Dave:
A danger I am constantly battling is becoming too tied to my tools. By tools, I mean the things I use to get work done. It could be Photoshop, CSS, a CMS, pen, paper, anything I use to do my job. Why is this so dangerous? Aren’t tools there to make our lives easier? Well, they are, but we often lock in out toolset too early on projects and it ends up hurting our product in the long run.
Josh:
The modern day cut-up man/woman/shop is dead when it comes to a dynamic system. It’s sad because no obituary was written nor news alert on AP/CNN posted, but it’s true. The theory, that a company or individual needs to ‘cut-up’ the design composition into a semi-working website before full development of the backend system is highly unnecessary and inefficient. In a time where budgets are even tighter than they have been in years past and a need for continual push around efficiency in development, eliminating the process of cut-ups before development needs to die quickly.
Josh:
Primer:
I thought that I would start a series of fairly straight forward posts that refer to the basics that are so often overlooked in web development and more specifically the realm of front end development. Utilizing sprites should be one of those techniques that it’s a no brainer and have no second thoughts/reasons on why not to use them. In case you did forget, the sprite is in reference to early video game developers who used a large image to contain multiple states of an entity while preserving precious space on the game media at the time.
Laura:
"Why use parentheses instead of brackets?" These are the types of basic questions asked by designers learning PHP. Such questions befuddle instructors and annoy developer-types in PHP classes, but making PHP accessible to designers is a huge leap toward advancing Drupal adoption. Drupal instructors are fumbling to create PHP courses that are designer-friendly and don't scare away this huge group of potential Drupal users.
And designers are hungry to learn PHP. While they've been walking down the website creation street with their bag of design, CSS and HTML tricks, their PHP-literate sister is zooming by in her shiny black Cadillac.
Josh:
CSS3 is great fun! It can speed up our work process with simple syntax for creating awesome drop/text shadows, gradients, rounded corners, animations etc. It’s a virtual wonderland for any web developer/designer for easily whip up visual elements that would normally take at least a few sprites, several hours of writing code and countless Advil when trying to get it all to work cross-browser.
Josh:
There are more flavors of browsers out there than coffee choices at your local Starbucks. I may not be 100% correct on that statement, but toss in browsers resolutions and the different operating systems that people are viewing on and the numbers are quite close.
"Can I get a firefox 3.5 on OSX with my 1440 x 900 resolution to go?"
"My IE6 on windows xp is how much? 1024x768?"
"Do you have any fresh chromes? My Ubuntu loves them!"
Don’t get me started on odd browsers like NutScrape, Orca, Salamander, Skipstone, SkyKruzer, Kazehakase, Madfox, Arachne, Charon, Chimera, Dillo, Oregano, and Viola, just to name a few.
Tobby :
Most folks realize what the "cascading" part of Cascading Style Sheets means for styling Web pages. However, some of the inner workings of CSS specificity are lost on many of them. Especially when it comes to those maddening CSS selectors that should be taking effect, but aren't.
Samantha:
When designing websites there are a few online tools that I regularly utilize. Thinking back on my growth as a designer, its hard to imagine what it was like before these tools were lurking in my web design toolkit. From typography and color to layout and design patterns, these tools help me cut down on time during the design process.
Tirdad:
There's really no reason you should need Javascript to preload images when it can be done with a little CSS.
Laura:
Being a user-interface designer involves two jobs: designing a comp and then turning this design into code (or as we say here at Phase2, "doing a cut-up.")
Both involve creativity and precision, but while there is some overlap, at a certain point I take off my designer hat to put on my cutter-up hat. It involves a clear switch of mental gears.
