Interesting article that I came across from colorlovers.com. It showcases few example of the popular site with color blind filters. There’s this tool called “Color Blind Webpage Filter“, it translate your site into the world as seen by color blind person.
This definately adds a boost to web accessbility. Awesome.
I just love the fact that somone blends both trailer together so well. nice job.
Awesome show and tell from Web Designer’s Wall. Nick raise a good point using sitemap in the footer. Cut down the clicks, engage interactivity, saves time and enhance page design are all good reasons to design for responsiveness.
Nothing better than cutting down my production time! Sweet!
Tragic at my condo
Our condo recently just got flooded due to the waterline breakage behind the fridge. We had to remove all the carpet so now we are living on the bare concrete! I had planned to get hardwood floor anywayz, but everything starts one month early! And because we are on the bare concrete, nothing better than just paint the whole place anywayz.
During the painting process, we had to remove our wall shelf in order to get all the area painted. The problem is, after we remove the shelf, the anchor in the drywall is no longer valid! We put the shelf back in, put the stuff back on, and then “whomp”, everything comes back down plus adding holes to the drywall. Argh.
Now we have to patch up the holes, and we can’t install the shelf on the wall again! So what can we do about the shelf? Add few legs to the shelf and make it into a little table to hold the stuff instead.
Handsome makeover for ugly AC unit
This all came from the great inspiration of Ikea Hacker blog. I randomly check this site for inspiration. I do agree that IKEA’s stuff is never really that durable, but IKEA is everywhere (and probably the cheapest for the design that they offer)! And because all the furniture came in pieces, you can reuse those pieces and make it to something else. It’s brilliant!
This guy transformed his ugly AC unit into a handsome furniture piece that adds accent to the place. It’s just beautiful!
And someone put together Vika Fintorp leg and Lack shelf to make a slim entry table. It’s also brilliant!
This is far the best hack I’ve seen. Salad Bowl Speakers. Who would thought of a salad bowl can be turned into something sexy.
Home improvement is one of my 2009 goal, and it’s literally taking half of my free time to accomplish it. Think outside of the box is what I say to myself all the time, but most of the time I still think inside of the box. lol
Interesting, I was just checking CSS vault for their update on the CSS galleries. I saw this Organic Food supermarket, it caught my attention due to it’s richness in terms of layout and color.
What I find intersting is that their navigation and headings are replaced with images right after the page is loaded.
After just sniffing through codes to find out how they did it. This is the site I came across. “Facelift image replacement” A nifty script that turns your fonts into display types as image format.
So far I am not quite sure how reliable of this script is although you actually pay for “premium” service for $1 a month.
I can see they have came out with FIR wordpress plugin for this script.
So has anyone wondered about the SEO for this script? I haven’t found any documentation or anything states on the website indicating if Google will crawl those text that had been replaced with images.
Another images replace technique that has been implemented in our new ourfaves.com website is sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement).
What sIFR does is to replace the text with Swf that has been created dynamically. It overlays on top of the original text and the text can be selected and copied. And if the user doesn’t have flash player installed. The text just simply won’t get replaced.
Sometimes I wonder if I should use those script to enhance the look of my design. Sometimes I also wonder if adding those script will increase the load time for the users? Sure, it makes the site look so much nicer, but do I really want to sacrifice the response time? Another great post that I read the other day is Speed in Software design. It mentioned how we should cut down response time and eliminate steps. It emphasize that we should “Design for responsiveness!”
I typically kept my design flexible and easy to update without going through so much trouble. That’s why I kept everything system fonts and scalable backgrounds.
And please keep in mind, those image replacements are only good for short and large display fonts. It’s always better to keep the body fonts to either Verdana (if it’s under 11pixel in size) or Arial, Helvetica (if it’s over 12 pixel in size), just for the sake of legibility.
5 tips for increasing Google Adsense earning
Interesting, I came across this link when I was checking out Smashing Magazine’s post on 100% Google AdSense tips and tools. I just started playing with Google AdSense late last year. Therefore there are still alot of things about AdSense that I need to learn. I only implemented AdSense on my AlexandPatty.com blog. Those tips definately helped me optimize my ads for sure.
I actually came across this posting last month. I even sent out this link to everyone in my team (not sure if they read it.) It’s actually quite interesting how those controls are actually around us in most of the applications, softwares or even web pages.
12 Standard UI Screen Patterns
Another wonderful posting about the principles of screen patterns for RIA applications. It’s quite interesting the patterns are actually around us all the time. Even the sites that I worked on everyday (thestar.com, yourhome.ca, parentcentral.ca..etc) They all incorporate some sort of the patterns.
When I see this post, I send this to my manager (whom’s working on building us a wonderful project management tool). It has a large list of the component behaviors that we see today. This is a must-read if you are building some sort of productivity tools or applications.
10 Min Power Point Mock prototyping
No matter how much I dislike Power Point, I just can’t avoid it. It’s on everyone’s machine! It’s on your manager’s machine, and it’s on all your client’s machine too! I had built Flash presentation back in the day that I should have just built it under Power Point instead. Why? because it’s just easier to update through Powerpoint instead of Flash. This Powerpoint prototyping Youtube video shows you the trick all under 10 min, it’s freaking awesome.
Awesome post from Freelance Switch. In the past I have never really provide any written contract with the client. I usually use Email as proof of contract. (That’s why I still have client owe me money!) This post is definately big boost for my business side for sure.
http://freelanceswitch.com/clients/what-should-be-included-in-a-design-contract/
This post is targeted for rental properties, but it also works for freelance business as well. I don’t really do my own taxes, but I know my furniture are under CCA schedules. lol
http://www.milliondollarjourney.com/how-capital-cost-allowance-works-cca.htm
I guess I should start keep track of all the interesting articles and links I read everyday..
I haven’t get myself back on track with twitter, and here’s already a list of 99 twitter tools and applications! Holy cow!
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/17/99-essential-twitter-tools-and-applications/
Interesting jquery script effect, I guess it would be awesome for showing portfolio pieces?
http://www.hieu.co.uk/ImageSwitch/
Excellent Article on building flexible and fluid websites
http://alistapart.com/articles/fluidgrids
Excellent slideshow about working with CSS in object oriented manner. This definately solves a lot of problem with all our corporate sites. There’s no such thing as one central code library that everyone follows.
http://wiki.github.com/stubbornella/oocss
I kept a habit collect and organize my design resources. Do you?
http://www.bittbox.com/freebies/free-texture-tuesday-leather/
I do agree that right now it’s an awesome time to start investing and also get a place if you don’t have one yet.
http://www.milliondollarjourney.com/it%E2%80%99s-a-great-time-to-buy-your-first-house.htm
Finally after one year signing up Twitter, got bored after 2 second using it, and now I am coming back to use it.
Why? because now it will link my blog entry to twitter to provide update on the fly. Sweet! I hate updating my status/news in many different location.
This all thanks to Twitterfeed.com. Yay!
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