitle) that lets you decide if the browser will pop up or not his default tooltips when you hover the Milkbox links. Defaults to true.
ImageOfText option. If your lang is not eng, and don't want to see "1 of 15", just use this option. I'm italian, so I usually set it to 'di'. Defaults to 'of'.
Transitions are minimal: I like fast navigation. Anyway, you can use any of the MooTools's Fx.Transitions effects.

Slimbox 2

2009-08-08T19:26:00.001+10:00

Slimbox 2 is a 4 KB visual clone of the popular Lightbox 2 script by Lokesh Dhakar, written using the jQuery javascript library. It was designed to be very small, efficient, standards-friendly, fully customisable, more convenient and 100% compatible with the original Lightbox 2.

SlickMap - CSS Sitemapping Tool

2009-07-09T23:58:00.001+10:00

SlickMap CSS is a simple stylesheet for displaying finished sitemaps directly from HTML unordered list navigation. It’s suitable for most web sites – accommodating up to three levels of page navigation and additional utility links – and can easily be customized to meet your own individual needs, branding, or style preferences.

Happy birthday WWW - 20 years old!

2009-03-15T07:48:00.001+11:00

The modern day internet, better known as the "World Wide Web", has entered into its twenties today. Its inception dates back to 13 March 1989, when a computer scientist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN Laboratory, presented a paper containing means and methods by which particles physics scientists could easily share and find out essential electronics documents.

Full story here

IE will come with an 'OFF' switch in Windows 7

2009-03-08T22:11:00.000+11:00

MICROSOFT said today that a control panel in its next-generation computer operating system will let users shut off Internet Explorer 8 and other built-in programs. Full story here

IE6 - time to die

2008-11-11T22:14:00.000+11:00

The clamour of noise on the interweb for IE6 to (dis)gracefully hurry off to the retirement home is growing by the week (links below). PC World have even listed it (no. 8 in the hall of shame) among the 25 Worst Tech Products of All-Time.

It's way past time to drop support for Internet Explorer 6. At SkyRocket we grudgingly still test for IE6 but agree with others that our “official” stance is not to support it and we are actively educating our customers to at least upgrade to IE7 or their IE6 users, still stuck in the last millennium, will not be getting the full interaction & feature-set that folks on modern-generation browsers have.

1. Time to drop IE6
2. The Final Word on IE6
3. Twitter Twits about IE6 hatred

Creating animated Gifs in Photoshop CS3

2008-10-24T23:29:00.000+11:00

Now ImageReady has been discontinued in CS3 the ability to make animated GIFs has been built into Photoshop instead. Good tutorial on how to do this here...

Google Insights for Search (beta)

2008-10-21T00:15:00.000+11:00

Been having a play with the new Insights for Search tool from Google (currently still in beta) and find it very interesting and useful - if you're into nerdy style SEO trendspotting ... :/

BG Patterns

2008-10-16T01:14:00.000+11:00

Useful website to create & download tiled patterned backgrounds. Plenty of configuration options and lots of paisley :)

Web Safe Area - resource

2008-09-05T23:38:00.000+10:00

Useful resource detailing available or 'safe' screen real estate on various OS (Win XP/Vista and Mac OSX) and also different standard browser chrome.

Google launches "Chrome" internet browser

2008-09-02T19:34:00.000+10:00

Google is launching an open source web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Firefox. The browser is designed to be lightweight and fast, and to cope with the next generation of web applications that rely on graphics and multimedia.

Called Chrome, it will launch as a beta for Windows machines in 100 countries, with Mac and Linux versions to come.

"We realised... we needed to completely rethink the browser," said Google's Sundar Pichai in a blog post

BBC News story

Phasing out support for IE 6

2008-07-14T23:37:00.001+10:00

"Phasing out support for IE 6 across all 37signals products on August 15, 2008 On August 15th, 2008 we will begin phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 across all 37signals products. In order to continue using the products without any hiccups, Internet Explorer 6 users should upgrade to a newer browser"
How about this for common sense...

