random musings of a designer, gamer, tea drinker.
October 18th, 2007
Todays quote come from my dearest.
“what the hell are you doing to my eyes”
Taken out of context one could wonder what on earth she is referring too. She was of course refering to a test image of the new navigation bar I am working on for the MOUL site.
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July 3rd, 2007
I’ve often thought about which would be the best way to structure CSS, which would be the most beneficial way to make finding and editing quicker and easier.
Not to mention it may need to be easy to find for others using the style sheet for example.
Currently I style my sheets grouped in to sections; structure style, text styles, image styles and so on. Within each of those sections the elements are grouped in terms of their placement on the site (header values are at the top, content values beneath that, footer values at the bottom).
I had been considering using a different format of having the style sheet structured by elements then within each element section having all the values for that element.
The problem with this format is that I seldom see it used on sites, which makes me wonder if it is one of those “web design no-nos”. Having said that I did discover a WordPress theme which uses this formatting for the CSS which you can view here: CSS.txt
Perhaps the size of the site could be a factor here, if you have a small site with minimal CSS values then you wouldn’t need to be concerned so much with using the structuring provided in the example. However I do believe this kind of structure would be greatly beneficial for The D’ni Jazz Club which has a pretty large style sheet which has gotten muddled and confusing as I have added in test values that have ended up staying but not in their designated spots.
I am curious as to what the thoughts are of the fellow designers who read this blog are.
May 9th, 2007
N.Design Studio, using a spot of Jquery, Javascript library and Fisheye component, came up with a stunning Mac like dock menu for websites.
I seem to be having a little issue with the icons being a bit jagged when they are enlarged but aside from that I am rather impressed with the smoothness of it.
Demo of the Dock Menu can be found here: Dock Menu Demo
April 1st, 2007
I have been finding lately that the applications I enjoy using seem to loose something upon receiving an upgrade. New features are added, things I would never use (and sometimes wonder if anyone would use) and eventually the neat little application becomes this bloated thing that just doesn’t inspire me to use any more. I am sure I am not the only one who feels this, infact I know I am not, one of the key points to Zenphoto being created was an answer to the bloated gallery software you find floating around.
I have been having this issue with Wiki software, a lot of it is insanely bloated and just a pain to use. Now I can understand that Wiki’s can be complex in structuring and so you are probably going to get a lot of coding going on there, but there are some “light” versions around that don’t seem to fall prey to this issue. I have tried countless versions of Wiki software to find something that I like, I admit I am being a little picky but I need to know that it can do what I have in mind without hacking into 50 different php files to do so. Ideally what I would like to see is someone like Automattic take on the Wiki area. The format that they use for both WordPress and BBPress is something I would like to see in a Wiki. A simple installation and customization of themes, and the use of plugins for extra options. Especially with a rewrite for the urls, which has been the draw back of the light Wiki software I have used, I want more control over the urls.
A guy can dream.
October 29th, 2006
Recently chucker mentioned in his “Remix” post about the tagline in wordpress, which states “Code is Poetry” and ventures the possibility of Code being Art.
This leads me to wonder if Code is Poetry what does that make the Kubrick style sheet? A Haiku perhaps?
I was wondering if I was the only one frustraited by the messy CSS code of Wordpress’ default theme, but as it turns out I wasn’t.
So I decided to do something about it, I went through and removed all the conflicting values (duplicate values) and added a few more to make customisation easier (some people know how to change values but not write new ones). I wrote this sheet in a structured way that I find works for me, not sure if others will find it usable as I can never tell if my CSS decent enough for people really. So here it is;
As chucker points out, Kubrick is third party and so doesn’t really fall under wordpress’ “Code is Poetry” line, this of course would depend on whether the line itself refers to just wordpress code or code in general.
April 17th, 2006
So I have been thinking of upgrading the old DJC forums. The problem is going from v1.3.1 to v2+, means you need to completely rewrite the skin.
Seems they are relying on CSS sheets more in the newer versions which is nice, made skinning a lot easier. Still not brilliant though and trying to remember what effects what on a forum that has so many pages causes headaches. I did have to dive into the root HTML files and add some new elements in order to get what I wanted.
So the new forum skin looks ok, I might write a better skin later but its no longer at the top of my “to do” list. Seems more integrated with the new site build too which is nice, there are some elements that kind of break out of their boxes (basically when one is setting up a new registration).
My main concern is the upgrade messing up the SQL database, but I have plenty of time to figure that out. The forums won’t go up until the new build is released, and until I fix this issue with the “News” section thats not going to be up any time soon.
Really optimistic about the new site, content is better sorted, easier to find for new players and old players plus a lot of new info to be added.
April 2nd, 2006
So you want to bring your website out of the stone age and into the future? Web 2.0 can help you here. We here at TweekCorp enjoy shiny new things and are always looking to the future (one way or another). This quick guide put together by our web team is here to help.
First think you need to know about web 2.0 is less is more so more is cool so you will be wanting 4 colours here;
For our example we shall be using the D’ni Jazz Club site as an example.
Before we forget you will also need to use gradients, because no site is complete without them.
Web 2.0 optimizes content using tags to make it easier for people to share information and post cool articles on their blogs, so remember to tag everything you write.
Now that you have tagged all your content you need a web 2.0 tags navigation section like so;
Web 2.0 loves minimal design so big images are often a no-no, instead we use small images and not to forget that ones site would be nothing with out the magical web 2.0 star graphic.
No self respecting web 2.0 site would be seen without an RSS feed, how would your visitors syndicate your content on their blogs?
So now it is time to combine all the elements and there we go, you are now web 2.0 make sure you validate your XHTML and CSS.
congratulations welcome to the future of the web remember for those who don’t believe us? just take a look at our web 2.0 dnijazzclub.com site below.
March 6th, 2006
