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Seward Alaska
HTML5 BOILERPLATE V2
A great starting point for your next project.
My friend Art in pitch mode:
Content first, menu last approach for mobile web design
Lot’s of advantages to this approach, but it can be a bit tricky to implement.
Using spiro splines in Inkscape
This tutorial will focus on a new feature in Inkscape version .47 called spiro splines.
This is a simple technique and might be a bit of a stretch to consider as an actual tutorial. At any rate this is a fun tool with a lot of possible uses. Grab a copy of Inkscape if you don’t have one already and let’s get started.
Inset effect with Inkscape (version .47)
Basic SEO for WordPress theme developers
Generally the last thing people think about when building a WordPress theme is search optimization.
Features and design come first, and search optimization generally comes last or not at all. This article will discuss a few easy steps to make your WordPress theme a little friendlier to search engines. More specifically I’ll concentrated on explaining why it’s a good idea to optimize your WordPress theme, what the key elements of good on page SEO are, and discuss today’s best practices for on page SEO when designing websites that use WordPress as a CMS.
Designing download buttons with Inkscape
This tutorial will show you how to create a contemporary download button in Inkscape — a popular web design asset. Continue reading “Designing download buttons with Inkscape”
Redesign Summer 2009
If you’ve visited here before you might notice that this site has just received a major overhaul. One of my main goals with this design was to improve the navigation and make it easier for people to access and find content. I also wanted to make it easier for people to get in touch, request proposals, and provide a better explanation of how our web design process works. I’ll discuss the motivations behind this design, the process, and some of the sites new features.
Sugar Labs Activities
We’re designing the activities download portal for Sugar Labs.
This is a fork of Mozilla’s open-source web application, AMO (which is short for addons.mozilla.org) which they built as an add-on manager for Firefox and Thunderbird. The Sugar Labs team has forked this project to manage activity downloads for the XO laptop.
We actually finished this the design and front-end development for this project back in June. However, shortly after its launch Mozilla released a significant redesign of their AMO app which has a lot of cool features that we’re now working on incorporating for Sugar Activites.
We’re designing this site in-browser, so here’s a preview of what it will look like soon.
UPDATE: Now online at http://activities.sugarlabs.org/ and 9,676,899 activities have been downloaded from the services as of 10/26/2013.
Motivation for a new design
Our website is just fine how it is, but I wanted to make information for potential clients easier to access and quickly scan.
On the most basic level, I really just wanted to reorganize our about page and add our design and development process in a four column grid below our elevator pitch. The idea was that this four column grid would sit below the a three column grid (the same grid as the current homepage) with some relevant information about Tucson Labs and our services.
Nikko Icons Beta Release
After countless hours of design work, I’m proud to release the first beta version of the Nikko Icon set. I’m also releasing a completely free “web edition” that contains 99 high quality icons. These web edition icons were create for people that don’t use Gnome but would like to use the icons for other purposes. The downside to the web edition is that it’s an incomplete set (it only contains icons that are 48 pixels in width and height). However, if you want all of the icons, they’re included in the Gnome edition – you just have to dig.
The changes for this release include:
- # New navigation icons
- # Most icons are now using the Tango color palette
- # A lot of new application Icons
- # New mimetypes
Get more info and download it here.
Creating Patterns in Inkscape
Patterns are an essential resource for web designers. They help dictate the character of a website and when used correctly can help shift the readers attention to desired sections on the page or help set the mood for reading.
The web is awash with resources free or paid pattern resources, but knowing how to create your own can often provide better results than an off the shelf, generic solution. Moreover you needn’t worry about downloading the pattern in the desired format or spending time searching through hundreds of images.
This article is aimed at explaining how to create a background pattern using Inkscape. Given that there’s a current trend on the web to use a repeating pin stripe pattern set at a 45 degree angle for a background image – I will use this as an example for the method. More specifically this tutorial will explain how to convert vector objects in Inkscape into patterns that you can use in your design. I’ll and also provide a work around for a fairly annoying pattern gap bug that affects Inkscape .47 and below.
Microsoft's new marketing strategy
Microsoft is a giant company with a unique history. It has dominated the software industry for the past 25 years, but it’s finally starting to feel the pressure of a sluggish market and more intense competition. Considering trends in today’s desktop market, I’m going to make some predictions about what Microsoft is going to sell at its new stores.