"Why are we making this change? IE 6 is a last-generation browser. This means that IE 6 can't provide the same web experience that modern browsers can. Continued support of IE 6 means that we can't optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps. Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress. We want to make sure the experience is the best it can be for the vast majority of our customers, and continuing to support IE 6 holds us back."

IETester

2008-06-02T06:50:00.000+10:00

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Using IETester, it is possible to test web sites under IE6 without the need of a second computer or a virtual machine with an old XP/IE6 installed. Different IE versions can be opened on different tabs in the same window.

This is how you get sIFR to work...

2008-05-01T08:07:00.000+10:00

Great post by David at Design Intellection on how to get sIFR to work...

"The goal of this tutorial is to distill the information at the official site for sIFR into a simple step-by-step process of how to implement sIFR on your site. After following this tutorial you will have a basic understanding of how sIFR works and will be able to expand into more advanced areas."

Create your own pop art poster

2008-04-19T02:17:00.000+10:00

Nice article from freelance artist Rob Cubbon:

Create your own pop art poster

Open Source Text Editors

2008-04-16T01:27:00.000+10:00

Some open source (free!) text editors to download & try...

HTML Kit
Bluefish
Komodo Edit
NVU
SeaMonkey Composer

The Web in Charts

2008-03-25T03:56:00.000+11:00

Interesting post on TechCrunch

"Today more than ever, the Web is a global game. Below are charts from a new State of the Internet report from comScore that paints a picture of global competition on the Web. In 1996, two thirds of all people online (66 percent) lived in the U.S. By last October, that had completely flipped, with 77 percent of the online population living in the rest of the world and only 23 percent in the U.S. The U.S. still has the largest total number of Web surfers (162 million a month), but China is catching up fast (with 96 million)"

IE8 Beta

2008-02-29T06:48:00.003+11:00

Microsoft prepares to release IE8...

IE8 will replace Internet Explorer 7.0, Microsoft's current internet browsing software program. IE7 was introduced in October 2006.

Following some criticism of IE7, version 8 is expected to more fully comply with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. W3C attempts to ensure cross-browser and -platform interoperability. RIval browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox already comply with W3C standards.

Website Law - Privacy Policy

2008-02-05T21:22:00.000+11:00

Good Privacy Policy for UK websites. Free version allowed if you keep their author credit intact otherwise there is a standard licence fee.

"Our privacy policy document is intended for use in England and Wales in relation to websites which collect and process personal information. It may be used to help website owners fulfil their obligations under data protection legislation."

W3C Pushing for Better Web on Mobile Devices

2007-11-19T03:21:00.000+11:00

Increasingly, people are connecting to the Internet through mobile phones, video-game consoles, or televisions. The problem is that a lot of Internet content isn't available for all of these devices, and many websites crash when loaded on a mobile device. Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and father of the Internet, worries that this is effectively cutting some people off from the information that is freely shared on the Internet. Speaking at the Mobile Internet World conference in Boston earlier this week, Berners-Lee said that the W3C is working on defining a set of standards that developers can use to build websites that work with mobile devices, as well as with desktop computers, so that the mobile Web doesn't break apart from the World Wide Web. This week, the W3C also launched a new tool that developers can use to test their websites for compatibility with mobile devices.

Free Document Templates

2007-11-11T21:33:00.000+11:00

Useful post on makeuseof.com...

Once in a while we all need some kind of document, it may be a business plan presentation, rental contract, non-disclosure agreement, or even a name change request form. In most cases, Googling the document may ultimately get you what you need, but it’s both time consuming and frustrating. Here are 3 excellent resources that can provide you with any professional document or form template for free.

1. Docstoc
2. Gazhoo
3. Scribd

Current Web Style

2007-10-29T07:53:00.000+11:00

Interesting article on current style trends in web design land...

