« December 2005 Entries »

7 Things

Well, I suppose if everyone else is doing it, I’d better join the fray with a year-end introspective of my own. Here are 7 randomly-selected things that made me happy in 2005, in no particular order.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (28) | posted to Ephemeral, Technology, The Good

Destructive Strokes

This is kind of a minor thing, but something that’s been a growing irritation for a while. Photoshop’s Stroke layer effect actually eats into the layer it’s applied to, resulting in an undesired destructive effect if you start doing things like adjusting the layer blending mode or opacity of the stroke.

Continue Reading… | comments off | posted to Photoshop

FACE

You know and love script.aculo.us, and now there’s a new kid on the block. The Javascript-based FACE aims to “enhance standards-compliant pages without sacrificing important aspects such as accessibility, scalability and flexibility.” Simple animation effects are enabled by the script, and then controlled by CSS; in theory, you can now animate any change you might inflict upon an element. Like, animating an element resizing. Or animating a palette cycle. Or growing a border. Or… etc.

A bunch of demonstrations of FACE in action are available in the various sections on creator Faruk Ateş’ site, KuraFire. Unfortunately, most are animation of the on-load variety, which you’ll likely remember growing sick of during the Flash days. It’s pretty hard to love pages that animate on their own accord anymore. Thankfully, FACE is not limited to that. Check out the example Destinations page for some basic hover effects; the interactivity options strike me as much more useful, especially in light of script.aculo.us.

While it would be premature to rush out and replace your copy of Flash MX with a bit of Javascript, FACE might just grow into an alternative for times when Flash feels like overkill. It should be interesting to see how this one develops. It has potential.

Comments Closed (31) | posted to CSS, Interaction, Scripting

Presentation Mode

That’s it. I’m totally over HTML for slides. Done. Finished. The straw that broke the camel’s back: frantic last minute browser testing on a plane under Virtual PC as my computer’s battery meter inched ever closer to the red zone because after spending two solid weeks creating material and producing my slides, testing in IE6 just somehow slipped in the list of priorities.

Continue Reading… | comments off | posted to Events, Software

Macromedia No More

It’s done. Adobe has officially acquired Macromedia, and the company is now called… Adobe.

On the one hand, no more lawsuit silliness over tabbed palettes. I’d imagine it’ll take a few release cycles, but we’ll finally have a consistent interface between some of the most popular design applications.

On the other hand, now we start the deathwatch on all former Macromedia applications that aren’t Flash or Dreamweaver. From the looks of the new bundles, there will be some shifting as contents settle, but the direction seems pretty clear. Only the web bundle includes any non-Flash Macromedia applications. You can still buy others stand-alone, but how long will that last?

What I’m particularly curious about is what will happen with their newly acquired web and server technologies. Adobe’s never had much of a solution for web development beyond the UI portion. Presumably GoLive will die in favour of Dreamweaver, but ColdFusion and Flex don’t have equivalents in Adobe’s stable. The obvious implication of a combined PDF/Flash platform sometime in the future means there must be back-end technology to back it up.

Which brings us back to the web. AJAX is hot, but Javascript can’t do everything. When faced with its limitations, Flash is currently the most practical alternative. From a business standpoint, it’s a no-brainer to develop and promote this emerging/existing platform (in whatever form it may take). So I’d expect to see a lot more effort toward making Flash development easier.

Should be interesting to see how all this impacts Macromedia’s attention to standards-based web development. Adobe’s made some strides in that direction recently with GoLive’s increased emphasis on CSS, but it has always seemed that Macromedia was fundamentally more in tune with the technology and the community.

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PSA

Public Service Announcement: if you’re planning on going to SXSWi in March, book your hotel now. A bunch of them are already sold out, as I learned the hard way this week. No Hampton Inn for me this year.

Comments Closed (23) | posted to Ephemeral, The Industry

Zen

Must be something in the air. I just heard from our publisher that The Zen of CSS Design made both Amazon’s Editors’ picks and Customers’ Favorites lists in Computers & Internet for 2005! A big huge thanks to everyone who bought a copy, this is a great early Christmas present.

comments off | posted to Ephemeral, Publishing

Bulletproof

Right, so I can’t possibly write anything about a Dan Cederholm book without appearing to have a bias, so let me tell you right off the bat: yep, I think he’s a swell guy, and yep, I got a review copy of his latest book for free.

That being said, I’ve had Bulletproof Web Design sitting on my desk for a few months now, and I just can’t bring myself to stick it back in the bookshelf. It’s got a special something that most tech books don’t, namely cohesiveness.

The overall package feels like the perfect blending of its summary parts. From the book design to the illustration work, the paper texture to the book dimensions, it all adds up to something most books don’t offer: a great experience.

The content’s good too, as you might expect. “Bulletproofing” a web site means effectively blending liquid and fixed-width techniques, accounting for alternate browsing scenarios, and generally designing web sites in a web-like manner. You may not find anything new if you’ve been reading SimpleBits for any length of time, but having all these techniques in book form makes for easier explanation when speaking with clients and other designers.

Comments Closed (13) | posted to CSS, Design, Publishing