"This is where I try to sum up the current state-of-the-art in graphic design for web pages, and identify the distinctive features that make a web page look fresh, appealing and easy to use. I'm glad to say that web design in 2007 is better than ever. And it's not just because there are more web sites out there, so more good stuff to look at. There's still an awful lot of crud too. I just think that more web designers know more about how to design than ever before"

SkyRocket awarded - Most Creative Favicon

2007-10-03T03:43:00.000+10:00

Checking my web stats log and was interested to see that SkyRocket has taken out another interweb gong. This time the good people at Smashing Magazine have voted our Favicon as one of the best they've seen in their article Creative Favicons - When Small is Beautiful. Thanks Smashing people! :)

Web 3.0

2007-09-20T20:59:00.000+10:00

Web 3.0 - a rather acidic & cynical article by Sir Jeffrey Zeldman but anything penned by him is well worth reading.

"Web 2.0 is a fresh-faced starlet on the intertwingled longtail to the disruptive experience of tomorrow. Web 3.0 thinks you are so 2005..."

Logopond

2007-09-11T23:38:00.000+10:00

Logopond - identity inspiration. Great website + beautiful showcase of logos and branding concepts.

BETSIE Text to Speech Internet Enhancer

2007-09-10T18:21:00.000+10:00

If you've ever used a screen reader, you'll know exactly what I mean when I say that the web isn't always all it's cracked up to be. Some sites work when you have the computer reading out loud exactly what's on the screen, from left to right, and top to bottom, but not all of them. Not even many of them. Most sites come out like gibberish.

Betsie stands for BBC Education Text to Speech Internet Enhancer, and is a simple Perl script which is intended to alleviate some of the problems experienced by people using text to speech systems for web browsing.

Betsie has been officially approved by the RNIB, and received the RNIB accessibility award for January 1999.

Tartan - the new black!

2007-07-18T19:29:00.000+10:00

Stop using stripes for your site backgrounds and get into something errrrmm... even trendier. That's right. No self-respecting web designer should be without this site which makes custom-made Tartan backgrounds. Didn't you know that Tartan is the new black?

The most effective way of hiding your email address from the spambots

2007-07-09T23:34:00.000+10:00

This is the most useful, analytical & informative article on the best way of stopping the evil spammers from getting hold of your email address on web pages. Pay close attention people...

"Publishing an email address on a web page invites more spam. Protect your address by masking it from the email harvesters (spambots) used by spammers. This article tests 50 masking methods against 23 harvesters to see which methods work to stop spammers, and which do not"

Ultimate Web 2.0 Gradients

2007-07-02T05:17:00.000+10:00

Don't know why you can't just design your own but, just in case, here's the Ultimate collection of Web 2.0 Gradients...

OECD Privacy Policy Generator

2007-06-09T20:38:00.000+10:00

To help implement the Privacy Guidelines in the electronic world, the OECD has developed the OECD Privacy Policy Statement Generator in co-operation with industry, privacy experts and consumer organisations. The Generator, which has been endorsed by the OECD's 30 member countries, aims to offer guidance on compliance with the Privacy Guidelines and to help organisations develop privacy policies and statements for display on their Web sites.The OECD has developed the OECD Generator as a tool to provide users with useful input in the development of a privacy policy and statement. The Generator is freely available to all private and public organisations on the OECD Web site and via links in member and other countries.

IE6 Standalone

2007-06-08T20:21:00.000+10:00

Now that Vista is out and everyone is using IE7 (everyone is right?) we'll need to install a standalone version of the IE6 for testing & compatibility checking. Best place to go to is evolt.org which has all the old versions of the web designers bane IE3 to IE6. Warning: this site will give you the creeps as it contains some of the vilest code ever put out for human use. It's a hall of shame but we have to do it so here you are... If you really want to take the express elevator to hell then you can install multiple versions of IE on the same computer. As with everything to do with IE the multiple standalones don't work correctly either so you may need to read this to tame those multiple installs. May the force be with you - you'll need it!

The 50 'Most Beautiful' CSS-based websites of 2006(?)

2007-06-06T22:25:00.000+10:00

You decide

A list of the 50 most beautiful CSS-based website designs of 2006. Yes, they are all great & very groovy but there's one problem - they haven't included one of ours ;)

quikmaps

2007-06-02T21:07:00.000+10:00

Useful tool to create, edit & customise your own Google map then save or post it on your site.

Footer Stick

2007-04-14T21:57:00.000+10:00

Good article from SolarDream Studios: footer stick

"I’m going to show you all how to force the footer of a webpage to stick to the bottom of the viewport. This is a pretty advanced CSS method and requires that you know a bit about how CSS works..."

There's also footerStick ALT from the man in blue

Web 2.0 Stripe Generator

2007-04-03T21:35:00.000+10:00

Yes it had to happen - introducing the web 2.0 stripe generator. You know a trend has become mainstream when there's an online generator to do it for you... :/

Designing With Web Standards (second edition)

2007-02-17T13:44:00.000+11:00

Best-selling author, designer, and web standards evangelist Jeffrey Zeldman has updated his classic, industry-shaking guidebook Designing With Web Standards 2nd Edition. This new edition, now in full color, covers improvements in best practices and advances in the world of browsers since the first edition introduced the world to standards-based design.

1024 x 768 Most Popular Resolution

2007-01-29T12:09:00.000+11:00

Browser size does matter useful article on latest stats & trends on browser window size & screen resolution. Also, in this article from July 2006 Jakob Nielsen recommends that you optimise for 1024×768, which is currently the most widely used screen size.

"Currently, about 60% of all monitors are set at 1024 x 768 pixels. In comparison, only about 17% use 800 x 600 so it's obviously less important to aim at perfection for these small-display users. What's equally obvious, however, is that you can't simply ignore 17% of your customer segment by providing a frozen layout that requires more screen space than they have available"

Bill Gates interview on Web Standards

2007-01-26T10:41:00.000+11:00

In December 2006, Molly E. Holzschlag had the opportunity to talk to Bill Gates for a few minutes. She used that time to ask Bill a few questions about Microsoft’s commitment to implementing Web standards in their products... Bill Gates commitment to web standards

He sounds just a bit defensive for some reason...

moo.fx

2007-01-08T10:38:00.000+11:00

moo.fx is a superlightweight, ultratiny, megasmall javascript effects library. It's very easy to use, blazing fast, cross-browser, standards-compliant, provides controls to modify any CSS property of any HTML element, including colors, with built-in checks that won't let a user break the effect with multiple, crazy clicks. Optimised to make you write the lesser code possible, the new moo.fx is so modular you can create any kind of effect with it.

The Visual Design of Web 2.0

2007-01-01T16:04:00.000+11:00

Good article on the Pixel Acres blog

"The visual elements of Web 2.0. include gradients, colorful icons, reflections, dropshadows, and large text. Bright, cheerful colors dominate Web 2.0 sites. Green is the unofficial color of web 2.0, but saturated blues, oranges and pinks are also favourites. Bold primary colors suggest a playful, fun attitude and also help to draw attention to important page elements..."

CMS Made Simple...

2006-12-29T11:30:00.000+11:00

Useful CMS solution for small-medium sized projects...

"CMS Made Simple provides a fast and easy way to create a website and manage its contents. Use it to make a home page for your family -- or your multinational corporation!!!"

Version 1.0.2 released

Cross browser alpha transparent PNG solution

2006-12-17T21:18:00.000+11:00

A non-pointless gem among these is the AlphaImageLoader filter, which is supported in IE5.5+/Win. When used to display a PNG, it allows for full alpha transparency support. This code works great, with only the small drawback that it’s not part of any accepted web standard, and no other browser on the planet understands it.

Opening a new window with JavaScript

2006-12-13T12:32:00.000+11:00

The target attribute is not allowed in strict doctypes, and since you should always use a strict doctype, the target attribute is invalid. Full stop.

Now there is a JavaScript solution to open a new window...

Quirksmode - Browser Bugs Reports

2006-12-11T12:06:00.000+11:00

Thanks to the folks over at Quirksmode they have a useful resource on bugs reported in all major browsers. I was thinking that MS had done a good job with IE7 until I saw this...

Search reports by browser:

* (Orphaned) (2)
* Explorer 5-6 Windows (116)
* Explorer 7 beta (80)
* Explorer Mac (47)
* iCab (6)
* Mozilla (49)
* Opera (58)
* Safari (61)

80 bugs reported in IE7 (beta) already! :(

IE7 & IE6 on the same machine

2006-12-03T21:15:00.000+11:00

Microsoft has now give us an official way to run IE7 and still have IE6 on the same machine...

"Now you can install IE7 on your main machine for development, and get all the advantages of IE7, like the RSS platform, native XMLHTTP stack, and improved security, while still running IE6 simultaneously in the VPC on the same computer. Most importantly, you don’t even have to buy an additional Windows license"

World Usability Day - 14 Nov

2006-11-14T13:38:00.000+11:00

"Why doesn't this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?"

World Usability Day, November 14, 2006, is for everyone who's ever asked these questions. This Earth Day style event, focused on raising awareness and visibility of usability engineering and user centered design, is currently being organized by volunteers and local event coordinators from around the world. Whether a usability professional or just an enthusiastic (or frustrated) user, each participant is making a contribution to "making life easy".

Expanse - standards compliant CMS

2006-11-11T16:03:00.000+11:00

"Expanse is a content management system designed for creative people (like you). Expanse lets you upload your artwork and photos, create thumbnails, add press events and your latest news, as well as allowing people to interact with you and keep up to date on your work. The beauty of Expanse is that it is as standards compliant as you want. This means you can code your site to be valid XHTML 1.0 Strict, or if you feel so inclined, use tables, font tags, and even throw a blink tag in there..." :/

2006-11-10T09:56:00.000+11:00

"Google is testing a version of its popular search engine that would allow those with vision problems to more easily use the site. Called Accessible Search, the page is different from normal Google Web search in that it also evaluates site usability in ranking results..."

What is Google Accessible Search?

Accessible Search is an early Google Labs product designed to identify and prioritize search results that are more easily usable by blind and visually impaired users. Regular Google search helps you find a set of documents that is most relevant to your tasks. Accessible Search goes one step further by helping you find the most accessible pages in that result set.

Lightbox JS

2006-11-04T14:28:00.000+11:00

Lightbox JS is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It's a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.

Web Industry Professionals Association (WIPA)

2006-10-21T15:47:00.000+10:00

For the last four years, members of the Web community have been discussing and debating the formation of an industry Association for Web Professionals. The idea has also been discussed at numerous Web Standards Group meetings since its inception. Over the last eight months we have gradually been working towards this goal. The wait is finally over...

We are very excited and proud to announce the Web Industry Professionals Association Incorporated (WIPA) - for Australian Web Professionals.

Pure CSS vertical drop down menu

2006-10-20T11:39:00.000+10:00

Nice work from TJK Design...

It has great browser support, it is script-free, it is CSS hack-free, it is keyboard-friendly, it is pointing device-friendly, it degrades nicely without script support, it uses semantic markup, it uses non-obtrusive Javascript and it is Web Standards Compliant and addresses Accessibility Guidelines.

Online tool to create Google XML Sitemap

2006-10-18T20:07:00.000+10:00

Google launched Google Sitemaps as a way for webmasters to give them information they could use to better crawl their sites. This involves creating an XML Sitemap for which they provided their Google Sitemap Generator. This can be the most complicated to set up using the tools provided by Google as you need to be running Python on your server. It's perhaps the most important one too given the current dominance of the search engine.

Setting up all three types of sitemaps may seem a daunting task but luckily there are websites that take the strain out of this and you can create all three within a matter of minutes.

XML-Sitemaps.com is one such site. Originally developed to easily create Google sitemaps for webmasters without an understanding of Python, it has evolved through demand for new features.

The Complete Web 2.0 Directory...

2006-09-20T16:08:00.000+10:00

The title says it all really...

The Complete Web 2.0 Directory

Web 2.0 Design Kit

2006-09-11T12:05:00.000+10:00

Great article on how to get the trendy 'Web 2.0 look' including glassy gradients, reflected surfaces and even...star shapes

Browsealoud - look, click, listen

2006-09-06T21:36:00.000+10:00

Just been to the UEFA Champions League website and they have a link to Browsealoud. Haven't heard of this new screen reader before (maybe because they're based in Ireland).

"Browsealoud reads web pages aloud for people who find it difficult to read online. Reading large amounts of text on screen can be difficult for those with literacy and visual impairments. 7 million people in the UK have literacy problems, many of whom have downloaded Browsealoud already. By subscribing to Browsealoud for your website, you will greatly increase the number of people who can access the content on your site"

There's a MAC & PC version. Download here

The Ultimate SEO Checklist

2006-08-28T21:48:00.000+10:00

This page was getting tagged a lot on del.icio.us so I took a look and it's well worth bookmarking...

The "Hello World" of Google Maps

2006-08-18T12:46:00.000+10:00

How to build Google Maps into your webpage...

Details here

Pub Standards

2006-08-14T20:22:00.000+10:00

Came across this site on a blog crawl and it gave me a politically incorrect laugh so it gets an honourable mention...

"And lo, another Pub Standards was declared. Everyone to the usual gaff on Tuesday, 15th August. Once there, you should immediately start to consume beer and criticise Yahoo’s hiring of Drew McLellan. Pub Standards London meet-ups are for social web-types. Join us for beer, web-talk, and other general waffle"...

Maybe we should start a Pub Standards Down Under...?

Removing active/focus dotted link borders in Firefox 1.5

2006-08-09T10:14:00.000+10:00

From Nathan Springs (sonspring.com):

"It is no secret, I love Firefox. I have been using it since the beta version of 0.8. Firefox 1.5 though, has a quirk that proves to be a minor irritation every time I use it. I am of course referring to the dotted outline that appears around every link. In versions previous to 1.5, the outline behaved similarly to Internet Explorer on Windows, wrapping exactly around clickable areas. Now though, it wraps completely around links that have negative value applied to text-indent."

Screengrabs & fix here

Stu Nicholls also talks about it on CSS Play

The Security Risk in Web 2.0

2006-08-03T22:04:00.000+10:00

Web 2.0 is causing a splash as it stretches the boundaries of what websites can do. But in the rush to add features, security has become an afterthought, experts say...

"Think of it like a house," said Hoffman, who will give a presentation on AJAX security at next week's Black Hat Security Event in Las Vegas. "A traditional Web site is like a house with no windows and just a front door. An AJAX Web site is like a house with a ton of windows and a sliding door. You can put the biggest locks on your front and back doors, but I can still get in through a window."

Story here

Georgia - the trendiest font on the web(?)

2006-07-28T20:40:00.000+10:00

Typefaces slip in and out of fashion like every other area of design, but right now Georgia is the most fashionable one on the Internet. "A few designers have mentioned that there seems to be a 'Georgia revival' going on," says Matthew Carter, the British-born, Boston-based designer who developed Georgia for Microsoft in 1996.

Full story here

Web accessibility soon mandatory in Europe?

2006-06-22T17:22:00.000+10:00

Full article here

"The 25 European Commission member states and nine accession countries have all signed up for a plan that could make accessibility in e-procurement mandatory.

The 34 countries all signed an agreement in Riga, Latvia, on Wednesday, committing themselves to the "Internet for all" action plan, designed to ensure that the most Web-disadvantaged groups can get online.

According to recent research, 81 percent of Web sites in the United Kingdom are inaccessible to disabled people, while a separate report found that only 3 percent of European public-sector Web sites met W3C accessibility guidelines".

301 Redirect - better for SEO

2006-05-26T09:51:00.000+10:00

Use 301 redirects to let visitors know if a URL has changed. Many people still use the "meta refresh" command. This is an outdated command that has been utilised in the past for unethical purposes. While visitors can be directed to the new page the same way with either method, Google specifically mentions using a 301 redirect.

301 Redirect Instructions

If you have changed the domain name of your web site or changed the file names of pages, then you need to link to the new URLs for your visitors and search engine spiders. The 301 redirect is the most search engine-friendly method of directing users to the new URL or page.

In a .htaccess File (if you have one):

Add a new line that reads:

redirect 301 / http://www.new-site.com/

More information on how to implement this redirect can be read here...

Microsoft & Internet Explorer vs Web Standards

2006-05-21T10:42:00.000+10:00

This is a great post by someone called Jim on 456 Berea Street...

Microsoft, by not keeping Internet Explorer up to date as web development has moved into the era of open web standards, has caused web professionals all over the world a lot of grief.

I don't think this can be emphasised enough. It's not just "a lot of grief".

It's years of being held back, knowing what you could do, knowing that it would be possible if it weren't for this one damn browser.

It's hours spent at the office instead of with your friends and family for no other reason than Internet Explorer not being good enough.

It's knowing what absolute garbage it is, and yet being utterly powerless to do anything other than babysit it.

It's knowing that there is no end to it for years to come, even now that Internet Explorer 7 is almost finished.

It's knowing that even when Internet Explorer 7 is deployed on most people's computers (my best guess the year 2010), it still won't be good enough to handle a lot of CSS 2 (published 1998).

Internet Explorer is a ten tonne weight around the neck of web developers everywhere, it's been utterly demoralising for years, and I really can't work up the energy to care that poor Chris is upset. I know he's trying to do the right thing. I know it's not his fault. But ultimately I, like a lot of web developers, have just reached the end of my tether and nothing will be good enough to stop this feeling of resentment.

Yeah, there's nothing he can do about it but put up with it. I guess after a few more years of unwarranted abuse, he'll finally understand what it's been like for us web developers"

Couldn't agree more.

Graded Browser Support

2006-05-19T21:55:00.000+10:00

Interesting article on Graded Browser Support by Nate Koechley, Senior Web Developer Yahoo! Inc (Feb 13th 2006):

"In the first 10 years of professional web development, back in the early ‘90s, browser support was binary: Do you — or don’t you — support a given browser? When the answer was “No”, user access to the site was often actively prevented. In the years following IE5’s release in 1998, professional web designers and developers have become accustomed to asking at the outset of any new undertaking, “Do I have to support Netscape 4.x browsers for this project?”

By contrast, in modern web development we must support all browsers. Choosing to exclude a segment of users is inappropriate, and, with a “Graded Browser Support” strategy, unnecessary.

Graded Browser Support offers two fundamental ideas:

A broader and more reasonable definition of “support.”
The notion of “grades” of support

Evaluating Website Accessibility

2006-05-03T22:02:00.000+10:00

Invaluable post by Roger Johansson on 456 Berea St evaluating website accessibility...

"intended to make it easier for web developers and website owners to perform a basic accessibility evaluation"

Evaluating website accessibility part 2, Basic Checkpoints explains accessibility aspects that can be tested with automated tools as well as some relatively easy manual checks.

2006-04-25T22:07:00.000+10:00

Great resource collection of CSS navigation techniques. Brilliant!

http://www.alvit.de/css-showcase/css-navigation-techniques-showcase.php

'Disappearing' blocks of text & lists in IE

2006-03-28T21:22:00.000+11:00

Good fix for an annoying IE bug which causes blocks of text to 'disappear' - usually when above or below a list (with the bullet points forced outside the div)...

Those familiar with IE's propensity to "disappear" protruding content know that applying {position: relative;} to the protruding element can sometimes make it display properly. In fact, the bullets are really still there in IE6, but that browser has a well known difficulty with showing content when it is forced outside of its container, usually as a result of applying negative margins. Although these bullets are not your typical box content, they are connected to the list items, and are clearly being forced to display outside of the DIV container, so this IE bug is at least being semi-consistent.

details here

Quirks vs Standards Mode - what's the difference?

2006-03-14T20:19:00.000+11:00

Great post by Tedster on Webmasterworld about Quirks Mode vs Standards Mode...

" There's been some question (sometimes a lot of questions) about what quirks mode is, and the parallel question, what standards mode is.

Up until version 6 browsers, there was a lot of non-standard rendering built into user agents. A lot of this behavior didn't conform to the W3C rendering recommendations at all, but it was what we worked with and we got very used to it.

And then came the move to standards, with Document Type Declarations (DTD) and all that. But how can new browsers handle those legacy pages all, over the web that depend on "quirky" behavior in order to look good?

That became the question, and the answer is "quirks" mode.

If a browser sees a full DTD as the FIRST element of a document, including the W3C URL for the details, then it renders the page in "standards" mode. Because standards are still relatively young, there is some variation from one browser to another, but it's usually minor.

But if a browser sees no DTD, or a partial DTD, then it goes into "quirks mode", which essentially means rendering the page the wrong way, but the way we were used to up until version 6".

Microsoft will have a better search engine than Google in 6 months

2006-03-08T11:06:00.000+11:00

Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday.

"What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google," said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

"The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant," he told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit.

Story here

One response from RichTC on the Webmasterworld forum:

" I do wish they would cut the PR BS. Lets see them get the basic deep indexing and half relevent serps right first - before they start claiming they can knock Google off the number 1 spot in 6 mths. Currently its all pie in the sky, the results are dire, their reach is dire and their search bot is currently next to hopeless - making a statement like that is a pure pipe dream imo and not even remotely likely in another two years let alone 24wks!"

Conditional Comments & IE7

2006-02-25T21:33:00.000+11:00

Looks like we'll all have to become familiar with conditional comments when IE7 comes out...

In mid October, the IE Blog urged developers to stop using CSS hacks to workaround IE’s problems, and start relying on Microsoft’s proprietary conditional comments.

Good discussion on Mezzoblue on this topic too.

What Exactly Are Accessibility & Usability?

2006-02-19T21:47:00.000+11:00

Great post on webmasterworld.com...here

"For years, accessibility and usability have been considered optional improvements. Not anymore. Many countries across the globe are passing laws necessitating a global change in how we view accessibility and usability. Companies and websites have faced legal penalties for not making their sites accessible. The legal requirements in certain countries, or for certain types of websites, obligate many of us to not only be aware of accessibility and usability guidelines, but to actively pursue and conform to them.

Accessibility deals with ensuring that everyone can access your website, regardless of browser used or whether living with certain impairments or disabilities. Needless to say, accessibility is much more than caring for people with disabilities. It is about lowering the barriers for everyone accessing the Internet, about caring for people's needs and preferences, along with writing the best possible content.

As you can see, the step over to usability is quite natural. Usability takes over where accessibility ends. If accessibility is about enabling access to your site for everyone, usability is ensuring that everyone can navigate the site in an intuitive way. Usability is about making your quality content easy to find, about ease and flexibility of navigation, about simplicity and logic.

Accessibility and Usability are two topics not to be ignored or taken lightly. Legislation and the steady increase in public demand for a better web is, luckily, going to impact how we view marketing, site design, and ecommerce -- forever...."